IV
His hands reached for her throat. Tamisan flung up her arm in an attempt to guard and stumbled back.
“Lord Starrex!” If I have been wrong, if . . .
Though his fingertips brushed her shoulders, he did not grasp her. Instead it was his turn to retreat a step or two, his mouth half-open in a gasp.
“Witch! Witch!” The very force of the words he hurled at her made them darts dispatched from one of the crossbows of the history tapes.
“Lord Starrex,” Tamisan repeated, feeling on more secure ground at his stricken amazement and no longer fearing he would attack her out of hand. His reaction to that name was enough to assure her she was right, though he did not seem prepared to acknowledge it.
“I am Hawarel of the Vanora.” He brought out those words as harsh croaking.
Tamisan glanced around. This was a bare-walled room, with no hiding place for a listener. In her own time and place she could have feared many scanning devices, but she thought those unknown to this Ty-Kry. To win Hawarel-Starrex into cooperation was very necessary.
“You are Lord Starrex,” she returned with bold confidence, or at least what she hoped was a convincing show of it. “Just as I am Tamisan, the dreamer. And this, wherein we are caught, is the dream you ordered of me.”
He raised his hand to his forehead, his fingers encountered his helmet and he swept it off unheedingly, so that it clanked and slid across the polished floor. His hair, netted into a kind of protecting cushion was piled about his head, giving him an odd appearance to Tamisan. It was black and thick, just as his skin was as brown-hued as that of her new body. Without the shadow of the helmet, she could see his face more clearly, finding in it no resemblance to the aloof master of the sky towers. In a way, it was that of a younger man, one less certain of himself.
“I am Hawarel,” he repeated doggedly. “You try to trap me, or perhaps the trap has already closed and you seek now to make me condemn myself with my own mouth. I tell you, I am no traitor. I am Hawarel and my blood oath to the Great One has been faithfully kept.”
Tamisan experienced a rise of impatience. She had not thought Lord Starrex to be a stupid man. But it would seem his counterpart here lacked more than just the face of his other self.
“You are Starrex, and this is a dream!” If it was not she did not care to raise that issue now. “Remember the sky tower? You bought me from Tabis for dreaming. Then you summoned me and Lord Kas and ordered me to prove my worth.”
His brows drew together in a black frown as he stared at her.
“What have they given you, or promised, that you do this to me?” came his counterdemand. “I am no sworn enemy to you or yours, not that I know.”
Tamisan sighed. “Do you deny you know the name Starrex?” she asked.
For a long moment he was silent. Then he turned from her, took a stride or two; his toe thumped against his helmet, sending it rolling ahead of him. She waited. He turned again to face her.
“You are a Mouth of Olava. . . .”
She shook her head, interrupting him. “We have little time for such fencing. Lord Starrex. You do know that name, and it is in my mind that you also remember the rest, at least in some measure. I am Tamisan the dreamer.”
It was his turn to sigh. “So you say.”
“So I shall continue to say, and, mayhap as I do, others than you will listen.”
“As I thought!” he flashed. “You would have me betray myself.”
“If you are truly Hawarel as you state, then what have you to betray?”
“Very well. I am . . . am two! I am Hawarel and I am someone else who has queer memories and who may well be a night demon come to dispute ownership of this body. There, you have it. Go and tell those who sent you and have me out to the arrow range for a quick ending there. Perhaps that will be better than to continue as a battlefield between two different selves.”
Perhaps he was not just being obstinate, Tamisan thought. It might be that the dream had a greater hold on him than it did on her. After all, she was a trained dreamer, one used to venturing into illusions wrought from imagination.
“If you can remember a little, then listen.” She drew closer to him and began to speak in a lower voice, not that she believed they could be overheard, but it was well to take no chance. Swiftly she gave her account of the whole tangle, or what had been her part in it.
When she was done she was surprised to see that a certain hardening had overtaken his features, so that now he looked more resolute, less like one trapped in a maze which had no guide.
“And this is the truth?”
“By what god or power do you wish me to swear to it?” She was exasperated now, frustrated by his lingering doubts.
“None, because it explains what was heretofore unexplainable, what has made my life a hell of doubt these past hours, and brought more suspicion upon me. I have been two persons. But if this is all a dream, why is that so?”
“I do not know.” Tamisan chose frankness as best befitting her needs. “This is unlike any dream I have created before.”
“In what manner?” he asked crisply.
“It is a part of a dreamer’s duty to study her master’s personality, to suit his desires, even if those be unexpressed and hidden. From what I had learned of you, of Lord Starrex, I thought that too much had been already seen, experienced and known to you, that it must be a new approach I tried, or else you would find that dreaming held no profit.
“Therefore, it came to me suddenly that I would not dream of the past, nor of the future, which are the common approaches for an action dreamer, but refine upon the subject In the past there were times in history when the future rested upon a single decision. And it was in my mind to select certain of these decisions and then envision a world in which those decisions had gone in the opposite direction, trying to see what would be the present result of actions in the past.”
“So this is what you tried? And what decisions did you select for your experiment at the rewriting of history?” He was giving her his full attention.
“I took three. First, the welcome of the Over-queen, Ahta, second, the drift of the colony ship Wanderer, third, the rebellion of Sylt. Should the welcome have been a rejection, should the colony ship never reach here, should Sylt have failed, these would produce a world I thought might be interesting to visit in a dream. So I read what history tapes I could call upon. Thus, when you summoned me to dream I had my ideas ready. But it did not work as it should have. Instead of spinning the proper dream, creating incidents in .good order, I found myself fast caught in a world I did not know or build.”
As she spoke she could watch the change in him, He had lost all the fervent antagonism of his first attack on her. More and more she could see what she had associated with the personality of Lord Starrex coming through the unfamiliar envelope of this man’s body.
“So it did not work properly.”
“No. As I have said, I found myself in the dream, with no control of action and no recognizable creation factors. I do not understand.”
“No? There could be an explanation,” The frown line was back between his brows, but it was not a scowl aimed at her. It was as if he were trying hard to remember something of importance which eluded his efforts. “There is a theory, a very old one. Yes, that of parallel worlds.”
In her wide use of the tapes she had not come across that, and now she demanded the knowledge of him almost fiercely. “What are those?”
“You are not the first, how could you be, to be struck by the notion that sometimes history and the future hang upon a very thin cord which can be twisted this way and that by a small chance. A theory was once advanced that when that chanced it created a second world, one in which the decision was made to the right, when that of the world we know went to the left”
“But alternate worlds, where, how did they exist?”
“Thus, perhaps,” he held out his two hands horizontally, one above the other, “in layers. There were even old tales created for amusement, of men traveling not back in time, nor forward, but across it from one such world to another.”
“But here we are. I am a Mouth of Olava and I don’t look like myself, just as to the eye you are not Lord Starrex.”
“Perhaps we are the people we would be if our world had taken the other side of your three decisions. It is a clever device for a dreamer to create, Tamisan.”
She told him now the last truth. “Only, I do not think I have created it. Certainly I cannot control it”
“You have tried to break this dream?”
“Of course, but I am tied here. Perhaps it is by you, and Lord Kas. Until we three try together maybe we cannot any of us return.”
“Now you must go searching for him with that board and sand trick of yours?”
She shook her head. “Kas, I think, is one of the crew on the spacer about to set down. I believe I saw him, though not his face. She smiled a little shakily. “It seems that though I am mainly the Tamisan I have always been, yet also do I have some of the powers of a Mouth; likewise, you are Hawarel as well as Starrex.”
“The longer I listen to you,” he announced, “the more I become Starrex. So we must find Kas on the spacer before we wriggle free from this tangle? But that is going to be rather a problem. I am enough of Hawarel to know that the spacer is going to receive the usual welcome dealt off-world ships here: trickery and extinction. Your three points have been as you envisioned them. There was no welcome, but rather a massacre; no colony ship ever reached here, and Sylt was speared by a contemptuous man-at-arms the first time he lifted his voice to draw a crowd. Hawarel knows this as truth; as Starrex I am aware there is another truth which did radically change life on this planet. Now, did you seek me out on purpose, your champion tale intended to be our bridge to Kas?”
“No, at least I did not consciously arrange it so. I tell you, I have some of the powers of a Mouth; they take over.”
He gave a sharp bark of sound which was not laughter but somewhat akin to it. “By the fist of Jimsam Taragon, we have it complicated by magic, too! And I suppose you cannot tell me just how much a Mouth can do in the way of foreseeing, forearming or freeing us from this trap?”
Tamisan shook her head. “The Mouths were mentioned in the history tapes; they were very important once. But after Sylt’s rebellion they were either killed or disappeared. They were hunted by both sides, and most we know about them is only legend. I cannot tell you what I can do. Sometimes something, perhaps the memory and knowledge of this body, takes over and then I do strange things. I neither will nor understand them.”
He crossed the room and pulled two stools from a far comer. “We might as well sit at ease and explore what we can of this world’s memories. It just might be that united, we can learn more than when trying alone. The trouble is . . .” He reached out a hand and mechanically she touched fingertips to the back of it in an oddly formal ceremony which was not part of her own knowledge. He guided her to one of the stools and she was glad to sit down.
“The trouble is,” he repeated as he dropped on the other stool, stretching out his long legs and tugging at his sword belt with that dangerously empty sheath, “that I was more than a little mixed up when I awoke, if you might call it that, in this body. My first reactions must have suggested mental imbalance to those I encountered. Luckily, the Hawarel part was in control soon enough to save me. But there is a second drawback to this identity: I am suspect as coming from a province where there has been a rebellion. In fact, I am here in Ty-Kry as a hostage, rather than a member of the guard in good standing. I have not been able to ask questions, and all I have learned is in bits and pieces. The real Hawarel is a quite uncomplicated, simple soldier who is hurt by the suspicion against him and quite fervently loyal to the crown. I wonder how Kas took his waking. If he preserves any remnant of his real self he ought to be well established by now.”
Surprised, Tamisan asked a question to which she hoped he would give a true and open answer. “You do not like . . . you have reason to fear Lord Kas?”
“Like? Fear?” She could see that thin shadow of Starrex overlaying Hawarel become more distinct. “Those are emotions. I have had little to do with emotions for some time.”
“But you wanted him to share the dream,” she persisted.
“True. I may not be emotional about my esteemed cousin, but I am a prudent man. Since it was by his urging, in fact his arrangement, that you were added to my household, I thought it only fair he share in his plan for my entertainment. I know that Kas is very solicitous of his crippled cousin, ready handed to serve in any way, so generous of his time and his energy.”
“You suspect him of something?” She thought she had sensed what lay behind his words.
“Suspect? Of what? He has been, as all would assure you freely, my good friend, as far as I would allow.” There was a closed look about him warning her off any further exploration of that.
“His crippled cousin.” This time Hawarel repeated those words as if he spoke to himself and not to her. “At least you have done me a small service on the credit side of the scale.” Now he did look to Tamisan as he thumped his right leg with a satisfaction which was not of the Starrex she knew. “You have provided me with a body in good working order, which I may well need since, so far, bad has outweighed the good in this world.”
“Hawarel, Lord Starrex . . .” She was beginning when he interrupted her.
“Give me always Hawarel, remember. There is no need to add to the already heavy load of suspicion surrounding me in these halls.”
“Hawarel, then, I did not choose you for the champion; that was done by a power I do not understand, working through me. If they agree, you have a good chance to find Kas. You may even demand that he be the one you battle.”
“Find him how?”
“They may allow me to select the proper one from the off-world force,” she suggested. It was a very thin thread on which to hang any plan of escape, but she could not see a better one.
“And you think that this sand painting will pick him out, as it did me?”
“It did you, did it not?”
“That I cannot deny.”
“And the first time I foresaw, for one of the First Standing, it made such an impression on her that she had me summoned here to foresee for the Over-queen.”
“Magic!” Again he uttered that half laugh.
“To another world much that the space travelers can do might be termed magic.”
“Well said. I have seen strange things; yes, I have seen things myself, and not while dreaming either. Very well, I am to volunteer to meet an enemy champion from the ship and then you sand paint out the proper one. If you are successful and do find Kas, then what?”
“It is simple; we wake.”
“You take us with you, of course?”
“If we are so linked that we cannot leave here without one another, then a single waking will take us all.”
“Are you sure you need Kas? After all, I was the one you were planning this dream for.”
“We go, leave Lord Kas here?”
“A cowardly withdrawal you think, my dreamer. But one, I assure you, which would solve many things. However, can you send me through and return for Kas? It is in my mind I would like to know what is happening now for myself in our own world. Is it not by the dreamer’s oath that he for whom the dream is wrought has first call upon the dreamer?”
He did have some lurking uneasiness tied to Kas, but in a manner he was right. She reached out before he was aware of what she would do and seized his hand, at the same time using the formula for waking. Once more that mist which was nowhere enveloped her. But it was no use, her first guess ad been right, they were still tied. She blinked her eyes open upon the same room. Hawarel had slumped and was falling from his stool, so that she had to go to one knee to support is body with her shoulder or he would have slid full length to the floor. Then his muscles tightened and he jerked erect, is eyes opened and blazed into hers with the same cold anger with which he had first greeted her upon entering this room.
“Why?”
“You asked,” she countered.
His lids drooped so she could no longer see that icy anger. “So I did. But I did not quite expect to be so quickly served. Now, you have effectively proven your point; three go or none. And it remains to be seen how soon we can find our missing third.”
He asked her no more questions and she was glad, since that whirl into nowhere in the abortive attempt at waking had tired her greatly. She moved the stool a little so her back could rest against the wall and she was farther from him. In a little while he got to his feet and paced back and forth as if some driving desire for wider action worked in him to the point where he could not sit still.
Once the door opened, but they were not summoned forth. Instead, food and drink were brought to them by one of the guards; the other stood ready with a crossbow at thigh, his eyes ever upon them.
“We are well served.” Hawarel opened the lids of the bowls and inspected their contents. “It would seem we are of importance. Hail, Rugaard, when do we go forth from this room, of which I am growing very tired?”
“Be at peace; you shall have action enough, when the Great One desires it,” the officer with the crossbow answered. “The ship from the stars has been sighted; the mountain beacons have blazed twice. They seem to be aiming for the plain beyond Ty-Kry. It is odd that they are so single-minded and come to the same pen to be taken each time. Perhaps Dalskol was right when he said that they do not think for themselves at all, but carry out the orders of an off-world power which does not allow them independent judgment. Your service time will come; and, Mouth of Olava,” he took a step forward to see Tamisan the better, “the Great One says that it might be well to read the sand on your own behalf. False seers are given to those they have belittled in such seeing, to be done with as those they have so shamed may decide.”
“As is well known,” she answered him. “I have not dealt falsely, as shall be seen at the proper time and in the proper place.”
When they were gone she was hungry, and so it seemed was Hawarel, for they divided the food fairly and left nothing in the bowls.
When they were done he said, “Since you are a reader of history and know old customs perhaps you remember one which it is not too pleasant to recall now, that among some races it was the proper thing to dine well as a prisoner about to die.”
“You choose a heartening thing to think on.”
“No, you chose it, for this is your world; remember that, my dreamer.”
Tamisan closed her eyes and leaned her head and shoulders back against the wall. There was a clang of sudden noise, and she gasped out of a doze. The room had grown dark, but at the door was a blaze of light; in that stood the officer, with a guard of spearmen behind.
“The time has come.”
“The wait has been long.” Hawarel stood up, stretched wide his arms as one who has been ready for too long. Then he turned to her and once more offered his wrist. She would have liked to have done without his aid, but she found herself stiff and cramped enough to be glad of it.
They went on a complicated way through halls, down stairs, until at last they issued out into the night. Waiting for them was a covered cart, much larger than the chair on wheels which had brought her to the castle, with two griffins between its shafts.
Into this their guard urged them, drawing the curtains and pegging those down tightly outside, so that even had they wished they could not have looked out. As the cart creaked out Tamisan tried to guess by sound where they might be going.
There was little noise to guide her. It was as if they now passed through a town deep in slumber. But in the gloom of the cart she felt rather than saw movement, and then a shoulder brushed hers and a whisper so faint she had to strain to hear it was at her ear.
“Out of the castle.”
“Where?”
“My guess is the field, the forbidden place.” The memory of the this-world Tamisan supplied explanation. That was where two other spacers had planeted, not to rise again. In fact, the one which had come fifty years ago had never been dismantled; it stood, a corroded mass of metal, to be a double warning: to the stars not to invade and to Ty-Kry to be alert against such invasion.
It seemed to Tamisan that that ride would never come to an end. Then there was an abrupt halt which bumped her soundly against the side of the cart, and lights bedazzled her eyes as the curtains were pulled aside. “Come, Champion and Champion-maker!” Hawarel obeyed first and turned to give her assistance once more, but was elbowed aside as the officer pulled rather than led her into the open. Torches in the hands of spearmen ringed them. Beyond was a colorful mass of people, with a double rank of guards drawn up as a barrier between those and the dark of the land beyond.
“Up there.” Hawarel was beside her again. Tamisan raised eyes. She was almost blinded by the glare as a sudden pillar of fire burst across the night sky. A spacer was riding down on tail rockets to make a fin landing.