While she still had light, Charis set about
making their half-cave into more of a fortress, pushing and
carrying loose stones to build up a low wall across its front. If
they kept well down behind that, the green of her tunic and the
green-brown of Lantee’s uniform would not be too noticeable.
She bit at a ragged nail as she crawled back under cover.
The pocket of shadow had deepened and Charis put out a
questioning hand to guide her. She touched Lantee’s shoulder
and moved, to huddle down close beside him. Tsstu flitted in,
“meeerreeed” once, and then left on a hunt of her own.
Of Taggi, there had been no sign since they had come into the
broken land. Perhaps the wolverine, too, had gone in quest of
food.
Charis let her head fall forward to rest on her knees. In this
cramped space it was necessary to ball one’s body into the
smallest possible compass. She was not really tired; the Sustain
tablet was working. But she needed to think. The Wyverns had warned
her that time was against her. She had won free from the sea-rock
to which they had exiled her, but perhaps she had made the wrong
choice of escape. In his present condition, Lantee was no ally but
a responsibility. With the coming of light she could redraw the
pattern, get as far south as the moss meadow. How much farther
beyond that lay the government base she had no idea. But if she
kept on following the shore she would eventually reach it.
But—Lantee? She could not take him with her, she was sure
of that. And to leave him here in his condition—Charis shied
from that solution every time the brutal necessity for action
presented it. He was no friend; they had no acquaintance past that
one meeting by the post. He had no claim on her at all and the need
for action was urgent.
There were times when one human life was expendable for the
whole. But, well as she knew the bitter logic of that reasoning,
Charis found a barrier in her against her following it as high and
firm as the barriers which the Wyverns had used to control her.
Well, she could do nothing during the hours of dark. Maybe before
morning Lantee would come out of it, out of this state of
non-being. It was childish to cling to such hope but she did. Now
she tried to will herself to sleep, a sleep past the entry of any
dream.
“—ah—ahhhhhhh—”
The plaint was that of pain. Charis strove to deafen herself
against it.
“—ah—ahhhhhhh!”
The girl’s head came up. There was a stirring beside her.
She could not see Lantee save as a dim bulk in the gloom, but her
hand went out to feel the convulsive shudders which tore him. And
always came that small thread of a moan which must mark some
unendurable agony.
“Lantee!” She shook his arm and he fell over against
her, his head now resting on her knee, so that the shivering which
rocked him became partly hers. His moaning had stopped, but his
breath came and went in great sucking gasps, as if he could not get
oxygen enough to satisfy the needs of his trembling body.
“Shann—what is it?” Charis longed for light
enough to see his face. When she had nursed those struck down by
the white plague on Demeter, she had known this same sick fear,
this same courage sapping frustration. What could she do, what
could anyone do? She drew him toward her so that his head rested in
her lap, tried to hold him still. But just as he had been apathetic
and robot-like before, so now he was restless. His head turned back
and forth as that horrible gasping racked him.
“Rrrruuuu.” Out of nowhere Tsstu came, a shadow. The
curl-cat was on Lantee’s chest, crouched low, clinging with
claws when Charis tried to push her away. Then a growl and Taggi
burst around the stones Charis had set up, came to nuzzle against
Lantee’s twisted body as if, with Tsstu, he strove to hold
the sufferer still. Need—it was a cloud about the four of
them—the blind call for help which Lantee did not have to put
into words for Charis to feel, the concern of the animals, her own
helplessness. This was a crisis point, she realized that. The
Survey man was fighting a battle, and if he lost—?
“What can I do?” she cried aloud. This was not an
affair of the body—she had delved deeply enough into the
Wyvern Power to know that—but of mind, of—of
identity.
Will—that was the springboard of Wyvern power. They willed
what they wished, and it was! She was willing
now—willing Lantee to . . .
Dark and cold and that which was nothing once again, this was
the space into which her desire to help was drawing her, a space
which was utterly alien to her kind. Dark—cold. But
now— Two small lights, flickering, then growing stronger,
though the dark and cold fought to extinguish them; two lights
which drew closer to her and grew and grew. She did not reach out
her hands to take up those lights, but they came as if she had
called. And then Charis was aware that there was a third light, and
she furnished the energy on which it fed.
Three lights joined to speed through that dark in search. No
thought, no speech among them; just the compulsion to answer a
calling need. For the dark and cold were all-encompassing, a sea of
black having no shore, no islands.
Island? Faint, so faint, a glimmer showed on the sea.
They spun together, those three lights, and struck down to the
small spark gleaming in that encroaching and swallowing dark. Now
there was a fourth light like an ash-encrusted coal in a near-dead
fire. Together the three aimed at that fire, but there was no
touching it: They had not the power to strike through, and the fire
was near extinction.
Then the light which was fed by Charis’s energy and will
soared, drawing also that which was the animals’. She reached
out, not with a physical arm or hand but with an extension of her
inner force, and touched one of her companion lights.
It snapped toward her. She was rent, to writhe in pain as
emotions which were alien warred against that which was Charis
alone—wild, raw emotions which boiled and frothed, which
dashed her in and about. But she fought back, strove to master and
won to an uneasy stability. And then she reached out again and drew
to her the second spark.
Once again she was in tumult, and even greater was the fight she
had to wage for supremacy. But the urgency which had drawn all
three, the need to go to the dying fire, laid upon them now the
need for acting as one. And when Charis called upon that need, they
obeyed.
Down to that glimmer which was now far spent sped a bolt of
flaming force raised to the highest possible pitch. That broke
through, pierced to the heart of the fire.
Turmoil for a space. Then it was as if Charis raced wildly down
a corridor into which emptied many doors. From behind each of these
came people and things she did not know, who grasped at her, tried
to shout messages in her ears, impress upon her their importance,
until Charis was deafened, driven close to the edge of sanity. To
that corridor she could see no end.
The voices screamed, but through them came other sounds—a
growling, a squalling—equal to the voices, demanding
attention in their turn. Charis could not run much
farther . . .
Silence, abrupt, complete—and in its way terrifying, too.
Then—light. And she had a body again. Aware first of that,
Charis ran a hand down that body in wonder and thankfulness. She
looked about her. Under her sandaled feet was sand, silver sand.
But this was not the shore of the sea. In fact, vision in any
direction was not clear, for there was a mist which moved in
spirals and billows, a mist of green, the same green as the tunic
she wore.
The mist curled, writhed, held a darker core. She saw movement
in that core, as if an arm had drawn aside a curtain.
“Lantee!”
He stood there, facing her. But it was no longer the shell of a
man she saw. There was life and awareness back in his body and
mind. He held out his hand to her.
“Dream . . . ?” Was it all a dream? She had known such clarity of
vision before in the dream Otherwhere of the Wyverns.
“I don’t know,” she answered his
half-question.
“You came—you!” There was a kind of
wondering recognition in his voice which she understood. They had
been together in that place where their kind was not. The four
fires, joined together, had now broken the bonds which had held him
in a place their species should never know.
“Yes.” Lantee nodded even though Charis had put none
of that into words. “You and Taggi and Tsstu. Together you
came, and together we broke out.”
“But this?” Charis gazed about at the green mist.
“Where is this?”
“The Cavern of the Veil—of illusions. But this I
believe is a dream. Still they strive to keep us that much
in bonds.”
“For dreams there are answers.” Charis went down on
her knees and smoothed the sand. With one finger tip she traced her
design. It was not clear in the powdery stuff, but there was
enough, she hoped, to serve her purpose. Then she looked at
Lantee.
“Come.” Charis held out her hand. “Think of a
half-cave—” swiftly she described the place they had
been in at night “—and keep hold. We must try to
return.”
She felt his grip tense and harden, his stronger fingers
cramping hers until her flesh numbed. And then she centered all of
her mind on the picture of the ledge cave and the
pattern . . .
Charis was stiff and cold, her arm ached, her hand was numb.
Behind her was a rock wall, over her head an extension of it, and
from before her a breath of sun heat. There was a sigh and she
glanced down.
Lantee lay there, curled up awkwardly, his head in her lap, his
hand clutching hers in that numbing grip. His face was drawn and
haggard, as if he had aged planet years since she had seen him
last. But the slack blankness which had been so terrifying was
gone. He stirred and opened his eyes, first bewildered, but then
knowing, recognizing her.
He raised his head.
“Dream!”
“Maybe. But we are back—here.” Charis freed
her hand from his hold and spread her cramped fingers. With her
other hand she patted the nearest stone in her improvised wall to
assure herself of its reality.
Lantee sat up and rubbed his hand across his eyes. But Charis
remembered.
“Tsstu! Taggi!”
There was no sign of either animal. A small nagging fear began
to nibble at her mind. They—they were those other
lights. And she had lost them; they had not been in the place of
green mist. Were they lost forever?
Lantee stirred. “They were with you—there?” It
was not a question but a statement. He crawled out from under the
ledge, whistled a clear rising note or two. Then he stooped and
held out his hand again to draw her up beside him.
“Tsstu!” aloud she called the curl-cat.
Faint—very faint—an answer! Tsstu had not been
abandoned in that place. But where was she?
“Taggi is alive!” Lantee’s smile was real.
“And he answered me. It was different, that answer, from what
it has ever been before, more as if we spoke.”
“To have been there—might not that bring a
change in us all?”
For a moment he was silent and then he nodded. “You mean
because we were all one for a space? Yes, perhaps that cannot be
ever put aside.”
She had a spinning vision of that race down the endless corridor
with its opening doors and the shouting figures emerging from them.
Had those represented Lantee’s memories, Lantee’s
thoughts? Not again did she want to face that!
“No,” he agreed without need of speech from her,
“not again. But there was then the need—”
“More than one kind of need.” Charis shied away from
any more mention of that mingling. “There’s more
trouble than Wyvern dreaming for us to consider now.” She
told him of what she had learned.
Lantee’s mouth thinned into a straight line, his jaw
thrust forward a little. “Thorvald was with them or at least
at the Citadel when we found that spear. They may have put him away
as they did me. Now they can move against all off-worlders without
interference. We have a com-tech at the base, and a Patrol scout
may have set down since I left—one was almost due. If that
ship had not come in, Thorvald would have recalled me when he left.
Two, maybe three, men were there and none of them armored against
Wyvern control. We’ve been very cautious about trying to
expand the base because we did want to maintain good relations.
These Jacks have blown the whole plan! You say they have some
Wyvern warriors helping them? I wonder how they worked that. From
all we’ve been able to learn, and that’s very little,
the witches have a firm control over their males. That has always
been one of the problems; makes it almost impossible for them to
conceive of cooperation with us.”
“The Jacks must have something to nullify the
Power,” Charis commented.
“That’s all we need,” he said bitterly.
“But if they can nullify the Power, then how can the witches
go up against them?”
“The Wyverns seem very sure of themselves.” Charis
had her own first doubts. With the assembly arrayed against her
back at the Citadel, she had accepted their warning; her respect
for their Power had not been shaken until this moment. But Lantee
was right. If the invaders were able to nullify the Power to the
extent of releasing the males who had always been under domination,
then could the witches hope to battle the strangers themselves?
“No,” Lantee continued, “they’re very
sure of themselves because they’ve never before come up
against anything which threatened their hold on their people and
their way of life. Perhaps they can’t even conceive of the
Power’s being broken. We had hoped to make them understand
eventually that there were other kinds of power, but we
have not had time. To them this is a threat, right enough, but not
the supreme threat I believe it is.”
“Their power has been broken,” Charis said
quietly.
“With a nullifier, yes. How soon do you suppose the truth
of that will get through to them?”
“But we did not need this machine or whatever the Jacks
have. We broke it—the four of us!”
Lantee stared at her. Then he threw back his head and laughed,
not loudly but with the ring of real amusement.
“You are right. And what will our witches say to this, I
wonder? Or do they already know? Yes, you freed me from whatever
prison they consigned me to. And it was a prison!”
His smile vanished, the drawn lines in his face sharpened.
“So—their power can be broken or circumvented
in more ways than one. But I do not think that even that
information will deter them from making the first move. And they
must be stopped.” He hesitated and then added in a rush of
words, “I am not arguing that they should take the
interference of the Jacks and not fight back. By their way of
thinking their way of life is threatened. But if these witches go
ahead as they plan and try to wipe us all off Warlock, supposing
they are able to fight the Jack weapon or weapons, then
they will have written the end to their own story themselves.
“For if this band of Jacks has come up with a nullifier to
defeat the Power, others can, too. It will just be a matter of time
until the Wyverns are under off-world control. And that
mustn’t happen!”
“You say that?” Charis asked curiously.
“You?”
“Does that surprise you? Yes, they have worked on me and
this was not the first time. But I, too, have shared their
dreaming. And because I did and Thorvald did, we were that much
closer to bridging the gap between us. We must be changed in part
when we are touched by the Power. But though they may have to bend
to weather a new wind—which will be very hard for
them—they must not be swept away. Now—” he looked
about him as if he could summon a copter out of the air
“—we have to be on the move.”
“I don’t think they will allow us to return to the
Citadel,” Charis demurred.
“No, if they are working up to some stroke against
off-worlders, they will have all the screens up about their prime
base. Our own headquarters is the only place. From there we can
signal for help. And if time is good to us, we can handle the Jacks
before they do. But where we are now and how far from the
base—” Lantee shook his head.
“Do you have your disk?” he added a moment
later.
“No. But I don’t need it.” Just how true that
was, Charis could not be sure. She had won off the rock island and
out of the place of green mist without it, however. “But
I’ve never seen your base.”
“If I described it, as you did this rock hole for me,
would that serve?”
“I don’t know. The cavern was a dream, I
think.”
“And our bodies remained here as anchors to draw us back?
That could well be. But there’s no harm in trying.”
The hour must have been close to midday; the sun was burning hot
on the baked section of rock. And, as Lantee had pointed out, they
were lost as far as landmarks were concerned. His suggestion was as
good as any. Charis looked about for a patch of earth and a stone
or stick to scratch with. But there was neither.
“I must have something which will make a mark.”
“A mark?” Lantee echoed as he, too, surveyed their
general surroundings. Then he gave an exclamation and snapped open
a belt pocket to bring out the small aid kit. From its contents he
selected a slender pencil which Charis recognized as sterile paint,
made to cleanse and heal small wounds. It was of a greasy
consistency. She tried it on the rock. The mark was faint but she
could see it.
“Now,” Lantee sat on his heels beside her,
“we’ll aim for a place I know about a half mile from
the base.”
“Why not the base itself?”
“Because there may be a reception waiting there that we
wouldn’t care to meet. I want to do some scouting before I
walk into what might be real trouble.”
He was right, of course. Either the Wyverns might already have
made their move—for how could Charis guess how much time had
actually passed since she had been wafted from the assembly to the
island—or the Jacks, learning the undermanned status of the
only legal hold on Warlock, had taken it over to save themselves
from off-world interference.
“Right here—there’s a lake shaped so.”
Lantee had taken the sterile stick from her and was drawing.
“Then trees, a line of them standing this way. The rest is
meadow land. We should be at this end of the lake.”
It was hard to translate those marks into a real picture and
Charis began to shake her head. Suddenly her companion leaned
forward and laid his palms flat against her forehead just above her
eyes.
While she still had light, Charis set about
making their half-cave into more of a fortress, pushing and
carrying loose stones to build up a low wall across its front. If
they kept well down behind that, the green of her tunic and the
green-brown of Lantee’s uniform would not be too noticeable.
She bit at a ragged nail as she crawled back under cover.
The pocket of shadow had deepened and Charis put out a
questioning hand to guide her. She touched Lantee’s shoulder
and moved, to huddle down close beside him. Tsstu flitted in,
“meeerreeed” once, and then left on a hunt of her own.
Of Taggi, there had been no sign since they had come into the
broken land. Perhaps the wolverine, too, had gone in quest of
food.
Charis let her head fall forward to rest on her knees. In this
cramped space it was necessary to ball one’s body into the
smallest possible compass. She was not really tired; the Sustain
tablet was working. But she needed to think. The Wyverns had warned
her that time was against her. She had won free from the sea-rock
to which they had exiled her, but perhaps she had made the wrong
choice of escape. In his present condition, Lantee was no ally but
a responsibility. With the coming of light she could redraw the
pattern, get as far south as the moss meadow. How much farther
beyond that lay the government base she had no idea. But if she
kept on following the shore she would eventually reach it.
But—Lantee? She could not take him with her, she was sure
of that. And to leave him here in his condition—Charis shied
from that solution every time the brutal necessity for action
presented it. He was no friend; they had no acquaintance past that
one meeting by the post. He had no claim on her at all and the need
for action was urgent.
There were times when one human life was expendable for the
whole. But, well as she knew the bitter logic of that reasoning,
Charis found a barrier in her against her following it as high and
firm as the barriers which the Wyverns had used to control her.
Well, she could do nothing during the hours of dark. Maybe before
morning Lantee would come out of it, out of this state of
non-being. It was childish to cling to such hope but she did. Now
she tried to will herself to sleep, a sleep past the entry of any
dream.
“—ah—ahhhhhhh—”
The plaint was that of pain. Charis strove to deafen herself
against it.
“—ah—ahhhhhhh!”
The girl’s head came up. There was a stirring beside her.
She could not see Lantee save as a dim bulk in the gloom, but her
hand went out to feel the convulsive shudders which tore him. And
always came that small thread of a moan which must mark some
unendurable agony.
“Lantee!” She shook his arm and he fell over against
her, his head now resting on her knee, so that the shivering which
rocked him became partly hers. His moaning had stopped, but his
breath came and went in great sucking gasps, as if he could not get
oxygen enough to satisfy the needs of his trembling body.
“Shann—what is it?” Charis longed for light
enough to see his face. When she had nursed those struck down by
the white plague on Demeter, she had known this same sick fear,
this same courage sapping frustration. What could she do, what
could anyone do? She drew him toward her so that his head rested in
her lap, tried to hold him still. But just as he had been apathetic
and robot-like before, so now he was restless. His head turned back
and forth as that horrible gasping racked him.
“Rrrruuuu.” Out of nowhere Tsstu came, a shadow. The
curl-cat was on Lantee’s chest, crouched low, clinging with
claws when Charis tried to push her away. Then a growl and Taggi
burst around the stones Charis had set up, came to nuzzle against
Lantee’s twisted body as if, with Tsstu, he strove to hold
the sufferer still. Need—it was a cloud about the four of
them—the blind call for help which Lantee did not have to put
into words for Charis to feel, the concern of the animals, her own
helplessness. This was a crisis point, she realized that. The
Survey man was fighting a battle, and if he lost—?
“What can I do?” she cried aloud. This was not an
affair of the body—she had delved deeply enough into the
Wyvern Power to know that—but of mind, of—of
identity.
Will—that was the springboard of Wyvern power. They willed
what they wished, and it was! She was willing
now—willing Lantee to . . .
Dark and cold and that which was nothing once again, this was
the space into which her desire to help was drawing her, a space
which was utterly alien to her kind. Dark—cold. But
now— Two small lights, flickering, then growing stronger,
though the dark and cold fought to extinguish them; two lights
which drew closer to her and grew and grew. She did not reach out
her hands to take up those lights, but they came as if she had
called. And then Charis was aware that there was a third light, and
she furnished the energy on which it fed.
Three lights joined to speed through that dark in search. No
thought, no speech among them; just the compulsion to answer a
calling need. For the dark and cold were all-encompassing, a sea of
black having no shore, no islands.
Island? Faint, so faint, a glimmer showed on the sea.
They spun together, those three lights, and struck down to the
small spark gleaming in that encroaching and swallowing dark. Now
there was a fourth light like an ash-encrusted coal in a near-dead
fire. Together the three aimed at that fire, but there was no
touching it: They had not the power to strike through, and the fire
was near extinction.
Then the light which was fed by Charis’s energy and will
soared, drawing also that which was the animals’. She reached
out, not with a physical arm or hand but with an extension of her
inner force, and touched one of her companion lights.
It snapped toward her. She was rent, to writhe in pain as
emotions which were alien warred against that which was Charis
alone—wild, raw emotions which boiled and frothed, which
dashed her in and about. But she fought back, strove to master and
won to an uneasy stability. And then she reached out again and drew
to her the second spark.
Once again she was in tumult, and even greater was the fight she
had to wage for supremacy. But the urgency which had drawn all
three, the need to go to the dying fire, laid upon them now the
need for acting as one. And when Charis called upon that need, they
obeyed.
Down to that glimmer which was now far spent sped a bolt of
flaming force raised to the highest possible pitch. That broke
through, pierced to the heart of the fire.
Turmoil for a space. Then it was as if Charis raced wildly down
a corridor into which emptied many doors. From behind each of these
came people and things she did not know, who grasped at her, tried
to shout messages in her ears, impress upon her their importance,
until Charis was deafened, driven close to the edge of sanity. To
that corridor she could see no end.
The voices screamed, but through them came other sounds—a
growling, a squalling—equal to the voices, demanding
attention in their turn. Charis could not run much
farther . . .
Silence, abrupt, complete—and in its way terrifying, too.
Then—light. And she had a body again. Aware first of that,
Charis ran a hand down that body in wonder and thankfulness. She
looked about her. Under her sandaled feet was sand, silver sand.
But this was not the shore of the sea. In fact, vision in any
direction was not clear, for there was a mist which moved in
spirals and billows, a mist of green, the same green as the tunic
she wore.
The mist curled, writhed, held a darker core. She saw movement
in that core, as if an arm had drawn aside a curtain.
“Lantee!”
He stood there, facing her. But it was no longer the shell of a
man she saw. There was life and awareness back in his body and
mind. He held out his hand to her.
“Dream . . . ?” Was it all a dream? She had known such clarity of
vision before in the dream Otherwhere of the Wyverns.
“I don’t know,” she answered his
half-question.
“You came—you!” There was a kind of
wondering recognition in his voice which she understood. They had
been together in that place where their kind was not. The four
fires, joined together, had now broken the bonds which had held him
in a place their species should never know.
“Yes.” Lantee nodded even though Charis had put none
of that into words. “You and Taggi and Tsstu. Together you
came, and together we broke out.”
“But this?” Charis gazed about at the green mist.
“Where is this?”
“The Cavern of the Veil—of illusions. But this I
believe is a dream. Still they strive to keep us that much
in bonds.”
“For dreams there are answers.” Charis went down on
her knees and smoothed the sand. With one finger tip she traced her
design. It was not clear in the powdery stuff, but there was
enough, she hoped, to serve her purpose. Then she looked at
Lantee.
“Come.” Charis held out her hand. “Think of a
half-cave—” swiftly she described the place they had
been in at night “—and keep hold. We must try to
return.”
She felt his grip tense and harden, his stronger fingers
cramping hers until her flesh numbed. And then she centered all of
her mind on the picture of the ledge cave and the
pattern . . .
Charis was stiff and cold, her arm ached, her hand was numb.
Behind her was a rock wall, over her head an extension of it, and
from before her a breath of sun heat. There was a sigh and she
glanced down.
Lantee lay there, curled up awkwardly, his head in her lap, his
hand clutching hers in that numbing grip. His face was drawn and
haggard, as if he had aged planet years since she had seen him
last. But the slack blankness which had been so terrifying was
gone. He stirred and opened his eyes, first bewildered, but then
knowing, recognizing her.
He raised his head.
“Dream!”
“Maybe. But we are back—here.” Charis freed
her hand from his hold and spread her cramped fingers. With her
other hand she patted the nearest stone in her improvised wall to
assure herself of its reality.
Lantee sat up and rubbed his hand across his eyes. But Charis
remembered.
“Tsstu! Taggi!”
There was no sign of either animal. A small nagging fear began
to nibble at her mind. They—they were those other
lights. And she had lost them; they had not been in the place of
green mist. Were they lost forever?
Lantee stirred. “They were with you—there?” It
was not a question but a statement. He crawled out from under the
ledge, whistled a clear rising note or two. Then he stooped and
held out his hand again to draw her up beside him.
“Tsstu!” aloud she called the curl-cat.
Faint—very faint—an answer! Tsstu had not been
abandoned in that place. But where was she?
“Taggi is alive!” Lantee’s smile was real.
“And he answered me. It was different, that answer, from what
it has ever been before, more as if we spoke.”
“To have been there—might not that bring a
change in us all?”
For a moment he was silent and then he nodded. “You mean
because we were all one for a space? Yes, perhaps that cannot be
ever put aside.”
She had a spinning vision of that race down the endless corridor
with its opening doors and the shouting figures emerging from them.
Had those represented Lantee’s memories, Lantee’s
thoughts? Not again did she want to face that!
“No,” he agreed without need of speech from her,
“not again. But there was then the need—”
“More than one kind of need.” Charis shied away from
any more mention of that mingling. “There’s more
trouble than Wyvern dreaming for us to consider now.” She
told him of what she had learned.
Lantee’s mouth thinned into a straight line, his jaw
thrust forward a little. “Thorvald was with them or at least
at the Citadel when we found that spear. They may have put him away
as they did me. Now they can move against all off-worlders without
interference. We have a com-tech at the base, and a Patrol scout
may have set down since I left—one was almost due. If that
ship had not come in, Thorvald would have recalled me when he left.
Two, maybe three, men were there and none of them armored against
Wyvern control. We’ve been very cautious about trying to
expand the base because we did want to maintain good relations.
These Jacks have blown the whole plan! You say they have some
Wyvern warriors helping them? I wonder how they worked that. From
all we’ve been able to learn, and that’s very little,
the witches have a firm control over their males. That has always
been one of the problems; makes it almost impossible for them to
conceive of cooperation with us.”
“The Jacks must have something to nullify the
Power,” Charis commented.
“That’s all we need,” he said bitterly.
“But if they can nullify the Power, then how can the witches
go up against them?”
“The Wyverns seem very sure of themselves.” Charis
had her own first doubts. With the assembly arrayed against her
back at the Citadel, she had accepted their warning; her respect
for their Power had not been shaken until this moment. But Lantee
was right. If the invaders were able to nullify the Power to the
extent of releasing the males who had always been under domination,
then could the witches hope to battle the strangers themselves?
“No,” Lantee continued, “they’re very
sure of themselves because they’ve never before come up
against anything which threatened their hold on their people and
their way of life. Perhaps they can’t even conceive of the
Power’s being broken. We had hoped to make them understand
eventually that there were other kinds of power, but we
have not had time. To them this is a threat, right enough, but not
the supreme threat I believe it is.”
“Their power has been broken,” Charis said
quietly.
“With a nullifier, yes. How soon do you suppose the truth
of that will get through to them?”
“But we did not need this machine or whatever the Jacks
have. We broke it—the four of us!”
Lantee stared at her. Then he threw back his head and laughed,
not loudly but with the ring of real amusement.
“You are right. And what will our witches say to this, I
wonder? Or do they already know? Yes, you freed me from whatever
prison they consigned me to. And it was a prison!”
His smile vanished, the drawn lines in his face sharpened.
“So—their power can be broken or circumvented
in more ways than one. But I do not think that even that
information will deter them from making the first move. And they
must be stopped.” He hesitated and then added in a rush of
words, “I am not arguing that they should take the
interference of the Jacks and not fight back. By their way of
thinking their way of life is threatened. But if these witches go
ahead as they plan and try to wipe us all off Warlock, supposing
they are able to fight the Jack weapon or weapons, then
they will have written the end to their own story themselves.
“For if this band of Jacks has come up with a nullifier to
defeat the Power, others can, too. It will just be a matter of time
until the Wyverns are under off-world control. And that
mustn’t happen!”
“You say that?” Charis asked curiously.
“You?”
“Does that surprise you? Yes, they have worked on me and
this was not the first time. But I, too, have shared their
dreaming. And because I did and Thorvald did, we were that much
closer to bridging the gap between us. We must be changed in part
when we are touched by the Power. But though they may have to bend
to weather a new wind—which will be very hard for
them—they must not be swept away. Now—” he looked
about him as if he could summon a copter out of the air
“—we have to be on the move.”
“I don’t think they will allow us to return to the
Citadel,” Charis demurred.
“No, if they are working up to some stroke against
off-worlders, they will have all the screens up about their prime
base. Our own headquarters is the only place. From there we can
signal for help. And if time is good to us, we can handle the Jacks
before they do. But where we are now and how far from the
base—” Lantee shook his head.
“Do you have your disk?” he added a moment
later.
“No. But I don’t need it.” Just how true that
was, Charis could not be sure. She had won off the rock island and
out of the place of green mist without it, however. “But
I’ve never seen your base.”
“If I described it, as you did this rock hole for me,
would that serve?”
“I don’t know. The cavern was a dream, I
think.”
“And our bodies remained here as anchors to draw us back?
That could well be. But there’s no harm in trying.”
The hour must have been close to midday; the sun was burning hot
on the baked section of rock. And, as Lantee had pointed out, they
were lost as far as landmarks were concerned. His suggestion was as
good as any. Charis looked about for a patch of earth and a stone
or stick to scratch with. But there was neither.
“I must have something which will make a mark.”
“A mark?” Lantee echoed as he, too, surveyed their
general surroundings. Then he gave an exclamation and snapped open
a belt pocket to bring out the small aid kit. From its contents he
selected a slender pencil which Charis recognized as sterile paint,
made to cleanse and heal small wounds. It was of a greasy
consistency. She tried it on the rock. The mark was faint but she
could see it.
“Now,” Lantee sat on his heels beside her,
“we’ll aim for a place I know about a half mile from
the base.”
“Why not the base itself?”
“Because there may be a reception waiting there that we
wouldn’t care to meet. I want to do some scouting before I
walk into what might be real trouble.”
He was right, of course. Either the Wyverns might already have
made their move—for how could Charis guess how much time had
actually passed since she had been wafted from the assembly to the
island—or the Jacks, learning the undermanned status of the
only legal hold on Warlock, had taken it over to save themselves
from off-world interference.
“Right here—there’s a lake shaped so.”
Lantee had taken the sterile stick from her and was drawing.
“Then trees, a line of them standing this way. The rest is
meadow land. We should be at this end of the lake.”
It was hard to translate those marks into a real picture and
Charis began to shake her head. Suddenly her companion leaned
forward and laid his palms flat against her forehead just above her
eyes.