What is it?
Something I do not know. See how it watches?
It must be something of his. I wonder how much of my plans it has learned?
Shall I upchuck firestuff upon it?
No. Pretend that it is not there. Do not look at it.
He turned and crossed to the castle, entering there. He had come upon a description of an effect in one of his father’s volumes and had been meaning to try it when he had the time.
He hurried up the stair, to halt outside the library where Nora sat sketching some final maps. Peering in, he saw that she wore a pale tunic, short gray breeches, a metal belt and sturdy boots she had located in one of the upstairs wardrobes. Her hair was bound back by a black strap.
She looked up as Pol entered.
“I am not entirely finished,” she said. “There’s another page.”
“Go ahead.”
She completed a drawing she had been making, took up another writing sheet, turned a page, began another map. She glanced up at Pol and smiled. He nodded.
“Soon,” she said.
She worked for several minutes. Finally, she sighed, closed the book and took up the papers.
“Would you step outside for just a moment, please?”
“Your voice sounds strange.”
“Yes. I talked too much. Please.”
She crossed to the door. He waited beside it. His face was expressionless. She paused.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“No. Go out.”
His lips, now that she looked closely, did not seem to move in proper time with his words. She passed through the doorway and halted. In the corridor, Pol stood off to the right, fingers to his lips.
“How?”
“This way,” he whispered, taking her hand.
She followed him.
“It is a simulacrum spun of magical strands, my likeness laid upon it. I don’t know how long it will last. Maybe all day, maybe only a little while.” He began gesturing, slowly at first, then more rapidly. Something took shape between his hands, a faint glow to it. “This one is yours,” he said. “It will go back in there and keep mine company, to distract the spy device, while we depart. He’s been watching us. I want as good a lead as possible.”
Later, Nora seemed to stroll back into the room, taking the hand of Pol, who still stood beside the door. They crossed slowly to a pair of chairs and sat facing one another.
“Lovely weather.”
“Yes.”
Periodically, one of them would rise and walk about the room. There were a number of things they would do, together and apart, taking perhaps an hour before the sequence began again.
The prototype blue-bellied, gray-backed tracer-bird followed their every step, hung upon their words. It did not turn away at the noises below, or as Moonbird rose above the flagstones, drifted over the far wall, pivoted on the point of a breeze, bore east and vanished.
As the night progressed, Mouseglove had slowly come to feel as if he were a prisoner. Despite several near-disasters, he had remained undetected, gradually enlarging his mental map of the area and developing an awareness of the city’s peculiar defenses. But he could find no way off of Anvil Mountain. The perimeters of the plateau were extremely well-patrolled, both by the small men and the half-mechanical caterpillars, as well as being subject to the scrutiny of fixed mechanical eyes and those of the circling birds. It seemed that not even an insect could pass undetected.
Picking lock after lock, he had finally located stores of foodstuffs and transferred what he judged a sufficient quantity to his hiding place. He memorized every niche, every unfrequented passage he came upon. With a thief s eye, he studied the various fixed detection devices from a distance and finally close up, coming to appreciate their functions and some of their weaknesses.
It was only by chance—chance, and Mark’s immediate decision to bolster his combat forces above the level he had formerly felt adequate—that Mouseglove happened upon a newly formed ground school for the preliminary training of pilots for a series of manned fliers on which production had been stepped up.
Lying flat on the roof, blocked from overhead detection by an angled air duct, he could hear the words and view the training machine through a grating he had exposed by removing a small panel.
He listened to the entire lecture. When it was over, he had convinced himself. If he could audit just a few more sessions, he would be willing to steal a flier by night and take his chances in the air. Short of finding a hidden tunnel through the rock itself, it seemed the only way to manage an escape.
Feeling a grudging respect for the red-haired man who had brought this city back to life, he returned to his quarters to rest until evening when he intended spying upon the surveillance center once again and later breaking into the classroom to study the trainer’s controls at closer range.
Following a full meal, he slept deeply; one hand upon his dagger, a stolen grenade he knew was some sort of weapon beneath the other.
Statue-like, an old female and two young stallions stood on a crag in the midst of a stand of dwarf pines, regarding Castle Rondoval.
“There is nothing out of the ordinary,” she said.
“I saw lights last night, Stel, and I heard noises. Bitalph, in the south, did report a dragon.”
“The place is probably haunted,” she said. “Enough has gone on there.”
“And what of the dragon?” asked the younger stallion.
“If one has come awake, it will be dealt with—eventually—by those it most oppresses. It could also be a foreign beast.”
“Then we should do nothing?”
“Let us watch here, a day and a night. We can take turns. I’ve no desire to enter the place.”
“Nor I.”
It was much later in the day that they saw the dragon rise and drift eastward.
“There!”
“Yes.”
“What do we do now?”
“Alert the others. It may never return. But then, again, it may.”
“It appeared that there were two riders.”
“I know.”
“You were there on the day of the battle, Stel. Was that one of the old dragons of Kondoval?”
“All dragons look alike to me. But the riders . . . One of them looked like Devil Det himself, younger and stronger than I ever saw him.”
“Woe!”
“Alas!”
“Go and spread the word among the folk. And we had best talk with the men of the villages, and with old Mor.”
“Mor is gone, A Wise One—Grane—said that he walked the golden road and will not return.”
“Then things are becoming difficult. Go! I will investigate farther.”
“You would enter the castle yourself?”
“Go! Do as I say! Now!”
The youths obeyed her. They knew the look in her eye, and they still feared her hoofs.
During his evening explorations, Mouseglove was attracted by a series of screams emerging from a small, barred window. Approaching, he ventured one quick glance through the opening, then ducked into a pool of shadow to digest what he had seen and, if possible, to eavesdrop.
The first impression had shaken him. But upon reflection, he wondered whether the small man in the reclining chair had indeed been covered with snakes. The black things did seem overlong to qualify for serpenthood, and their farther ends did all appear to be attached to the large metal box nearby. Also, their movements could have been a result of the man’s own thrashings. Mark had stood nearby with a small metal case in his hand, turning something on the face of the unit.
He listened to the shrieks a little longer, wondering for what offense the man might be undergoing discipline. Wondering, too, whether anything was to be gained by remaining, or by venturing another look.
There was silence. He waited, but the cries did not resume. He decided to remain. There came faint sounds of movement from within.
Finally, he could bear it
no longer. He rose for another glimpse.
Mark, facing away from the window, was detaching what now appeared to be a series of shiny black ropes from the suppine form, coiling them and placing them in compartments within the large box. The smaller man’s eyes were open, staring up at the ceiling. When the last of the leads were removed, he stirred weakly. Mark passed him a glass of something pink and he drank from it.
“How do you feel?” the large man asked.
“Shaky,” the other replied, flexing his arms, his legs. “But everything’s all right again.”
“Did it hurt?”
“No. Not really.”
“You screamed a lot.”
“I know. Some were blue, but most were red.”
“The screams?”
“Yes. And I could smell them.”
“Excellent. You were a brave man to volunteer for this, and I want to thank you.”
“I was happy to serve.”
“Tell me more about it.”
“I tasted the colors, too—and the sounds.”
“It was a fine mix, then. Pity it only has such a short range. There are all sorts of problems in scaling it up, too . . . I wish I had more time.”
“What do you call the—thing that did it?”
Mark hefted the small unit.
“For want of a better name, I call it a jumble box. It smears your sensory inputs, mixes them. Instant synesthesia.”
The man gestured toward the huge unit to his right.
“That didn’t do it? Just the little one you’re holding?”
“That’s right. The other just recorded what was happening. If you didn’t hurt, tell me why you cried out so much?”
“I—I couldn’t understand what was happening. Everything was still there, but it was changed . . . It scared me.”
“No pain?”
“No one place that hurt. Just a—feeling that disaster was coming. Most of the time, it kept getting worse. Sometimes, though—”
“What?”
“There were moments of great pleasure.”
“You were able to count all right.”
“Yes . . . Most of the numbers were yellow. Some tasted sour.”
“Did you feel you could have gotten up, walked about?”
“Maybe. If I’d have thought of it. It was hard to think. Too much was wrong.”
“You are a brave man, and I thank you again. I will not forget this service. Now, let’s test your reflexes.”
Mouseglove heard some instruments being shifted about. Silently, he slid off through the night.
It was difficult for Stel to place her hoofs quietly on stone and tile unless she moved very slowly. This she did, however, with the patience of a huntress and former commando.
Memories returned to her as she passed through the great hall where she had stood dripping blood and sweat that final day of the battle. Ah! the stallions had had much work that night . . . She recalled the sorcerers’ confrontation, and her eyes automatically sought that ruined area of ceiling which had settled Det for good, before he could call upon his hidden powers. Much of the rubble beneath had been cleared for the removal of his body. She recalled how Mor had borne it away into the west . . .
She paused periodically and stood listening. Her ears pricked forward. There were voices. Somewhere up higher, to the left.
She crossed the gallery, came to the foot of the stair, halted again. Yes, up there . . .
Slowly, keeping near to the wall, she began to climb. The place appeared to be in better condition than she had remembered.
As she made her way along the hall, the voices came louder. To her right now, that third door . . .
She noted that the door was ajar. Approaching, she stopped directly beside it. She heard nothing from within, not even the sounds of breathing. Venturing farther forward, she looked around the corner, then drew back in puzzlement.
The couple had just seated themselves, facing one another—the young man with the white streak through his hair and the slim blonde girl. But . . . These were the same people she had seen departing on dragonback. She had not seen them return. Strange . . .
She looked again.
More than strange . . .
The girl’s face seemed to be melting, pieces of it falling, drifting away, decomposing in the air. The man—who still bore a striking resemblance to old Det—seemed totally oblivious to the fact that portions of his left arm and right thigh appeared to be unravelling, as though he were composed of thin strips of cloth wound about nothing.
Fascinated, Stel did not retreat, but stared in frank astonishment as the couple came apart. Finally, she moved forward and entered the room. What was left of the pair paid her no heed whatsoever.
“Lovely weather.”
“Yes . . . ”
The man’s face now began to melt, the girl’s garments ran from her body like liquid, drifted in the air currents like strands of silk. Their conversation continued.
“ . . . Though it could rain.”
“That is true.”
The man rose to his foot and crossed to the girl.
“You have lovely eyes.”
She rose slowly.
Stel watched them embrace, losing larger and larger pieces of themselves every moment, to drift tinsel-like before her, fading from view as they crossed the room.
“I-arrooowarnn . . . ”
The words slowed and deepened, the mouths were gone, the hair went up like smoke. Another half-minute, and they had intertwined and vanished. Stel whinnied and backed away. She had never before seen the like of it. Superstitious dreads rose to harry her.
The prototype blue-bellied, gray-backed tracer-bird now focussed its attention upon her as she circled the room, studying it carefully without paying real attention to the opened atlas, as she retreated out the door and into the corridor beyond, her hoofs clattering rapidly as she passed down the corridor.
Mouseglove heard the great doors opening below and made it to an appropriate vantage in time to see the metal birdforms launched like blown leaves into the dark sky, where they rose to swirl beneath stars, then assumed a formation which tightened itself as it wound and unwound, took its course and passed in a direction he deemed to be roughly southeast. This troubled him as he made his way to the surveillance center. He managed the approach once more and heard Mark within, cursing and giving orders. The one glimpse he got of the screens showed nothing of interest.
He did not understand Mark’s, “They’re gone! More of that magic, I suppose. That damned centaur had something to do with it! Bring me a centaur!”
Mouseglove decided to leave it at that. Less now than at any other time did he desire to fall into the hands of the ruddy giant the small men treated like a god. As he backed away, though, the words, “ . . . At the triangle’s point!” reached him from within. It would not be until later, however, that these would set off lengthy trains of speculation.
Instead, immediate considerations occupied him for the better part of several hours: Time to get out. Things are getting more frantic and life goes less certain. The longer I stay, the worse my chances . . .
The lock on the training room door barely halted his stride. Slowly and carefully, his fingertips found the controls in the model cockpit. He was afraid to make a light . . . . Funny if I can only fly it with my eyes closed, he reflected. It’s scary up there, but it’s worse down here. Anyway, better this than a dragon. What did he say about this little lever? Oh, yes . . .
Batteries fully charged, the dark birds fled across the night, the land, the water.
XVI
East and south. They traveled until fatigue overcame them. Night was rising when they located the island they had marked, and there they slept unmolested. The following day, before the night was fully departed, they crossed over the waters to the land, to sweep above mountains, dwindling rivers, desert. The next night was spent among chilly hills, where Pol reviewed all that he knew concerning their route and destination. The ge
ography here was not congruent with that of his previous world. In that place, the larger land mass he had departed did not even exist, and that over which he was crossing, while similar in places, was not a true match. Distances varied radically between locales which seemed to possess some reconcilability on maps of the two worlds. But they both had pyramids in several places, though the one he sought had the way to its entrance flanked by rows of columns alternating with sphinxes, many of them fallen, damaged, but most still visible. Something in the description he had read seemed to indicate that he should commence his entrance at the end of that way.
The dark birdforms dotted the mountaintops like statues of prehistoric beasts, wings outspread. Had there been an eye to observe them, it might not even have noted their minute, tropism-like pursuit of the sun across the sky as they recharged their batteries for the night’s flight.
The day had beaten its way well on toward evening before they stirred, almost simultaneously, as if shaken by a sudden breeze. They began to flex their wings.
Soon, one by one, they dropped from the heights, caught the air, rose, found their way, found their patterns, resumed their journey . . .
Pol’s wrist began to itch some time before their goal came into view. He felt that it was not just the now-darkening sunburn, and increased his surveillance of the bright and wavering horizon. Minutes later, a pointed dot resolved itself before him and he licked his dry lips and smiled.
Your internal compass seems to be working fine.
I do not know what you mean.
That seems to be it up ahead.
Of course.
“Nora!” His voice came out as a croak. “I see it!”
“I think I do, too!”
It grew before them until there could be no doubt as to its nature. There were no signs of movement anywhere about the dark stone structure. The plain before it was dotted with columns and statues.
Moonbird took them down near the far end of the approach, and Pol’s joints creaked as he alighted.
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