Wizards’ Worlds (54 page)

“They are men,” he pulled those black strands to emphasize his words, “they only obeyed
orders. We have a quarrel with their masters, but not with them!”

“They hunted, and now they shall be hunted!”

“I have been hunted, as have you, witch woman. And while I live there shall be no
more such hunts—whether I am hound or quarry.”

“While you live—” her menace was ready.

Suddenly Craike forced out a hoarse croak meant for laughter. “You, yourself, Takya,
have put the arrow to this bow cord!”

He kept one hand tangled in her hair. But with the other he snatched from her belt
the knife she had borrowed from Nickus and not returned. She screamed, beat against
him with her fists, tried to bite. He mastered her roughly, not loosing his grip on
that black silk. And then in sweeps of that well-whetted blade he did what the Black
Hoods had failed in doing, he sawed through those lengths.

“I am leaving you no weapons, Takya. You shall not rule here as you have thought to
do—” The exultation he had known when he had won his first victory against the Black
Hoods was returning a hundredfold. “For a while I shall pull those pretty claws of
yours!” He wondered briefly how long it would take her hair to regrow. At least they
would have a breathing spell before her powers returned.

Then, his arm still prisoning her shoulders, the mass of her hair streaming free from
his left hand, he turned to face the guardsmen.

“Tell them to go,” he thought, “taking their dead with them.”

“You will go, taking these with you,” she repeated aloud, stony calm.

One of the men dropped to his knees by Tousuth’s body, then abased himself before
Craike.

“We are your hounds, Master.”

Craike found his voice at last. “You are no man’s hounds—for you are a man. Get you
gone to Sampur and tell them that the power is no longer to make hind nor hound. If
there are those who wish to share the fate of Tousuth, perhaps when they look upon
him as dead they will think more of it.”

“Lord, do you come also to Sampur to rule?” the other asked timidly.

Craike laughed. “Not until I have established my lordship elsewhere. Get you back
to Sampur and trouble us no more.”

He turned his back on the guardsmen and, drawing the silent Takya, still within the
circle of his arm, with him, started back to the tower. The bowmen remained behind,
and Craike and the girl were alone as they reached the upper level. He paused then
and looked down into her set, expressionless face.

“What shall I do with you?”

“You have shamed me and taken my power from me. What does a warrior do with a female
slave?” She formed a stark mind picture, hurling it at him as she had hurled the stone
on the mesa.

With his left hand he whipped her hair across her face, smarting under that taunt.

“I have taken no slave, nor any woman in that fashion, nor shall I. Go your way, Takya,
and fight me again if you wish when your hair has grown.”

She studied him, and her astonishment was plain. Then she laughed and clutched at
the hair, tearing it free from his grasp, bundling it into the front of her single
garment.

“So be it, Ka-rak. It is war between us. But I am not
departing hence yet a while.” She broke away, and he could hear the scuff of her feet
on the steps as she climbed to her own chamber in the tower.

“They are on their way, Lord, and they will keep to it.” Jorik came up. He stretched.
“It was a battle not altogether to my liking. For the honest giving of blows from
one’s hand is better than all this magic, potent as it is.”

Craike sat down beside the fire. He could not have agreed more heartily with any suggestion.
Now that it was over he felt drained of energy.

“I do not believe they will return,” he wheezed hoarsely, very conscious of his bruised
throat.

Nickus chuckled, and Zackuth barked his own laughter.

“Seeing how you handled the Lady, Lord, they want nothing more than to be out of your
grasp and that as speedily as possible. Nor, when those of Sampur see what they bring
with them, do I think we shall be sought out by others bearing drawn swords. Now,”
Jorik slapped his fat middle, “I could do with meat in my belly. And you, Lord, have
taken such handling as needs good food to counter.”

There was no mention of Takya, nor did any go to summon her when the meat was roasted.
And Craike was content to have it so. He was too tired for any more heroics.

Nickus hummed a soft tune as he rubbed down his unstrung bow before wrapping it away
from the river damp. And Craike was aware that the younger man glanced at him slyly
when he thought the Esper’s attention elsewhere. Jorik, too, appeared highly amused
at some private thoughts, and he had fallen to beating time with one finger to Nickus’
tune. Craike shifted uncomfortably. He was an actor who had forgotten his lines, a
novice required to make a ritual move he did not understand. What they wanted of him
he could not guess, for he was too tired to mind touch. He only wanted sleep, and
that he sought as soon as he painfully swallowed his last bite. But he heard through
semistupor a surprised exclamation from Nickus.

“He goes not to seek her—to take her!”

Jorik’s answer held something of approval in it. “To master such as the Lady Takya
he will need full strength of power and limb. His is the wisest way, not to gulp the
fruits of battle before the dust of the last charge is laid. She is his by shearing,
but she is no meek ewe to come readily under any man’s hand.”

Takya did not appear the next day, nor the next. And Craike made no move to climb
to her. His companions elaborately did not notice her absence as they worked together,
setting in place fallen stones, bringing the tower into a better state of repair,
or killing deer to smoke the meat. For as Jorki pointed out:

“Soon comes the season of cold. We must build us a snug place and have food under
our hands before then.” He broke off and gazed thoughtfully down stream. “This is
also the fair time when countrymen bring their wares to market. There are traders
in Sampur. We could offer our hides, even though they be newly fleshed, for salt and
grain. And a bow—this Kaluf of whom you have spoken, would he not give a good price
for a bow?”

Craike raised an eyebrow. “Sampur? But they have little cause to welcome us in Sampur.”

“You and the Lady Takya, Lord, they might take arms against in fear. But if Zackuth
and I went in the guise of wandering hunters—and Zackuth is of the Children of Noe,
he could trade privately with his kin. We must have supplies, Lord, before the coming
of the cold, and this is too fine a fortress to abandon.”

So it was decided that Jorik and Zackuth were to try their luck with the traders.
Nickus went to hunt, wreaking havoc among the flocks of migrating fowl, and Craike
held the tower alone.

As he turned from seeing them away, he sighted the owl wheel out from the window slit
of the upper chamber, its mournful cry sounding loud. On sudden impulse he went inside
to climb the stair. There had been enough of
her sulking. He sent that thought before him as an order. She did not reply. Craike’s
heart beat faster. Was—had she gone? The rough outer wall, was it possible to climb
down that?

He flung himself up the last few steps and burst into the room. She was standing there,
her shorn head high as if she and not he had been the victor. When he saw her Craike
stopped. Then he moved again, faster than he had climbed those stairs. For in that
moment the customs of this world were clear, he knew what he must do, what he wanted
to do. If this revelation was some spell of Takya’s he did not care.

Later he was aroused by the caress of silk on his body, felt her cool fingers as he
had felt them drawing the poison from his wounds. It was a black belt, and she was
making fast about him, murmuring words softly as she interwove strand with strand
about his waist until there was no beginning nor end to be detected.

“My chain on you, man of power.” Her eyes slanted down at him.

He buried both his hands in the ragged crop of hair from which those threads had been
severed and so held her quiet for his kiss.

“My seal upon you, witch.”

“What Tousuth would have done, you have accomplished for him,” she observed pensively
when he had given her a measure of freedom once again. “Only through you may I now
use my power.”

“Which is perhaps well for this land and those who dwell in it,” he laughed. “We are
now tied to a common destiny, my lady of river towers.”

She sat up running her hands through her hair with some of her old caress.

“It will grow again,” he consoled.

“To no purpose, except to pleasure my vanity. Yes, we are tied together. But you do
not regret it, Ka-rak—”

“Neither do you, witch.” There was no longer any
barrier between their minds, as there was none between their bodies. “What destiny
will you now spin for the two of us?”

“A great one. Tousuth knew my power-to-come. I would now realize it.” Her chin went
up. “And you with me, Ka-rak. By this,” her hand rested lightly on the belt.

“Doubtless you will set us up as rulers over Sampur?” he said lazily.

“Sampur!” she sniffed. “This world is wide—” Her arms went out as if to encircle all
which lay beyond the tower walls.

Craike drew her back to him jealously. “For that there is more than time enough. This
is an hour for something else, even in a warlock’s world.”

Mousetrap

R
EMEMBER
that old adage about the man who built a better mousetrap and then could hardly cope
with the business which beat a state highway to his door? I saw that happen once—on
Mars.

Sam Levatts was politely introduced—for local color—by the tourist guides as a “desert
spider.” “Drunken bum” would have been the more exact term. He prospected over and
through the dry lands out of Terraport and brought in Star Stones, Gormel ore, and
like knickknacks to keep him sodden and mostly content. In his highly scented stupors
he dreamed dreams and saw visions. At least his muttered description of the “lovely
lady” was taken to be a vision, since there are no ladies in the Terraport dives he
frequented and the females met there are far from lovely.

But Sam continued a peaceful dreamer until he met Len Collins and Operation Mousetrap
began.

Every dumb tourist who steps into a scenic sandmobile at Terraport has heard of the
“sand monsters.” Those which still remain intact are now all the property of the tourist
bureaus. And, brother, they’re guarded as if they were a part of that cache of Martian
royal jewels Black
Spragg stumbled on twenty years ago. Because the monsters, which can withstand the
dust storms, the extremes of desert cold and heat, crumble away if so much as a human
fingertip is poked into their ribs.

Nowadays you are allowed to get within about twenty feet of the “Spider Man” or the
“Armed Frog” and that’s all. Try to edge a little closer and you’ll get a shock that’ll
lay you flat on your back with your toes pointing Earthwards.

And, ever since the first monster went drifting off as a puff of dust under someone’s
hands, the museums back home have been adding to the cash award waiting for the fellow
who can cement them for transportation. By the time Len Collins met Sam that award
could be quoted in stellar figures.

Of course, all the bright boys in the glue, spray and plastic business had been taking
a crack at the problem for years. The frustrating answer being that when they stepped
out of the rocket over here, all steamed up about the stickability of their new product,
they had nothing to prove it on. Not one of the known monsters was available for testing
purposes. Every one is insured, guarded, and under the personal protection of the
Space Marines.

But Len Collins had no intention of trying to reach one of these treasures. Instead
he drifted into Sam’s favorite lapping ground and set them up for Levatts—three times
in succession. At the end of half an hour Sam thought he had discovered the buddy
of his heart. And on the fifth round he spilled his wild tale about the lovely lady
who lived in the shelter of two red rocks—far away—a vague wave of the hand suggesting
the general direction.

Len straightway became a lover of beauty panting to behold this supreme treat. And
he stuck to Sam that night closer than a Moonman to his oxy-supply. The next morning
they both disappeared from Terraport in a private sandmobile hired by Len.

Two weeks later Collins slunk into town again and booked passage back to New York.
He clung to the port hotel, never sticking his head out of the door until it was time
to scuttle to the rocket.

Sam showed up in the Flame Bird four nights later. He had a nasty sand burn down his
jaw and he could hardly keep his feet for lack of sleep. He was also—for the first
time in Martian history—cold and deadly sober. And he sat there all evening drinking
nothing stronger than Sparkling Canal Water. Thereby shocking some kindred souls half
out of their wits.