Knave of Dreams

by Andre Norton

  Melvas gave a short, approving bark of half laughter. “Well argued, comrade. You have put forth thus a good reason for preventing any reinforcements to reach Thantant. But”—he arose suddenly—“we forget now that those whom we have sworn aid-bond may come rising in answer to our message, and go down in turn before that hellfire!”

  “So what do you propose to do?” Sydow asked gruffly. “We know nothing of the way inland, we have not a second message bird. And night is coming—”

  Melvas dropped a hand on the other’s shoulder, gripped it tight.

  “Remember the Isle of Kerge and what we did there?”

  Rahman arose also, turned his head slowly, surveying those heights down which they had recently come.

  “Were it between Company and Company,” he said, “it might be done. But these halftime soldiers of Olyroun, what do they know of such matters? They would see a fire, that is all—”

  “You forget they have already been warned of an attack.” Melvas pushed the matter. “Also I do not speak of just any fire. I would have one laid out in the Fate symbol.”

  “The Fate symbol—” Rahman repeated. “Yes—a powerful warning. But do you think that those who have mauled us nearly to extinction will not be expecting some such move?” He shook his head.

  “Not altogether.” Melvas’s eyes were fiercely alight. “We are on the opposite side of the sea cliff, remember. If we are able to find up there a spot whence the light can only be seen in this direction— then we are able to hope. Also there is a trick a man can use— Give me, each of you, what you can tear from your tunics and I will show you!”

  Using their swords to hack at the stout cloth, they tore free strips, which Melvas began typing together until he had a clumsy knotted rope. Under a late-afternoon sun already dipping to the west, he strode back and forth among the trees and bushes of their hiding place until he found a stand of thick canes, brown and shiny, with leaves growing at sparse intervals from the knots along the surfaces. These he hacked through with his sword and cut them into pieces about the length of his forearm.

  When he returned with his load, Sydom looked surprised. “Gasserwood—I had forgotten!”

  Melvas laughed. “I thought I saw it earlier. Yes, here we have that which will help.” He dropped cross-legged on the ground and began to tie the pieces of cane together to form a crude latticework.

  Meanwhile they ate sparingly of the rations they carried in their belt pouches. Dedan still slept heavily. At least he no longer moaned with every breath. His own burns, Ramsay realized, did not hurt enough to make him conscious of them. Whatever remedy Melvas had applied appeared to have an element of magic in it as far as the ease of pain was concerned.

  Melvas had produced a firm lattice. Now, into that, he began to weave the cloth strip they had earlier knotted together, not to fill all the spaces of the cane work, but rather in a circle first and then two lines which crossed that, dividing it into quarters. When he had finished, he faced the frame around for their approval.

  Now with the sun gone, twilight was well upon them. But Melvas did not hurry. He opened a small flask taken from an inner pocket of his much shortened tunic. From that he dribbled, using extreme care, a dark liquid, spreading it back and forth across the cloth he had woven so carefully into place. When the last drop had been used, he rubbed fingertips gently along the lines he had soaked with the liquid.

  “For once”—Arjun spoke up—“I am willing to admit that your taste in seasonings is worth much, comrade. I never thought I would see the day, or evening, when I might say that—having had to endure watching you spread that slime over your ration bread for years!”

  Ramsay sniffed a rather sickening fishly smell spreading from Melvas’s work. The latter laughed.

  “Comrade, I am from Pyraprad. There we eat sea’s fodder like men. The Oil of Shark is a fighting man’s seasoning, as I have so often told you.

  “Now—” He stood up, holding the frame of oiled cloth a little away from him. “Here we have Fate, and we had better get it in place before night is utterly upon us.”

  Ramsay pulled off his boots, as he had done before when he made the attack on the sentry. He got to his feet to join Melvas.

  “Where do we plant it?” he asked.

  The last thing he wanted to do was reclimb that slope down which they had had such a hard time making their way earlier. He moved stiffly, all the bruises he had taken when the vibrators had blown giving him notice of their existence. However, he was, he was sure, in better shape, in spite of them, than any of the squad except Melvas.

  For a moment it appeared that Melvas and Sydow might refuse his aid, then the latter said, “You did prove you know your way around rocks, Arluth, when you cleared the path for us back there. But if you would go, it must be now, before the dark comes.”

  They angled farther back, not down the slope whence they had earlier come, but along the edge of the cliff that enclosed this pocket of a valley, until they were as far west as they might go. Here the cliffs pinched together again to present a wall.

  Luckily the twilight lingered and that wall was a rough one with holes easily found for hands and feet. Melvas had slung the lattice on his back, and, though the frame was unwieldy, it was light enough not to cause him undue strain as he climbed.

  They reached the top of the wall and went on, farther north, for Melvas was firm that any road from the March fortress must lie in that direction. At last, as the twilight was deepening so that they could no longer move safely across this broken terrain, he chose a site to wedge the lattice into place with stones, facing it toward the heart of Olyroun.

  Both Melvas and Ramsay made very sure, as they piled loose rocks about the frame, that no chance wind could topple it. In fact the cliff wall at this place, rounded put a little over it—not hiding it from the ground, but providing something of a sheltering roof.

  “Will they understand?” Ramsay asked. He did not mention the more important point—would any inland see it at all?

  “That symbol? No one can mistake it for aught but a warning. They might believe that the enemy set it, of course. But then they would deploy scouts and take all precautions.” Melvas was busy with his wheel lighter. He spun it vigorously so the spark fell on the oiled cloth.

  As Ramsay and he drew away, that line of fire ran quickly along the dampened strips until the pattern was aflame. It could certainly be seen, Ramsay believed, for some distance.

  “We go.” Melvas jerked at his arm. “If any scouts of those sea devils sight it, they will come hunting. And this is no land to travel hastily in the dark.”

  As they both speedily discovered, moving from one hold to the next by feel now rather than sight. The circle of rags still flared out above them. Perhaps the oil Melvas had used was not so easily consumed, instead protected the material for a longer burning. Yet Ramsay realized that the other’s warning was the truth. Their whole party would be better away from the small sanctuary they had discovered.

  When they half tumbled down the last of the climb, landing in what was now a pocket of darkness, a low voice hailed them.

  “Come on—we’re moving west—”

  “The Captain—” Ramsay was sure Dedan could not have recovered to the point that he was on his feet, no matter what miracle Melvas’s herbs wrought.

  “They’ve started on, carrying him,” Rahman half-whispered. “We made a litter after you left, lashed him in. Only way we could hope to move him now—”

  The other end of the valley, where a stream ran from the pool until it disappeared underground, took a curve to the left. Luckily there was not a second wall beyond, rather a wider range of land covered mainly with scrub, but this caught at their already tattered clothing and raked their hands and arms viciously.

  Their blundering ahead could not be made without sound, and Ramsay feared that here they were nearly helpless. To keep going minute after minute was all they dared hope to accomplish. Then, just when he felt if he stumbled once more
over some exposed root he could not rise, but would lie waiting for some doom, they were again in the clear.

  Here was a sweep of bush grass little more than ankle high, through which they swished. They were far too visible in this open.

  Ramsay stopped short, brought both hands to his head, swayed back and forth. His mouth opened to cry out, closed again without giving utterance to that protest.

  This sensation was unlike Osythes’s dreams, yet instinct told him there was an underlying kinship to those in it. He only knew that he was— “summoned” was the only word he could find to describe that feeling. And in such a way that he had no hope of defying the power that claimed him.

  Nor was he alone in his reaction. All of them staggered a little to the right, began to trudge forward as if they obeyed the jerk of a leash held in some strange and alien hand. None spoke, they only moved, the Captain borne between Sydow and Arjun, Rahman, Melvas, and Ramsay behind—six survivors, perhaps now fatally entrapped.

  Ramsay had never experienced anything to equal this compulsion before. Even the aches and pains of his tired body appeared suddenly to belong to someone else. It was necessary only to obey, to reach a goal ahead. Though what the goal might be—?

  Ramsay, locked in a struggle between his innermost self and that compulsion, became dimly aware of a light. Their cliff-top signal? By rights they would have had their backs to that. Some dwelling in this debatable land? Even a campfire of the enemy, astute enough to move this far inland in order to cut off the escape of any who survived the ridge attack?

  The beam was too steady to be fire, he thought confusedly. More like a steady beacon, such as were familiar in his own world. Toward it his party marched as single-mindedly as if they were on some ordained maneuver. They all made a quick right-angle turn that brought them onto a road of sorts. Not paved, but smooth enough underfoot to suggest that it was well traveled. Perhaps they had found their way to the frontier post—but why then this— drawing?

  The light grew no stronger as they approached it—it remained very much the same. Yet Ramsay was sure that its source was not retreating in the same measure as they were advancing. That beacon was fixed, and someone there reeled them in, as easily as if they were hooked fish on a line too strong to fight.

  Now the light touched on stones—erect, slender— Some half-buried memory moved in Ramsay’s mind. Yes, that red rock pillar he had seen near the hunting lodge, the one Grishilda had described as part of a very ancient, shunned ruin. Were they indeed approaching the lodge? But even in the dark he could not see the forest, which should have been wide enough across the horizon to make itself clear now.

  Also there were more than one of those pillars— six, to be exact, three flanking the source of light on either side, while their party was drawn away from the smooth surface of the road, which had curved again, as if to avoid any close touch with those very ancient monoliths. Now Ramsay picked out a figure moving deliberately into the path of the light, one which threw a shadow like a long warning finger pointing in their direction.

  Those left of the company were very close, close enough to see the light, a rod slender enough for Ramsay to span with his two hands, planted in the earth. The one awaiting them by it wore a black-and-white robe. Osythes? But the face was now turned half to the light, and these features were not of the Shaman who advised the old Empress. This was a younger man, though he had the same detached look about him. A second figure glided forward to join him, and this, in spite of the identical black-and-white and cut of her robe, was a woman, slender, delicate of feature. Impassive, the two stood waiting for the six fugitives to come to them.

  As the men advanced into the light, Ramsay felt a tingling throughout his body. His nostrils expanded to take in a queer, unidentifiable odor. Sydom and Arjun put down the litter holding their commander almost at the feet of those who awaited them. Then, panting, they half collapsed, to sit beside it. Ramsay felt his strength ebbing also. He managed to push forward another step of two and then subsided, his hands braced against the ground on either side of him, fighting to keep both his mind control and what little strength remained in him.

  The woman stooped above Dedan, who was lying face down, his back covered with the hardened crust formed from the herb. A hand came out of hiding in her voluminous sleeve as she touched the First Captain’s cheek lightly. She spoke to her companion, but she did not use that language Ramsay had fought to learn. Then she turned to face the rest of them. From face to face she glanced, lingering on each set of features for the space of a breath of two as she studied them in turn.

  It was her companion who spoke, and now in a language Ramsay could understand.

  “Whom do you follow, beaten men?”

  Ramsay watched the others stiffen, and knew a swift jab of anger at what he thought might be contempt coloring that question.

  Sydow replied. “We are of the Company of Dedan. He, our First Captain, lies before you, Enlightened Ones.”

  “Mercenaries,” the man returned.

  It was Ramsay who flashed a swift, hot reply. “Men who give their lives to keep their oaths—and this time were betrayed.” He did not know that for a fact, but he had no qualms against throwing the charge into the calm, expressionless face. “Men who were coming to serve this land and were—were— finished before they could raise hand in their own defense.”

  “Ah.” The Enlightened One now looked directly at him and him alone. “Of you there has been knowledge sent us—You are the Knave of Dreams—”

  “The what?” Ramsay was mystified.

  “The Knave of Dreams, he who enters to disturb a pattern of foretelling, the one changing and changeable factor that cannot be controlled and whose advent completely alters all. You have already held two names, now you are granted this one—which is truer than the rest. That you and your comrades have won free so far means that there is still a use for all of you. It remains to understand what that use can be—”

  “We are men!” Ramsay fought an insidious lethargy which threatened him—the him who was a man, who was Ramsay. “We are not used, we move of our free will—”

  “No man moves of free will, he is pushed here, drawn there, by events from his past, needs of the future, perhaps even the will of a stronger man or woman. No one is free of the chances life itself lays heavily upon him from the moment of his birth. But this is not the time to speak of freedom, of choice, of belief or unbelief. It is apparent that the game is not complete, or you would not be here. Therefore, we agree that you shall be under the protection of the Grove until such a time as we know what is meant for you.”

  The Shaman raised his hand with a quirk of the wrist, tossing back the full sleeve. In the light, his hand appeared to possess an extra radiance of its own. The lifted forefinger pointed directly to Ramsay’s head.

  Ramsay felt himself slumping forward. A few moments of panic and fear were swallowed by soft, welcoming darkness.

  TWELVE

  Did he sleep and dream? Or had he come to this place unknowing and just now was beginning to see, hear, understand? So much had happened to Ramsay in so short a time that he wondered if he dared ever again depend upon the evidence presented by his own senses. He only knew that here and now he was seated by a narrow table that glowed with a wan light, as if it were no real board, rather a slab that was in itself a lamp.

  Yet the wan radiance so given forth did not spread far. Ramsay could see only what lay upon the length, two hands which moved deftly over that. Very slender were those hands, bare of the massive rings that were the common fashion of the people in this world. Their delicate grace made him believe that they must belong to a woman. Yet when Ramsay tried to see beyond, to make out even a shadowy outline of her who might be seated opposite him, nothing but a wall of dark faced him.

  Thus, fascinated against his will, he watched the hands at work. Against his will, because, deep within him, an ancient warning awoke hints of enslavement of his senses in a way he had not ever believed p
ossible. Ramsay was only sure at that moment that, even if he drew upon all his forces and attempted to stand, to move away from the table, leave behind those hands with their quick, purposeful movements, he would not be able to do so. Whether he would or not, he must sit and watch.

  His own hands lay clasped together powerlessly in his lap. He could not loose a single finger from that enforced intertwining. Fear was his immediate reaction to this complete helplessness. Then anger followed, and, with the swell of that, his will strengthened, hardened, as metal worked by the smith’s knowledge and skill takes on a keener cutting edge, a greater power for use.

  Still in spite of the anger that strove to arm him, Ramsay discovered that he must watch the hands.

  The fingers had deftly dealt out slips of what might be some light metal, for, as each was placed firmly into position, it produced from the board a small ringing sound. On the slip’s length there then blazed a symbol that might have been the direct result of meeting with the table surface.

  The symbols were complicated. Now, as Ramsay continued to watch, he discovered he could pick out a meaning from some of the lesser ones used to border each slip. How did he know that those curling tendrils—which were not unlike those full-bellied clouds one might see in an old Chinese drawing of his own time and world—stood for Dream? And that the small heart from the center cleft of which sprang a five-petaled flower was Hope? A jagged lightning strip that took on a dusty, threatening purplish color upon meeting the board—that was Fear. Last of all came a small figure completely hidden in robe and cowl—pointing a too long-fingered hand to either right or left—that was Fate.

  These identifying borders were only the least of the pictures on the strips. For each had also a larger central design, very intricate. Those flashed boldly alive as they were put down, only to blur again, so that he could not distinguish them with any accuracy.