The mist was not a quiet thing; it billowed and
curled until it appeared to half-conceal darker shadows, any one of
which could be an enemy. Shann remained hunkered on the sand, every
sense abnormally alert, watching the fog. He was still sure he
could hear sounds which marked the progress of another. What other?
One of the Warlockians tracing him to spy? Or was there some
prisoner like himself lost out there in the murk? Could it be
Thorvald?
Now the sound had ceased. He was not even sure from what
direction it had first come. Perhaps that other was listening now,
as intent upon locating him. Shann ran his tongue over dry lips.
The impulse to call out, to try and contact any fellow traveler
here, was strong. Only hard-learned caution kept him silent. He got
to his hands and knees, uncertain as to his previous direction.
Shann crept. Someone expecting a man walking erect might be
suitably distracted by the arrival of a half-seen figure on all
fours. He halted again to listen.
He had been right! The sound of a very muffled footfall or
footfalls carried to his ears. He was sure that the sound was
louder, that the unknown was approaching. Shann stood, his hand
close to his stunner. He was almost tempted to spray that beam
blindly before him, hoping to hit the unseen by chance.
A shadow—something more swift than a shadow, more than one
of the tricks the curling fog played on eyes—was moving with
purpose and straight for him. Still, prudence restrained Shann from
calling out.
The figured grew clearer. A Terran! It could be Thorvald! But
remembering how they had last parted, Shann did not hurry to meet
him.
That shadow-shape stretched out a long arm in a sweep as if to
pull aside some of the vapor concealing them from each other. Then
Shann shivered as if that fog had suddenly turned into the drive of
frigid snow. For the mist did roll back so that the two of them
stood in an irregular clearing in its midst.
And he did not front Thorvald.
Shann was caught up in the ice grip of an old fear, frozen by
it, but somehow clinging to a hope that he did not see the
unbelievable.
Those hands drawing the lash of a whip back into striking
readiness . . . a brutal nose broken askew, a
blaster burn puckering across cheek to misshapen
ear . . . that evil, gloating grin of
anticipation. Flick, flick, the slight dance of the lash in a
master’s hand as those thick fingers tightened about the
stock of the whip. In a moment it would whirl up to lay a ribbon of
fire about Shann’s defenseless shoulders. Then Logally would
laugh and laugh, his sadistic mirth echoed by those other men who
played jackals to his rogue lion.
Other men . . . Shann shook his head
dazedly. But he did not stand again in the Dump-sited bar of the
Big Strike. And he was no longer a terrorized youngster, fit meat
for Logally’s amusement. Only the whip rose, the lash curled
out, catching Shann just as it had that time years ago, delivering
a red slash of pure agony. But Logally was dead, Shann’s mind
screamed, fighting frantically against the evidence of his eyes, of
that pain in his chest and shoulder. The Dump bully had been spaced
by off-world miners, now also dead, whose claims he had tried to
jump out in the Ajax system.
Logally drew back the lash, preparing to strike again. Shann
faced a man five years dead who walked and fought. Or, Shann bit
hard upon his lower lip, holding desperately to sane
reasoning—did he indeed face anything? Logally was the
ancient devil of his boyhood, produced anew by the witchery of
Warlock. Or had Shann himself been led to recreate both the man and
the circumstances of their first meeting with fear as a weapon to
pull the creator down? Dream true or false. Logally was
dead; therefore, this dream was false, it had to be.
The Terran began to walk toward that grinning ogre rising out of
his old nightmares. His hand was no longer on the butt of his
stunner, but swung loosely at his side. He saw the coming lash, the
wicked promise in those small narrowed eyes. This was Logally at
the acme of his strength, when he was most to be feared, as he had
continued to exist over the years in the depths of a
boy-child’s memory. But Logally was not alive; only
in a dream could he be.
For the second time the lash bit at Shann, curling about his
body, to dissolve. There was no alteration in Logally’s grin.
His muscular arm drew back as he aimed a third blow. Shann
continued to walk forward, bringing up one hand, not to strike at
that sweating, bristly jaw, but as if to push the other out of his
path. And in his mind he held one thought; this was not Logally, it
could not be. Ten years had passed since they had met. And for five
of those years Logally had been dead. Here was Warlockian witchery,
to be met by sane Terran reasoning.
Shann was alone. The mist, which had formed walls, enclosed him
again. But still there was a smarting brand across his shoulder.
Shann drew aside the rags of his uniform blouse to discover a welt,
raw and red. And seeing that, his unbelief was shaken.
When he had believed in Logally and in Logally’s weapon,
the other had had reality enough to strike that blow, make the lash
cut deep. But when the Terran had faced the phantom with the truth,
then neither Logally nor his lash existed. Shann shivered, trying
not to think what might lie before him. Visions out of nightmares
which could put on substance! He had dreamed of Logally in the
past, many times. And he had had other dreams, just as frightening.
Must he front those nightmares, all of them—? Why? To amuse
his captors, or to prove their contention that he was a fool to
challenge the powers of such mistresses of illusion?
How did they know just what dreams to use in order to break him?
Or did he himself furnish the actors and the action, projecting old
terrors in this mist as a tri-dee tape projected a story in three
dimensions for the amusement of the viewer?
Dream true—was this progress through the mist also a
dream? Dreams within dreams . . . Shann put his
hand to his head, uncertain, badly shaken. But that stubborn core
of determination within him was still holding. Next time he would
be prepared at once to face down any resurrected memory.
Walking slowly, pausing to listen for the slightest sound which
might herald the coming of a new illusion, Shann tried to guess
which of his nightmares might come to face him. But he was to learn
that there was more than one kind of dream. Steeled against old
fears, he was met by another emotion altogether.
There was a fluttering in the air, a little crooning cry which
pulled at his heart. Without any conscious thought, Shann held out
his hands, whistling on two notes a call which his lips appeared to
remember more quickly than his mind. The shape which winged through
the fog came straight to his waiting hold, tore at long-walled-away
hurt with its once familiar beauty. It flew with a list; one of the
delicately tinted wings was injured, had never healed straight. But
the seraph nestled into the hollow of Shann’s two palms and
looked up at him with all the old liquid trust.
“Trav! Trav!” He cradled the tiny creature
carefully, regarded with joy its feathered body, the curled plumes
on its proudly held head, felt the silken patting of those
infinitesimal claws against his protecting fingers.
Shann sat down in the sand, hardly daring to breathe.
Trav—again! The wonder of this never-to-be-hoped-for return
filled him with a surge of happiness almost too great to bear,
which hurt in its way with as great a pain as Logally’s lash;
it was a pain rooted in love, not fear and hate.
Logally’s lash . . .
Shann trembled. Trav raised one of those small claws toward the
Terran’s face, crooning a soft caressing cry for recognition,
for protection, trying to be a part of Shann’s life once
more.
Trav! How could he bear to will Trav into nothingness, to bear
to summon up another harsh memory which would sweep Trav away? Trav
was the only thing Shann had ever known which he could love
wholeheartedly, that had answered his love with a return gift of
affection so much greater than the light body he now held.
“Trav!” he whispered softly. Then he made his great
effort against this second and far more subtle attack. With the
same agony which he had known years earlier, he resolutely summoned
a bitter memory, sat nursing once more a broken thing which died in
pain he could not ease, aware himself of every moment of that pain.
And what was worse, this time there clung that nagging little
doubt. What if he had not forced the memory? Perhaps he could have
taken Trav with him unhurt, alive, at least for a while.
Shann covered his face with his now empty hands. To see a
nightmare flicker out after facing squarely up to its terror, that
was no great task. To give up a dream which was part of a lost
heaven, that cut cruelly deep. The Terran dragged himself to his
feet, drained and weary, stumbling on.
Was there no end to his aimless circling through a world of
green smoke? He shambled ahead, moving his feet leadenly. How long
had he been here? There was no division in time, just the
unchanging light which was a part of the fog through which he
plodded.
Then he heard more than any shuffle of foot across sand, any
crooning of a long dead seraph, the rising and falling of a voice:
a human voice—not quite singing or reciting, but something
between the two. Shann paused, searching his memory, a memory which
seemed bruised, for the proper answer to match that sound.
But, though he recalled scene after scene out of the years, that
voice did not trigger any return from his past. He turned toward
its source, dully determined to get over quickly the meeting which
lay behind that signal. Only, though he walked on and on, Shann did
not appear any closer to the man behind the voice, nor was he able
to make out separate words composing that chant, a chant broken now
and then by pauses, so that the Terran grew aware of the distress
of his fellow prisoner. For the impression that he sought another
captive came out of nowhere and grew as he cast wider and wider in
his quest.
Then he might have turned some invisible corner in the mist, for
the chant broke out anew in stronger volume, and now he was able to
distinguish words he knew.
“ . . . where blow the winds between
the worlds,
And hang the suns in dark of space.
For Power is given a man to use.
Let him do so well before the last accounting—”
The voice was hoarse, cracked, the words spaced with uneven
catches of breath, as if they had been repeated many, many times to
provide an anchor against madness, form a tie to reality. And
hearing that note, Shann slowed his pace. This was out of no memory
of his; he was sure of that.
“ . . . blow the winds between the
worlds,
And hang the suns
in . . . dark—of—of—”
That harsh croak of voice was running down, as a clock runs down
for lack of winding. Shann sped on, reacting to a plea which did
not lay in the words themselves.
Once more the mist curled back, provided him with an open space.
A man sat on the sand, his fists buried wrist deep in the smooth
grains on either side of his body, his eyes set, red-rimmed,
glazed, his body rocking back and forth in time to his labored
chant.
“ . . . the dark of
space—”
“Thorvald!” Shann skidded in the sand, went down on
his knees. The manner of their last parting was forgotten as he
took in the officer’s condition.
The other did not stop his swaying, but his head turned with a
stiff jerk, the gray eyes making a visible effort to focus on
Shann. Then some of the strain smoothed out of the gaunt features
and Thorvald laughed softly.
“Garth!”
Shann stiffened but had no chance to protest that mistaken
identification as the other continued: “So you made class one
status, boy! I always knew you could if you’d work for it. A
couple of black marks on your record, sure. But those can be rubbed
out, boy, when you’re willing to try. Thorvalds always have
been Survey. Our father would have been proud.”
Thorvald’s voice flattened, his smile faded, there was a
growing spark of some emotion in those gray eyes. Unexpectedly, he
hurled himself forward, his hands clawing for Shann’s throat.
He bore the younger man down under him to the sand where Lantee
found himself fighting desperately for his life against a man who
could only be mad.
Shann used a trick learned on the Dumps, and his opponent
doubled up with a gasp of agony to let the younger man break free.
He planted a knee on the small of Thorvald’s back, digging
the officer into the sand, pinning down his arms in spite of the
other’s struggles. Regaining his own breath in gulps, Shann
tried to appeal to some spark of reason in the other.
“Thorvald! This is Lantee—Lantee—” His
name echoed in the mist-walled void like an unhuman wail.
“Lantee—? No, Throg! Lantee—Throg—killed
my brother!”
Sand puffed out with the breath which expelled that indictment.
But Thorvald no longer fought, and Shann believed him close to
collapse.
Shann relaxed his hold, rolling the other man over. Thorvald
obeyed his pull limply, lying face upward, sand in his hair and
eyebrows, crusting his slack lips. The younger man brushed the dirt
away gently as the other opened his eyes to regard Shann with his
old impersonal stare.
“You’re alive,” Thorvald stated bleakly.
“Garth’s dead. You ought to be dead too.”
Shann drew back, rubbed sand from his hands, his concern
dampened by the other’s patent hostility. Only that angry
accusation vanished in a blink of those gray eyes. Then there was a
warmer recognition in Thorvald’s expression.
“Lantee!” The younger man might just have come into
sight. “What are you doing here?”
Shann tightened his belt. “Just about what you are.”
He was still aloof, giving no acknowledgment of difference in rank
now. “Running around in this fog hunting the way
out.”
Thorvald sat up, surveying the billowing walls of the hole which
contained them. Then he reached out a hand to draw fingers down
Shann’s forearm.
“You are real,” he observed simply, and his
voice was warm, welcoming.
“Don’t bet on it,” Shann snapped. “The
unreal can be mighty real—here.” His hand went up to
the smarting brand on his shoulder.
Thorvald nodded. “Masters of illusion,” he
murmured.
“Mistresses,” Shann corrected. “This place is
run by a gang of pretty smart witches.”
“Witches? You’ve seen them? Where? And
what—who are they?” Thorvald pounced with a return of
his old-time sharpness.
“They’re females right enough, and they can make the
impossible happen. I’d say that classifies them as witches.
One of them tried to take me over back on the island. I set a trap
and caught her; then somehow she transported me—”
Swiftly he outlined the chain of events leading from his sudden
awakening in the river tunnel to his present penetration of this
fog-world.
Thorvald listened eagerly. When the story was finished, he
rubbed his hands across his drawn face, smearing away the last of
the sand. “At least you have some idea of who they are and a
suggestion of how you got here. I don’t remember that much
about my own arrival. As far as I can remember I went to sleep on
the island and woke up here!”
Shann studied him and knew that Thorvald was telling the truth.
He could remember nothing of his departure in the outrigger, the
way he had fought Shann in the lagoon. The Survey officer must have
been under the control of the Warlockians then. Quickly he gave the
older man his version of the other’s actions in the outer
world and Thorvald was clearly astounded, though he did not
question the facts Shann presented.
“They just took me!” Thorvald said in a husky half
whisper. “But why? And why are we here? Is this a
prison?”
Shann shook his head. “I think all this”—a
wave of his hand encompassed the green wall, what lay beyond it,
and in it—“is a test of some kind. This dream
business . . . A little while ago I got to
thinking that I wasn’t here at all, that I might be dreaming
it all. Then I met you.”
Thorvald understood. “Yes, but this could be a
dream meeting. How can we tell?” He hesitated, almost
diffidently, before he asked: “Have you met anyone else
here?”
“Yes.” Shann had no desire to go into that.
“People out of your past life?”
“Yes.” Again he did not elaborate.
“So did I.” Thorvald’s expression was bleak;
his encounters in the fog must have proved no more pleasant than
Shann’s. “That suggests that we do trigger the
hallucinations ourselves. But maybe we can really lick it
now.”
“How?”
“Well, if these phantoms are born of our memories there
are about only two or three we could see together—maybe a
Throg on the rampage, or that hound we left back in the mountains.
And if we do sight anything like that, we’ll know what it is.
On the other hand, if we stick together and one of us sees
something that the other
can’t . . . well, that fact alone will
explode the ghost.”
There was sense in what he said. Shann aided the officer to his
feet.
“I must be a better subject for their experiments than
you,” the older man remarked ruefully. “They took me
over completely at the first.”
“You were carrying that disk,” Shann pointed out.
“Maybe that acted as a focusing lens for whatever power they
use to make us play trained animals.”
“Could be!” Thorvald brought out the cloth-wrapped
bone coin. “I still have it.” But he made no move to
pull off the bit of rag about it. “Now”—he gazed
at the wall of green—“which way?”
Shann shrugged. Long ago he had lost any idea of keeping a
straight course through the murk. He might have turned around any
number of times since he first walked blindly into this place. Then
he pointed to the packet Thorvald held.
“Why not flip that?” he asked. “Heads, we go
that way—” he indicated the direction in which they
were facing—“tails we do a right about-face.”
There was an answering grin on Thorvald’s lips. “As
good a guide as any we’re likely to find here. We’ll do
it.” He pulled away the twist of cloth and with a swift snap,
reminiscent of that used by the Warlockian witch to empty the bowl
of sticks, he tossed the disk into the air.
It spun, whirled, but—to their open-jawed
amazement—it did not fall to the sand. Instead it spun until
it looked like a small globe instead of a disk. And it lost its
dead white for a glow of green. When that glow became dazzling for
Terran eyes the miniature sun swung out, not in orbit but in a
straight line of flight, heading to their right.
With a muffled cry, Thorvald started in pursuit, Shann running
beside him. They were in a tunnel of the fog now, and the pace set
by the spinning coin was swift. The Terrans continued to follow it
at the best pace they could summon, having no idea of where they
were headed, but each with the hope that they finally did have a
guide to lead them through this place of confusion and into a sane
world where they could face on more equal terms those who had sent
them there.
The mist was not a quiet thing; it billowed and
curled until it appeared to half-conceal darker shadows, any one of
which could be an enemy. Shann remained hunkered on the sand, every
sense abnormally alert, watching the fog. He was still sure he
could hear sounds which marked the progress of another. What other?
One of the Warlockians tracing him to spy? Or was there some
prisoner like himself lost out there in the murk? Could it be
Thorvald?
Now the sound had ceased. He was not even sure from what
direction it had first come. Perhaps that other was listening now,
as intent upon locating him. Shann ran his tongue over dry lips.
The impulse to call out, to try and contact any fellow traveler
here, was strong. Only hard-learned caution kept him silent. He got
to his hands and knees, uncertain as to his previous direction.
Shann crept. Someone expecting a man walking erect might be
suitably distracted by the arrival of a half-seen figure on all
fours. He halted again to listen.
He had been right! The sound of a very muffled footfall or
footfalls carried to his ears. He was sure that the sound was
louder, that the unknown was approaching. Shann stood, his hand
close to his stunner. He was almost tempted to spray that beam
blindly before him, hoping to hit the unseen by chance.
A shadow—something more swift than a shadow, more than one
of the tricks the curling fog played on eyes—was moving with
purpose and straight for him. Still, prudence restrained Shann from
calling out.
The figured grew clearer. A Terran! It could be Thorvald! But
remembering how they had last parted, Shann did not hurry to meet
him.
That shadow-shape stretched out a long arm in a sweep as if to
pull aside some of the vapor concealing them from each other. Then
Shann shivered as if that fog had suddenly turned into the drive of
frigid snow. For the mist did roll back so that the two of them
stood in an irregular clearing in its midst.
And he did not front Thorvald.
Shann was caught up in the ice grip of an old fear, frozen by
it, but somehow clinging to a hope that he did not see the
unbelievable.
Those hands drawing the lash of a whip back into striking
readiness . . . a brutal nose broken askew, a
blaster burn puckering across cheek to misshapen
ear . . . that evil, gloating grin of
anticipation. Flick, flick, the slight dance of the lash in a
master’s hand as those thick fingers tightened about the
stock of the whip. In a moment it would whirl up to lay a ribbon of
fire about Shann’s defenseless shoulders. Then Logally would
laugh and laugh, his sadistic mirth echoed by those other men who
played jackals to his rogue lion.
Other men . . . Shann shook his head
dazedly. But he did not stand again in the Dump-sited bar of the
Big Strike. And he was no longer a terrorized youngster, fit meat
for Logally’s amusement. Only the whip rose, the lash curled
out, catching Shann just as it had that time years ago, delivering
a red slash of pure agony. But Logally was dead, Shann’s mind
screamed, fighting frantically against the evidence of his eyes, of
that pain in his chest and shoulder. The Dump bully had been spaced
by off-world miners, now also dead, whose claims he had tried to
jump out in the Ajax system.
Logally drew back the lash, preparing to strike again. Shann
faced a man five years dead who walked and fought. Or, Shann bit
hard upon his lower lip, holding desperately to sane
reasoning—did he indeed face anything? Logally was the
ancient devil of his boyhood, produced anew by the witchery of
Warlock. Or had Shann himself been led to recreate both the man and
the circumstances of their first meeting with fear as a weapon to
pull the creator down? Dream true or false. Logally was
dead; therefore, this dream was false, it had to be.
The Terran began to walk toward that grinning ogre rising out of
his old nightmares. His hand was no longer on the butt of his
stunner, but swung loosely at his side. He saw the coming lash, the
wicked promise in those small narrowed eyes. This was Logally at
the acme of his strength, when he was most to be feared, as he had
continued to exist over the years in the depths of a
boy-child’s memory. But Logally was not alive; only
in a dream could he be.
For the second time the lash bit at Shann, curling about his
body, to dissolve. There was no alteration in Logally’s grin.
His muscular arm drew back as he aimed a third blow. Shann
continued to walk forward, bringing up one hand, not to strike at
that sweating, bristly jaw, but as if to push the other out of his
path. And in his mind he held one thought; this was not Logally, it
could not be. Ten years had passed since they had met. And for five
of those years Logally had been dead. Here was Warlockian witchery,
to be met by sane Terran reasoning.
Shann was alone. The mist, which had formed walls, enclosed him
again. But still there was a smarting brand across his shoulder.
Shann drew aside the rags of his uniform blouse to discover a welt,
raw and red. And seeing that, his unbelief was shaken.
When he had believed in Logally and in Logally’s weapon,
the other had had reality enough to strike that blow, make the lash
cut deep. But when the Terran had faced the phantom with the truth,
then neither Logally nor his lash existed. Shann shivered, trying
not to think what might lie before him. Visions out of nightmares
which could put on substance! He had dreamed of Logally in the
past, many times. And he had had other dreams, just as frightening.
Must he front those nightmares, all of them—? Why? To amuse
his captors, or to prove their contention that he was a fool to
challenge the powers of such mistresses of illusion?
How did they know just what dreams to use in order to break him?
Or did he himself furnish the actors and the action, projecting old
terrors in this mist as a tri-dee tape projected a story in three
dimensions for the amusement of the viewer?
Dream true—was this progress through the mist also a
dream? Dreams within dreams . . . Shann put his
hand to his head, uncertain, badly shaken. But that stubborn core
of determination within him was still holding. Next time he would
be prepared at once to face down any resurrected memory.
Walking slowly, pausing to listen for the slightest sound which
might herald the coming of a new illusion, Shann tried to guess
which of his nightmares might come to face him. But he was to learn
that there was more than one kind of dream. Steeled against old
fears, he was met by another emotion altogether.
There was a fluttering in the air, a little crooning cry which
pulled at his heart. Without any conscious thought, Shann held out
his hands, whistling on two notes a call which his lips appeared to
remember more quickly than his mind. The shape which winged through
the fog came straight to his waiting hold, tore at long-walled-away
hurt with its once familiar beauty. It flew with a list; one of the
delicately tinted wings was injured, had never healed straight. But
the seraph nestled into the hollow of Shann’s two palms and
looked up at him with all the old liquid trust.
“Trav! Trav!” He cradled the tiny creature
carefully, regarded with joy its feathered body, the curled plumes
on its proudly held head, felt the silken patting of those
infinitesimal claws against his protecting fingers.
Shann sat down in the sand, hardly daring to breathe.
Trav—again! The wonder of this never-to-be-hoped-for return
filled him with a surge of happiness almost too great to bear,
which hurt in its way with as great a pain as Logally’s lash;
it was a pain rooted in love, not fear and hate.
Logally’s lash . . .
Shann trembled. Trav raised one of those small claws toward the
Terran’s face, crooning a soft caressing cry for recognition,
for protection, trying to be a part of Shann’s life once
more.
Trav! How could he bear to will Trav into nothingness, to bear
to summon up another harsh memory which would sweep Trav away? Trav
was the only thing Shann had ever known which he could love
wholeheartedly, that had answered his love with a return gift of
affection so much greater than the light body he now held.
“Trav!” he whispered softly. Then he made his great
effort against this second and far more subtle attack. With the
same agony which he had known years earlier, he resolutely summoned
a bitter memory, sat nursing once more a broken thing which died in
pain he could not ease, aware himself of every moment of that pain.
And what was worse, this time there clung that nagging little
doubt. What if he had not forced the memory? Perhaps he could have
taken Trav with him unhurt, alive, at least for a while.
Shann covered his face with his now empty hands. To see a
nightmare flicker out after facing squarely up to its terror, that
was no great task. To give up a dream which was part of a lost
heaven, that cut cruelly deep. The Terran dragged himself to his
feet, drained and weary, stumbling on.
Was there no end to his aimless circling through a world of
green smoke? He shambled ahead, moving his feet leadenly. How long
had he been here? There was no division in time, just the
unchanging light which was a part of the fog through which he
plodded.
Then he heard more than any shuffle of foot across sand, any
crooning of a long dead seraph, the rising and falling of a voice:
a human voice—not quite singing or reciting, but something
between the two. Shann paused, searching his memory, a memory which
seemed bruised, for the proper answer to match that sound.
But, though he recalled scene after scene out of the years, that
voice did not trigger any return from his past. He turned toward
its source, dully determined to get over quickly the meeting which
lay behind that signal. Only, though he walked on and on, Shann did
not appear any closer to the man behind the voice, nor was he able
to make out separate words composing that chant, a chant broken now
and then by pauses, so that the Terran grew aware of the distress
of his fellow prisoner. For the impression that he sought another
captive came out of nowhere and grew as he cast wider and wider in
his quest.
Then he might have turned some invisible corner in the mist, for
the chant broke out anew in stronger volume, and now he was able to
distinguish words he knew.
“ . . . where blow the winds between
the worlds,
And hang the suns in dark of space.
For Power is given a man to use.
Let him do so well before the last accounting—”
The voice was hoarse, cracked, the words spaced with uneven
catches of breath, as if they had been repeated many, many times to
provide an anchor against madness, form a tie to reality. And
hearing that note, Shann slowed his pace. This was out of no memory
of his; he was sure of that.
“ . . . blow the winds between the
worlds,
And hang the suns
in . . . dark—of—of—”
That harsh croak of voice was running down, as a clock runs down
for lack of winding. Shann sped on, reacting to a plea which did
not lay in the words themselves.
Once more the mist curled back, provided him with an open space.
A man sat on the sand, his fists buried wrist deep in the smooth
grains on either side of his body, his eyes set, red-rimmed,
glazed, his body rocking back and forth in time to his labored
chant.
“ . . . the dark of
space—”
“Thorvald!” Shann skidded in the sand, went down on
his knees. The manner of their last parting was forgotten as he
took in the officer’s condition.
The other did not stop his swaying, but his head turned with a
stiff jerk, the gray eyes making a visible effort to focus on
Shann. Then some of the strain smoothed out of the gaunt features
and Thorvald laughed softly.
“Garth!”
Shann stiffened but had no chance to protest that mistaken
identification as the other continued: “So you made class one
status, boy! I always knew you could if you’d work for it. A
couple of black marks on your record, sure. But those can be rubbed
out, boy, when you’re willing to try. Thorvalds always have
been Survey. Our father would have been proud.”
Thorvald’s voice flattened, his smile faded, there was a
growing spark of some emotion in those gray eyes. Unexpectedly, he
hurled himself forward, his hands clawing for Shann’s throat.
He bore the younger man down under him to the sand where Lantee
found himself fighting desperately for his life against a man who
could only be mad.
Shann used a trick learned on the Dumps, and his opponent
doubled up with a gasp of agony to let the younger man break free.
He planted a knee on the small of Thorvald’s back, digging
the officer into the sand, pinning down his arms in spite of the
other’s struggles. Regaining his own breath in gulps, Shann
tried to appeal to some spark of reason in the other.
“Thorvald! This is Lantee—Lantee—” His
name echoed in the mist-walled void like an unhuman wail.
“Lantee—? No, Throg! Lantee—Throg—killed
my brother!”
Sand puffed out with the breath which expelled that indictment.
But Thorvald no longer fought, and Shann believed him close to
collapse.
Shann relaxed his hold, rolling the other man over. Thorvald
obeyed his pull limply, lying face upward, sand in his hair and
eyebrows, crusting his slack lips. The younger man brushed the dirt
away gently as the other opened his eyes to regard Shann with his
old impersonal stare.
“You’re alive,” Thorvald stated bleakly.
“Garth’s dead. You ought to be dead too.”
Shann drew back, rubbed sand from his hands, his concern
dampened by the other’s patent hostility. Only that angry
accusation vanished in a blink of those gray eyes. Then there was a
warmer recognition in Thorvald’s expression.
“Lantee!” The younger man might just have come into
sight. “What are you doing here?”
Shann tightened his belt. “Just about what you are.”
He was still aloof, giving no acknowledgment of difference in rank
now. “Running around in this fog hunting the way
out.”
Thorvald sat up, surveying the billowing walls of the hole which
contained them. Then he reached out a hand to draw fingers down
Shann’s forearm.
“You are real,” he observed simply, and his
voice was warm, welcoming.
“Don’t bet on it,” Shann snapped. “The
unreal can be mighty real—here.” His hand went up to
the smarting brand on his shoulder.
Thorvald nodded. “Masters of illusion,” he
murmured.
“Mistresses,” Shann corrected. “This place is
run by a gang of pretty smart witches.”
“Witches? You’ve seen them? Where? And
what—who are they?” Thorvald pounced with a return of
his old-time sharpness.
“They’re females right enough, and they can make the
impossible happen. I’d say that classifies them as witches.
One of them tried to take me over back on the island. I set a trap
and caught her; then somehow she transported me—”
Swiftly he outlined the chain of events leading from his sudden
awakening in the river tunnel to his present penetration of this
fog-world.
Thorvald listened eagerly. When the story was finished, he
rubbed his hands across his drawn face, smearing away the last of
the sand. “At least you have some idea of who they are and a
suggestion of how you got here. I don’t remember that much
about my own arrival. As far as I can remember I went to sleep on
the island and woke up here!”
Shann studied him and knew that Thorvald was telling the truth.
He could remember nothing of his departure in the outrigger, the
way he had fought Shann in the lagoon. The Survey officer must have
been under the control of the Warlockians then. Quickly he gave the
older man his version of the other’s actions in the outer
world and Thorvald was clearly astounded, though he did not
question the facts Shann presented.
“They just took me!” Thorvald said in a husky half
whisper. “But why? And why are we here? Is this a
prison?”
Shann shook his head. “I think all this”—a
wave of his hand encompassed the green wall, what lay beyond it,
and in it—“is a test of some kind. This dream
business . . . A little while ago I got to
thinking that I wasn’t here at all, that I might be dreaming
it all. Then I met you.”
Thorvald understood. “Yes, but this could be a
dream meeting. How can we tell?” He hesitated, almost
diffidently, before he asked: “Have you met anyone else
here?”
“Yes.” Shann had no desire to go into that.
“People out of your past life?”
“Yes.” Again he did not elaborate.
“So did I.” Thorvald’s expression was bleak;
his encounters in the fog must have proved no more pleasant than
Shann’s. “That suggests that we do trigger the
hallucinations ourselves. But maybe we can really lick it
now.”
“How?”
“Well, if these phantoms are born of our memories there
are about only two or three we could see together—maybe a
Throg on the rampage, or that hound we left back in the mountains.
And if we do sight anything like that, we’ll know what it is.
On the other hand, if we stick together and one of us sees
something that the other
can’t . . . well, that fact alone will
explode the ghost.”
There was sense in what he said. Shann aided the officer to his
feet.
“I must be a better subject for their experiments than
you,” the older man remarked ruefully. “They took me
over completely at the first.”
“You were carrying that disk,” Shann pointed out.
“Maybe that acted as a focusing lens for whatever power they
use to make us play trained animals.”
“Could be!” Thorvald brought out the cloth-wrapped
bone coin. “I still have it.” But he made no move to
pull off the bit of rag about it. “Now”—he gazed
at the wall of green—“which way?”
Shann shrugged. Long ago he had lost any idea of keeping a
straight course through the murk. He might have turned around any
number of times since he first walked blindly into this place. Then
he pointed to the packet Thorvald held.
“Why not flip that?” he asked. “Heads, we go
that way—” he indicated the direction in which they
were facing—“tails we do a right about-face.”
There was an answering grin on Thorvald’s lips. “As
good a guide as any we’re likely to find here. We’ll do
it.” He pulled away the twist of cloth and with a swift snap,
reminiscent of that used by the Warlockian witch to empty the bowl
of sticks, he tossed the disk into the air.
It spun, whirled, but—to their open-jawed
amazement—it did not fall to the sand. Instead it spun until
it looked like a small globe instead of a disk. And it lost its
dead white for a glow of green. When that glow became dazzling for
Terran eyes the miniature sun swung out, not in orbit but in a
straight line of flight, heading to their right.
With a muffled cry, Thorvald started in pursuit, Shann running
beside him. They were in a tunnel of the fog now, and the pace set
by the spinning coin was swift. The Terrans continued to follow it
at the best pace they could summon, having no idea of where they
were headed, but each with the hope that they finally did have a
guide to lead them through this place of confusion and into a sane
world where they could face on more equal terms those who had sent
them there.