Wizards’ Worlds (41 page)

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
gave them this barrier against the star rovers, Tamisan wondered, and why were they
so adverse to any contact with star civilization? Apparently they were content to
stagnate at a level of civilization perhaps five hundred years behind her world. Did
they not produce any inquiring minds any who desired to do things differently?

The ship was down and 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 nor helms, only short tunics of an unrelieved black. And in the
hands of each was a bow—not the crossbow of the troops, but the yet older hand-bow
of expert archers.

That part of Tamisan which was of this world knew a catch of breath. For those bows
were unlike any other in the land, and those who held them unlike any other archers.
No wonder ordinary men and women gave them wide room. For they were a monstrous lot.
Over the heads of each was fitted so skillfully fashioned a mask that it seemed no
mask at all, rather their natural features, save that the features were not those
of human men, but rather copies of the great heads which surmounted, one for each
point of the compass, the defensive walls of Ty-Kry. Neither human nor animals, but
something of both, and something beyond both.

And the bows they raised were fashioned of treated human bone, strung with cords woven
of human hair. The bones and hair of ancient enemies and ancient heroes, so that the
intermingled strength of both were ready to serve the living now.

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 bubble of the ship. Ingathering—one
part of Tamisan’s mind supplied—a laying on of ancient power to influence those in
the spacer. Though that of her which was a dreamer could not so readily believe in
the efficiency of any such ceremony.

There had been sound with the arrows’ passing, a shrill high whistling which hurt
the ears so that those in that throng put hands to the sides of their heads to shut
out the screech. A wind arose out of nowhere and 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, until a closer look said it was no giant bird but rather a banner so fashioned
that the wind set it flying to counterfeit the action.

The black-clad archers still stood in a line a little out from the ranks of the guards.
And now, though the Over-Queen made no visible sign, those about Hawarel and Tamisan
urged them forward until they came to front both those 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, she 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?”

And 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 an absolutely unchangeable
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. Now he arose to his feet,
swinging that blade as 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 trumpets
and drums.

“The Right be strength to your arm, a shield to your body,” intoned the Over-Queen.
But 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 burnt and blasted ground about its
landing fins arose trails of steam and smoke. Small, red, charring ran in lines away
from that ruin. The faint arcs which had remained in the air from the arrow flights
were gone now.

As Hawarel moved forward, Tamisan followed a pace or two behind. Though if the ship
remained closed to them, with no entrance hatch opened and no ramp run forth, she
did not see how they could carry out their plans. And what 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 spacecrew 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
one, but a smaller door above one of the fins; and 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 that fire. Nor did they lose consciousness—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. But her sight was sharply curtailed to the edge of burning
grass which crept inexorably on toward her. Seeing that, she forgot all else.

Those moments were the worst 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 a shock through her still painful bruises,
she was caught, right side and left, by what felt like giant pinchers. 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 spasm made her sick, spinning in that
brutal clutch, being drawn to the spacer, as if the ship had shot forth a robot’s
arm to pull her in.

She came into a burst of dazzling light. Then hands seized upon 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 the 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. Not that the Over-Queen’s desires 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 their leaving
shatter this dream world? How real was 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 she do? Pound on the door of this cell to demand attention—to speak with
the commander of this ship? Ask then to see all his 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 actually opening! Tamisan was startled by what seemed a quick answer
to her need.

T
HERE
was no helmet on the man who stood there, though he wore a tunic bearing the insignia
of an upperofficer, slightly different from that Tamisan knew from her own Ty-Kry.
He also had a stunner aimed at her, while 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 Glanden
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 lacking-in-ceremony 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 safekeeping. 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?”

“Out there.” She waved to what she thought was the
ship walls. “On the land being claimed.”

“Logical,” he conceded. And 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. And the underlying principle of such training wherever possible was
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, thus find Kas. And once that was done—break-dream!

But, Tamisan told herself now, 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, with 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,
that 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.