“ ‘Tis a blessing the ledge is so narrow, they cannot come against me more than one at a time.” Agatha wrapped a rag around the handle of the pot and hefted it off the hook, strands of muscle straining along her arms. “Quickly, child,” she grated, “the tripod! My son Harold is summat more than a man, but he cannot hold them long, not so many! Quickly! Quickly! We must prepare to be aiding him!”
She hobbled into the entryway. Gwen caught up the tripod and ran after her.
As she set down the tripod and Agatha hooked the pot on it again, two sticks of wood thudded against the ledge, sticking two feet up above the stone.
“Scaling ladders!” gasped Agatha. “This was well-planned, in truth! Quickly, child! Fetch the bellows!”
Gwen ran for the bellows, wishing she knew what old Agatha was planning.
As she returned—handing the bellows to Agatha where she crouched over the pot in the middle of the entryway—a tall, bearded figure appeared at the top of the ladder, clambering onto the ledge. The man leveled his dark, polished staff at the cave-mouth. The staff gave a muted clank as he set its butt against the stone.
“An iron core!” Agatha pointed the bellows over the pot at the preacher and began pumping them furiously. “That staff must not touch my son!”
But the forward end of the staff had already touched the heat haze. A spark exploded at the top of the staff. Skolax howled victory and swung his staff to beckon his forces. The peasants shouted and surged into the cave.
“Bastard!” Agatha screamed. “Vile Hell-fiends! Murrain upon thee! Thou hast slain my son!”
She glared furiously, pumping the bellows like a maniac. The steam from the pot shot forward toward the mob.
They stopped dead. A deathly pallor came over their faces. Little red dots be-gan appearing on their skins. They screamed, whirling about and flailing at their comrades, swatting at something unseen that darted and stung them.
For a moment, the crowd milled and boiled in two conflicting streams at the cave-mouth; then the back ranks screamed and gave way as the phantom stings struck them too, and the mob fled back along the ledge, away from the cave.
Only the preacher remained, struggling against the flock of phantom bees, his face swelling red with ghost-stings.
The old witch threw back her head and cackled shrill and long, still pumping the bellows. “We have them, child! We have them now!” Then she bent grimly over the pot, pumping harder, and spat, “Now shall they pay for his death! Now shall my Eumenides hie them home!”
With a titanic effort, Skolax threw himself forward, his staff whirling up over the witch’s head. Gwen leaped forward to shield her; but the staff jumped back-ward, jerking the preacher off his feet and throwing him hard on the stone floor. Agatha’s triumphant cry cut through his agonized bellow: “He lives! My son Harold lives!”
But the preacher lifted his staff as though it were a huge and heavy weight, his face swelling with ghost-stings and rage. “Hearken to me! Hearken to Skolax! Tear them! Rend them! They cannot stand against us! Break them—now!” And he lurched toward his victims with a roar.
Rod leaped forward, grabbing the staff, yanking it out of the preacher’s hands with a violent heave. But the whole crowd surged in after him, screaming and shouting. Fingers clawed at the witches; scythes swung…
Then light, blinding light, a sunburst, a nova—silent light, everywhere.
And silence, deep and sudden, and falling, falling, through blackness, total and unrelieved, all about them, and cold that drilled to their bones…
Part II
And something struck his heels, throwing him back. Something hard, heels, hips, and shoulders, and he tucked his chin in from reflex.
And fire burned in the blackness.
A campfire, only it burned in a small iron cage, black bars slanting up to a point.
Rod’s eyes fastened on that cage for the simple reassurance of solid geometry in a world suddenly crazy. It was a tetrahedron, a fire burning inside a tetrahe-dron.
But what the hell was it doing here?
And for that matter, where was “here”?
Rephrase the question; because, obviously, the fire and cage belonged here. So…
What was Rod doing here?
Back to Question Number Two: Where was “here”?
Rod started noticing details. The floor was stone, square black basalt blocks, and the fire burned in a shallow circular well, surrounded by the basalt. The walls were distant, hard to see in the dim light from the fire; they seemed to be hung with velvet, some dark deep color, not black. Rod squinted—it looked to be a rich maroon.
The hell with the curtains. Gwen…
A sudden, numbing fear pervaded Rod. He was scarcely able to turn his head, was afraid to look, for fear she might not be there. Slowly, he forced his gaze around the darkened chamber, slowly…
A great black form lay about ten feet from him: Fess.
Rod knelt and felt for broken bones, taking things in easy stages. Satisfied that he didn’t have to be measured in fractions, he clambered carefully to his feet and went over to the horse.
Fess was lying very still, which wasn’t like him; but he was also very stiff, each joint locked, which was like him when he had had a seizure. Rod didn’t blame him; being confronted with that journey, he could do with a seizure him-self—or at least a mild jolt; bourbon, for instance…
He groped under the saddlehorn and found the reset switch.
The black horse relaxed, then slowly stirred, and the great head lifted. The eyes opened, large, brown, and bleary. Not for the first time, Rod wondered if they could really be, as the eye-specs claimed, plastic.
Fess turned his head slowly, looking as puzzled as a horsehair-over-metal face can, then turned slowly back to Rod.
“Di-dye… chhhab a… zeizure, RRRRRodd?”
“A seizure? Of course not! You just decided you needed a lube job, so you dropped into the nearest grease station.” Rod tactfully refrained from mention-ing just how Fess had “dropped in.”
“I… fffai-led you innn… duhhh… momenduv…”
Rod winced at the touch of self-contempt that coated the vodered words and interrupted. “You did all you could; and since you’ve saved my life five or six times before, I’m not going to gripe over the few times you’ve failed.” He patted Fess between the ears.
The robot hung his head for a moment, then surged to his feet, hooves clash-ing on the stone. His nostrils spread; and Rod had a strange notion his radar was operating, too.
“We arrre inna gread chall,” the robot murmured; at least when he had sei-zures, he made quick recoveries. “It is stone, hung with maroon velvet curtains; a fire burns in the center in a recessed well. It is surrounded by a metal, latticework tetrahedron. The metal is an alloy of iron containing, nickel and tungsten in the following percentages…”
“Never mind,” Rod said hastily. “I get the general idea.” He frowned sud-denly, turning away, brooding. “I also get the idea that maybe my wife isn’t dead; if she was, her body would have been there. So they’ve kidnapped her?”
“I regret…”
“ ‘That the data is insufficient for…’ ” Rod recited with him. “Yeah, yeah. Okay. So how do we find her?”
“I regret…”
“Skip it. I’ve got to find her.” He struck his forehead with his fist. “Where is she?”
“In the next room,” boomed a deep, resonant voice. “She is unharmed and quite well, I assure thee. Agatha is there also.”
A tall old man with long white hair streaming down over his shoulders and a long white beard down his chest, in a long, dark-blue monk’s robe with the hood thrown back, stood by the fire. His robe was sprinkled with silver zodiac signs; his arms were folded, hands thrust up the wide, flaring sleeves. His eyes were surrounded by a network of fine wrinkles under white tufts of eyebrows; but the eyes themselves were clear and warm, gentle. He stood tall and square-shouldered near the fire, looking deep into Rod�
��s eyes as though he were search-ing for something.
“Whoever you are,” Rod said slowly, “I thank you for getting me out of a jam and, incidentally, for saving my life. Apparently I also owe you my wife’s life, and for that I thank you even more deeply.”
The old man smiled thinly. “You owe me nothing, Master Gallowglass. None owe me ought.”
“And,” Rod said slowly, “you owe nothing to anyone. Hm?”
The wizard’s head nodded, almost imperceptibly.
Rod chewed at the inside of his cheek and said, “You’re Galen. And this is the Dark Tower.”
Again the old man nodded.
Rod nodded too, chewing again. “How come you saved me? I thought you ignored the outside world.”
Galen shrugged. “I had an idle moment.”
“So,” said Rod judiciously, “you saved two witches, my horse, and my hum-ble self, just to kill time.”
“Thou art quick to comprehend,” said Galen, hiding a smile deep in his beard. “I had no pressing researches at the moment.”
“Rod,” Fess’s voice murmured, “an analysis of vocal patterns indicates he is not telling the whole truth.”
“For this I need a computer?” Rod muttered dryly.
Galen tilted his head closer, with a slight frown. “Didst thou speak?”
“Oh, uh—just an idle comment about the physical aspects of thought.”
“Indeed.” The old wizard’s head lifted. “Dost thou, then, concern thyself with such problems?”
Rod started to answer, then remembered that he was talking to a wizard who had locked himself away for forty years and had gained power continually throughout that time—and it wasn’t because he’d been fermenting. “Well, noth-ing terribly deep, I’m afraid—just the practical side of it.”
“All knowledge is of value,” the wizard said, eyes glittering. “What bit of knowledge hast thou gained?”
“Well… I’ve just been getting some firsthand experience in the importance of the prefrontal lobes.” Rod tapped his forehead. “The front of the brain. I’ve just had a demonstration that it acts as a sort of tunnel.”
“Tunnel?” Galen’s brows knit. “How is that?”
Rod remembered that the original Galen had authored the first definitive anatomy text back at the dawn of the Terran Renaissance. Had to be coinci-dence—didn’t it? “There seems to be a sort of wall between concept and words. The presence of the concept can trigger a group of sounds—but that’s like some-one tapping on one side of a wall and someone on the other side taking the tap-ping as a signal to, oh, let’s say… play a trumpet.”
Galen nodded. “That would not express the thought.”
“No, just let you know it was there. So this front part of the brain”—Rod tapped his forehead again—“sort of makes a hole in that wall and lets the thought emerge as words.”
Galen slowly nodded. “A fascinating conjecture. Yet, how could one verify its accuracy?”
Rod shrugged. “By being inside the mind of someone who doesn’t have pre-frontal lobes, I suppose.”
Galen lost his smile, and his eyes lost focus. “Indeed we could—an we could find such a person.”
Rod couldn’t help a harsh bark of laughter. “We’ve got ‘em, Master Wizard—more than we want. Much more! The peasants call ‘em ‘beastmen,’ and they’re raiding our shores.” He remembered the alarm, and guilt gnawed at him. “Raid-ing ‘em right now, come to think of it.”
“Truly?” The old wizard actually seemed excited. “Ah, then! When I finish my current tests I will have to let my mind drift into one of theirs!”
“Don’t rush ‘em,” Rod advised. “But please do rush me! I’m needed at the home front to help fight your test group—and I’d kinda like to take my wife back with me.”
“As truly thou shouldst.” Galen smiled. “Indeed, there is another here whom thou must also conduct away from this Dark Tower.”
“Agatha? Yeah, I want her too—but not for the same reasons. Would you happen to know where they are?”
“Come,” said Galen, turning away, “thy wife is without the chamber.”
Rod stared after him a moment, surprised at the old man’s abruptness; then he shrugged and followed, and Fess followed Rod.
The wizard seemed almost to glide to the end of the cavernous room. They passed through the maroon hangings into a much smaller room—the ceiling was only fifteen feet high. The walls were hung with velvet drapes, cobalt blue this time, and one huge tapestry. The floor boasted an Oriental carpet, with a great black carven wood chair at each corner. Roman couches, upholstered in bur-gundy plush, stood between the chairs. A large round black wood table stood in the center of the room before a fair-sized fireplace. Six huge calf-bound volumes lay open on the table.
Rod didn’t notice the splendor, though; at least, not the splendor of the fur-nishings. The splendor of his wife was something else again.
Her flame-red hair didn’t go badly with the cobalt-blue drapes, though. She stood at the table, bent over one of the books.
She looked up as they came in. Her face lit up like the aurora. “My lord!” she cried, and she was in his arms, almost knocking him over, wriggling and very much alive, lips glued to his.
An eternity later—half a minute, maybe?—anyway, much too soon, a harsh voice grated, “Spare me, child! Pity on a poor old hag who never was one tenth as fortunate as thou!”
Gwen broke free and spun about. “Forgive me, Agatha,” she pleaded, press-ing back against her husband and locking his arms around her waist. “I had not thought…”
“Aye, thou hadst not,” said the old witch with a grimace that bore some slight resemblance to a smile, “but such is the way of youth, and must be excused.”
“Bitter crone!” Galen scowled down at her from the dignity of his full height. “Wouldst deny these twain their rightful joy for no reason but that it is joy thou never knew? Hath the milk of love so curdled in thy breast that thou canst no longer bear…”
“Rightful!” the witch spat in a blaze of fury. “Thou darest speak of ‘rightful,’ thou who hast withheld from me…”
“I ha’ heard thy caterwauls afore,” said Galen, his face turning to flint. “Scrape not mine ears again with thy cant; for I will tell thee now, as I ha’ told thee long agone, that I am no just due of thine. A man is not a chattel, to be given and taken like a worn, base coin. I am mine own man to me alone; I never was allotted to a woman, and least of all to thee!”
“Yet in truth thou wast!” Agatha howled. “Thou wert accorded me before thy birth or mine and, aye, afore the world were formed in God’s own mind. As sure as night was given day, wert thou allotted me; for thou art, as I am, witch-blood, and of an age together with me! Thy hates, thy joys, are mine…”
“Save one!” the wizard grated.
“Save none! Thine every lust, desire, and sin are each and all alike to mine, though hidden deep within thy heart!”
Galen’s head snapped up and back.
Agatha’s eyes lit with glee. She stalked forward, pressing her newfound ad-vantage. “Aye, thy true self, Galen, that thou secretest veiled within thy deepest heart, is like to me! The lust and body weakness that ever I made public thou hast in private, mate to mine! Thus thou hast hid for threescore years thy secret shame! Thou hast not honesty enow to own to these, thy covered, covert sins of coveting! Thou art too much a coward…”
“Coward?” Galen almost seemed to settle back, relaxing, smiling sourly. “Nay, this is a cant that I ha’ heard afore. Thou wanest, Agatha. In a younger age, thou wouldst not so soon have slipped back upon old argument.”
“Nor do I now,” the witch said, “for now I call thee coward of a new and most unmanly fear! Thou who cry heed-lessness of all the world without the walls of thy Dark Tower; thou, who scornest all the people, fearest their opinion! Thou wouldst have them think thee saint!”
Galen’s face tightened, eyes widening in glare.
“A saint!” Agatha chortl
ed, jabbing a finger at him. “The Saint of Hot and Heaving Blood! A saint, who hast as much of human failing as ever I did have, and great guilt! Greater! Aye, greater, for in thy false conceit thou hast robbed me of mine own true place with thee! For thou art mine by right, old Galen; ‘twas thou whom God ordained to be my husband, long before thy mother caught thy father’s eye! By rights, thou shouldst be mine; but thou hast held thyself away from me in cowardice and pompousness!”
Galen watched her a moment with shadowed eyes; then his shoulders squared, and he took a breath. “I receive only the curse that I have earned.”
Agatha stared for a moment, lips parting. “Thou wilt admit to it!”
Then, after a moment she fixed him with a sour smile. “Nay. He means only that he hath saved mine life six times and more; and thus it is his fault that I do live to curse him.”
She lifted her head proudly, her eyes glazing. “And in this thou mayst know that he is a weakling; for he cannot help himself but save us witches. It is within his nature, he who claims to care naught for any living witch or plowman. Yet he is our guardian and our savior, all us witches; for, if one of us should die when he might have prevented it, his clamoring conscience would batter down the weakness of a will that sought to silence it, and wake him in the night with haunted dreams. Oh, he can stand aloof and watch the peasant and the noble die, for they would gladly burn him; but a witch, who has not hurt him, and would render him naught but kindness—had he the courage or the manhood to be ask-ing it—these he cannot help but see as part and parcel like him; and therefore must he save us, as he ha’ done a hundred times and more.”
She turned away. “Thou mayst credit him with virtue and compassion if thou wishest; but I know better.”
“ ‘Tis even as she saith,” said the old man proudly. “I love none, and none love me. I owe to none; I stand alone.”
Old Agatha gave a hoot of laughter.
“Uh… yes,” said Rod. The fight seemed to have reached a lull, and Rod was very eager to be gone before it refueled.
And since Galen’s brow was darkening again, it behooved Rod to make haste.
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