He fired at Patur, but a hairbreadth instant before the shots cracked out, the oldster had rocked sHghtly on his bench—to the left, frontward, and back to the right. Just as the shots soimded, he vanished. The explosions made hghtning-flashes.
Scarlatti stamped and spat fire, both figuratively and literally, as he swore and svnmg his pistol at the maidservant. Instantly, she disappeared into nothingness and with her the manservant. The bullets chipped the green wall in line where they should have been but for their eerie vanishment, and sent sparks of emerald flying.
Hibbert swept out a foot in a vicious lack at Car-lotta's shins. She yelped and he side stepped her. He started, head lowered like a battering ram, for Scarlatti with the hope that if he butted his head hard enough, the giant would forget Mareth for the moment and she might steal away into limbo after Patur and the others. He did not stop to think what would surely happen to him if he succeeded. But his crippled leg cut his speed, and he felt his hands jerked from behind as Carlotta caught up with him.
*Tou louse!" she was howling. *T11 get you now if it's the last thing I do!"
Her knife would have been buried deep if Scarlatti had not leaped, dragging Mareth with him. The hand with the pistol struck Carlotta's arm, paralysing it, and sending the blade flying in a gleaming arc behind her.
He bellowed at her. Mareth took advantage of his diverted interest and ducked under his encircling arm. Before she could sprint a step away, his fingers closed over the fluttering folds of her gown and he had hauled her back.
''Quick, get more wirel We got to tie the gal too!*"
Carlotta gulped down her fury, and hastened to obey. But for aU her strength, it was no simple task to snap the wires hanging over the right-hand cube. She twisted them back and forth.
"Snap it up, for God's sakel''
She darted across the room to her fallen knife, snatched it up, and returned to saw on the slender threads. She came waving them in triumph. Scarlatti shifted his hold on Mareth, drawing her wrists behind her. Carlotta tied the knots cruelly tight. Mareth winced, but made no sound.
Scarlatti relaxed his grip and stepped back to scan the work with satisfaction. Carlotta said: 'TTou stop looking at her like that, or the whole deal's off l'^
Mareth would have moved, and Scarlatti caught her again. "Huh, so that was why you and the old buzzard wasn t worried. You think you can get away any old time by shpping through those cracks I can't see!''
He laughed. "Its not what I wanted. I thought Td get you both. But it's good enough. Now either those characters in the blue sheets will open up the door and send the steps down to the swamps for me, or I give you the works. And they won't hke it any more than you will, believe mel"
He leered at Hibbert. "She goes down the steps with us I ThatTl keep the blue guys from shutting off the juice while we're climbiag down, so we're not go-
ing to fall and get messed up unless she does, tool"
Mareth asked: 'Tou will set me free in the swamps?**
He grinned wickedly. Hibbert and Carlotta did not have to be Khoireans to read his mind. Mareth's eyes opened wide with shocked surprise.
Carlotta's promise was no more reassuring. *Treali, well let you loose, all rightl'*
Scarlatti reconnoitered. ^'Okay. Let's get going while the going^s goodl**
He booted Hibbert toward the door and detailed Carlotta to shepherd him by a peremptory toss of his chin. He scooped up Mareth and carried her in Carlotta's wake as if she were a child, clearly enjoying this task.
He said: *Tfou not going to slip ofiF while I got my hands on you.'' He squeezed her. *^n]oying the ride, babyr
**You—I** But it was either her infinite innocence or an overextension of Khoirean courtesy which prevented her naming of him.
He said: *'Good trick, that ducking aroimd comers where there ain't none. Maybe when we get down home you'll teach me how to do it too. Just treat me right, kid, and things will be okay."
The corridor s blackness was like a wall of jet
*^ow what?" Carlotta demanded crossly, burning at Mareth in the giant's arms. "What way do we go? It all looks the same to me."
Mareth parted her lips to speak, but Scarlatti's laugh silenced her. *Think I'm going to listen to you? I'm not so dumb I don't know you'd tell us the wrong wayl I give the directions—I know my way like a cat. Just go straight ahead, Carlotta. That's how we first came here."
They walked a long way. Hibbert said: ^'Scarlatti, you re out of yoiu* mindl This isn't the right way at all. For God's sake, call this thing off before we get into worse troublel Let Mareth go, and wait until Patur comes back. They're humane here—they won't pimish you. Tell Patiu: you just lost your head— **
"Ah, swallow your tongueP Carlotta jabbed him with her knife.
They marched along, Scarlatti swinging Mareth in his arms, her floating silks wreathing like rising and falling tongues of polychrome flame. In her struggles, her hair had slipped its combs and was drifting over the giant's shoulders like a floating yellow scarf.
Hibbert finally asked: **And just why am I included?" It was piu-ely rhetorical, of course. He did not care what the reason might be for his part in the proceedings, as long as he could be near Mareth. Helpless as he was at present, there was always a chance that in some imforeseen way he might be able to save her. If he had been left behind to picture her as Scarlatti would like to have her—or Carlotta, for that matter, would surely like to have her—^he could not have endured it
Scarlatti said: 'Where I go, you go! I saw you had guts by the way you came up the yellow steps, and I like guts. I don t want to see you go off your chump like Burks, trying to make yourself into a bird or something, when you can be learning how to handle yourself with me."
He hummed a happy few bars. '*Now Burks is gone, Fm boss, and you're promoted into my place. Once I get the mask and screen wired up to working, maybe what comes out of your head will help add up to what comes out of mine, and we'll have the know-how to make some more of those gadgets we seen."
Carlotta said: **Where do I come into all this?"
"Same place you always been," Scarlatti replied, giving Mareth an extra squeeze.
Flicker and flash, the patter of their feet made puffs of Hght. Hibbert glanced backward. The yellow portals of the green-walled room were far and farther away.
FUcker and flash. "We sure been walking a long time," Carlotta said. My feet's tired."
Hibbert said: ''But Scarlatti, the forces of Khoire are different from oiu* ownl There's only one chance in a milKon of yoin: being to able to operate the mask and the screen."
"Yeah? Well, what's to stop me and the boys coming back here with persuaders, and rounding up enough hostages so they give us a pipehne to this place?**
Mareth laughed. 'Tfou do not know my people, nor Khoirel" she said, really amused. Scarlatti's arms tightened, and she winced.
"You not as smart as you like to think, or what are you doing here?" he asked.
Hibbert turned back again to the distant yellow doorway. It wavered and swung out of sightl Then he blinked, as the rest were bhnldng, for the blackness abruptly had become ablaze with amber glarel
Chapter Thirteen
The Monks and the Glamors
"What the helll'* Scarlatti's huge head swung this way and that. *How'd we land here?'*
He glared down at Mareth's wide-eyed innocence.
On every hand was barren wasteland of luminous orange sand. It was as though they had been dropped into a polished copper bowl. The black sky pressed down upon the strangely high horizon like a lid with the resultant impression that, for all the sweep of distance, Hibbert and the others were caught and covered like flies in a botde.
Nothing broke the sheer and agoraphobic stretch of hard-packed, sterile sand save—perhaps three him-dred yards to their right—^ circle of squat dull stones like a diminutive replica of the Stonehenge menhirs. Vaguely the stones resembled huddled men, as though long ago they had been carved in human shape and been scuffed indistinct
by the shifting sands.
Hibbert heard the lilt of the World-mother's cradle song, the sound of the sim. It was softer now and had descended a note on the scale, perhaps because in his own world the sun was sinking westward. When he and the giant, Burks and Carlotta had climbed the stair from the swamps, it had been but a httle past
the noon mark. Since then, not much upward of five hours had elapsed.
Only five hoursl
But during them he had shared Patur's centuries of lifetime through the mediimi of the crystal mask, and through Mareth's narration of Khoire's history had watched the threading of untold eons as beads upon a cordi The sun must nearly be setting on the World of the Forefathers below, and soon the soimds of the chiming stars must replace its note. In Khoire, in sooth, was the music of the spheres I
Scarlatti shook Mareth. *'How'd we land here, I saidl And how do we get out?"
As she tossed her head, her settling hair fell like a veil over her eyes. She said: TSut you fear that I will give you the wrong directions!**
His grip tightened, and she gasped. He growled: *When I ask you something, don't give me no smart talk! How do we get out of here?*' She was obstinately silent. He shook her again. "Do I have to get playful?"
Hibbert forgot that his hands were shackled behind him and stamped toward the giant. Carlotta distracted all of them by squeaking in siuprise and pointing.
The ring of manlike stones was in motioni Men in truth, they had been seated immobile, perhaps in meditation, resembling rock because of the flowing gray robes, their legs crossed under them, their backs humped, and their heads bowed on their breasts.
But now as if obeying an inaudible command, they were sitting upright, and their hands were lifting in a synchronous movement to a common center high above them, so that their arms pointed toward it like the spokes of a wheel to its hub. They gave no sign of
having seen the newcomers, whether or not they had. Whatever occupied them was vastly more important to them than the presence of onlookers.
From their right hands came measured throbs of light. On thumb and forefinger, they wore tiny cymbals like those of Oriental dancing girls. In their left hands they gripped what looked Hke flashHghts, but instead of rays came a bass bleating. Still pointing to that spot overhead, they rocked on their hips, digging their chins in the air. It was something like the sitting dances of the Polynesians.
**What the hell are they?*' Scarlatti muttered.
Mareth tried to peep around his bulkiag shoulder, and he turned that she might see. "They are monks of the Xirod sect beginning one of their rites. I think they are summoning their Power Within.''
Scarlatti looked blankly imeasy. He shifted his grip on her. SUght as she was, he was beginning to feel her weight. He began to edge away from the circle, Carlotta prodding Hibbert along after him.
*'Give me the girl,'' Carlotta suggested, almost too eagerly. T can hang onto her and this jerk here, while you go over and stop them."
The giant stared through Mareth, picturing the possibilities of what might happen if he complied.
The lights from the monks' fingertips puflFed upward like colored smoke. The bleats from their left hands pushed the glowing wisps Uke little gusts. The threads of hght wove under and over into a chmbing, fluted basket of harleqmn radiance, the ring of monks forming its base.
Like Ciaderella's pumpkin, the basket grew as if a magic wand had touched it. The monks began to hum, and harlequin luminescence wafted from their nostrils, climbing and staining the woven strands.
'"Well, come on, do somethingi" Carlotta snapped, *We got to keep movingi"
Hibbert had an idea. ^'ITl tell you what, Carlotta. Suppose I go along with you, and you try to stop them from whatever they're doing."
If the giant had used horse sense, Hibbert was thinking, he would not have stured from the spot in which they had first found themselves, for obviously it was an invisible link with the Hall of Blackness from which they all had stepped. They had left no footprints in the close-packed sand, and if he could inveigle Carlotta to act on his notion, he was fairly certain that they would end up farther from the unseen door than ever. And if they remained lost long enough, the Change might give Mareth some advantage for getting away. Too, if Scarlatti finally asked Mareth to guide them out of this desert, she could probably steer them wherever she chose.
Carlotta wavered. The giant said: '^^Jothing doing! Carlotta, you stick close. We don't want you maybe falling through one of those damn blind doorways and splitting us up.""
Mareth smiled. Scarlatti fimied: *Tou think you got us buffaloed, don't you? By God, I got a good idea to slap you silly!"
Carlotta said to Hibbert: "And I should bust you one, bastard!*"
Hibbert grinned. ''What good would it do either of you? It won't get you out of this spot any faster. And I thought you were in a rush?"
"It'd at least make me feel good, that's for sure," Carlotta said.
"But he's right, you know," Mareth interposed sweetly, and Carlotta glared.
The giant spat. He turned furiously toward the
monks as though the heat of his rage might possibly dry them up and evaporate them.
The basket of hght had swelled outward and upward into a gigantic, rainbow-striped funnel. And now the monks arose. The prismatic streamers did not die away but remained sharp and brilHant, almost as if some of those rust-clad maintenance workers whom Hibbert had glimpsed among Patur's pictures were concentrating upon it.
Each monk caught a tendril of the light as if it were a solid string, and together they moved as if in a maypole dance, the colored strands crossing and shaping diamonds and squares, knotting as the monks broke rhythm to reverse their motion, then paused anew to form other knots. The structure of light was less a basket or funnel now than a net, woven to trap— what?
*Trhey re crazyl"" Carlotta protested, as if that might solve anything.
**Every religion seems peculiar to those who do not practice it,'' Mareth remarked sententiously.
The monks snapped from sight, leaving only the glowing net. Xook at thatl'' Scarlatti exulted, moving forward, Mareth's hair and gown rippling aflame. *TTiey know the way outl''
Then he stopped. *1 m not so sure I want to take it, though."
Carlotta said ambiguously: *Tx)oks like a trap to me."
The monks reappeared high on the topmost edges of their snare, resting knee-deep in the spectra.
"^Standing on light! Or else Im seeing thingsl" the giant whispered, his clutch on Mareth relaxing. "And even though they went through those cockeyed doors, I notice they didn't get far. Good thing we didn't try
it, or we'd be up there with them falling and busting our necks I'*
Perhaps he was seeing things, indeed. It occurred to Hibbert that the unlikely things which the monks had done might all be attributed simply enough to hypnotism, like the Hindu rope trick and the Tibetan magic of forcing a seed to grow into a tree on a moment's notice.
With the sound of a thunderclap which was probably the Kioirean equivalent for a burst of Hght, something bulked in the midst of the monks, and they made obeisance to it. Perhaps it was bom of their eerie agglomerated impulses, and perhaps it had merely stepped into view around one of Khoire's arterial freaks.
The minutes were ticking past, Hibbert thought happily. He doubted that his own mental powers could be of Httle eflFect in projecting a message to the monks, but he did his best to cheer them on.
The thing hulking amidst the monks appeared to be a head, but a head from a nightmare, and if actual, what was the rest of its body Hke, concealed no doubt around the formless comer from which it peered?
It was a pyramid of burnished copper, thirty feet from base to apex. Its peak was pointed groundwork hke a bird's bill. On each of its surfaces was an eye a yard across and faceted like a diamond, a roving pupil in every twinkling plane.
The lashes of those eyes were thick and bent hke the jointed legs of prodigious spiders. Carlotta shook her head in
credulously as the lashes folded and straightened out again in an uncanny wink.
And although the monks of Xirod had made no mark of their watchers, the pyramid was less seclu-sive. The pupils in their planes focussed on the giant and his party, and the head angled forward on a neck
like a copper pipe. Ten feet it thrust, and twenty. Then dully gleaming shoulders burst into sight from beyond that turn whence it peered, shoulders like saw-toothed crags of red metal with angled joints hinting not of two but a score of arms.
One of these arms fumbled forward, a flexible cylinder of copper three feet in diameter and thirty yards in length. Out of the hollow wrist imcoiled— fingers, Hibbert supposed—^which were wiry spirals of all thicknesses from hairline thin to heavy cable, and not of copper as was the body, but of varicolored and nameless metals. Was each thickness and each hue correspondent to some special sense?
Carlotta shrieked. *lt's coming at us! Runl"*
She forgot Hibbert and pulled anxiously on Scarlatti. The giant shifted Mareth over one of his shoulders and snatched his gun. As well beat off an elephant with a strawl He scrambled backward, and Carlotta lurched along with him. Hibbert did not stay rooted either. Hypnotism or not, this was going altogether too farl
There was a curious rippling as if the monks and their master were only painted figures on a gust-shaken curtain. The blink-eyed pyramid, the serpentine arm, the monks atop their fantastic scaffold, even the marigold desert itself, all were swept awayl As if two scarlet hands, sweeping together in a cosmic clap, flattened the vista between their palms—scarlet shutters snapped tight on the scene.
Scarlatti had bungled inadvertently through another of those warped distances. The four stood now in endless redness, a fog of glowering rubescence reminiscent of Burks' red room in his tower.
The giant lowered his gun and swimg his head to take in this new development, and Carlotta Hkewise swiveled to peer about. It was Hibbert's chance to
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