The smell caught at Charis’s throat, made
her cough, even before she knew the source. This was the post
clearing—just as she had aimed for—the bubble of the
building rising from bare earth. Or the remains of it, for there
were splotched holes in its fabric from which the plasta-cover
peeled in scorched and stinking strips. Tsstu spat, growled,
communication with Charis firm on the need for immediate
withdrawal.
But there was a prone figure by the ragged hole which had once
been a door. Charis started for that—
“Hoyyy!”
She whirled, her disk ready. There was someone on the trail
which led down the cliff face. He moved faster, waving to her. She
could escape at any moment she chose and that knowledge led her to
stand her ground. Tsstu spat again, caught a clawed grip of
Charis’s tunic.
From the brush rim of the clearing came a brown animal, trotting
purposefully. It walked with its back slightly arched, showing off
the bands of lighter color along each side, the fur thick and long.
More of the light fur was visible above its eyes. Its ears were
small, its face broad, the tail bushy.
Just out of the bushes it stopped to eye Charis composedly.
Tsstu made no more audible protests, but the trembling of her body,
her fear of mind, was transmitted to Charis. For the second time
the girl readied her disk.
The man who had waved disappeared from the trail; he must have
jumped down the last few feet. Now a whistle sounded from the
foliage. The brown animal squatted down where it was. Charis
watched warily as the newcomer burst into the clearing in a
rush.
He wore the green-brown of Survey, with the addition of high
boots of a dull copper-colored, supple material. On his tunic
collar was the glint of metal—the insignia of his corps again
modified with a key as it had been on the copter. He was young,
though nowadays with the mixture of races and the number of
mutants, planet years were hard to guess. Not as tall as the usual
Terran breed though, and slender. His skin was an even brown which
might be its natural shade or the result of much weathering, and
his hair, rather closely cropped to his round skull, was almost as
tightly curled, and just as black, as Tsstu’s fur.
His impetuous break into the open halted and he stood staring at
Charis in open disbelief. The brown animal rose and went to him,
rubbing against his legs.
“Who are you?” he demanded in Basic.
“Charis Nordholm,” she replied mechanically. Then
she added, “That beast of yours—he frightens
Tsstu—”
“Taggi? You need not fear him.” The brown animal
reared against the man’s thigh and he fondled its head,
scratched behind the small ears. “But—a
curl-cat!” He was gazing now with almost as great surprise at
Tsstu. “Where did you get it? And how did you make friends
with it?”
“Meeerrreeee.” Some of Tsstu’s fear had
lessened. She wriggled about in Charis’s arms as if settling
herself in a more comfortable position, watching both man and
animal with wary interest.
“She came to me,” Charis fitted the past to the
present, “when you were hunting her with that
animal!”
“But I never—” he began and then stopped
“—oh, back in the woods that day Taggi went off on a
new scent! But why—who are you?” His tone had
a new snap; this was official business now. “And what are you
doing here? Why did you hide when I searched here
earlier?”
“Who are you?” she countered.
“Cadet Shann Lantee, Survey Corps, Embassy-Liaison,”
he replied almost in one breath. “You sent that message, the
one entered on our pick-up tape, didn’t you? You were here
with the traders, though where you were just a little while
ago—”
“I wasn’t here. I have just come.”
He moved toward her, the animal Taggi remaining where it was.
Now his eyes were intent, with a new kind of measurement.
“You’ve been with them!”
And Charis had no doubt as to whom that “them”
referred.
“Yes.” She was not prepared to add to that, but he
seemed to need no other answer.
“And you’ve just come here. Why?”
“What has happened here? That man there—” She
turned toward the body once more but the Survey officer in one
swift stride was blocking her view of it.
“Don’t look! What’s happened?—Well,
I’d like to know that myself. There’s been a raid. But
who or why—Taggi and I have been trying to learn what could
have happened here. How long have you been with
them?”
Charis shook her head. “I don’t know.” It was
the truth, but would this Lantee believe it?
He nodded. “Like that, eh? Some of their
dreaming . . . ”
It was her turn for surprise. What did this officer know of the
Wyverns and their Otherwhere? He was smiling slowly, an expression
which modified his usual set of mouth, made him even more
youthful.
“I, too, have dreamed,” he said softly.
“But I thought—!” She had a small prick of
emotion which was not amazement but, oddly, resentment.
His smile remained, warm and somehow eager. “That they do
not admit males can dream? Yes, that is what they told us, too,
once upon a time.”
“Us?”
“Ragnar Thorvald and I. We dreamed to order—and came
out under our own command, so they had to give us equal status. Did
they do the same to you? Make you visit the Cavern of the
Veil?”
Charis shook her head. “I dreamed, yes, but I don’t
know about your cavern. They taught me how to use this.” On
impulse she held up the disk.
Lantee’s smile vanished. “A guide! They gave you a
guide. So that’s how you got here!”
“You don’t have one?”
“No, they never offered us those. And you don’t
ask—”
Charis nodded. She knew what he meant. With the Wyverns, you
waited for their giving; you did not ask. But apparently Lantee and
this Thorvald had better contact with the natives than the traders
had been able to establish.
The traders—the raid here. She did not realize that she
was speaking aloud her thoughts as she said:
“That man with the blaster!”
“What man?” Again that official voice from
Lantee.
Charis told him of that strange last night in the post when she
had awakened to find herself in a deserted building, of her use of
the com and the answer the sweep had picked up in the north. Lantee
shot questions at her, but the answers she had were so limited she
could tell him little more than the fact that the stranger in the
visa-plate had worn an illegal weapon.
“Jagan had a limited permit,” Lantee said when she
had done. “He was here on sufferance and against our
recommendations, and he had only a specified time in which to prove
his trade claim. We heard he had brought in a woman as liaison, but
that was when he first set up the
post . . . ”
“Sheeha!” Charis broke in. Rapidly she added that
part of the story to the rest.
“Apparently she couldn’t take the dreams,”
Lantee observed. “They reached for her, just as they did for
you. But she wasn’t receptive in the right way, so it reacted
on her, broke her. Then Jagan made another trip and got you. But
this other crowd—the one you picked up that night—that
spells trouble. It looks as if they hit here—”
Charis glanced at the body. “Is that Jagan? One of his
men?”
“It’s a crewman, yes. Why did you come here? You
taped a call for help to escape that night.”
She showed him the stunner, told him of where and how she had
found it. Lantee was far from smiling now.
“The com in the post was smashed along with everything
else inside that wasn’t blast-burned. But—there
was something else. Have you ever seen a mate to this
before, or was it part of Jagan’s stock—a
keepsake?”
Lantee moved back to the body he had warned her not to approach
and picked an object from the ground beside it. When he came back,
he held an unusual weapon, now horribly stained for a third of its
length. It had the general appearance of a spear or dart, but the
sawlike projections extended farther down its shaft than was
natural in a spearhead.
Charis’s fingers were a tight fist about her disk as
Lantee held it closer to her. The bone-white substance was very
like that used in the guide.
“I never saw it before.” She told the truth, but in
her a fear was growing.
“But you have an idea?” He was too acute!
“Suppose, just suppose,” Lantee continued, no longer
holding her eye to eye as if demanding her thoughts, but regarding
the strange spear with a brooding expression, “that this is
native to Warlock!”
“They don’t need such weapons,”
Charis flashed. “They can control any living thing through
these.” She waved her balled fist.
“Because they dream,” Lantee noted. “But what
of those of their race who do not dream?”
“The—the males?” For the first time Charis
wondered about that. Now she remembered that, in all the time she
had spent with the Wyverns, she had not seen any male of their
species. That they existed she knew, but there appeared to be a
wall of reticence surrounding any mention of them.
“But—” she could not believe in Lantee’s
suggestion “—that is the sign of blaster fire.”
With her chin she pointed to the post.
“Yes. Blaster fire, systematic wrecking of every
installation—and then this—used to kill an off-worlder.
It’s as complicated as a dream, isn’t it? But this is
real, too real by far!” He dropped the stained spear to lie
between them. “We have to have answers and have them
quick.” He looked up at her. “Can you call them?
Thorvald went out to the Citadel for a conference before he knew
about this.”
“I tried to go back before—they’d walled me
out.”
“We have to know what happened here. A body with this in
it. Up there—” Lantee waved toward the plateau,
“—an empty ship just sitting. And out of here, as far
as Taggi can trace, not a single trail. Either they lifted in by
aircraft or—”
“The sea!” Charis finished for him.
“And the sea is their domain; there is not much
happens out there that they are not aware of.”
“You mean—they planned this?” Charis
demanded coldly. To her mind violence of this kind was not the
Wyvern way. The natives had their own powers and those did not
consist of blaster fire and serrated spears.
“No,” Lantee agreed with her promptly. “This
has the stamp of a Jack job, except for that.” He toed the
spear. “And if a Jack crew planeted here, the sooner we
combine forces against them, the better!”
To that Charis could agree. If Jagan’s poor
outfit had been fringe trading, it had still been on the side of
the law. A Jack crew was a thoroughly criminal gang, pirates
swooping on out-world trading posts to glut, kill, and be off again
before help could be summoned. And on such an open world as
Warlock, they might well consider lingering for awhile.
“You have a Patrol squad on world?” she asked.
“No. We’re in a peculiar situation here. The Wyverns
won’t allow any large off-world settlement. They only
accepted Thorvald and me because we did, by chance, pass their
dream test when we were survivors of a Throg raid. But they
wouldn’t agree—or haven’t yet—to any Patrol
station. We have a scout that visits from time to time and
that’s the limit.
“This post of Jagan’s was an experiment, pushed on
us by some of the off-world veeps who wanted to see how a
non-government penetration would be accepted. And the big Companies
didn’t want to gamble. That’s how a Free Trader got it.
There are just Thorvald, Taggi, his mate Togi and their cubs, and
me, plus a com-tech generally resident at headquarters.”
As if the mention of his name summoned him, the brown animal
lumbered forward. He sniffed the spear and growled. Tsstu spat, her
claws pricking through to Charis’s skin.
“What is he?” she asked.
“Wolverine, a Terran-mutated team animal,” Lantee
answered a little absently. “Could you try to raise them
again? I have a hunch that time is getting rather tight.”
Gytha—among the Wyverns Charis had been the closest to
that young witch who had shared some of her instruction—maybe
she could break through by beaming the power directly at Gytha and
not at the Citadel as a whole. She did not answer Lantee’s
question in words but breathed upon the disk, and closed her eyes
the better to visualize Gytha.
At her first meeting with the Wyverns, they had had a physical
uniformity which made it difficult for an off-worlder to see them
as individuals. But Charis had learned that their jeweled
skin-patterns varied, that this adornment had meaning. The younger
members of their species, when they came to adulthood and the use
of the Power, could take certain simplifications of designs worn by
the elders of their family lines and then gradually add the symbols
of their own achievements, spelled out in no code Charis could yet
understand, although by it she could now recognize one from
another.
So it was easy to visualize Gytha, to beam her desire for her
friend. She expected mind contact but, at an exclamation from
Lantee, she opened her eyes to see Gytha herself, the gold and
crimson circles about her snout agleam in the sun, the spine ridges
along her back moving a little as if she had actually used them to
fly here.
“He-Who-Dreams-True.” The mental greeting reached
out to Lantee.
“She-Who-Shares-Dreams.” Charis was startled when
the Survey man answered in the same way. So he did have
communication with the Wyverns in spite of the fact he possessed no
disk.
“You have called!” That was aimed at Charis with a
sharpness which suggested her act had been an error of
judgment.
“There is trouble here—”
Gytha’s head turned; she surveyed the wreckage of the
post, glanced once at the body.
“It does not concern us.”
“Nor this either?” Lantee made no move to pick up
the spear again, but with boot toe he nudged it a little closer to
the Wyvern.
She looked down, and a barrier between her and Charis snapped
into place, as a door might slam. But Charis had been long enough
among Gytha’s kind to read the flash of agitation in the
sudden quiver of the Wyvern’s forehead crest. Her
indifference of moments before was gone.
“Gytha!” Charis tried to break through the barrier
of silence. But it was as if the Wyvern was not only deaf but that
Charis and Lantee had ceased to exist. Only the bloodstained spear
had reality and meaning.
The Wyvern made no gesture of warning. But they were
there—two more of her kind. And one—Charis took a quick
step back—one of the new arrivals had a head crest which was
close to black in shade; the whole surface of her scaled skin was
covered with such a multiplicity of gemmed design that she flashed.
Gysmay—one of the Readers of Rods!
With her came the impact, first of irritation; then, as the
Wyvern looked at Lantee, a cold anger, cold enough to strike as a
weapon.
Though the Survey officer swayed, his face greenish under the
brown, he stood up to her. Under that momentary burst of anger,
Charis caught the suggestion of surprise in the Wyvern.
The second Warlockian who had accompanied Gysmay at
Gytha’s summons made no move. But from her, too, flowed
emotion—if one could name it that—a feeling of warning
and restraint. Her head crest was also black, but there was no
flashing display of patterned skin bright in the sun. At first
glance Charis thought she wore no designs at all, even the
“encouragement” ones of her ancestors. Then the girl
noted that there was a series of markings, deceptively simple, so
close in hue to the natural silver of her skin as to make a brocade
effect detectable only after concentrated study.
For Lantee or Charis this newcomer had no attention at all; she
was staring unwinkingly at the spear. That rose from the spot where
Lantee had dropped it, moving up horizontally on a level with the
Wyvern’s eyes, coming to her. Then it stopped, balanced in
the air for a long moment.
It whirled end for end and dashed groundward. There was a sharp
snapping as it shattered into bits. It might have been broken
against rock instead of bare earth. Then the splinters whirled
about and rose in turn. Charis watched unbelievingly as those
needle-small remnants of the spear spun madly about. They fell,
stilled, but now they formed what was surely a pattern.
The girl reeled. Tsstu, in her arms, screeched. The wolverine
squalled. Charis watched Lantee collapse limply under a mental blow
of rage, so raw and hot as to be a fire within one’s
tormented brain. There was a red cloud about her, but Charis was
most aware of the pain in her head.
That pain accompanied her into the dark, nibbled at her will,
weakened her struggle to pull away from it. Was it pain or
something behind the pain, compelling her, making her no longer
Charis Nordholm but a tool to be used, a key to turn for another,
stronger personality?
The pain pushed at her. She crawled through a red haze—on
and on. Where? for what purpose? There was only the whip of pain
and the need to obey that other will which wielded such a lash.
Red, red, all about her. But the red was fading slowly as a fire
falls into ash. Red to gray, gray which remained about her, a gray
she could see . . .
Charis lay on her back. There was an arch of wall close to her
right hand; it sloped inward over her head. She had seen that wall
before. Half-light so dim—bare walls—a drop
table—a seat by it. The trading post—she was back in
the trading post!
The smell caught at Charis’s throat, made
her cough, even before she knew the source. This was the post
clearing—just as she had aimed for—the bubble of the
building rising from bare earth. Or the remains of it, for there
were splotched holes in its fabric from which the plasta-cover
peeled in scorched and stinking strips. Tsstu spat, growled,
communication with Charis firm on the need for immediate
withdrawal.
But there was a prone figure by the ragged hole which had once
been a door. Charis started for that—
“Hoyyy!”
She whirled, her disk ready. There was someone on the trail
which led down the cliff face. He moved faster, waving to her. She
could escape at any moment she chose and that knowledge led her to
stand her ground. Tsstu spat again, caught a clawed grip of
Charis’s tunic.
From the brush rim of the clearing came a brown animal, trotting
purposefully. It walked with its back slightly arched, showing off
the bands of lighter color along each side, the fur thick and long.
More of the light fur was visible above its eyes. Its ears were
small, its face broad, the tail bushy.
Just out of the bushes it stopped to eye Charis composedly.
Tsstu made no more audible protests, but the trembling of her body,
her fear of mind, was transmitted to Charis. For the second time
the girl readied her disk.
The man who had waved disappeared from the trail; he must have
jumped down the last few feet. Now a whistle sounded from the
foliage. The brown animal squatted down where it was. Charis
watched warily as the newcomer burst into the clearing in a
rush.
He wore the green-brown of Survey, with the addition of high
boots of a dull copper-colored, supple material. On his tunic
collar was the glint of metal—the insignia of his corps again
modified with a key as it had been on the copter. He was young,
though nowadays with the mixture of races and the number of
mutants, planet years were hard to guess. Not as tall as the usual
Terran breed though, and slender. His skin was an even brown which
might be its natural shade or the result of much weathering, and
his hair, rather closely cropped to his round skull, was almost as
tightly curled, and just as black, as Tsstu’s fur.
His impetuous break into the open halted and he stood staring at
Charis in open disbelief. The brown animal rose and went to him,
rubbing against his legs.
“Who are you?” he demanded in Basic.
“Charis Nordholm,” she replied mechanically. Then
she added, “That beast of yours—he frightens
Tsstu—”
“Taggi? You need not fear him.” The brown animal
reared against the man’s thigh and he fondled its head,
scratched behind the small ears. “But—a
curl-cat!” He was gazing now with almost as great surprise at
Tsstu. “Where did you get it? And how did you make friends
with it?”
“Meeerrreeee.” Some of Tsstu’s fear had
lessened. She wriggled about in Charis’s arms as if settling
herself in a more comfortable position, watching both man and
animal with wary interest.
“She came to me,” Charis fitted the past to the
present, “when you were hunting her with that
animal!”
“But I never—” he began and then stopped
“—oh, back in the woods that day Taggi went off on a
new scent! But why—who are you?” His tone had
a new snap; this was official business now. “And what are you
doing here? Why did you hide when I searched here
earlier?”
“Who are you?” she countered.
“Cadet Shann Lantee, Survey Corps, Embassy-Liaison,”
he replied almost in one breath. “You sent that message, the
one entered on our pick-up tape, didn’t you? You were here
with the traders, though where you were just a little while
ago—”
“I wasn’t here. I have just come.”
He moved toward her, the animal Taggi remaining where it was.
Now his eyes were intent, with a new kind of measurement.
“You’ve been with them!”
And Charis had no doubt as to whom that “them”
referred.
“Yes.” She was not prepared to add to that, but he
seemed to need no other answer.
“And you’ve just come here. Why?”
“What has happened here? That man there—” She
turned toward the body once more but the Survey officer in one
swift stride was blocking her view of it.
“Don’t look! What’s happened?—Well,
I’d like to know that myself. There’s been a raid. But
who or why—Taggi and I have been trying to learn what could
have happened here. How long have you been with
them?”
Charis shook her head. “I don’t know.” It was
the truth, but would this Lantee believe it?
He nodded. “Like that, eh? Some of their
dreaming . . . ”
It was her turn for surprise. What did this officer know of the
Wyverns and their Otherwhere? He was smiling slowly, an expression
which modified his usual set of mouth, made him even more
youthful.
“I, too, have dreamed,” he said softly.
“But I thought—!” She had a small prick of
emotion which was not amazement but, oddly, resentment.
His smile remained, warm and somehow eager. “That they do
not admit males can dream? Yes, that is what they told us, too,
once upon a time.”
“Us?”
“Ragnar Thorvald and I. We dreamed to order—and came
out under our own command, so they had to give us equal status. Did
they do the same to you? Make you visit the Cavern of the
Veil?”
Charis shook her head. “I dreamed, yes, but I don’t
know about your cavern. They taught me how to use this.” On
impulse she held up the disk.
Lantee’s smile vanished. “A guide! They gave you a
guide. So that’s how you got here!”
“You don’t have one?”
“No, they never offered us those. And you don’t
ask—”
Charis nodded. She knew what he meant. With the Wyverns, you
waited for their giving; you did not ask. But apparently Lantee and
this Thorvald had better contact with the natives than the traders
had been able to establish.
The traders—the raid here. She did not realize that she
was speaking aloud her thoughts as she said:
“That man with the blaster!”
“What man?” Again that official voice from
Lantee.
Charis told him of that strange last night in the post when she
had awakened to find herself in a deserted building, of her use of
the com and the answer the sweep had picked up in the north. Lantee
shot questions at her, but the answers she had were so limited she
could tell him little more than the fact that the stranger in the
visa-plate had worn an illegal weapon.
“Jagan had a limited permit,” Lantee said when she
had done. “He was here on sufferance and against our
recommendations, and he had only a specified time in which to prove
his trade claim. We heard he had brought in a woman as liaison, but
that was when he first set up the
post . . . ”
“Sheeha!” Charis broke in. Rapidly she added that
part of the story to the rest.
“Apparently she couldn’t take the dreams,”
Lantee observed. “They reached for her, just as they did for
you. But she wasn’t receptive in the right way, so it reacted
on her, broke her. Then Jagan made another trip and got you. But
this other crowd—the one you picked up that night—that
spells trouble. It looks as if they hit here—”
Charis glanced at the body. “Is that Jagan? One of his
men?”
“It’s a crewman, yes. Why did you come here? You
taped a call for help to escape that night.”
She showed him the stunner, told him of where and how she had
found it. Lantee was far from smiling now.
“The com in the post was smashed along with everything
else inside that wasn’t blast-burned. But—there
was something else. Have you ever seen a mate to this
before, or was it part of Jagan’s stock—a
keepsake?”
Lantee moved back to the body he had warned her not to approach
and picked an object from the ground beside it. When he came back,
he held an unusual weapon, now horribly stained for a third of its
length. It had the general appearance of a spear or dart, but the
sawlike projections extended farther down its shaft than was
natural in a spearhead.
Charis’s fingers were a tight fist about her disk as
Lantee held it closer to her. The bone-white substance was very
like that used in the guide.
“I never saw it before.” She told the truth, but in
her a fear was growing.
“But you have an idea?” He was too acute!
“Suppose, just suppose,” Lantee continued, no longer
holding her eye to eye as if demanding her thoughts, but regarding
the strange spear with a brooding expression, “that this is
native to Warlock!”
“They don’t need such weapons,”
Charis flashed. “They can control any living thing through
these.” She waved her balled fist.
“Because they dream,” Lantee noted. “But what
of those of their race who do not dream?”
“The—the males?” For the first time Charis
wondered about that. Now she remembered that, in all the time she
had spent with the Wyverns, she had not seen any male of their
species. That they existed she knew, but there appeared to be a
wall of reticence surrounding any mention of them.
“But—” she could not believe in Lantee’s
suggestion “—that is the sign of blaster fire.”
With her chin she pointed to the post.
“Yes. Blaster fire, systematic wrecking of every
installation—and then this—used to kill an off-worlder.
It’s as complicated as a dream, isn’t it? But this is
real, too real by far!” He dropped the stained spear to lie
between them. “We have to have answers and have them
quick.” He looked up at her. “Can you call them?
Thorvald went out to the Citadel for a conference before he knew
about this.”
“I tried to go back before—they’d walled me
out.”
“We have to know what happened here. A body with this in
it. Up there—” Lantee waved toward the plateau,
“—an empty ship just sitting. And out of here, as far
as Taggi can trace, not a single trail. Either they lifted in by
aircraft or—”
“The sea!” Charis finished for him.
“And the sea is their domain; there is not much
happens out there that they are not aware of.”
“You mean—they planned this?” Charis
demanded coldly. To her mind violence of this kind was not the
Wyvern way. The natives had their own powers and those did not
consist of blaster fire and serrated spears.
“No,” Lantee agreed with her promptly. “This
has the stamp of a Jack job, except for that.” He toed the
spear. “And if a Jack crew planeted here, the sooner we
combine forces against them, the better!”
To that Charis could agree. If Jagan’s poor
outfit had been fringe trading, it had still been on the side of
the law. A Jack crew was a thoroughly criminal gang, pirates
swooping on out-world trading posts to glut, kill, and be off again
before help could be summoned. And on such an open world as
Warlock, they might well consider lingering for awhile.
“You have a Patrol squad on world?” she asked.
“No. We’re in a peculiar situation here. The Wyverns
won’t allow any large off-world settlement. They only
accepted Thorvald and me because we did, by chance, pass their
dream test when we were survivors of a Throg raid. But they
wouldn’t agree—or haven’t yet—to any Patrol
station. We have a scout that visits from time to time and
that’s the limit.
“This post of Jagan’s was an experiment, pushed on
us by some of the off-world veeps who wanted to see how a
non-government penetration would be accepted. And the big Companies
didn’t want to gamble. That’s how a Free Trader got it.
There are just Thorvald, Taggi, his mate Togi and their cubs, and
me, plus a com-tech generally resident at headquarters.”
As if the mention of his name summoned him, the brown animal
lumbered forward. He sniffed the spear and growled. Tsstu spat, her
claws pricking through to Charis’s skin.
“What is he?” she asked.
“Wolverine, a Terran-mutated team animal,” Lantee
answered a little absently. “Could you try to raise them
again? I have a hunch that time is getting rather tight.”
Gytha—among the Wyverns Charis had been the closest to
that young witch who had shared some of her instruction—maybe
she could break through by beaming the power directly at Gytha and
not at the Citadel as a whole. She did not answer Lantee’s
question in words but breathed upon the disk, and closed her eyes
the better to visualize Gytha.
At her first meeting with the Wyverns, they had had a physical
uniformity which made it difficult for an off-worlder to see them
as individuals. But Charis had learned that their jeweled
skin-patterns varied, that this adornment had meaning. The younger
members of their species, when they came to adulthood and the use
of the Power, could take certain simplifications of designs worn by
the elders of their family lines and then gradually add the symbols
of their own achievements, spelled out in no code Charis could yet
understand, although by it she could now recognize one from
another.
So it was easy to visualize Gytha, to beam her desire for her
friend. She expected mind contact but, at an exclamation from
Lantee, she opened her eyes to see Gytha herself, the gold and
crimson circles about her snout agleam in the sun, the spine ridges
along her back moving a little as if she had actually used them to
fly here.
“He-Who-Dreams-True.” The mental greeting reached
out to Lantee.
“She-Who-Shares-Dreams.” Charis was startled when
the Survey man answered in the same way. So he did have
communication with the Wyverns in spite of the fact he possessed no
disk.
“You have called!” That was aimed at Charis with a
sharpness which suggested her act had been an error of
judgment.
“There is trouble here—”
Gytha’s head turned; she surveyed the wreckage of the
post, glanced once at the body.
“It does not concern us.”
“Nor this either?” Lantee made no move to pick up
the spear again, but with boot toe he nudged it a little closer to
the Wyvern.
She looked down, and a barrier between her and Charis snapped
into place, as a door might slam. But Charis had been long enough
among Gytha’s kind to read the flash of agitation in the
sudden quiver of the Wyvern’s forehead crest. Her
indifference of moments before was gone.
“Gytha!” Charis tried to break through the barrier
of silence. But it was as if the Wyvern was not only deaf but that
Charis and Lantee had ceased to exist. Only the bloodstained spear
had reality and meaning.
The Wyvern made no gesture of warning. But they were
there—two more of her kind. And one—Charis took a quick
step back—one of the new arrivals had a head crest which was
close to black in shade; the whole surface of her scaled skin was
covered with such a multiplicity of gemmed design that she flashed.
Gysmay—one of the Readers of Rods!
With her came the impact, first of irritation; then, as the
Wyvern looked at Lantee, a cold anger, cold enough to strike as a
weapon.
Though the Survey officer swayed, his face greenish under the
brown, he stood up to her. Under that momentary burst of anger,
Charis caught the suggestion of surprise in the Wyvern.
The second Warlockian who had accompanied Gysmay at
Gytha’s summons made no move. But from her, too, flowed
emotion—if one could name it that—a feeling of warning
and restraint. Her head crest was also black, but there was no
flashing display of patterned skin bright in the sun. At first
glance Charis thought she wore no designs at all, even the
“encouragement” ones of her ancestors. Then the girl
noted that there was a series of markings, deceptively simple, so
close in hue to the natural silver of her skin as to make a brocade
effect detectable only after concentrated study.
For Lantee or Charis this newcomer had no attention at all; she
was staring unwinkingly at the spear. That rose from the spot where
Lantee had dropped it, moving up horizontally on a level with the
Wyvern’s eyes, coming to her. Then it stopped, balanced in
the air for a long moment.
It whirled end for end and dashed groundward. There was a sharp
snapping as it shattered into bits. It might have been broken
against rock instead of bare earth. Then the splinters whirled
about and rose in turn. Charis watched unbelievingly as those
needle-small remnants of the spear spun madly about. They fell,
stilled, but now they formed what was surely a pattern.
The girl reeled. Tsstu, in her arms, screeched. The wolverine
squalled. Charis watched Lantee collapse limply under a mental blow
of rage, so raw and hot as to be a fire within one’s
tormented brain. There was a red cloud about her, but Charis was
most aware of the pain in her head.
That pain accompanied her into the dark, nibbled at her will,
weakened her struggle to pull away from it. Was it pain or
something behind the pain, compelling her, making her no longer
Charis Nordholm but a tool to be used, a key to turn for another,
stronger personality?
The pain pushed at her. She crawled through a red haze—on
and on. Where? for what purpose? There was only the whip of pain
and the need to obey that other will which wielded such a lash.
Red, red, all about her. But the red was fading slowly as a fire
falls into ash. Red to gray, gray which remained about her, a gray
she could see . . .
Charis lay on her back. There was an arch of wall close to her
right hand; it sloped inward over her head. She had seen that wall
before. Half-light so dim—bare walls—a drop
table—a seat by it. The trading post—she was back in
the trading post!