Lantee waved Charis back and took the lead as
they approached the outer door. The Company guard still stood
there, his back blocking their passage, intent upon what was
happening outside, his blaster drawn and moving as if he were
trying to align its sights on some very elusive mark.
The Survey man crossed the anteroom with the caution of a
stalking feline as the din outside covered any sound within. But
some instinct must have warned the guard. He turned his head,
sighted Lantee and, giving a cry, tried to bring his blaster up and
around.
Too late! Just what Lantee did Charis was not sure. The blow he
struck was certainly not any conventional one. As the guard
crumpled, the blaster fell to the floor and skidded. Charis pounced
and closed fingers about the ugly weapon. She tossed it, as she
straightened, to Lantee and he caught it easily.
They looked out into a scene of wild confusion, though their
view of it was limited to a small segment of the base. Men in
yellow uniforms crouched under cover and laced the air with blaster
rays, apparently trying to strike back at some menace in the sky.
Two of the Wyvern males lay either dead or unconscious by the door
of a dome to the right, across from the one in which Shann and
Charis had been prisoners. And there were burned and blasted
clakers littering the ground in all directions.
“There—” Lantee gestured to the dome by which
the Wyvern bodies sprawled. “It’s in there.”
But to try to reach that would set them up as targets for the
marksmen now concentrating on the clakers. The din of the attack
cries was lessening; fewer bodies struck the ground. Charis saw
Lantee’s lips thin, his face assume a grim cast, and she knew
he was tensing for action.
“Run! I’ll cover you.”
She measured the distance by eye. Not far, but at his moment
that open space stretched as an endless plain. And the Wyvern
males? Those in sight were motionless, but more could be inside
that open door.
Charis gave a leap which carried her well into the open. She
heard a shout and then the crackle of a blaster beam which was
close enough to scorch her upper arm. She cried out, but somehow
she kept to her feet and stumbled on into the door, tripping there
over the body of a Wyvern. She sprawled forward into the interior,
thereby saving her life as one of the murderous, saw-toothed spears
flew past her. She rolled, coming up against the wall where she
pushed up to look at her assailants.
Wyvern males—three of them, two still holding spears, one
of whom raised his weapon with sadistic slowness. The Wyvern was
enjoying her fear as well as the fact that he was now in command of
the situation.
“Rrrrrrrruuggghhh.”
The Wyvern, his spear almost ready to throw, snapped around to
face the door. A snarling ball of fury burst through it to launch
at the natives. They howled, thrusting wildly at the wolverine. But
the animal, using the advantage of its surprise attack to break
past them, disappeared into the next room.
“Charis! You all right?”
Shann dodged in. The fabric of his tunic smoldered at rib level
and he beat at it with his left hand.
“Surprisingly bad shots for Company men,” he
commented.
“Maybe they’ve orders not to kill.” Charis
tried to match his composure. But though she was on her feet now,
she kept her back to the wall, facing the Wyverns, amazed that they
had not launched a spear as yet. The eruption of the wolverine into
their midst had shaken them oddly.
Shann gestured the three aliens back with his ready blaster.
“Move!” he ordered curtly. And the wariness in their
yellow eyes told the two off-worlders that the natives were well
aware of the potency of that weapon.
They retreated from the small outer room into the main room of
the structure. There had been a good-sized com unit in here, but
one glance told Charis that it could not serve them, for the
installation had been deliberately rayed with blaster fire until it
was half-melted in more than one place.
But that was not all that was in the room. On a base improvised
from packing boxes was an intricate machine giving off an aura of
rippling light. And, standing about that, almost as if they were
cold and were warming their chilled bodies, were six male Wyverns.
Now spears were leveled—until they sighted the blaster Shann
held.
“Kill!” The word was scorching hate in
Charis’s mind as it flashed from the warriors.
“And be killed!” Shann returned in the same mental
speech.
The snouted, spike-combed heads bobbed. Their surprise, their
unease close to the border of fear, played about them much as did
the light that rippled from the machine they guarded.
Lantee could do just that—wipe out the Wyverns
and the machine they were striving to shield with their
bodies. In Charis’s thought, the natives were ready
to die in that fashion. But was that the only answer?
“There might be a better one.” Shann’s thought
came in reply to hers.
“Kill!” Not from the Wyverns now, but clear and as a
feral demand. Taggi emerged from under the wreckage of the com.
“Here!” The small black shadow which had just
flitted in sprang at Charis. The girl stooped and gathered up
Tsstu. From her arms the curl-cat regarded the Wyverns with an
unwinking stare.
“We die—you die!”
Clear-cut that warning. But the Wyvern who had made it did not
raise his spear. Instead he placed his four-digited hands on the
installation.
“He means it.” This time Lantee used audible speech.
“There must be some sort of panic button in that that will
blow up the whole thing if necessary. Move away!” He changed
to mental order and gestured with the blaster.
Not one of the natives stirred, and their determination not to
yield to that command beat back at the off-worlders in a
counterblast. How long could such a standoff continue? Charis
wondered. Sooner or later the Company men would be in on this.
She put down Tsstu and went back to the anteroom, to discover
that while she could close the outer door, there was no way to
secure that portal. The palm lock which had once fastened it was
now only a blackened hole in the fabric.
“Kill the witch one! With you, we shall
bargain.”
The thought was clear speech in her head as she reentered the
wrecked com room.
“You are as we. Kill the witch and be free!” The
males appealed to Lantee.
Tsstu hissed, her ears flattened against her round skull as she
backed to a stand before Charis. Taggi growled from where he
accompanied Shann, his small eyes alight with battle anger.
The spokesman for the natives glanced at both animals. Charis
caught the quiver of uncertainty in his mind. Shann the Wyvern
could understand; Charis he hated since he classed her with his own
females who had always held the Power. But this link with animals
was new and so to be feared.
“Kill the witch and those who are hers.” He made his
decision, lumping the unfamiliar with Charis. “Be free again
as now we are.”
“Are you?” From somewhere Charis found the words.
“Away from this room or from the base where this off-world
machine cannot reach—are you then free?”
Stark, hot hate glowing at her from yellow eyes, a snarl lifting
scaled skin away from fangs.
“Are you?” Shann took up, and Charis readily gave
way to his leadership. To the Wyvern males, she was a symbol of all
they hated most. But Lantee was male and so to them not wholly an
enemy.
“Not yet.” The truth was hard to admit. “But
when the witch ones die, then we shall be!”
“But there may not be a need for such killing or
dying.”
“What are you thinking of?” Charis asked
vocally.
Lantee did not look at her. He was studying the Wyvern leader
with intensity, as if he would hold the native in check by his will
alone.
“A thought,” he said aloud, “just a thought
which might resolve the whole problem. Otherwise, this is going to
end with a real blood bath. Now that they know what this machine
can do for them, do you think the males will ever be anything again
but potential murderers of their own kind? And we can destroy this
machine—and them, but that will be a failure.”
“Not killing?” The Wyvern’s thoughts cut in.
“But if we do not kill them while they may not dream us
defenseless, then they will in time break us and once more use the
Power against us.”
“Upon me they used the Power and I was in the outer dark
where nothing is.”
The astonishment of the Wyverns was a wave spreading out to
engulf the off-worlders.
“And how came you again from that place?” That the
Wyvern recognized the site of Lantee’s exile was plain.
“She sought me, and these sought me, and they brought me
forth.”
“Why?” came flatly.
“Because they were my friends; they wished me
well.”
“Between witch and male there can be no friendship! She is
mistress—he obeys her commands in all things—or he is
naught!”
“I was naught, yet here I am now.” Shann sought
Charis. “Link! Prove it to them—link!”
She tossed the mental cord to Tsstu, to Taggi, and then reached
for Shann. They were as one, and as one Shann thrust at the
Wyvern’s consciousness. Charis saw the spokesman for the
natives sway as if buffeted by a storm wind. Then the off-worlders
broke apart and were four again.
“Thus it is,” Shann said.
“But you are not as we are. With you, male and female may
be different. True?”
“True. But also know this: as one, we four have broken the
bonds of the Power. But can you live always with a machine and
those who have brought you the machine? Can they be trusted? Have
you looked into their minds?”
“They use us for their purposes. But that we accept for
our freedom.”
“Turn off the machine,” Shann said abruptly.
“If we do, the witches will come.”
“Not unless we will it.”
Charis was startled. Was Lantee running his claims too high? But
she had begun to understand what he was fighting for. As long as
the cleft between male and female existed in the Wyvern species,
there would be an opening for just such trouble as the Company men
had started here. Shann was going to attempt to close that gap.
Centuries of tradition, generations of specialized breeding, stood
against his will. And all the terrors and fears of inbred prejudice
would be fighting against him, but he was going to try it.
He had not even asked for her backing or consent, and she
discovered that she did not resent that. It was as if the linkage
had erased all desire to counter a decision she realized as
right.
“Link!”
A crackling explosion, the stench of burning plasta-fab. The
Company soldiers had turned blasters on the dome! What did Lantee
propose to do about that? Charis had only time for one fleeting
thought before her mind fell into place beside the others.
Again it was Lantee who aimed that shaft of thought, sent it out
past the melting wall of the dome, straight at the enemy minds,
open and ill-prepared for such attack. Men dropped where they
stood. A still-spitting blaster rolled along the ground, spraying
its deadly ray in a wave pattern along a wall.
Shann had had the courage to try that first gamble and he had
won. Could he do the same again in the greater gamble he
proposed?
The Wyvern spokesman made a slight motion with his hand. Those
who walled the machine with their bodies stood away.
“That is not the Power as we know it.”
“But it was born of that Power,” Shann caught him
up. “Just as other ways of life may issue from those now
known to you.”
“But you are not sure.”
“I am not sure. But I know that killing leaves only the
dead, and the dead may not be summoned back by any Power ever known
to living creatures. You will die and others shall die if you take
the vengeance you wish. Then who will profit by your
dying—except perhaps off-worlders for whom you do not fight
in truth?”
“But you fight for us?”
“Can I hide the truth when we touch minds?”
That curious quiet came down as a curtain between the
off-worlders and the Wyverns as the natives conferred among
themselves. At last the spokesman returned to contact.
“We know you speak the truth as you see it. No one before
has broken the bonds of the Power. That you have done so means that
perhaps you can defend us now. We brought our spears for killing.
But it is true that the dead remain dead, and if we make the
killing we wish, we as a people shall die. So we shall try your
path.”
“Link!” Again the command from Lantee. He made a
motion with his hand and the Wyvern pressed a lever on the
installation.
This time they had not fashioned a spear of the mind-force but a
barrier wall, and only just in time. As a wave of determined attack
struck against it, Charis swayed and felt the firm brace of
Shann’s arm as he stood, his feet a little apart, his chin
up—as he might have faced a physical fight, fist against
fist.
Three times that wave battered at them, striving, Charis knew,
to reach the Wyvern males. And each time the linkage held without
yielding. Then they were there in person—Gysmay, her
brilliant body-patterns seeming to flame in her terrible anger,
Gidaya—and two others Charis did not know.
“What do you?” The question seared.
“What we must.” Shann Lantee made answer.
“Let us have those who are ours!” Gysmay demanded in
full cry.
“They are not yours but their own!”
“They are nothing! They do not dream, they have no Power.
They are nothing save what we will them to be.”
“They are part of a whole. Without them, you die; without
you, they die. Can you still say they are nothing?”
“What say you?” The question Gidaya asked was aimed
at Charis, not Shann.
“That he speaks the truth.”
“After the manner of your people, not ours!”
“Did I not have an answer from Those Who Have Gone Before
which you could not read, Wise One? Perhaps this is the reading of
that answer. Four have become one at will, and each time we so will
it, that one made of four is stronger. Could you break the barrier
we raised here while we were one, even though you must have sent
against us the full Power? You are an old people, Wise One, and
with much learning. Can it not be that some time, far and long ago,
you took a turning into a road which limited your Power in truth?
Peoples are strong and grow when they search for new roads. When
they say, ‘There is no road but this one which we know well,
and always must we travel in it,’ then they weaken themselves
and dim their future.
“Four have made one and yet each one of that four is
unlike another. You are all of a kind in your Power. Have you never
thought that it takes different threads to weave a real
pattern—that you use different shapes to make the design of
Power?”
“This is folly! Give us what is ours lest we destroy
you.” Gysmay’s head-comb quivered, the very outlines of
her body seemed to shimmer with her rage.
“Wait!” Gidaya interrupted. “It is true that
this dreamer has had an answer from the Rods, delivered by the will
of Those Who Have Dreamed Before. And it was an answer we could not
read, but yet it was sent to her and was a true one. Can any of you
deny that?”
There was no answer to her demand.
“Also, there have been said here things which have a core
of good thought behind them.”
Gysmay stirred, none of her anger abating. But she did not
render her protest openly.
“Why do you stand against us now, Dreamer?” Gidaya
continued. “You, to whom we have opened many gates, to whom
we gave the use of the Power—why should you choose to turn
that same gift against us who have never chosen to do you
ill?”
“Because here I have seen one true thing: that there is a
weakness in your Power, that you have been blind to that which
makes evil against you. As long as you are a race divided against
itself, with a wall of contempt and hatred keeping you apart, then
there is a way of bringing disaster upon your race. It is because
you opened doors and made straight a road for me that I will to do
the same for you now. This evil came from my people. But we are not
all thus. We, too, have our divisions and barriers, our outlaws and
criminals.
“But do not, I pray you, Wise Ones,” Charis hastened
on, “keep open this rift in your own nation so that outside
ill can enter. You have seen that there are two answers to the
Power on which you lean. One comes through a machine which can be
turned on and off at the will of outsiders. Another is a growth
from the very seeds you have sown, and so it is possible for you to
nourish it also.
“Without this man I have only the Power you gave to my
summoning. With him and the animals, I am so much the greater that
I no longer need this.” From her tunic Charis took the map
sheet, holding it out so that the Wyverns could see the pattern
drawn upon it. She crumpled the sheet and tossed it to the
floor.
“This must be thought upon in council.” Gidaya had
watched that repudiation of the pattern with narrowed eyes.
“So be it,” Charis affirmed, and they were gone.
“Will it work?” Charis sat in the commander’s
quarters of the base. A visa-screen on the wall showed a row of
Wyvern warriors squatting on their heels, guards for the still
dazed Company men who had been herded into the visitors’ dome
in temporary imprisonment, awaiting the arrival of the Patrol
forces.
Lantee lounged in an Eazi-rest, far down on his spine, while
across his outstretched legs sprawled two wolverine cubs now
snorting a little from the depths of slumber.
“Talk out, won’t you?” Thorvald snapped in
exasperation as he looked up from the emergency com. “I pick
up only a kind of buzzing in the brain when you do that and
it’s giving me a headache!”
Shann grinned. “A point to remember, sir. Do I think our
argument will convince them? I’m not venturing any guesses.
But the witches are smart. And we proved them flat failures,
tackling them on their own ground. That rocked them harder than
they’ve ever been, I imagine. Warlock’s been theirs to
control; with their Power and their dreams, they have thought
themselves invincible. Now they know they are not. And they have
two answers: to stand still and go under, or to try this new road
you’ve talked about. I’ll wager we may have a tentative
peace offer first, then some questions.”
“They have their pride,” Charis said softly.
“Don’t strip that from them.”
“Why should we wish to?” Thorvald asked.
“Remember, we, too, have dreamed. But this is just why you
will handle the negotiations.”
She was surprised at the tone of his voice, but he was
continuing. “Jagan was right in his approach, a woman must be
a liaison. The witches have to admit that Lantee and, to a lesser
degree, myself have some small claim on their respect, but they
will be happier to have you take the fore now.”
“But I’m not—”
“Empowered to act on a diplomatic level? You are. This
mission has wide emergency powers, and you are to represent us.
You’re drafted, all of you—Tsstu and Taggi
included—to conduct a treaty with the witches.”
“And it will be a real treaty this time!”
Charis did not know how Shann could be so sure of that, but she
accepted his confidence.
“Link!”
Automatically now she yielded to that unspoken order. It was a
new pattern, flowing, weaving, and she allowed herself to be swept
along, sensing there were treasures to be found so: the subtle
skill and neat mind that was Tsstu, the controlled savagery and
curiosity that was Taggi and sometimes Togi.
Then there was that other—closer in some ways, different
in others, and fast becoming an undissolvable part of
her—which was strength, companionship. Hand rising to clasp
hand, falling away, but always there to reach and hold again when
needed. This had she brought with her from the Otherwhere of the
Wyverns and this she would need ever hereafter to be complete.
Lantee waved Charis back and took the lead as
they approached the outer door. The Company guard still stood
there, his back blocking their passage, intent upon what was
happening outside, his blaster drawn and moving as if he were
trying to align its sights on some very elusive mark.
The Survey man crossed the anteroom with the caution of a
stalking feline as the din outside covered any sound within. But
some instinct must have warned the guard. He turned his head,
sighted Lantee and, giving a cry, tried to bring his blaster up and
around.
Too late! Just what Lantee did Charis was not sure. The blow he
struck was certainly not any conventional one. As the guard
crumpled, the blaster fell to the floor and skidded. Charis pounced
and closed fingers about the ugly weapon. She tossed it, as she
straightened, to Lantee and he caught it easily.
They looked out into a scene of wild confusion, though their
view of it was limited to a small segment of the base. Men in
yellow uniforms crouched under cover and laced the air with blaster
rays, apparently trying to strike back at some menace in the sky.
Two of the Wyvern males lay either dead or unconscious by the door
of a dome to the right, across from the one in which Shann and
Charis had been prisoners. And there were burned and blasted
clakers littering the ground in all directions.
“There—” Lantee gestured to the dome by which
the Wyvern bodies sprawled. “It’s in there.”
But to try to reach that would set them up as targets for the
marksmen now concentrating on the clakers. The din of the attack
cries was lessening; fewer bodies struck the ground. Charis saw
Lantee’s lips thin, his face assume a grim cast, and she knew
he was tensing for action.
“Run! I’ll cover you.”
She measured the distance by eye. Not far, but at his moment
that open space stretched as an endless plain. And the Wyvern
males? Those in sight were motionless, but more could be inside
that open door.
Charis gave a leap which carried her well into the open. She
heard a shout and then the crackle of a blaster beam which was
close enough to scorch her upper arm. She cried out, but somehow
she kept to her feet and stumbled on into the door, tripping there
over the body of a Wyvern. She sprawled forward into the interior,
thereby saving her life as one of the murderous, saw-toothed spears
flew past her. She rolled, coming up against the wall where she
pushed up to look at her assailants.
Wyvern males—three of them, two still holding spears, one
of whom raised his weapon with sadistic slowness. The Wyvern was
enjoying her fear as well as the fact that he was now in command of
the situation.
“Rrrrrrrruuggghhh.”
The Wyvern, his spear almost ready to throw, snapped around to
face the door. A snarling ball of fury burst through it to launch
at the natives. They howled, thrusting wildly at the wolverine. But
the animal, using the advantage of its surprise attack to break
past them, disappeared into the next room.
“Charis! You all right?”
Shann dodged in. The fabric of his tunic smoldered at rib level
and he beat at it with his left hand.
“Surprisingly bad shots for Company men,” he
commented.
“Maybe they’ve orders not to kill.” Charis
tried to match his composure. But though she was on her feet now,
she kept her back to the wall, facing the Wyverns, amazed that they
had not launched a spear as yet. The eruption of the wolverine into
their midst had shaken them oddly.
Shann gestured the three aliens back with his ready blaster.
“Move!” he ordered curtly. And the wariness in their
yellow eyes told the two off-worlders that the natives were well
aware of the potency of that weapon.
They retreated from the small outer room into the main room of
the structure. There had been a good-sized com unit in here, but
one glance told Charis that it could not serve them, for the
installation had been deliberately rayed with blaster fire until it
was half-melted in more than one place.
But that was not all that was in the room. On a base improvised
from packing boxes was an intricate machine giving off an aura of
rippling light. And, standing about that, almost as if they were
cold and were warming their chilled bodies, were six male Wyverns.
Now spears were leveled—until they sighted the blaster Shann
held.
“Kill!” The word was scorching hate in
Charis’s mind as it flashed from the warriors.
“And be killed!” Shann returned in the same mental
speech.
The snouted, spike-combed heads bobbed. Their surprise, their
unease close to the border of fear, played about them much as did
the light that rippled from the machine they guarded.
Lantee could do just that—wipe out the Wyverns
and the machine they were striving to shield with their
bodies. In Charis’s thought, the natives were ready
to die in that fashion. But was that the only answer?
“There might be a better one.” Shann’s thought
came in reply to hers.
“Kill!” Not from the Wyverns now, but clear and as a
feral demand. Taggi emerged from under the wreckage of the com.
“Here!” The small black shadow which had just
flitted in sprang at Charis. The girl stooped and gathered up
Tsstu. From her arms the curl-cat regarded the Wyverns with an
unwinking stare.
“We die—you die!”
Clear-cut that warning. But the Wyvern who had made it did not
raise his spear. Instead he placed his four-digited hands on the
installation.
“He means it.” This time Lantee used audible speech.
“There must be some sort of panic button in that that will
blow up the whole thing if necessary. Move away!” He changed
to mental order and gestured with the blaster.
Not one of the natives stirred, and their determination not to
yield to that command beat back at the off-worlders in a
counterblast. How long could such a standoff continue? Charis
wondered. Sooner or later the Company men would be in on this.
She put down Tsstu and went back to the anteroom, to discover
that while she could close the outer door, there was no way to
secure that portal. The palm lock which had once fastened it was
now only a blackened hole in the fabric.
“Kill the witch one! With you, we shall
bargain.”
The thought was clear speech in her head as she reentered the
wrecked com room.
“You are as we. Kill the witch and be free!” The
males appealed to Lantee.
Tsstu hissed, her ears flattened against her round skull as she
backed to a stand before Charis. Taggi growled from where he
accompanied Shann, his small eyes alight with battle anger.
The spokesman for the natives glanced at both animals. Charis
caught the quiver of uncertainty in his mind. Shann the Wyvern
could understand; Charis he hated since he classed her with his own
females who had always held the Power. But this link with animals
was new and so to be feared.
“Kill the witch and those who are hers.” He made his
decision, lumping the unfamiliar with Charis. “Be free again
as now we are.”
“Are you?” From somewhere Charis found the words.
“Away from this room or from the base where this off-world
machine cannot reach—are you then free?”
Stark, hot hate glowing at her from yellow eyes, a snarl lifting
scaled skin away from fangs.
“Are you?” Shann took up, and Charis readily gave
way to his leadership. To the Wyvern males, she was a symbol of all
they hated most. But Lantee was male and so to them not wholly an
enemy.
“Not yet.” The truth was hard to admit. “But
when the witch ones die, then we shall be!”
“But there may not be a need for such killing or
dying.”
“What are you thinking of?” Charis asked
vocally.
Lantee did not look at her. He was studying the Wyvern leader
with intensity, as if he would hold the native in check by his will
alone.
“A thought,” he said aloud, “just a thought
which might resolve the whole problem. Otherwise, this is going to
end with a real blood bath. Now that they know what this machine
can do for them, do you think the males will ever be anything again
but potential murderers of their own kind? And we can destroy this
machine—and them, but that will be a failure.”
“Not killing?” The Wyvern’s thoughts cut in.
“But if we do not kill them while they may not dream us
defenseless, then they will in time break us and once more use the
Power against us.”
“Upon me they used the Power and I was in the outer dark
where nothing is.”
The astonishment of the Wyverns was a wave spreading out to
engulf the off-worlders.
“And how came you again from that place?” That the
Wyvern recognized the site of Lantee’s exile was plain.
“She sought me, and these sought me, and they brought me
forth.”
“Why?” came flatly.
“Because they were my friends; they wished me
well.”
“Between witch and male there can be no friendship! She is
mistress—he obeys her commands in all things—or he is
naught!”
“I was naught, yet here I am now.” Shann sought
Charis. “Link! Prove it to them—link!”
She tossed the mental cord to Tsstu, to Taggi, and then reached
for Shann. They were as one, and as one Shann thrust at the
Wyvern’s consciousness. Charis saw the spokesman for the
natives sway as if buffeted by a storm wind. Then the off-worlders
broke apart and were four again.
“Thus it is,” Shann said.
“But you are not as we are. With you, male and female may
be different. True?”
“True. But also know this: as one, we four have broken the
bonds of the Power. But can you live always with a machine and
those who have brought you the machine? Can they be trusted? Have
you looked into their minds?”
“They use us for their purposes. But that we accept for
our freedom.”
“Turn off the machine,” Shann said abruptly.
“If we do, the witches will come.”
“Not unless we will it.”
Charis was startled. Was Lantee running his claims too high? But
she had begun to understand what he was fighting for. As long as
the cleft between male and female existed in the Wyvern species,
there would be an opening for just such trouble as the Company men
had started here. Shann was going to attempt to close that gap.
Centuries of tradition, generations of specialized breeding, stood
against his will. And all the terrors and fears of inbred prejudice
would be fighting against him, but he was going to try it.
He had not even asked for her backing or consent, and she
discovered that she did not resent that. It was as if the linkage
had erased all desire to counter a decision she realized as
right.
“Link!”
A crackling explosion, the stench of burning plasta-fab. The
Company soldiers had turned blasters on the dome! What did Lantee
propose to do about that? Charis had only time for one fleeting
thought before her mind fell into place beside the others.
Again it was Lantee who aimed that shaft of thought, sent it out
past the melting wall of the dome, straight at the enemy minds,
open and ill-prepared for such attack. Men dropped where they
stood. A still-spitting blaster rolled along the ground, spraying
its deadly ray in a wave pattern along a wall.
Shann had had the courage to try that first gamble and he had
won. Could he do the same again in the greater gamble he
proposed?
The Wyvern spokesman made a slight motion with his hand. Those
who walled the machine with their bodies stood away.
“That is not the Power as we know it.”
“But it was born of that Power,” Shann caught him
up. “Just as other ways of life may issue from those now
known to you.”
“But you are not sure.”
“I am not sure. But I know that killing leaves only the
dead, and the dead may not be summoned back by any Power ever known
to living creatures. You will die and others shall die if you take
the vengeance you wish. Then who will profit by your
dying—except perhaps off-worlders for whom you do not fight
in truth?”
“But you fight for us?”
“Can I hide the truth when we touch minds?”
That curious quiet came down as a curtain between the
off-worlders and the Wyverns as the natives conferred among
themselves. At last the spokesman returned to contact.
“We know you speak the truth as you see it. No one before
has broken the bonds of the Power. That you have done so means that
perhaps you can defend us now. We brought our spears for killing.
But it is true that the dead remain dead, and if we make the
killing we wish, we as a people shall die. So we shall try your
path.”
“Link!” Again the command from Lantee. He made a
motion with his hand and the Wyvern pressed a lever on the
installation.
This time they had not fashioned a spear of the mind-force but a
barrier wall, and only just in time. As a wave of determined attack
struck against it, Charis swayed and felt the firm brace of
Shann’s arm as he stood, his feet a little apart, his chin
up—as he might have faced a physical fight, fist against
fist.
Three times that wave battered at them, striving, Charis knew,
to reach the Wyvern males. And each time the linkage held without
yielding. Then they were there in person—Gysmay, her
brilliant body-patterns seeming to flame in her terrible anger,
Gidaya—and two others Charis did not know.
“What do you?” The question seared.
“What we must.” Shann Lantee made answer.
“Let us have those who are ours!” Gysmay demanded in
full cry.
“They are not yours but their own!”
“They are nothing! They do not dream, they have no Power.
They are nothing save what we will them to be.”
“They are part of a whole. Without them, you die; without
you, they die. Can you still say they are nothing?”
“What say you?” The question Gidaya asked was aimed
at Charis, not Shann.
“That he speaks the truth.”
“After the manner of your people, not ours!”
“Did I not have an answer from Those Who Have Gone Before
which you could not read, Wise One? Perhaps this is the reading of
that answer. Four have become one at will, and each time we so will
it, that one made of four is stronger. Could you break the barrier
we raised here while we were one, even though you must have sent
against us the full Power? You are an old people, Wise One, and
with much learning. Can it not be that some time, far and long ago,
you took a turning into a road which limited your Power in truth?
Peoples are strong and grow when they search for new roads. When
they say, ‘There is no road but this one which we know well,
and always must we travel in it,’ then they weaken themselves
and dim their future.
“Four have made one and yet each one of that four is
unlike another. You are all of a kind in your Power. Have you never
thought that it takes different threads to weave a real
pattern—that you use different shapes to make the design of
Power?”
“This is folly! Give us what is ours lest we destroy
you.” Gysmay’s head-comb quivered, the very outlines of
her body seemed to shimmer with her rage.
“Wait!” Gidaya interrupted. “It is true that
this dreamer has had an answer from the Rods, delivered by the will
of Those Who Have Dreamed Before. And it was an answer we could not
read, but yet it was sent to her and was a true one. Can any of you
deny that?”
There was no answer to her demand.
“Also, there have been said here things which have a core
of good thought behind them.”
Gysmay stirred, none of her anger abating. But she did not
render her protest openly.
“Why do you stand against us now, Dreamer?” Gidaya
continued. “You, to whom we have opened many gates, to whom
we gave the use of the Power—why should you choose to turn
that same gift against us who have never chosen to do you
ill?”
“Because here I have seen one true thing: that there is a
weakness in your Power, that you have been blind to that which
makes evil against you. As long as you are a race divided against
itself, with a wall of contempt and hatred keeping you apart, then
there is a way of bringing disaster upon your race. It is because
you opened doors and made straight a road for me that I will to do
the same for you now. This evil came from my people. But we are not
all thus. We, too, have our divisions and barriers, our outlaws and
criminals.
“But do not, I pray you, Wise Ones,” Charis hastened
on, “keep open this rift in your own nation so that outside
ill can enter. You have seen that there are two answers to the
Power on which you lean. One comes through a machine which can be
turned on and off at the will of outsiders. Another is a growth
from the very seeds you have sown, and so it is possible for you to
nourish it also.
“Without this man I have only the Power you gave to my
summoning. With him and the animals, I am so much the greater that
I no longer need this.” From her tunic Charis took the map
sheet, holding it out so that the Wyverns could see the pattern
drawn upon it. She crumpled the sheet and tossed it to the
floor.
“This must be thought upon in council.” Gidaya had
watched that repudiation of the pattern with narrowed eyes.
“So be it,” Charis affirmed, and they were gone.
“Will it work?” Charis sat in the commander’s
quarters of the base. A visa-screen on the wall showed a row of
Wyvern warriors squatting on their heels, guards for the still
dazed Company men who had been herded into the visitors’ dome
in temporary imprisonment, awaiting the arrival of the Patrol
forces.
Lantee lounged in an Eazi-rest, far down on his spine, while
across his outstretched legs sprawled two wolverine cubs now
snorting a little from the depths of slumber.
“Talk out, won’t you?” Thorvald snapped in
exasperation as he looked up from the emergency com. “I pick
up only a kind of buzzing in the brain when you do that and
it’s giving me a headache!”
Shann grinned. “A point to remember, sir. Do I think our
argument will convince them? I’m not venturing any guesses.
But the witches are smart. And we proved them flat failures,
tackling them on their own ground. That rocked them harder than
they’ve ever been, I imagine. Warlock’s been theirs to
control; with their Power and their dreams, they have thought
themselves invincible. Now they know they are not. And they have
two answers: to stand still and go under, or to try this new road
you’ve talked about. I’ll wager we may have a tentative
peace offer first, then some questions.”
“They have their pride,” Charis said softly.
“Don’t strip that from them.”
“Why should we wish to?” Thorvald asked.
“Remember, we, too, have dreamed. But this is just why you
will handle the negotiations.”
She was surprised at the tone of his voice, but he was
continuing. “Jagan was right in his approach, a woman must be
a liaison. The witches have to admit that Lantee and, to a lesser
degree, myself have some small claim on their respect, but they
will be happier to have you take the fore now.”
“But I’m not—”
“Empowered to act on a diplomatic level? You are. This
mission has wide emergency powers, and you are to represent us.
You’re drafted, all of you—Tsstu and Taggi
included—to conduct a treaty with the witches.”
“And it will be a real treaty this time!”
Charis did not know how Shann could be so sure of that, but she
accepted his confidence.
“Link!”
Automatically now she yielded to that unspoken order. It was a
new pattern, flowing, weaving, and she allowed herself to be swept
along, sensing there were treasures to be found so: the subtle
skill and neat mind that was Tsstu, the controlled savagery and
curiosity that was Taggi and sometimes Togi.
Then there was that other—closer in some ways, different
in others, and fast becoming an undissolvable part of
her—which was strength, companionship. Hand rising to clasp
hand, falling away, but always there to reach and hold again when
needed. This had she brought with her from the Otherwhere of the
Wyverns and this she would need ever hereafter to be complete.