V
By the light of those flames, the whole plain was illumined. Beyond stood the hulk of the unfortunate spacer which had last planeted. There, drawn up in lines was a large force of spearmen, crossbowmen, officers with the basket-hilted weapons at their sides. However, as they waited they appeared a guard of honor for the Over-queen, who sat raised above the rest on a very tall chair cart, certainly not an army in battle array.
Those in the ship might well look contemptuously on such archaic weapons as useless. How had those of Ty-Kry taken the other ship and her crew? Was it by wiles and treachery, as the victims might declare, or by clever tricks, as suggested that part of Tamisan who was the Mouth of Olava.
The surface of the ground boiled away under the descent rockets. Then the bright fires vanished, leaving the plain in semidarkness until their eyes adjusted to the lesser light of the torches.
There was no expression of awe by the waiting crowd. Though they might be, by their trappings, dress and arms, accounted centuries behind the technical knowledge of the newcomers, they were braced by their history to know that they were not to face gods of unknown powers, but mortals with whom they had successfully fought before. What gives them this attitude toward the star rovers, Tamisan wondered, and why are they so adverse to any contact with star civilization? Apparently they are content to stagnate at a level of civilization perhaps five hundred years behind my world. Do they not produce any inquiring minds, any who desire to do things differently?
The ship was down; it gave no outward sign of life, though Tamisan knew its scanners must be busy feeding back what information they gathered to appear on video screens. If those had picked up the derelict ship, the newcomers would have so much of a warning. She glanced from the silent bulk of the newly landed spacer to the Over-queen just in time to see the ruler raise her hand in a gesture. Four men came forward from the ranks of nobles and guards. Unlike the latter they wore no body armor, or helmets, but only short tunics of an unrelieved black. In the hands of each was a bow, not the crossbow of the troops, but the yet older bow of expert archers.
That part of Tamisan which was of this world drew a catch of breath, for those bows were unlike any other in the land and those who held them unlike any other archers. It was no wonder ordinary men and women gave them wide room, for they were a monstrous lot. Over the head of each was fitted so skillfully fashioned a mask that it seemed no mask at all, but his natural features, save that the features were not human; the masks were copies of the great heads, one for each point of the compass, which surmounted the defensive walls of Ty-Kry. Neither human nor animal, they were something of both and something beyond both.
The bows they raised were fashioned of human bone and strung with cords woven of human hair. They were the bones and hair of ancient enemies and ancient heroes; the intermingled strength of both were ready to serve the living.
From closed quivers each took a single arrow, and in the torchlight those arrows glittered, seeming to draw and condense radiance until they were shafts of solid light. Fitted to the cords they had a hypnotic effect, holding one’s attention to the exclusion of all else. Tamisan was suddenly aware of that and tried to break the attraction, but at that moment the arrows were fired. And her head turned with all the rest in that company to watch the flight of what seemed to be lines of fire across the dark sky, rising up and up until they were well above the dark ship, then following a curve, to plunge out of sight behind it.
Oddly enough, in their passing they had left great arcs of light behind, which did not fade at once, but cast faint gleams on the skin of the ship. It was ingathering one part of Tamisan’s mind knew. A laying on of ancient power to influence those in the spacer. That of her which was a dreamer could not readily believe in the efficacy of any such ceremony.
There had been sound with those arrows’ passing, a shrill, high whistling which hurt the ears so that those in the throng put hands to the sides of their heads to shut out the screech. A wind arose out of nowhere, with it a loud crackling. Tamisan looked up to see above the Over-queen’s head a large bird flapping wings of gold and blue. A closer look revealed it was no giant bird, but rather a banner so fashioned that the wind set it flying to counterfeit live action.
The black-clad archers still stood in a line a little out from the ranks of the guards. Now, though the Over-queen made no visible sign, those about Hawarel and Tamisan urged them forward until they came to front both the archers and the Over-queen’s tall throne-cart.
“Well, Champion, is it in your mind to carry out the duties this busy Mouth has assigned you?” There was jeering in the Over-queen’s question, as if she did not honestly believe in Tamisan’s prophecy but was willing to allow a dupe to march to destruction in his own way.
Hawarel went to one knee, but as he did so he swung his empty sword sheath across his knee, making very visible the fact that he lacked a weapon.
“At your desire, Great One, I stand ready. But is it your will that my battle be without even steel between me and the enemy?”
Tamisan saw a smile on the lips of the Over-queen and at that moment glimpsed a little into this ruler, that it might just please her to will such a fate on Hawarel. But if the Over-queen played with that thought for an instant or two, she put it aside. Now she gestured.
“Give him steel, and let him use it. The Mouth has said he is the answer to our defense this time. Is that not so, Mouth?”
The look she gave to Tamisan had a cruel core.
“He has been chosen in the farseeing, and twice has it read so.” Tamisan found the words to answer in a firm voice, as if what she said was a decree.
The Over-queen laughed. “Be firm, Mouth; put your will behind this choice of yours. In fact, do you go with him, to give him the support of Olava!”
Hawarel had accepted a sword from the officer on his left. He rose to his feet and, swinging the blade, he saluted with a flourish which suggested that, if he knew he were going to extinction, he intended to march there as one who moved to trumpet and drums.
“The right be strength to your arm, a shield to your body,” intoned the Over-queen. There was that in her voice which one might detect to mean that the words she spoke were only ritual, not intended to encourage this champion.
Hawarel turned to face the silent ship. From the burned and blasted ground about its landing fins arose trails of steam and smoke. The faint arcs left in the air from the arrow flights were gone.
As Hawarel moved forward, Tamisan followed a pace or two behind. If the ship remained closed to them, if no hatch opened, no ramp ran forth, she did not see how they could carry out their plans. If that were so, would the Over-queen expect them to wait hour after hour for some decision from the spacer’s commander as to whether or not he would contact them?
Fortunately, the space crew were more enterprising. Perhaps the sight of that hulk on the edge of the field had given them the need to learn more. The hatch which opened was not the large entrance hatch, but a smaller door above one of the fins. From it shot a stunner beam.
Luckily it caught its prey, both Hawarel and Tamisan, before they had reached the edge of the sullenly burning turf, so that their suddenly helpless bodies did not fall into the fire. They did not lose consciousness, but only the ability to control slack muscles.
Tamisan had crumpled face down, and only the fact that one cheek pressed the earth gave her room to breathe. Her sight was sharply curtailed at the edge of burning grass which crept inexorably toward her. Seeing that she forgot all else.
These moments were the worse she had ever spent. She had conjured up narrow escapes in dreams, but always there had been the knowledge that at the last moment escape was possible. Now there was no escape, only her helpless body and the line of advancing fire.
With the suddenness of a blow, delivering shock through her still painful bruises, she was caught, right side and left, in what felt like giant pincers. As those closed about her body, she was drawn aloft, still face down, the fumes and heat of the burning vegetation choking her. She coughed until the spasms made her sick, spinning in that brutal clutch, being drawn to the spacer.
She came into a burst of dazzling light. Then hands seized her, pulling her down, but holding her upright The force of the stunner was wearing off; they must have set the beam on lowest power. There was a prickle of feeling returning in her legs and her heavy arms. She was able to lift her head a fraction to see men in space uniforms about her. They wore helmets as if expecting to issue out on a hostile world, and some of them had the visors closed. Two picked her up easily and carried her along, down a corridor, before dropping her without any gentleness in a small cabin with a suspicious likeness to a cell.
Tamisan lay on the floor recovering command of her own body and trying to think ahead. Had they taken Hawarel, too? There was no reason to believe they had not, but he had not been put in this cell. She was able to sit up now, her back supported by the wall, and she smiled shakily at her thought that their brave boast of a championship battle had certainly been brought quickly to naught. It was not that what the Over-queen desired might have run far counter to what happened, but she and Starrex had gained this much of their own objective: they were in the ship she believed also held Kas. Only let the three of them make contact, and they could leave the dream. And, would our leaving shatter this dream world? How real is it? She was sure of nothing, and there was no reason to worry over side issues. The time had come to concentrate upon one thing only: Kas.
What should I do? Pound on the door of this cell to demand attention, to speak with the commander of this ship? Would she ask to see all the crew so she could pick out Kas in his this-world masquerade? She had a suspicion that while Hawarel-Starrex had accepted her story, no one else might.
The important thing was some kind of action to get her free and let her search.
The door was opening. Tamisan was startled by what seemed a quick answer to her need.
There was no helmet on the man who stood there, though he wore a tunic bearing the insignia of a higher officer, slightly different from that Tamisan knew from her own Ty-Kry. He also had a stunner aimed at her; at his throat was the box of a vocal interpreter.
“I come in peace.”
“With a weapon in hand?” she countered.
He looked surprised; he must have expected a foreign tongue in answer, but she had replied in the Basic which was the second language of all Confederacy planets.
“We have reason to believe that weapons are necessary with your people. I am Glandon Tork of Survey.”
“I am Tamisan and a Mouth of Olava.” Her hand went to her head and discovered that somehow, in spite of her passage through the air and her entrance into the ship, her crown was still there. Then she pressed the important question:
“Where is the champion?”
“Your companion?” The stunner was no longer centered on her, and his tone had lost some of its belligerency. “He is in safe keeping. But why do you name him champion?”
“Because that is what he is—come to engage your selected champion in right battle.”
“I see. And we select a champion in return, is that it? What is right battle?”
She answered his last question first. “If you claim land, you meet the champion of the lordship of that land in right battle.”
“But we claim no land,” he protested.
“You made claim when you set your fiery ship down on the fields of Ty-Kry.”
“Your people then consider our landing a form of invasion? But this can be decided by a single combat between champions? And we pick our man . . .”
Tamisan interrupted him. “Not so. The Mouth of Olava selects; or rather the sand selects, the seeing selects. That is why I have come, though you did not greet me in honor.”
“You select the champion how?”
“As I have said, by the seeing.”
“I do not see, but doubtless it will be made plain in the proper time. And where then is this combat fought?”
She waved to what she thought were the ship walls. “Out there on the land being claimed.”
“Logical,” he conceded. Then he spoke as if to the air around them. “All that recorded?” Since the air did not answer him, he was apparently satisfied by silence.
“This is your custom, Lady, Mouth of Olava. But since it is not ours, we must discuss it. By your leave, we shall do so.”
“As you wish.” She had this much on her side, he had introduced himself as a member of Survey, which meant that he had been trained in the necessity of understanding alien folkways. The simple underlying principle of such training was, wherever possible, to follow planet customs. If the crew did accept this idea of championship, then they might also be willing to follow it completely. She could demand to see every member of the crew and thus find Kas. Once that was done she could break dream.
But, Tamisan told herself, do not count on too easy an end to this venture. There was a nagging little doubt lurking in the back of her mind, and it had something to do with those death arrows, and the hulk of the derelict. The people of Ty-Kry, seemingly so weakly defended, had managed through centuries to keep their world free of spacers. When she tried to plumb the Tamisan-of-this-world’s memories as to how that was accomplished she had no answer but what corresponded to magic forces only partly understood. That the shooting of the arrows was the first step in bringing such forces into being she was aware. Beyond that seemed only to lie a belief akin to her Mouth power, and that she did not understand even when she employed it.
She was accepting all of this, Tamisan realized suddenly, as if this world did exist, as if it was not a dream out of her control. Could Starrex’s suggestion be the truth, that they had by some means traveled into an alternate world?
Her patience was growing short; she wanted action. Waiting was very difficult. She was sure that scanners of more than one kind were trained on her and she must play the part of a Mouth of Olava, displaying no impatience, only calm confidence in herself and her mission. That she held to as best she could.
Perhaps the time she waited seemed longer than it really was, but Tork returned, to usher her out of the cell and escort her up a ladder from level to level. She found the long skirts of her robe difficult to manage. The cabin they came into was large and well furnished, and there were several men seated there. Tamisan looked from one to another searchingly. She could not tell; she felt none of the uneasiness she had known in the throne room when Hawarel had been there. Of course, that could mean Kas was not one of this group, though a Survey ship did not carry a large crew, mainly specialists of several different callings. There were probably ten, perhaps twenty more than the six before her.
Tork led her to a chair which had some of the attributes of an easirest, molding to her comfort as she settled into it.
“This is Captain Lowald, Medico Thrum, Psycho-Tech Sims and Hist-Techneer El Hamdi.” Tork named names and each man acknowledged with a half bow. “I have outlined your proposal to them and they have discussed the matter. By what means will you select a champion from among us?”
She had no sand; for the first time Tamisan realized the handicap. She would have to depend upon touch alone, but somehow she was sure that would reveal Kas to her.
“Let your men come to me, touching hand to mine.” She raised hers to lay it, palm up, on the table. “When I clasp that of he whom Olava selects, I shall know it.”
“It seems simple enough,” the Captain returned. “Let us do as the lady suggests.” And he leaned forward to rest his own for a minute on hers. There was no response, nor was there any in the others. The Captain called an order on the intercom and one by one the other members of the crew came to her, touching palm to palm. Tamisan, with mounting uneasiness, began to believe she had erred; perhaps only by the sand could she detect Kas. Though she searched the face of each as he took his seat opposite her and laid his hand on hers, she could see no resemblance to Starrex’s cousin, nor was there any inner warning her man was here.
“That was the last,” the Captain said as the final man arose. “Which is our champion?”
“He is not here.” She blurted out the truth, her distress breaking through her caution.
“But you have touched hands with every man on board this ship,” the Captain answered her. “Or is this some trick?” He was interrupted by a sound sharp enough to startle. The numbers which spilled from the com by his elbow meant nothing to Tamisan, but brought the rest in that cabin into instant action. A stunner in Tork’s hand caught her before she could rise, and once more she was conscious but unable to move. As the other officers pushed through the door on the run, Tork put out his hand, holding her limp body erect in the chair, while with the other he thumped some alarm button set into the table.
His summons was speedily answered by two crewmen who carried her along, to thrust her once more into a cabin. This is getting to be far too regular a procedure, Tamisan thought ruefully, as they tossed her negligently on a bunk, hardly pausing to see if she landed safely on its surface or not. Whatever that alert had meant it had certainly once more brought her to the status of prisoner. Apparently sure of the stunner beam her guard went out, leaving the door open a crack so that she could hear the pad of running feet and the clangs of what could be secondary alarms.
What possible attack could the forces of the Over-queen have launched against a well-armed and already alert spacer? Yet it was plain that those men believed themselves in danger and were on the defensive. Starrex and Kas. Where is Kas? The Captain said she had met all on board. Did that mean that the vision she had earlier seen was false, that the faceless man in spacer dress was a creature of her too-active imagination?
I must not lose confidence. Kas is here, he has to be! She lay now trying vainly to guess by the sounds what was happening. But the first flurry of noise and movement were stilled, there was only silence. Hawarel, where is Hawarel?
The stunner’s power was wearing off. She had pulled herself up somewhat groggily when the door of the cabin shot into its wall crack and Tork and the Captain stood there.
“Mouth of Olava, or whatever you truly are,” the Captain said, with a chill in his voice which reminded Tamisan of Hawarel’s earlier rage, “the winning of time may not have been of your devising, this nonsense of champions and right battle, or perhaps it was. Your superiors perhaps deceived you, too. At any rate now it does not matter. They have done their, best to make us prisoners and will not reply now to our signals for a parley; so we must use you for our messenger. Tell your ruler that we hold her champion and we can readily use him as a key to open gates shut in our faces. We have weapons beyond swords and spears, even beyond those which might not have saved those in that other ship. She can tie us here for a measure of time, but we can sever such bonds. We have not come as invaders, no matter what you believe, nor are we alone. If our signal does not reach our sister ship in orbit above, there will be such an accounting as your race has not seen, nor can conceive of. We shall release you now and you shall tell your Queen this. If she does not send those to talk with us before the dawn, then it will be the worse for her. Do you understand?”
“And Hawarel?” Tamisan asked.
“Hawarel?”
“The champion. You will keep him here?”
“As I have said, we have the means to make him a key for your fortress doors. Tell her that, Mouth. From what we have read in your champion’s mind, you have certain authority here which ought to impress your Queen.”
Read from Starrex’s mind? What do they mean? Tamisan was suddenly fearful. Some kind of mind probe? But if they did that, then they must know the rest. She was utterly confused now, and found it very hard to center her attention on the matter at hand, that she must relay this defiant message to the Over-queen. Since there seemed to be nothing she could do to protest that action, she would do so. What reception might I have in Ty-Kry? Tamisan shuddered as Tork pulled her from the bunk and half carried, half led her along.