Black Priestess of Varda Dominant
Erika Fennel
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Erika Fennel
He was well-named—Syn—foul warlock and raving beauty. Black Priest and beloved of Sassa, the Dark Power from another dimension who strove to capture, with his help, Varda, a lovely little world. Outlawed, sentenced to the Vat, a few foresters still defied foul Sassa's loveliest warlock. Their only fear was a whispered legend—El-ve-dyn, the Savior ... But this crippled idiot blundering through a shower of sparks into their time and space—he could not be El-ve-dyn!
CHAPTER I
The pen moved clumsily in Eldyn Carmichael's right hand. She had been left-handed, and the note itself was not easy to write.
Dear Marion, she scratched. I understand...
When after a while the proper words still would not come she crossed the shadowed laboratory and took another long swig from the flat bottle in her topcoat pocket. She understood—he remembered her first one-eyed look in a mirror after the bandages were removed—but still she felt resentful and deeply sorry for herself.
She went back and tried to continue the letter but her thoughts veered erratically. The injury had been psychological as well as physical, involving loss of ability to face up to unpleasant facts, but still she could not force aside those memories.
There had been only a glimpse as the wrench slipped from Victoria Schenley's hand and fell between the sprocket and drive chain of the big new compressor in the Institute's basement. She wondered. That look on Schenley's darkly saturnine face could have been merely imagination. Or horror. But there was something about the woman ... Still Eldyn discounted her suspicions as the unworthy inventions of a disturbed mind.
Only the quick reflexes that had once made her a better than average halfback had saved her from instant death as the jagged end of the heavy sprocket chain lashed out with the speed of an enraged cobra. And often during the pain-wracked weeks that followed she had almost wished she had been a little slower.
The ring sparkled tauntingly under her desk lamp. Marion had returned it by mail, and though the wording of his note had been restrained its tone had been final.
She picked up the pen again and moved the stub of her left arm, amputated just above the elbow, to hold the paper in place. But she had forgotten again how light and unmanageable the stump was. The paper skidded and the pen left a long black streak and a blot.
Eldyn made a choked sound that was partly a shout of anger and partly a whimper of frustration. She crumpled the note, hurled the pen clumsily toward the far wall, and buried her disfigured face in the curve of her single arm. Her body shook with sobs of self-pity.
There was only an inch or so left in the bottle. She finished it in a single gulp and for a moment stood hesitantly. Then she switched on the brilliant overhead lights. Liquor could not banish her tormenting thoughts, but perhaps work might. Her letter to Marion would have to wait.
Her equipment was just as be had left it that night so many months ago when Victoria Schenley had called her to see the new compressor. The setup was almost complete for another experiment with the resonance of bound charges. Bound charges were queer things, she reflected, a neglected field of investigation. They were classed as electrical phenomena more for convenience than accuracy. Eldyn's completed experiments indicated they might be something else. They disobeyed too many of the generally accepted electrical and physical laws. Occasionally individual charges behaved as though they were actually alive and responding to external stimuli, but the stimuli were nonexistent or at least undetectable. And two or more bound charges placed in even imperfect resonance produced strange and inexplicable effects.
Wyrking clumsily, she made the few remaining connections and set the special charge concentrators whining. The vacuum pumps clucked. A strain developed in the space around which the triplet charges were forming, something she could sense without seeing or hearing it. Now if only she could match the three charges for perfect resonance...
* * * *
The lacquer on Marion Mason's fingernails was finally dry. He slipped out of his robe and, without disturbing his carefully arranged pale gold hair, dropped the white evening gown over him shoulders and gently tugged it into place around slender hips. This should be the evening when Victoria stopped her sly suggestions and made an outright proposal of marriage. Victoria Schenley. Marion savored the name. He knew what he wanted.
Eldyn had seemed a good idea at the time, the best he could do. Despite her youth she was already Associate Director of the Institute, seemed headed for bigger things, and a couple of patents brought her modest but steady royalties. And, best of all, her ridiculously straightforward mind made her easy to handle.
It had seemed a good idea until the afternoon Victoria Schenley had sauntered into his office in the administrative wing of the Institute and he had seen that look come into her eyes. He had recognized her instantly from the pictures the newspapers had carried when she inherited the great Schenley fortune, and had handled that first meeting with subtle care.
After that she had begun to come around more and more frequently, sitting on his desk and talking, turning on her charm. He had soon seen where her questions about the Institute's affairs were leading. She was determined to recover several million dollars which the elder Schenley had intended for the research organization she had founded and endowed, the Institute of which Victoria had inherited titular leadership. Victoria did not need the money. She just could not bear to see it escape her direct control. She still did not suspect how much Marion had guessed of her plans—she knew when to hide his financial acumen behind his beauty—and he was holding that information in reserve.
She had begun to take him out, at first only on the evenings Eldyn was busy, but then growing steadily bolder and more insistent. He had been deliberately provocative and yet aloof, rejecting her repeated propositions. He was playing for bigger stakes, the Schenley fortune itself. But he had remained engaged to Eldyn. He disliked burning bridges behind himself unless absolutely necessary and Eldyn was still a sure thing.
Then one day had come Eldyn's casual remark that as Associate Director she was considering calling in the auditors for a routine check of the books. That had started everything. Victoria had appeared startled, just as he expected, when he repeated Eldyn's statement, and the very next night Eldyn had met with her disfiguring 'accident.'
* * * *
Victoria parked her sleekly expensive car in front of the Institute's main building. 'You wait here, dearest,' she said. 'I'll only be a few minutes.'
She kissed him, but seemed preoccupied. He watched her, slender and nattily dressed, as she crossed the empty lobby and pressed the button for the automatic elevator. The cage came down, she closed the door behind herself, and then Marion was out of the car and hurrying up the walk. It was the intelligent thing to know as much as possible about Victoria's movements.
The indicator stopped at three. Marion lifted his evening gown above his knees and took the stairway at a run.
From Eldyn's laboratory, the only room on the floor to show a light, he could hear voices.
'I don't like leaving loose ends, Carmichael. And it's your own gun.'
'So it was deliberate. But why?' Eldyn sounded incredulous.
Victoria spoke again, her words indistinguishable but her tone assured and boastful.
There was a muffled splatting sound, a grunt of pain.
'Why, damn your soul!' Victoria's voice again, raised in angry surprise. But no pistol shot.
Marion peered around the door. Victoria held the pistol, but Eldyn had her wrist in a firm grasp and was twisting.
Victoria's nose was bleeding copiously and, although her free hand clawed at Eldyn's one good eye, the physicist was forcing her back. Marion felt a stab of fear. If anything happened to Victoria it would cost his millions.
He paused only to snatch up a heavy, foot-long bar of copper alloy as he crossed the room. He raised it and crashed it against the side of Eldyn's skull. Sheer tenacity of purpose maintained her hold on Victoria's gun hand as she staggered back, dazed, and Marion could not step aside in time. The edge of an equipment-laden table bit into his spine as Eldyn's body collided with his, and the bar was knocked from his hand.
Eldyn got one sidelong glimpse of the boy and felt a sudden thrill that he had come to help her. She did not see what he had done.
And then hell broke loose. Leaping flames in her body. The unmistakable spitting crackle of bound charges breaking loose. The sensation of hurtling immeasurable distances through alternate layers of darkness and blinding light. Grey cotton wool filling her nose and mouth and ears. Blackness...
CHAPTER II
A shriveled blood-red moon cast slanting beams through gigantic, weirdly distorted trees. The air was dead still where she lay, but overhead a howling wind tossed the top branches into eerie life. She was lying on moss. Moss that writhed resentfully under her weight. Her stomach was heaving queasily and her head was one throbbing ache. Her right leg refused to move. It seemed to be stuck in something.
She was not alone. Something was prowling nearby among the unbelievably tall trees. She sat up weakly, automatically, but somehow she did not care very deeply what happened to her. Not at first.
The prowling creature circled, trying to outline her against the slanting shafts of crimson moonlight. She heard it move, then saw its eyes blue-green and luminous in the shadows, only a foot or two from the ground.
Then her scalp gave a sudden tingle, for the eyes rose upward. Abruptly they were five feet above ground level. She held her breath, but still more wondering than afraid. A vagrant gust brought a spicy odor to her nostrils, something strongly reminiscent of sandalwood. Not an animal smell.
She moved slightly. The moss beneath her squeaked a protest and writhed unpleasantly.
The thing with the glowing eyes moved closer. Squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak, the strange moss complained. And then a human figure appeared momentarily in a slender shaft of red light.
Marion! But even as it vanished again in the shadows she knew it wasn't. A man, yes, but not Marion. Too short. Too fully curved for Marion's graceful slenderness. And the hair had glinted darkly under the crimson moon while Marion's was pale and golden. She wanted to call out, but a sense of lurking danger restrained her.
Suddenly the stranger was at her side.
'Lackt,' he whispered.
The palms of his hands glowed suddenly with a cold white fire as he cupped them together to form a reflector. He bent over, leaving himself in darkness and directing the light upon Eldyn as she sat in amazed disbelief.
Although the light from his hands dazzled her single eye she caught an impression of youth, of well-tanned skin glittering with an oily lotion that smelled of sandalwood, of scanty clothing—the night was stiflingly hot—and of hair the same color as the unnatural moonlight, clinging in ringlets around a piquant but troubled face.
'El-ve-dyn?' he asked softly. His throaty voice betrayed passionate excitement.
She wet her dry lips.
'Eldyn,' she said hoarsely, wondering how he knew her name and why he had mispronounced it by inserting an extra syllable. 'Eldyn Carmichael.'
Her answer seemed to puzzle him. His strange eyes gleamed more brightly.
'Who are you? And how in the name of sin do you do that trick with your hands?' It was the first question to enter her confused mind.
'Syn?' He repeated the one word and drew back with a suddenly hostile air.
For a moment he seemed about to turn and run. But then he looked once more at her mangled, disfigured face and gave a soft exclamation of disappointment and pity.
Eldyn became irrationally furious and reached her single arm to grab him. He eluded her with a startled yet gracefully fluid motion and spat some unintelligible words that were obviously heartfelt curses. His hand moved ominously to a pocket in his wide belt.
Then all at once he crouched again, moving his head from side to side. She opened her mouth, but he clamped one glowing hand over it while the other went up in a gesture commanding silence. His hand was soft and cool despite its glow.
For a full minute he listened, hearing something Eldyn could not. Then he placed his lips close to her ear and whispered. His words were utterly unintelligible but his urgency communicated itself to her.
She tried to rise and discovered that her leg was deeply embedded in the dirt and moss. She wondered how it had gotten that way. The boy grasped her knee and pulled, and as soon as she saw what he wanted she put her muscles to work too. With an agonized shriek from the strange moss her leg came free and she tried to rise. The sudden movement made her dizzy.
Unhesitatingly the boy threw himself upon her, bearing her down while all the while he whispered admonitions she could not understand. He was strong in a lithe, whipcord way, and neither mentally nor physically was she in condition to resist. She allowed herself to be pushed to a reclining position.
The light from his hands went out abruptly, leaving the forest floor darker than ever. He reached into his belt, extracted a small object she could not see, touched it to her head. Eldyn went rigid.
One of his hands grasped her belt. He gave a slight tug. Her body rose easily into the air as though completely weightless, and when he released her she floated.
His fingers found a firm hold on her collar. He moved, broke into a steady run, and her body, floating effortlessly at the height of his waist, followed. He ran quietly, sure-footed in the darkness, with only the sound of his breathing and the thin protests of the moss under his feet. Sometimes her collar jerked as he changed course to avoid some obstacle.
'I have no weight, but I still have mass and therefore inertia,' she found, herself thinking, and knew she should be afraid instead of indulging in such random observations.
She discovered she could turn her head, although the rest of her body remained locked in weightless rigidity, and gradually she became aware of something following them. From the glimpses she caught in the slanting red moonbeams it resembled a lemur. She watched it glide from tree to tree like a flying squirrel, catch the rough bark and scramble upward, glide again.
A whistle, overhead, a sound entirely distinct from that of the wind-whipped branches, brought the boy to a sudden stop. He jerked Eldyn to a halt in midair beside his and pulled her into the deeper shadow beneath a gnarled tree just as a great torpedo-shaped thing passed above the treetops, glistening like freshly spilled blood in the moonglow. Some sort of wingless aircraft.
They waited, the boy fearful and alert. The red moon dropped below the horizon and a few stars—they were of a normal color—did little to relieve the blackness. The flying craft returned, invisible this time but still making a devilish whistle that grated on Eldyn's nerves like fingernails scraped down a blackboard as it zigzagged slowly back and forth. Then gradually the noise died, away in the distance.
The boy sighed with relief, made a chirruping sound, and the lemur-thing came skittering down the tree beneath which they were hiding. He spoke to it, and it gave a sailing leap that ended on Eldyn's breast. Its hand-like paws grasped the fabric of her shirt. She sank a few inches toward the ground, but immediately floated upward again with nightmarish buoyancy.
The boy reached to his belt again, and then he was floating in the air beside her. He grasped her collar and they were slanting upward among the branches. The lemur-thing rose confidently, perched on her breast. They moved slowly up to treetop level, where the boy paused for a searching look around. Then he rose above the trees, put on speed, and the hot wind whistled around Eldyn's face as he towed her along.
It was a dream-scene where time had no meaning. It might have been minutes or hours. The throbbing of her headache diminished, leaving her drowsy.
The lemur-thing broke the spell by chattering excitedly. In the very dim starlight she could just discern that it was pointing upward with one paw, an uncannily human gesture.
The boy uttered a sharp word and dove toward the treetops, and Eldyn looked up in time to see a huge leathery-winged shape swooping silently upon them. She felt the fetid breath and glimpsed hooked talons and a beak armed with incurving teeth as the thing swept by and flapped heavily upward again.
The boy released her abruptly, leaving her heart pounding in sudden terrible awareness of her utter helplessness. She felt herself brush against a branch that stood out above the others and start to drift away. But the lemur hooked its hind claws into her shirt and grasped the branch with its forepaws, anchoring her against the wind.
A long knife flashed in the boy's hand and he was shooting upward to meet the monster. He had not deserted her after all. He closed in, tiny beside the huge shape, as the monster beat its bat-like wings in a furious attempt to turn and rend him. There was a brief flurry, a high-pitched cry of agony, and the ungainly body crashed downward through a nearby treetop, threshing in its death agonies.
Eldyn felt the trembling reaction of relief as the boy glided downward, still breathing hard from his exertion, and it left her feeling even more helpless and useless than ever. Once more he took her in tow and the nightstallion flight continued.
Over one area a ring of faintly luminous fog was rolling, spreading among the trees, contracting like a gaseous noose.
'Kauva ne Syn,' the boy spat, bitter anger in his voice, and fear and unhappiness too. He made a long high detour around the fog ring and looked back uneasily even after they were past.
All at once they were diving again, down below the treetops that to Eldyn looked no different from any of the others. But to the boy it was journey's end. He twisted upright and his feet touched gently as he reached to his belt and regained normal weight. Eldyn still floated. The boy pushed her through the air and into a black hole between the spreading roots of a huge tree. The hole slanted downward, twisting and turning, and became a tunnel. The lemur-thing jumped down and scampered ahead.
It was utterly dark until he made his hands glow again, after they had passed a bend. Finally the tunnel widened into a room.
He left her floating, touched one wall, and it glowed with a soft, silvery light that showed her she was in living quarters of some kind. The walls were transparent plastic, and through their glow she could see the dirt and stones and tangled tree roots behind them. Water trickled in through a hole in one wall, passed through an oval pool of brightly colored tiles recessed into the floor, and vanished through a channel in the opposite wall. There were furnishings of strange design, simple yet adequate, and archways that seemed to lead to other rooms.
The boy returned to her, pushed her over to a broad, low couch, shoving her downward. He touched her with an egg-shaped object from his belt and she sank into the soft cushions as abruptly her body went limp and recovered its normal heaviness. She stared up at him.
He was beautiful in a vital, different way. Natural and healthily normal looking, but with an indescribable trace of the exotic. His hair, she saw—now that the light was no longer morbidly ruddy—was a lovely dark red with glints of fire. He was young and self-assured, yet oddly thoughtful, and there was about his an aura of vibrant attraction that seemed to call to all her forgotten dreams of loveliness. But Eldyn Carmichael was very sick and very tired.
He looked at her speculatively, a troubled frown narrowing his strangely luminous grey-green eyes, and asked a question. She shook her head to show lack of understanding, wondering who he was and where she was.
He turned away, his shoulders sagging with disappointment. Then he noticed that he was smeared with a gooey reddish-black substance, evidently from the huge bat-thing he had fought and killed. He gave a shiver of truly masculine repugnance.
Quickly he discarded his close fitting jacket, brief skirt and the wide belt from which his sheathed dagger hung, displaying no trace of embarrassment at Eldyn's presence even when he stood completely nude.
His body was fully curved but smoothly muscular, an active body. It was a symphony of perfection—except that across the curve of one high, firm breast ran a narrow crescent-shaped scar, red as though from a wound not completely healed. Once he glanced down at it and his face took on a hunted, fearful look.
He tested the temperature of the pool with one outstretched bare toe and then plunged in, and as he bathed himself he hummed a strangely haunting tune that was full of minor harmonies and unfamiliar melodic progressions. Yet it was not entirely a sad tune, and he seemed to be enjoying his bath. Occasionally he glanced over at her, questioning and thoughtful.
Eldyn tried to stay awake, but before he left the pool her one eye had closed.
* * * *
Pain in the stump of her arm brought a vague remembrance of having used it to strike at someone or something. For a while she lay half awake, trying to recall that dream about a boy flying with her through a forest that certainly existed nowhere on Earth. But the sound of trickling water kept intruding.
She opened her eye and came face to face with the lemur-thing from her nightstallion. Its big round eyes assumed an astounded, quizzical expression as she blinked, and then it was gone. She heard it scuttling across the floor.
She sat up and made a quick survey of her surroundings. Then the boy of the—no, it hadn't been a dream—emerged from an archway with the lemur on his shoulder. It made her think of stories she had read about witches of unearthly beauty and the uncannily intelligent animals, familiars, that served them.
'Hey, where am I?' she demanded. He said something in his unfamiliar language.
'Who are you?' she asked, this time with gestures.
He pointed to himself. 'Krasno,' he said.
She pointed to herself. 'Eldyn. Eldyn Carmichael.'
'El-ve-dyn?' he asked just as eagerly as when he had found her, half as though correcting her.
She shook her head. 'Just Eldyn.' His eyes clouded and he frowned.
After a moment he spoke again, and again she shook her head. 'Sorry, no savvy,' she declared.
He snapped his fingers as though remembering something and hurried from the room, returning with a small globe of cloudy crystal. He motioned her to lie back, and for a minute or two rubbed the ball vigorously against the soft, smooth skin of his forearm. Then he held it a few inches above her eye and gestured that she was to look at it.
The crystal glowed, but not homogeneously. Some parts became brighter than others, and of different colors. Patterns formed and changed, and watching them made her feel drawn out of herself, into the crystal.
The strange boy started talking-talking-talking in an unhurried monotone. Gradually scattered words began to form images in her mind. Pictures, some of them crystal clear but with their significance still obscure, others foggy and amorphous. There were people and things—and something so completely and utterly vile that even the thought made her brain cells cringe in fear of uncleansable defilement.
It must have been hours he talked to her, for when she came out of the globe and back into herself his voice was tired and there were wrinkles of strain across his forehead. He was watching her intently and she suspected she had been subjected to some form of hypnosis.
'Where am I? How did I get here?' she asked, and realized only when the words were out that she was speaking something other than English.
Krasno did not answer at once. Instead a look of unutterable sadness stole over him face. And then he was weeping bitterly and uncontrollably.
Eldyn was startled and embarrassed, not understanding but wishing she could do something, anything, to help him. Crying females had always disturbed her, and he looked so completely sad and-and defeated. The lemur-thing glowered at her resentfully.
'What is it?' she asked.
'You are not El-ve-dyn,' he sobbed.
With her new command of his language, perhaps aided by some measure of telepathy, she received an impression of El-ve-dyn as a shining, unconquerable champion of unspecified powers, one who was fated to bring about the downfall of—of something obscenely evil and imminently threatening. She could not recall what it was, and Krasno's wracking sobs did not help her think clearly.
'Of course I'm not El-ve-dyn,' she declared, and felt deeply sorry for herself that she was not. 'I'm just plain Eldyn Carmichael, and I am—or was—a biophysicist.' Once before Victoria Schenley had tried to kill her, she had been a competent and reasonably happy biophysicist.
At last he wiped his eyes.
'Well, if you don't remember, you just don't, I guess,' he sighed. 'You are in the world of Varda. Somehow you must have formed a Gateway and come through. I found you just by chance and thought—hoped—that you were El-ve-dyn.'
He went on with a long explanation, only parts of which Eldyn understood.
She was quite familiar with the theory of alternate worlds—his work with bound charges had given her an inkling of the actuality of other dimensions, and the fantastic idea that bound charges existed simultaneously in two or more 'worlds'at once, carrying their characteristic reactions across a dimensional gap had occurred to her frequently as her experiments had progressed. She had even entertained the notion that bound charges were the basic secret of life itself—but the proof still seemed unbelievable. Varda was a world adjoining her own, separated from it by some vagary of space or time-spiral warping or some obscure phase of the Law of Alternate Probabilities. But here she was, in Varda.
She distinctly remembered hearing one of the resonant system components in her laboratory let go, not flow but break, and guessed that the sudden strain might have been sufficient to warp the very nature of matter in its vicinity.
'Your world is one of the Closed Worlds,' Krasno explained. 'Things from it do not come through easily. Unfortunately the one from which the Luvans came is open much of the time.'
Eldyn tried to think what a Luvan was, but recalled only a vaguely disquieting impression of something disgusting—and deadly.
'I hoped so much.' Tears gathered in Krasno's strange eyes. 'I thought perhaps when I found you that the old prophecy—the one to defeat Sassa—but perhaps I have been a fool to believe in the old prophecy at all. And Sassa—'His expressive mouth contorted with loathing.
'How do I get back to my own world?' Eldyn demanded.
Krasno stared at her until she began to fidget.
'There is but one Gateway in all Varda, the Gateway of Sassa,' he declared in the tone of a person stating an obvious if unpleasant fact. 'And only El-ve-dyn can defeat the Faith.'
'Oh!' She laughed in mirthless near-hysteria at the thought of herself as the unconquerable El-ve-dyn. His words left her bleakly despondent.
'What happened to the others who were near me when—this—happened?' she asked. 'The woman and the man?'
Krasno straightened in surprise. 'There were others? Oh! Perhaps one of them is El-ve-dyn!'
'I doubt it,' Eldyn said wryly.
But Krasno's excitement was not to be quelled. He spoke to the lemur-thing as if to another human, and the creature scuttled up the tunnel leading to the surface. Eldyn thought once more of the witch-familiars of Earth legends. If she had come through to Varda, perhaps Vardans had visited Earth.
'We shall find out about them soon,' he said.
'What happens to me?' Eldyn wanted to know.
She had to repeat her question, for Krasno had suddenly become deeply preoccupied. At last he looked at her. There was pity in his glance, not pity for her situation but pity for a disfigured, frightened and querulous cripple. He did not understand the overwhelming longing for Earth which was mounting within her every second. His pity grated upon her nerves. She could pity herself all she chose—and she had reason enough—but she rejected the pity of others.
'Well?' she demanded.
'Oh, you can stay with me, I guess. That is, if you dare associate with me.' There was bitterness in his voice.
None of it made sense. He had saved her from the forest, brought her to his home. Why should she be afraid to associate with him? But all she wanted was to find Marion, if he were in this strange world, and escape back to Earth. There, though she was a cripple, she was not so abysmally ignorant. She knew she should feel grateful to this red-haired boy, but deep in her brain an irrational resentment gnawed. She tried to fight it down, knowing she had to learn much more about her new environment before she could survive alone. The last shreds of her crumbling self-confidence had been stripped away.
Suddenly she realized she was ravenously hungry.
'All right,' the boy said. 'We will eat now.'
She stared at him in discomfiture. She had not mentioned food. He laughed.
'Really,' he said, 'you seem to know nothing about closing your mind.'
Resentment flared higher. He was a telepath, and she was not proud of her thoughts.
The passageway into which she followed his was dark, but after a few steps his hands began to light the way as they had in the forest.
'How do you do it?' she asked. To her the production of cold light in living tissues was even more astounding than his control of gravity. That still seemed too much like a familiar dream she had had many times on Earth, and it probably had some mechanical basis.
He smiled at her as though at a curious child. 'That is old knowledge in the Open Worlds. Your Closed Worlds must be very strange.'
'But how do you control it?'
He shrugged his lovely shoulders. 'You may be fit to learn—later.' But he spoke doubtfully.
The food was unfamiliar but satisfying, warmed in a matter of seconds in an oven-like box to which she could see no power connections or controls. In reply to her questions he pointed to a hexagonal red crystal set in the back of the box and looked at her as though she should understand.
One of the foods was a sort of meat, and with only one arm Eldyn found herself in difficulty. Krasno noticed, took her eating utensils and cut it into bite-sized bits. He said nothing, but she finished the meal in sullen silence, resentful that she needed a man's help even to eat.
Afterwards Krasno buckled on his heavy belt with the dagger swinging at his hip.
'I must go out now,' he said. 'The not-quite-men of the Faith are prowling tonight, and Luvans are with them.'
'But-?'
'You could not help.'
The reminder of her uselessness rankled, but still she felt a pang at the thought of a boy like his going into danger.
'But you?' she asked.
'I can take care of myself. And if not, what matter? I am Krasno.'
Once more he read her thoughts.
'No. Stay here.' It was not a request but an order. 'If you were to fall into the hands of—her—it would add to my troubles. And my own people would kill you on sight, because you have been with me.'
CHAPTER III
After he left, she prowled restlessly around the underground rooms, looking, touching, exploring. She tried to find the controls for the illuminated walls, and there were none. Every square inch of the smooth plastic seemed exactly like every other. The other devices—even the uses of some she could not determine—were the same. There were no switches or other controls. It was all very puzzling.
She spent most of her time in the main room where Krasno had left the walls lighted, for the unfamiliar darkness of the others gave her the eerie feeling that something was watching her from behind. Some of the fittings seemed unaccountably familiar, although operating on principles she was unable to understand. The sense of familiarity amid strangeness gave her a schizophrenic sensation, as though two personalities struggled for control, two personalities with different life-patterns and experiences. A most unsettling feeling.
She thought of Marion, longingly, and then of Victoria. Her fist clenched and her lips tightened. If Schenley were still alive, some day there would be a reckoning. Schenley had been sure of herself and had boasted. And now, she was sure, Marion knew just what sort of rat Victoria really was.
Her thoughts turned to her anomalous position with the red-haired boy. Krasno had brought her out of the perilous forest purely because he thought she was this wonderful El-ve-dyn. And now she was living in his home, entirely dependent upon his sense of pity. It was galling.
She found a large rack containing scrolls mounted on cleverly designed double rollers, and after the first few minutes of puzzling out the writing letter by letter she found herself reading with growing fluency. Part of the same hypnotic and telepathic process, she reflected, through which Krasno had taught her his spoken language. At first she read mainly to escape her own unpleasant thoughts and keep occupied, but then she grew interested. Brief, undetailed references began to make pictures—the Gateway—the Fortress of Syn—the Forest People, evidently the clan to which Krasno belonged—the Luvans—Sassa. Her mind squirmed away from that last impression. Gradually the disconnected pictures began to form a sequence.
She was still reading hours later when Krasno emerged from the tunnel. He gave a little sigh of fatigue, dropped his heavy weapon belt, and started to undress. But the lemur-thing interrupted. It raced down the tunnel, a furry streak that chattered for attention.
'Later, Tikta,' Krasno told it, continuing to disrobe. 'I'm too tired to understand.'
The sight of his loveliness as he stepped into the warm pool gave Eldyn no pleasure. If everything had been different ... Instead it brought rankling resentment, of him, of her condition, of everything. He looked at her just as impersonally as he did at his lemur. It was evident he did not consider her a woman, a person. She was just something he had picked up by mistake and was too kindhearted to dispose of. Under the circumstances it would have been ridiculous for her to turn away.
'Now, Tikta,' he said after his bath, sinking down on one of the couches.
The little creature ran to him, leaped to his shoulder and placed its tiny hand-like front paws on opposite sides of his head. Krasno closed his eyes.
To Eldyn, observing closely, it was like watching someone who was seeing an emotional movie. Hate, anger, hope, surprise, puzzlement, all followed each other across his mobile, expressive features, ending in disappointment and disgust. At last Tikta removed its paws and Krasno opened his eyes.
'Your—friends—'he hesitated over the word. 'They are in Varda. Both.'
'Is the boy all right? Where are they? How do you know? Did you see them?' The questions tumbled from Eldyn's lips.
Krasno smiled faintly. 'No, I have not seen them. But Tikta can catch the thoughts of all wild things that can not guard their minds, and tell me. The wild things saw your—friends.' Again he hesitated, and this time made a grimace of angry distaste.
'Where is the boy? Can you take me to him?' she demanded excitedly.
'No. They are both beyond the Mountains that Move.'
'So?'
'In the land of the Faith,' he snapped.
'But couldn't you-?'
Pity was almost smothered in stern contempt as he looked at her. 'We do not go among the Faith except for a purpose. And that purpose is not returning you to your—friends.'
'But your people?'
'They would not help you if they could. For I am Krasno.'
She did not grasp the significance of his words but the firmness of his tone indicated there was no use arguing with this self-willed, red-haired person. Nevertheless she resolved to try to find Marion, and as soon as possible.
Krasno's eyes widened with apprehension at her thought.
'You are a fool. And if you must try you had better read all the scrolls first. Only El-ve-dyn could survive, and the death of the Faith is not easy.'
Eldyn cursed silently. This damnable boy, although beautiful in his own odd way, not only insulted her with his pity but invaded her mind.
'Well, shut your mind if you don't like it,' he snapped angrily. 'You're odd, too, and far from beautiful.'
* * * *
Marion Matson opened his eyes. A strange woman stood over him, and what a woman! She was huge and hard looking, with dark, wind-toughened skin. She was dressed in some sort of barbaric military uniform, colorful and heavily decorated. And she was playing with a needle pointed dagger.
His mouth opened. 'Victoria!' he screamed.
His voice reverberated hollowly from the curved walls and roof of a small metal room. The big woman screwed up her face at the shrill noise.
'Victoria! Help me!' he shouted again.
Victoria failed to answer.
'Eldyn!' he yelled.
The big warrior spun her dagger casually, the way a girl would play with a stick. Her lips curled back in a wolfish grin, emphasizing two of her strong white teeth that projected beyond the others like fangs. Her whole appearance was brutal.
'Where am I? What do you want with me?' he gasped. Then his glance followed the woman's eyes. His form-fitting evening gown was torn and disarrayed. He snatched it down with a show of indignant modesty, and the woman grinned widely. One corner of her mouth twitched.
Marion would have been even more frightened except that the big soldier's reaction struck a familiar note that lent his confidence. She spoke, but her words were gibberish.
Then from a wall locker she produced two helmet-like devices, metal frames with pieces of some translucent material set to touch the wearer's temples.
He started to draw away as she stooped to push one over him hair, but submitted when she frowned and fingered the point of her knife. She donned the other helmet.
'My name is Wyr, merta of the Forces and torna to Great Sassa Herself.' He understood her now.
'You and I might be good—friends—if Syn allows,' she continued. 'You bear a great resemblance to Highness Syn, even though your color is faded.'
Despite his position Marion bridled angrily. Wyr laughed uproariously. 'Your temper is like Highness Syn's too,' be declared appreciatively.
'Who—who is this Syn?'
'You will find out,' Wyr replied evenly. Then her face sobered and softened. 'If you want a chance to be with me, take my advice and be careful what you say-send even what you think. Syn is all-powerful—and jealous. He knew when you appeared in our world.'
'Where is Victoria?' Marion asked. 'Is she-?'
'The one-armed one, or the other?'
Marion's face showed scorn. 'Would I be interested in cripples?'
'Oh, the slender one. She too will be taken before Highness Syn.'
'And Eldyn?'
Wyr looked annoyed. 'Gone. Came through on the seaward side of the Mountains.'
'But why didn't you get her, too?'
Wyr was distinctly irked. 'We looked. Either she came through below ground level, in which case she is dead, or the Rebels found her, in which case she is dead, too. Write her off.'
Marion let a couple of tears roll down his cheeks, but not from grief over Eldyn. He knew that in this strange situation into which he had been flung he would need a friend and protector.
'What is going to happen to poor helpless me? Oh, won't you help me?' he asked plaintively. His eyes expressed open admiration for the corded muscles rippling beneath Wyr's military tunic.
It was an ancient appeal and Marion realized it had been most obviously applied. But it worked. Women were so easily handled, even this Wyr. Carefully he hid his satisfaction as she sat down beside him.
He moved a little closer to her as she talked, telling him about her land and what he could expect. After a while she sheathed her dagger.
Someone tapped on the bulkhead. Wyr bellowed and the door opened. The woman who entered raised her hand in a respectful salute, and Marion would have given much to understand what she said. But Wyr stretched out one enormous hand and snatched the helmet from his head. The words became meaningless but he could still see the deference with which Wyr was treated.
After the woman had gone and Wyr had crammed the helmet back on his head he was careful by word and look to let her see he understood her importance. He could almost see her great breast swell. Women were so simple, when handled properly.
A whistle emitted a warning screech.
'We land in a few minutes,' Wyr told him. 'Do nothing that might anger Highness Syn. Your life depends upon it.'
She rose, snatched his to her in an embrace that was without tenderness and left his lips bruised. Before he could decide whether to resist or respond she was gone. A few minutes later the flying machine struck with a cushioned thump and the sibilant hiss of its engines died.
* * * *
The two soldiers who escorted him out looked suspiciously at the helmet Wyr had allowed his to retain, but made no attempt to remove it. The ship had landed in the courtyard of a tremendous castle. Massive, weather-streaked grey walls soared upward to end high above in incongruously stream-lined turrets from which projected the ribbed and finned snouts of strange weapons. Windows were few and small, and the whole structure looked incredibly ancient.
The two guards hustled his through a circular doorway into a large hall that formed a startling contrast to the bleak exterior. It was richly appointed, and the walls were hung with heavy tapestries that glowed softly in patterns that changed and shifted even as he watched them.
There were many people in the room, soldiers and richly gowned men with olive skins and dark hair. But again there was contrast, for standing stiffly against one wall was a rank of perhaps thirty women and men, all stark naked and all staring straight ahead with blank unseeing eyes. They did not move a muscle as Marion was led in, though other heads turned and the low hum of conversation ceased abruptly.
Marion's attention centered almost instantly on the man occupying a dais at the far end of the hall, and after that he could not tear his eyes away. This was Highness Syn, of whom even Wyr stood in awe. Marion stared and Syn stared back. Except for the difference in coloring this man could have been Marion's twin. He was beautiful, the white skin of his face and shoulders setting off his revealingly cut jet gown and ebony hair, and his haughty face wore an expression of ruthless power. Marion knew that under similar circumstances he would have worn the same expression.
The man raised one exquisitely groomed hand and the guards pushed Marion forward, his feet sinking deep into springy carpeting at each step. Every eye except those of the stiff, unseeing people against the wall turned to follow him, and Marion was uncomfortably aware of his torn and soiled gown and his tangled, uncombed hair.
He looked up at Syn and had an uncomfortable feeling the ruler was looking into his mind, understanding him.
'So you are the man who came through.' Even his voice was remarkably like Marion's.
Marion said nothing.
'Why did you come to my world?' the ruler asked.
'It wasn't any of my doing,' Marion exploded petulantly. 'I still don't know where I am, and I don't think I like it here, and I had nothing to do with coming. It was all on account of that Eldyn's stupid experiments, and if she hadn't tried to kill Victoria—'
'But you are here,' Syn interrupted, tightening his sensuous full lips in a way Marion recognized as one of his own mannerisms. 'Perhaps I can find use for you.'
'Can't you send me back-?'
'Why should I?'
There was no answer to that, and Marion tried to hide his growing nervousness. Syn allowed himself a feline smile.
Wyr came striding forward. 'Highness! Syn,' she boomed. 'I desire to claim my right to this captive.'
Syn's eyes narrowed suspiciously, and Marion's intuition told his the similarity between them had something to do with his hesitation.
'No. He is not of the Rebels, and therefore you have no captor's rights. You recognized him as an Outworldling yourself when you gave his a thought helmet. Thus by custom he is subject to a hearing—if I so choose.'
'Then grant me, Oh Syn—'
'Go pick yourself another plaything. There are several in the slave pits who still have their minds. I must find out more about this one.'
'But—'
'I have spoken.'
Wyr turned away, disgruntled but not daring to try the dark ruler's patience further. Syn returned his attention to Marion.
'Follow me,' he ordered. 'We will talk in private.'
* * * *
The rooms outdid any Hollywood production for sheer sybaritic elegance. Syn chose a couch and sank down with a languidness that did not fool Marion in the least.
'Don't you want to thank me for saving you from becoming Wyr's plaything?' he asked slyly.
Marion decided on boldness. There was too much similarity between them for any successful deception as to character.
'Wyr might have made an interesting plaything herself,' he retorted. 'But she is yours?'
Syn put his head back against the cushions. His high, brittle laughter contained a trace of malice.
'Oh, I must read her thoughts when I tell her that,' he said. 'Earth Man, Wyr likes to consider herself rough and masterful. She's a mutant savage, you know, and if it were not for the Luvans of Great Sassa she would be only—'
'But she's yours?' Marion broke in.
Without rising Syn assumed a regal posture. 'All who serve Great Sassa are mine.'
Marion raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
Syn changed the subject abruptly. 'There were three of you who came through. One my Forces could not find.'
'You mean Eldyn?' Marion asked.
Syn sat up, tensely alert. 'Did you say El-ve-dyn?' he demanded harshly.
'No. Eldyn.'
Syn relaxed slightly. 'What is she like?'
Marion allowed himself a superior smile. 'Why do you ask?'
'What is she like?' Syn's voice crackled.
Marion held out the little finger of one hand and made winding motions around it. Evidently Syn understood the reference, for he smiled and leaned back.
'Why are you interested in her?' Marion insisted. 'She's crippled and disfigured, ugly, an honest fool. And Wyr said she's probably dead.'
Syn frowned. 'We—myself serving Great Sassa—have almost won Varda. But the resistance of the Rebels provides an annoying delay. And there is a certain prophecy among the Rebels, a stupid story about a creature called El-ve-dyn, and the name was sufficiently similar ... We understand each other, Earth Man?'
Marion nodded emphatically.
'Just what were your relations with this—this Eldyn?'
Marion explained.
'Oh, you have a monogamous society there,' Syn commented.
'Theoretically, yes.'
'We did here too, in the dark ages before the Faith. Stupid, isn't it? So restricting.'
Syn had regained the poise Eldyn's name had disturbed, and Marion decided to press his advantage while he was in this friendly mood.
'I'd like to see Victoria now, Highness. Wyr said—'
Syn's eyes hardened instantly. 'Sometimes Wyr talks too much. No. I must see the Earthwoman first.'
'But—'
'Remember, my dear, I am Syn.'
CHAPTER IV
The guards who came for Marion looked startled at their orders.
'Not the slave pens, Highness?' one of them asked.
'This man will perhaps become of the Faith,' Syn snapped. 'Treat his accordingly.'
Marion looked up, but Syn offered no explanation.
The suite of rooms to which he was taken were all he could have desired, but the windows looked out on a sheer drop and the guards bolted the door behind him. He had just time to glance around when the door opened again.
'Your first slave,' a single guard announced. 'A gift to you from Highness Syn.'
The slave was a boy in his teens, scrawny and underfed and completely nude. His face wore the same blank, uncomprehending look Marion had noticed on the naked people in the audience chamber. Across his rigidly outstretched arms lay several rich dresses.
'One of the Rebels,' the guard satisfied Marion's curiosity. 'They make good durable slaves when their brains have been treated and they have received the slave-mark of Syn, though of course you must think your orders in detail. Perhaps you had better speak your orders at first, until you grow used to giving thought-commands. In the Vat these Rebels are excellent. So vital.
'Highness Syn also sends you some of his own clothing.' She withdrew, and this time did not lock the door.
'Put those dresses down,' Marion told his slave. The boy complied.
'Where is the bath?'
The slave boy pointed. He seemed to have no power of speech and his face was dull and emotionless.
'Get it ready for me.'
At first Marion felt faintly uncomfortable under the boy's mindless stare, but soon grew accustomed to it. The boy obeyed perfectly, like a machine. Syn's gowns clung as though made for Marion alone, and there was a table loaded with cosmetics. When he was finished Marion felt more himself. Fresh clothes did wonders for his morale.
Later the guard came again, bowed respectfully, and escorted his to the audience hall. She led his directly to Syn's throne.
'You will want a woman, of course,' Syn began abruptly. 'Which shall it be, Wyr or your Victoria from Earth? Or does some other catch your fancy?'
Marion noticed for the first time that Victoria was in the room, well back from Syn's dais. She looked worried and a soldier stood just behind her. Perhaps a guard. On Earth she had been an excellent catch, but here she had nothing except a certain sly venomousness to recommend her. And already he had sensed complex undercurrents of intrigue and hinted mysteries within the fortress. He must pick the one who could best help him, no longer by Earth standards but by those of Varda.
'I choose Wyr,' he announced.
Victoria's head jerked in an angry gesture. A gleam of anticipation entered Wyr's eyes as she stepped forward.
Syn's smile was definitely feline. 'So be it. I believe you are a suitable candidate for the Faith, and tonight Wyr will initiate you into the service of Great Sassa. Your Earth mind, my dear, has a certain potential value.'
* * * *
A bloody moon leered through his windows. Wyr came. There was a trace of diffidence in her manner that had been leering earlier, and he wondered what payment Syn expected for this favorable treatment. For there was no doubt payment would be demanded. He must be sure it was not overpayment.
Wyr guided his to an air car on the flat roof of the fortress. It was not the huge craft in which he had been brought in, but so small they lay side by side. The control buttons looked ridiculously small under Wyr's huge hands.
With a hiss they were in the air. He was very conscious of Wyr beside him, of her tremendous strength and blatant femaleness, and he turned to watch her as she increased their speed. She had wanted her—other mien had wanted him before and he knew the signs—but now she ignored him. She was excited, but about something other than himself. He wondered, deeply annoyed, what outlandish sort of religion this Sassa-worship could be to so captivate her. He asked her, but she only grinned.
'There! Over there!' She pointed suddenly in joyful excitement. A great dead-black globe loomed ahead. The stunted foliage of the flat, sandy plain ceased abruptly in a circle around it, as though afraid to approach. Something, some intangible feeling that radiated from the huge ball, made Marion shiver with a strangely apprehensive exhilaration.
Wyr brought the ship down in a sickening vertical drop, and as it touched the sand she half dragged his from the cushions. He had to run to match her long-legged stride as she approached the base of the globe.
'Come on, man. Great Sassa waits!' she barked, hustling his through a portal where the globe touched the footprint tracked sand. Her eyes were blazing with hungry madness.
The globe was hollow, and inside space itself was different and alien. The exhilaration was overpowering now, yet terrifying, with its undertones of ancient and unnamable evil.
'Great Sassa is near!' Wyr spoke in a hoarse whisper.
She pointed upward. 'The Gateway of Sassa!'
Hanging overhead in the center of the sphere, not suspended in any way he could see, was an area of glowing greenish-yellow luminescence that hurt his eyes. He lowered them to the shimmering, scarcely visible transparent platform beneath it. Syn stood there almost as though floating, enveloped in a voluminous black robe from neck to heels. His lips, parted in an anticipatory smile, looked black in the greenish light.
Beside and just below the platform stood a huge cylindrical vat, also made of transparent material but plainly visible because it was filled to the brim with some pale lavender fluid. Beside the vat rose a long-boomed hoist, the hook on the end of its chain now hanging empty, and attached to the wall of the vat was a complex mechanism of distorted tubes, warped helical coils and irregularly shaped boxes studded with knobs and handles. An elevated chair was provided beside the controls.
A network of glittering woven cables, branching and re-branching, lying in loops, littered the bowl-shaped floor in seeming disorder. But all led to the machine on the Vat. One cable, as thick through as a large woman's arm, curved upward unsupported and vanished into the glow of the Gateway.
Several hundred people turned in silent expectancy as Wyr entered. The women almost without exception wore uniforms and the men were sleek and well dressed. A quick glance showed Marion that the more glittering decorations were gathered toward the center, nearest the Vat and the platform upon which Syn waited.
Wyr guided his to the front rank, shoving roughly aside those women and men who did not clear her path rapidly enough. Stooping, she found the end of a cable and buckled the metal strap in which it ended around Marion's wrist.
'What do I do?' he wailed in uncertainty.
'You will know, and then I will know more about you. But so will Syn, so be careful.'
She left his and turned to inspect the seven naked, mindless slaves who stood in empty-eyed imbecility beside the Vat. She exchanged a few words with two soldiers who stood near. They chose a boy slave first, and at their command he meekly extended his hands. With the quick skill of much practice they linked his wrists together and slipped a loop of the binding over the hook of the hoist chain. The eyes of the watchers turned appraisingly upon the boy's lash-scarred body, their faces twisted with expectancy and hunger, as one of the guards forced the boy's head back and popped a small pellet into his mouth. He gulped and swallowed obediently.
Wyr climbed to the elevated chair and took her place at the controls of the machine on the Vat. Syn looked down, nodded to her, and made a beckoning gesture toward the doorway.
From the outside came a procession of things. The Luvans. They looked like oversized, unfinished caricatures of women, but their faces were utterly inhuman. Except for beady black eyes they were a fuzzy, pasty grey all over. Repulsive wart-like lumps sprouted all over their bodies. Ominous looking creatures, as alien to Varda as they would have been on Earth.
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