CHAPTER 4
They were not too far from the camp, Roane knew. She could leave the Princess here, go for the supplies she needed and return. And she refused to think of all the difficulties which might face her during the performance of that plan. One step at a time was best.
Once they pushed into the raw opening in the cliff wall the rain no longer reached them. And though the opening itself was narrow, it widened out, stretching into the dark as if they had entered a place of considerable space. Lowering the Princess to the floor, Roane unlooped her beamer, turned it to full.
This was no natural cave. She was startled by the evidence the light made plain. It was the anteroom to a tunnel, one that she had enough knowledge of archaeology to know had not been formed by nature. In fact the walls were so smooth that she went to lay a hand on the nearest, finding that her finger tips slipped across it as they might on a sleek metal surface—though it still had the outward look of native stone.
Swiftly she triggered the control on her detect, heard the answering tick which told her she was right in her guess. Not only was this a nonnatural cut into the cliffside, but it bore a reading for ancient remains. By chance she had stumbled on the very site they had been prospecting for! Roane brought up her wrist, ready to try again to relay her news via com. But before she pressed the broadcast pin she remembered.
Bring Uncle Offlas and Sandar here—let them find the Princess—They would never allow any inhabitant of Clio to go free with the news of this discovery. If their cover was so broken, they would not only be under the ban of the Service; they could be planeted for all time wherever the authorities sent them. Uncle Offlas, Sandar, their careers blasted, blacklisted in the only field they knew—Their only alternative would be to silence the girl now sitting hunched on the stone, coughing and rubbing her hands across her flushed face. That silencing would not mean death, as it might have once. (Roane had heard the horror tales of the early days of space expansion.) But it might mean memory blocking, or even transportation off world into a limbo for Ludorica. Either way the innocent would suffer. All Roane could do was buy time and hope for some miracle to occur. Her head ached with her inability to see her way clear. She did not know what there was about the Princess that so enchained her sympathies. Perhaps she was being affected by a faint shadow of the original conditioning which had repatterned the settlers here when this unhappy test world had first been conceived.
As she stood there, caught in the net of the dilemma, a hand gripped her wrist, tightening above the com which she must use if she were to be true to her people and her training.
“What is this place? It is no cave!”
She had believed the Princess too sunk in exhaustion to be fully aware of her surroundings. But Ludorica was now on her feet, staring into Roane’s face, not accusingly, but as if she could not wholly believe she saw what her eyes reported.
“You have done it!” The Princess swayed as if it were hard to stand on her bruised feet. “You have brought us to Och’s Hide! The Crown—give me back the Crown!”
“Please, I do not know what you are talking about—what crown? And Och’s Hide—” Roane protested. Was it possible that a Forerunner find had already been made in Reveny, that they were too late? But the Service snoopers had picked up not the slightest hint of any such happening, one which would have caused stir enough to leave a deep imprint on public memory.
For a long moment the Princess stared into the eyes of the off-world girl, as if by the very force of her will she would get the truth from Roane, past any ambiguous or false answer. But whether she might have decided that her companion was lying Roane was not to know, for there was a dull roar from the mouth of the opening.
Roane whirled, the Princess clutching at her for support. Recklessly she turned the beamer on the opening to the outer world. But that door was no longer there. Instead the harsh glare of the beam showed a curtain of rocks and earth, with bits of splintered bough and torn leaf caught in it.
Crying out, Roane pushed aside the Princess, ran to tear at the fall which had corked the entrance. She was able to scrape out some of the rain-slicked clay, pull at the branches in it. But underneath was a boulder she could not move. Though perhaps she could use the power of her tool to undercut it.
“Are—are we trapped?”
Roane had gone to her knees, was holding the beamer steady on the boulder. In one way her own problem was solved. For both their lives now depended upon help from outside—from the camp. Only the men there had the equipment to handle this easily.
“Yes. I do not have power enough to undercut this. I shall have to call for help.” Should she warn the Princess of the results of that? Or continue to wait, always hoping that something might happen to make a hard choice easier?
“This could be Och’s Hide. If we must wait for help, need we remain crouching here? For if it is the Hide and I can find the Crown—” She drew a deep breath. “For me, for Reveny, this could be the greatest day in a hundred years!”
“What crown do you seek?” Roane thought of the many forms that Forerunner discoveries had taken in the past. There had been a few times when such had consisted of objects which could come under the age-old designation of treasure—gems, weird art forms of precious metal, and the like. Though what were more important by far, and what they had come to seek here, were machines, records, and the clue to such a find had been enough to make them risk search on Clio.
“Our crown—the Ice Crown of Reveny.” The Princess answered almost absently. She no longer watched Roane but gazed into the shadowed passage. Then she did turn, and her face was stricken with a shadow of fear and her hands went to her mouth, covering her lips. When she spoke again it was in a very low and shaken voice.
“That is a great secret, Roane Hume, one that only two people know—my grandfather the King, and I. And I have sworn by that which is most sacred to our people not to speak of it. Now I am forsworn.”
“But I am not of Reveny, and I shall swear as you wish to say nothing.” Roane, made uncomfortable by the bleak look on the other’s face, was quick to answer.
“If this is Och’s Hide, then the harm is small, covered and forgotten in a greater good. But I must know! Come, use your light and let us look—”
If they stumbled on Forerunner remains and the Princess saw them—But what did that matter now? Roane had to do what she should have done long ago.
“Let me first call for help to free us.” She fingered the com, moving its button in the camp call. Waited—and saw the answering code flash on the dial, demanding—But she interrupted with her own terse signal, of where she was and what she might have stumbled upon. Though she made no mention of the Princess.
The answering flash was a jubilant series of dashes, promising all speed. She had forethought enough to add then a warning of people in the forest, thinking of the searchers which might be combing there.
She half expected some question from Ludorica, but the Princess said nothing, only turned the beamer on the passage.
“Can you not tell me more of what you seek?” Roane asked as they started on.
“Knowing a part, there is no reason now for you not to hear it all. The Ice Crown is the crown of Reveny, given by the Guardians at the far beginning. Just as the Flame Crown is for the rulers of Leichstan, the Gold Circlet worn in Thrisk—but surely all this is known to you. My grandfather, King Niklas, came to the throne while he was yet a boy and his stepmother-under-second-rights, Queen Olava, was regent in his name—though she was no true kin, not even of the Blood Royal, having been taken in a marriage on the left hand by my great-grandfather when he was well into his dotage. She was of the line of Jarrfar. They once held this hill country and tried twice to make a kingdom of their own. However, having no crown power from the Guardians, they of course failed.
“But it was in their blood to rule and they did not lose that desire, even when their lands dwindled and they held only a stead keep and two villages. Olava had great beauty, and it became the plan of her people that they might achieve by an ambitious marriage what they had not been able to do by force of arms. So they gathered their resources and brought her to court, humbly presenting her as a handmaiden.
“The King had long been a widower. Oh, he had had his ladies during those years, but they were only passing fancies, and he chose shrewdly such as would be easily satisfied with small favors and not beg for greater. But though Olava seemed of a like sort in the beginning, she was not! And—well, it is said she had had occasion, before she came to court, to visit a certain wise woman who dabbled in things better left alone. But then such is always whispered of a woman who rises rapidly in the favor of a high-born man. As time passed she became first a wife of the left hand and minor law, and then the Queen—though she was not allowed to touch the Crown lawfully, for all her pleading and intrigues. My great-grandfather might be besotted with her, but he was royal born, and it is very true (though some today think this is also a legend) that the crowns choose who will wear them. And once they have so chosen, that king or queen cannot surrender them during his lifetime. It is a protection the Guardians set upon them. Though sometimes it has led to death for the proposed wearer, he being killed that another might present himself to the crown.
“So Olava had to bide her time until death reached for the King, hoping that before his son might confront the Crown for its choosing, her own candidate might take it. And he was her son—though the King would never let him drink from the kin-cup and thus acknowledge him as a true blood son before the Court, since he was not fully of the Blood.
“When the King died, they went to fetch the Ice Crown for the choosing. Though Olava tried to prevent my grandfather from standing before it, the choosing went as it has always done and he was proclaimed king. However, he was but a child and there were great lords enough favoring Olava to say that the old King had named her regent with them as a council to advise her.
“A common enough tale, one which has been told before. But what had not happened before is that when my grandfather came of an age to put on the Crown and thus assume all power, the Crown, brought from safekeeping for the ceremony, disappeared immediately thereafter before it could be returned.
“For Olava dared what never had been dared before. She took the Crown, meaning thus to defeat my grandfather. And the power of the Crown blasted her as it always does those handling it unlawfully. But before she died, my grandfather finding her privately, she laughed and said that it had gone to Och’s Hide and that only chance might now find it. Her clan, she said, would guard the way to it, and only when it accepted one of them would it appear again.
“Since then there has been this hidden darkness in Reveny. We dared not let any know of the loss. And since it has not yet been needed to hail a new king, the secret has been kept. My father died during a hunt in these very hills, but what he sought was no animal of the chase, but Och’s Hide. Two of my uncles also died young. The third disappeared. And now—King Niklas is very old, and it has fallen on me to take up the search. For if I cannot stand before Reveny with the Ice Crown when death claims him—then our line comes to an end. And Reveny itself will be overrun by Leichstan or Vordain, where true wearers of crowns rule. A land without a crown is a land without name or being. So the Guardians decreed in the far beginning.”
“Has it ever happened that a country did lose its crown?” asked Roane.
The Princess shivered, but with more than just the chill of the passage through which they walked now.
“Once, in Arothner. The crown—it was the Shell Crown, for Arothner was of the sea—was destroyed in a tidal wave. And what followed was horrible. The people—a madness fell upon them. They turned upon their own lords, upon each other, so that all the nations on their boundaries set up armies to keep them in their own torn land. And thereafter it has been accursed and no one goes there for fear the same mind-blasting force might strike them. What was once a great nation with many ships, and the trading city of Arth as its capital, is now only barren waste, and if any still live there, they are no longer men—
“At least the Ice Crown has not been destroyed, for then the same fate would have fallen on Reveny. And to that hope we hold. But it must be found!”
“It would seem that there are those who also know the secret and do not want this crown discovered—if your father and the others died and this has happened to you.”
“Yes.” The Princess’s lips tightened. “I guess and think I guess rightly, though I have no proof, that it is Reddick’s doing. Though I never thought he would go so far as to have me taken out of Hitherhow when it was well known I was within those walls. There must be some desperate need to bring him so into open action. It may be this passage he would protect. Roane, does it seem warmer here to you?”
Ludorica slowed, put out her hand as if to touch the wall, but did not quite complete that gesture.
She was right! The chill which had closed about them in the fore part of the passage was gone. This was like walking under a gentle sun, just comfortingly warm. Roane touched the wall. There was warmth there, more so than in the air about them. And also something else, a faint vibration.
Excitement surged in her. A Forerunner installation still alive? It had happened on other worlds—Limbo, Arzor. If that were possible then this would be one of the big finds, and anything—even breaking cover on a closed planet—would be forgiven the discoverers! This could be the answer to her problem.
“What is it?” Ludorica, watching her closely, must have read the elation on her face.
“I do not know—not yet—” Roane returned quickly and then asked: “Who is Reddick, and why would he want to hold the Crown?”
“Though the King would not claim Olava’s son, he ennobled the boy and gave him command of Hitherhow in his lifetime, a right which must be renewed in each generation. Reddick is his grandson. But so might he have the secret of Och’s Hide. If I can only find the Crown, Duke Reddick has no chance. Then he cannot lay hand to it before the King’s death, or as long as I live—”
“As long as you live,” Roane echoed her meaningfully.
“You mean—but of course! That is why—he had a double purpose.” The Princess nodded. “Stop me from searching, or else make sure if I did chance upon it—Which also means—” Her face now mirrored not only determination and cold anger but also fear.
“Roane, I have not seen King Niklas for five days. It was he who told me I must make haste to find the Crown, gave into my hands all he had denied me for years, the clues he had tried to sift and follow, all that my father and uncles had when they went seeking. Perhaps he is more ill than he would have me know, or else has since grown worse. And Reddick knows this. If the King were himself, the Duke would never have dared to have me stolen from Hitherhow.”
“Do you not have someone to depend on?”
“None sharing the Crown secret. But if I can now find that and reach Yatton or the border, I can cross over into Leichstan with the Crown and gain a breathing space in which to rally the loyal lords. My mother was a princess of Leichstan, though she died at my birthing and he who sits the throne there is but a distant cousin. Yet I can claim blood kin, and all must aid one who wears a crown!”
She flicked the beamer ahead. “Come! If it lies here—do you not see? I must have it, and soon!” Now she began to run.
But the beam had picked up something else, a change in the wall to their right. Roane pressed to that side and then halted at a slab of transparent material. Inside—an installation! It could be nothing else. Rows of machines with here and there a flashing point of colored light. She pressed her face to the glass, trying to see more of what lay there. But the light was too intermittent—she had only glimpses as one flash was echoed by another. Green, blue, red, orange, a multitude of colors and combinations. Yet those did not reflect into the passage where she stood.
“Come on!” The Princess was ahead, paying no attention to what held Roane fascinated. “Why do you stop?”
“The lights—this must be an installation. But what—”
Ludorica came back reluctantly. “What lights?” she demanded, flashing the beamer directly onto the panel, thus revealing two machines of pillar shape inside, spinning off flecks of color.
“What lights?” The Princess pulled at Roane’s arm. “Why do you stand staring at bare wall and talking of lights? Are you mind-twisted?” She dropped her hold, drew back a little.
“What do you see there, then?” Roane asked.
“Wall—just as there, and there, and there—” With a stabbing finger the Princess pointed ahead, to the side, behind them. “Nothing but wall.”
Roane was shaken. But she did see a strange installation behind a transparent panel! She could not be mistaken or imagine that! There could be only one reason why the Princess did not see it too—conditioning!
And such conditioning could mean something else. Roane’s thoughts took a leap into dark surmise. Perhaps what they had uncovered was not Forerunner remains, but rather something left by the Psychocrats who had decreed Clio’s fate. While such a find might not have as much impact as the discovery of a genuine Forerunner installation, it could be important in another way. The Service knew little of the techniques of conditioning on the various closed worlds. To discover part of such an experiment might excite those in fields beyond that which Uncle Offlas represented. So she might have a bargaining point after all, some claim for consideration for the Princess.
“It is just bare wall!” Ludorica proclaimed again, still backing away from Roane, now eyeing the off-worlder as if she expected some dangerous outburst.
“A trick of the light.” Roane thought that a feeble answer, but she knew that if the Princess was conditioned she would resist even the thought of what might lie there.
“Trick of the light?” repeated the Princess doubtfully. “Oh, perhaps Olava set her own safeguards against seekers. I have heard of such tricks but they only work with some people.” She now regarded Roane pityingly and put out her hand. “Let me guide you past. I cannot be so bemused, you know. None of the Blood Royal can be caught in a foreset mind-maze.”
Ironic, Roane thought with wry amusement, a case of the blind leading the sighted. But if the Princess was willing to accept that explanation, she should be thankful. She did not look again at the panel.
Shortly thereafter the nature of the passage changed. The wider, smoothed walls gave way abruptly to a narrower way with rough rock on either side—as if those who had cut this path had used a natural break in the cliff for their purposes and this was the original cave unmarked by their improvements.
As the beamer caught the narrowing of those rough walls the Princess slackened pace, looked puzzled.
“Why should it change so?” she asked, more as if she questioned in her own mind than expected an answer from her companion.
“Do you still think this is Och’s Hide?”
“What else could it be? There would be no other reason to cut a passage through rock. Yet—”
“Wait!” Roane lifted her free hand, held it before that crevice. “There is air—a current of it. Maybe there is another way out ahead.”
They found the narrow passage a rough one. Twice walls closed in, so that they had to scrape through, and Roane had no idea how far they might be from the entrance. What if those from camp cleared the blockage there and did not find her? But at least they would have her report and so go exploring. Of course, the men might run into difficulties raised by some hunting the Princess and thus be delayed.
As they emerged into a wider space Roane spoke: “I do not know about you, but I am hungry.”
“Do not speak of food!” retorted Ludorica. “When one has nothing, it is better not to dwell on that lack. Let us get out of here—”
“But I have provisions of a sort,” Roane countered. There was no use in trying to conceal such things as tubes of E-ration when so much else in the way of cover had been broken, and she was painfully hungry.
“Where? You carry no provision bag—” The Princess once more turned the beamer on Roane, who had already unsealed her coverall and brought out one of the tubes. There were only two left, and with their rescue still uncertain, it was better that they now divide one between them.
The Princess stared at the tube. “You carry food so? But there is not enough in that to make even a quarter of a meal if you hunger as I do.”
“This is a special kind of food, made for travelers,” Roane explained. “A small portion, say half of this tube, is equal to a full meal. It does not taste as the real food you know, that is true. But it is as good for the body, and it will give us strength. If you hesitate, I shall eat first.” She measured off half the length of the tube, squeezed the contents bit by bit into her mouth without touching the edge to her lips.
Her companion watched her with deep interest. And when Roane had done and passed her the tube, Ludorica put it to her mouth in turn. She made a slight face as she tasted the paste, swallowed.
“It has little flavor, as you warned. Truly I do not think I would relish many meals taken so. But when one hungers there need be little choice of dish; any food will do.” She finished the tube quickly and gave it, empty, back to Roane.
From long training the off-worlder wadded it into a ball, which she hid under a loose stone. The Princess hand, the Princess turning it about in her own fingers. Its light, reflected from the roof over their heads, showed them that the space in which they now stood was a true cave.
But it showed something else, too. Roane gave a start as she caught sight of it, snatching up the beamer to turn it full upon what lay there. That had been a man once. But she had seen ancient burials enough not to be squeamish. These bones lay half buried under a fall of rock which concealed the skeleton above the waist.
She heard an exclamation from the Princess as the light caught a spark of fire to one side of the crushed bones. Roane stooped to pick up a band of metal in which were set small gem stones. It was a fine piece of work, the stones making small flowers among raised leaves of the metal.
A moment later the circlet was snatched from her hand, the Princess turning it about in her own fingers.
“The arm ring of Olava! This is Och’s Hide! And the Crown—the Crown!” She turned around, searching the walls of the cave as Roane swept the beamer. But the side wall opening which had once existed where the skeleton lay crushed was filled in past their exploration. There was now no opening at all that Roane could see.