He paused by the first of the openings and took a careful look at it. Too shallow, no more than a niche in the stone face. The next was barely a scrape, the third too narrow. The fourth opening, however, was something more useful. An entrance barely large enough to permit passage gave onto a rounded chamber, in which he could crouch or lie down, but was no larger than he needed. Further, a pile of rubble partially filled one end—dead sticks and small stones, with some ancient bone fragments. The place had doubtless been the lair of some creature before, but the former owner was long gone, and not even an odor remained. Hiero hastened to block the entrance with as much of the litter as he could sweep up, and soon only a small opening admitted the night air. The floor of the little cave was sand, and he saved some of the softer twigs and bark fragments, as they appeared to be, for a pillow. He dug holes for his hips and shoulders and curled up to get some badly needed rest. If some creature should menace him, he felt his senses were alert enough now to give him the instant’s warning which could mean the difference between life and death. He could do no more.
Though his body relaxed and his sinews loosened for the first time in many hours, sleep did not come. He did not try to force it. Any rest, even with open eyes, was still priceless. If his body was exhausted, his mind and his nervous system apparently were not. So be it. If his mind was awake, he could make use of it. He could afford to neglect no assets at this juncture. He would try once again to regain the skills he had somehow lost in the nightmare of the past few days and nights.
He willed his mind to sweep outward, gently at first, trying to build the once mighty powers he had possessed so short a time before. He was very, very cautious now, trying only to shut his ears to the small life forms which scurried about the basin and, instead, to sense them with his brain, to catch their tiny auras the impulses that distinguished them from not-life, the minute sparks of individuality which made them different each from another.
Supposing he should be able to recapture his vanished ability, or even part of it? Would he also recapture the web of hard-taught defenses? If his unguided thought roamed the night, perhaps partially in use, haltingly effective, could it not lead other minds, other powers, to his present location? And should the Unclean find him once more, the most hated of their foes, how could he protect himself? He had no answer. Yet it must be attempted. He had, once again, no choice.
Eventually, he stopped. The blockage was still intact. He could hear and see, smell and taste, but the years of Abbey training, the genetic ability of the telepath with which he had been endowed at birth, all were gone. So too were the far, far greater powers he had learned on his own during the last year, the strengths which had enabled him to defy and even overthrow certain of the great adepts of the enemy, Masters of the Circles of the Unclean. He could not repress a moan, choking it back in his throat even as it came. Unfair! It was unfair that a man should be reft so, unfair that he could be torn asunder from his greatest weapons, trapped without the force which alone might enable him to go to war! Unfair! Curse the Unclean and their foul science!
With an almost physical effort, he beat back the self-pity. He had lost his mental powers, but not the strength based on moral fiber. Had not Abbot Demero long ago warned of the curse of whining, the sin of believing oneself an object of special care from the Almighty? The thought of the stern old face of his master came into Hiero’s mind, and a reluctant smile crossed his sunblackened face. Yes, Reverend Father, he thought, I am a man again.
True, his hard-won mental powers were gone, but in many ways he had been incredibly lucky. Drugged, bound, and helpless, he had yet escaped his enemies. Though no longer telepathic, his brain was clear and he could think and plan ahead. He could reason, puzzle out what had happened to him, and take action for the future—action and revenge. His black eyes narrowed into burning slits. His enemies would pay for this—pay dearly!
Eventually, Hiero slept, his thoughts still and the memories of recent days mercifully forgotten for the time being.
The little hollow went on about the business of the night. The strange plants were dormant, while the small lives about them pursued their own midget dramas of life and death. Once the stars above were blotted out by something large and dark, passing high and far into the north. But the night shielded the hollow, and the man slumbered on, free of distressing dreams.
III. SUMMONED—AND FOLLOWED
A gleam of light, reflected off a piece of shiny rock, glanced into the tiny cave, striking the worn, unshaven face of the silent human. With a faint sigh, Hiero awoke and peered out of his refuge through the screen of rubble he had built up the night before.
The hollow lay under the morning sun as he had first seen it the day before. The strange plants had unfolded again and were soaking up the warm blaze. A few of them looked gnawed, but none seemed seriously injured. At the moment, however, his own needs were paramount. He inspected the remains of last night’s dinner with no great longing, but started to tear at the high-smelling flesh. He must have food, and this was all there was available.
His brief meal over, he wrapped the now scanty remains of the animal in its scrap of hide and walked over to the pool to have a long, filling drink. Then, crouched on his haunches, he looked about.
The first thing he noticed was that the remains of the animal had been stripped of any scrap of meat by the foraging ants. But the skin was intact, as were the white bones. He eyed the surrounding rocks. Sharp flakes of stone lay here and there, and he noted some with the greasy sheen and flaked appearance of some flintlike material. He stirred himself and became busy. Less than an hour later by his inner clock, he prepared to leave the oasis, but in far better guise than when he had stumbled into it.
On his head was an odd hat, contrived from the slender bones of the beast, with leaves of some of the small plants woven over them. From his shoulders hung two crude bags made from the same hide, one filled with water from the pool and leaking only a little, the other containing the remains of the meat, some crude bone needles, and a number of sharp pieces of flint. He was clean and had even managed a rough shave with a bit of fat and some sharp shards of flint. Best of all, his bag held a small, heavy pebble of some massive, iron-bearing mineral which he had tested with the flint to form sparks. Should he find suitable fuel, he now had fire!
On the western rim of the strange little bowl, he paused and looked down the gentle slope. He felt an odd pang. When he was lost and helpless, the oasis had succored him. Again, he bowed his head in prayer, then turned and topped the rise, to set off down the gentle slope of the bowl’s western edge. He moved at a steady lope. In his right hand was the stone fragment he had picked up where he slew the Death Hart. Now it had a crudely chipped-away grip and looked not unlike a rude sword, though the thing was all point and no edge.
He found himself back in the full glare of the desert heat once more. The light struck off the blue sand and broken black rock of the surface. But there was an encouraging change now. Tufts of scrubby weed, brown and even greenish in hue, sprouted from shaded crevices. Here and there, barrel-shaped cacti had begun to appear. They contained moisture which could be squeezed from the spiny pulp at need. The land was definitely improving. He jogged on while trying once more to draw a rough idea of his present location.
The stars he had seen the previous evening appeared only a little different from those of D’alwah, so he was probably not very much north or south of the palace. But he had come a long way on that damned kaw litter. Joseato’s murmur to Amibale was easy to recall. They wanted Hiero far off and deep in drugs before his throat was to be cut! They had known that the shock of his physical death might well reach one as attuned to him as Luchare. The fact of his disappearance would frighten and wound her, but she would retain hope. So again—where was he now?
West. He must have been brought almost due west, to the very borders of the kingdom or beyond. He recalled the maps he had studied of the realm and its borders, then concentrated once more on his
memory of last night’s stars. He had come somewhat south, he was sure. Not much, perhaps, but enough to throw his directional sense off a bit. Should he turn north now, he would probably find himself in plains of some length. There he might find men, maybe friendly, maybe not. It was too big a risk to take.
Further, he had to assume that Joseato and Amibale, plus whatever Unclean minds gave them orders or advice, were very careful; their meticulous plot proved they could be just that. Would they assume he was dead when the pallid dwarfs who had conducted him west did not report? Those bodies had not been found by the folk who blew the hunting horns. Even now, the enemy might be issuing new orders to track him down, if they had not already done so.
Where would they look for him? Why, toward the North, from which he had come originally and to which he could be expected to return for aid. Unarmed, he dared not go south or east into the waiting nets of the Unclean. He had to go north!
Well, he would return to the North—but not by the route they might be watching. He must strike even farther west, into the country off the map. Then he could turn north, becoming lost to his foes, to reappear when and where they could not expect him.
He was leaving Luchare behind, and his inner soul winced at the thought. She was not dead, he knew, despite his loss of mental strength; they were linked forever and he would know if she were dead, just as she would know if he were to perish. She had Mitrash of the guard and the hidden help of the Eleveners to protect her. She had Klootz, who would obey her when Hiero was not there. She had her royal father, who had been told enough to alert him. The mad young duke and the cunning priest would not find it easy to outwit her.
Trouble was coming to D’alwah—indeed, was already there. As prince and heir, he had tried to rally the southern kingdom against the Unclean peril. He had been interrupted, his plans broken and set aside, if not destroyed. But he was the sole emissary of the Metz Republic in this strange world of the far South. It was his duty to go on, to find new weapons, to keep up the fight. His lost mental powers might be reborn someday, but if not—so be it. Something else, other weapons, would have to do instead. While life lasted, he must go on, ignoring all personal calls in the interest of the greater task the Abbey Fathers and Brother Aldo had laid on him.
All day, under the burning sky, the bronzed figure trotted patiently along. His sharp eyes missed nothing of his surroundings as he ate up the miles. Small, dun-colored birds appeared, peering at him from rocky outcroppings, and the different types of cacti and desert shrubs increased. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the bluish tint was fading from the soil. A colony of little striped rodents chattered at him from an assemblage of holes in a sandy bank, but did not seem really concerned at his passing. Looking back, he could see them return to their own affairs while he was still within easy vision. This was an attitude on the part of the locals that he welcomed; it meant that men were little known in this land and hence not feared.
What he wanted at the moment was anonymity. Each league put behind him took him deeper into country where he would be lost to his foes. There would be time enough later to look for allies. This was a time to hide, to vanish utterly from human knowledge.
As the day drew to a close, he began to look for shelter. Food was no longer a problem. In his pouch, along with the rancid meat, he had a dozen cactus fruits, their needled fuzz carefully rubbed off. There were cacti of a different, smaller sort far to the north in the Kandan woods, and he knew them to be highly nutritious. Further, he had found a hollowed-out nest of some fairly large bird or reptile and had cracked the four hen-sized eggs and gulped them down on the spot. Metz Rovers were past masters at living off the country, and he had no fear of starving, especially since the land before him grew more benign with the waning of the desert. He sensed more life all about him. With the coming of night, there would also appear prowlers. It was a time to seek shelter again. Presently, in the red glow of sunset, he thought he saw what he sought.
An hour later, he felt he could relax, at least as much as anyone could relax in an unknown wilderness. He had found a low hillock of rock with one steep side. Halfway up this face was a shallow ledge, shallow but deep enough in the rock for him to lie down under the small overhang. There was also a little hollow in the ledge itself, well back from the lip. In this cavity, protected from most of the rare desert rains, Hiero found the remains of ancient ashes. The sides of the shelf curled around to enclose him as he sat over his tiny fire, made with a bundle of easily gathered twigs from the dry soil below. Only from the south and very near could his small light have been seen. The smear of ash looked incredibly old, made from fires created Heaven only knew how far back in time.
As he stirred his tiny glow with a twig, Hiero could have posed for the figure of some Apache hunter of the immemorial past, only the black mustache testifying to the mixed ancestry of the Metz. He had finished the meat, now charred into something resembling palatability by the fire, and a half dozen of the sweet and fully ripe red cactus fruits. Half his water, foul from its skin container, was untouched. He did not need it, but it would be saved; nasty as it was, it was still water. Beside him on the rock lay several long, dead cactus branches, their dried spines burned off with care. Thrust into the tiny fire, they would become instant torches, a potent weapon should any wild creature try to clamber up to Hiero’s perch and use him for its own repast.
Half-turning his body to gather a few more sticks from the pile behind him, he saw something which he had missed on his first exploration of the ledge. Faintly etched into the rock behind and above his head were pictures, revealed by the glow of the fire striking up at them. They were worn, old beyond reckoning, and he could read little of them. There were stick figures of men and four-legged beasts, though what they were was impossible to say. He felt strangely cheered by this fresh proof that men had used this place, however long ago.
He looked out over the flat landscape before him, stretching out under moon and stars until it was lost in the dimness of the South. The stars burned far and bright. The black of scrub and rock made the shadowed country seem a monochrome illusion, a sharply limned mirror image of the bright world he had traversed under the azure sky of the day.
A howl rang out from the middle distance, to be answered by a chorus of similar yells farther off. From the sounds, the Metz judged the makers to be pack hunters of some size. He hoped they were not on his track, though he had protected himself as well as he could. The calls were not unlike those of the wolves of his own Northland, though higher in pitch, and he smiled reminiscently. Whatever the creatures sought, however, it was not he, and he listened with only part of his attention as the hunt swept away south out of earshot. As the sound died, he allowed his minute fire to do the same, leaving only a bed of glowing coals. He would wake, he knew, at frequent enough intervals to renew it.
Not for the first time, he wondered what lay ahead of him. It was useless to speculate, he knew. His Forty Symbols, the precognition markers he had been trained to use since childhood, and the crystal globe that accompanied them were far back with his other belongings in D’alwah City. Even had they not been, his ability to use them was gone, and they would have been so much useless trash. He would have to face the future as most other humans of this day and age did and take what came as God and His Son sent.
Presently he fell into a light slumber, knowing his senses would awaken him at need. At first his sleep was dreamless. After a while, his fist clenched and his jaw tightened. His slumber remained unbroken and his breath still came evenly. Nothing moved out in the plain below him, save for the ordinary life of the waste places of the earth. No menacing sound broke the silence of the night.
Yet deep in the mind of the warrior, a faint alert flickered. Perhaps not all of his former powers had quite been silenced and suppressed. Some minute synapse had been started up or impinged upon, some blanketed circuit half-alerted. Into his mind came a thought of hills—smoky, purple hills, with mist rising from folded valleys, their roun
ded tops a mixture of forest and steep meadow. Strange hills, never seen in life, far lower than the mighty Stonies, the great Shining Mountains of his far-off home, but—hills! He sighed in his sleep and threw one brown arm across his face. In his dream the hills receded, but not altogether. Somewhere deep in his subconscious, their memory lingered. He would see those hills. They were very beautiful.
He awoke before dawn the next day and went hunting. The faint coolness of the desert morning dissipated quickly, and he was warm in a few seconds as he searched for tracks. Soon, under some flat-topped trees, a new sign of better ground, he found a slot, the mark of some dainty, hoofed mammal. The tracks were fresh, and his fine nose could even catch a faint musky warmth where the beast had rubbed itself against a scraggy trunk and left a few brown hairs. He followed cautiously, noting that the animal was not afraid, but lazing along, snatching a mouthful of leaf here and there. The faint breeze blowing came from its direction to him. Soon he saw it moving ahead in the dawn light, a lone antelope of small breed, with lyrate horns and brindle hair.
Now he readied a new weapon, made the day before as he trudged across the scrubland and finished to reasonable perfection before he ate on the ledge he had found. It was a new weapon to him, or rather, for him, one he had only read about in Abbey books. Yet to humanity and throughout history, it was so old that it had no age. Three cords hung from his right hand; at the end of each was a rounded stone, tightly secured to its own cord of leather. The three strips of hide were joined at the base where his hand gripped them.
Suddenly, having stolen as close as he could in safety, he rose from a bush and hurled the device in a whirling motion at the startled animal’s legs.
He was amazed at his easy success, but not so much that he did not leap forward and brain the poor brute as it struggled to escape the twisted thongs which held the forelegs fast. His stone spike, reversed, was more than equal to the job. As he began the butchery, he stole more than one respectful glance at the crude bolas which lay beside him on the ground. Nor did he forget to give thanks to God.
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