by Andre Norton
He wondered that she would try to keep up a pretense of innocence—or ignorance.
“Because that was the truth.”
Thecla came farther into the light, her intent gaze upon his face.
“I see that you believe it,” she acknowledged. “But how can you? The Empress, Osythes, they do not deal so—”
“They did before,” he reminded her deliberately. “What of Kaskar—and me—were we not intended to die together under the influence of Melkolf’s machine? What did my life weigh then against their needs? And does it weigh even less now when I stand in Lom to refute, by my presence, all their plans?”
Under the warm brown of her skin there arose a flush. “They—they did not know you then. You were an abstraction—something far removed—not real—”
“So then when by some slip I became real,” Ramsay retorted, “I was even more a menace. Is this not so? I have learned something, my Lady Duchess, your strength is duty, and to that you are prepared to sacrifice all. Is that not the truth?”
“It is the truth,” she agreed tonelessly.
“Therefore, as duty bid, you found a plausible story and those other two improved upon it. An anonymous Feudman slain on the wharfside by a known assassin for hire. Such an occurrence as would bring about little official investigation—and I am well removed.”
“No!” Her protest was quick, hot. Now there was anger in her tone. “That was not the way of it! I—I demean myself to come to you, to beg you to listen.” Her chin lifted. She drew about her not the physical folds of her veil, rather the inborn authority that was bred in her.
“It is only because—” She hesitated and then continued, all her pride displayed by her straight back, her flashing eyes. “It is because I will not have such a slur put upon Olyroun, for I am Olyroun—if you can understand that—I am here. The attack on the wharf was not of our planning—”
“Then whose?” Ramsay prompted when again she paused.
It would appear that she was loath to answer. He saw her hands twisting, wringing the edge of her veil.
“I am not sure, and I will accuse no one unjustly,” Thecla said slowly. “But this I will swear by any Power you wish, the Empress, and Osythes, and I—we did not unite to send you to your death. I knew not that you had gone until later. And this is the truth which you can discover for yourself. That guardsman who was to see you safe on board the ship—he did not return to the palace. Her Splendor’s Eyes and Ears have been busy—but even they could not find him.”
“This, too, you will lay on Ochall?” Ramsay was more than half convinced that whatever intrigue had been aimed at him had not included Thecla. Perhaps because he wanted to believe that, he decided in a flash of insight.
What was this girl to him? He could not have honestly answered. With her burden of rulership she was unlike any of her sex he had known. Still, in spite of that burden and difference, he realized now that he had been drawn to her from those hours when she had sheltered him in her chamber, been so efficient in arranging his escape.
“Ochall?” Thecla repeated the High Chancellor’s name with an accent of surprise. “No, he would not want Kaskar dead.”
“He knows Kaskar is dead,” Ramsay informed her. “Though he accepts the fiction that I am Kaskar.” Of that he was now as certain as if the High Chancellor had had told him so.
Thecla nodded. “He doubtless plans to make you his Kaskar. Your life is more precious to him now than any treasure—”
“So,” Ramsay persisted, “we are now left with a mystery. If it was not the Empress who arranged my final disappearance, and Ochall could want nothing less, who remains?”
She was silent, there was a shadow of obstinacy about her lips. Ramsay thought that she would not give him more. Yet he must—somehow he believed that Thecla was in earnest—learn what she suspected.
Who would benefit by the death of Kaskar the second—and who had even been aware that there was a Kaskar the second? Thecla, Grishilda, the Empress, Osythes—and Melkolf!
The scientist had been ready to kill him out of hand when he discovered the lab. Somehow Ramsay could not associate Melkolf with the devious attack on the wharf. But Melkolf could have been a link—with whom?
There was only one other—Berthal! Yet Ramsay would have thought after that exhibition of reckless temper the Prince had shown in his challenge, that Berthal, too, would not have been party to a complicated plot. He would have been far more likely to have made an open attack under some rule of the nobility—even as today he had delivered that challenge that Osythes had interrupted before most of Lom.
However—a last suggestion struck Ramsay—the Enlightened Ones? But he had a strong impression that, though they might stand aside and let death strike down a man if they thought that necessary, they would not actively arrange for a murder.
Watching Thecla closely, Ramsay made his choice and spoke two names aloud, hoping that the girl would reveal whether his guess was right or wrong:
“Berthal—and Melkolf?”
By an ebbing of her color he had his answer. “Berthal,” he continued, “wants Ulad. Melkolf— perhaps he resents the failure of his experiment so much that he must erase the result—”
“I did not say so!” Her answer was too prompt. “Only—watch yourself—Kaskar.” For the first time she used that name. “This much I know—the Empress has ordered that the exchanger be dismantled. Melkolf—he is gone and no one can find him. With him he took things even Osythes has not been able to understand. He knew—knows—more of the Old Knowledge than we suspected.”
They only needed that added to the rest, thought Ramsay grimly—Melkolf resentful and hidden, and, with him, and untold, unmeasured amount of what might be as fearsome knowledge as anything the Merchants of Norn brought into their dread market. His mind made a sinister leap, and he felt a cold shiver run through him. Melkolf would have only one market for his product—Ochall! In Berthal’s present state of mind, that Prince might also be added to a dark company, willing to make peace with the enemy for Ulad.
Not only had Ramsay’s thoughts marshaled those surmises into good order, but he had an odd sensation that this was what had happened. He believed this fact, though he could not state why.
If the Empress, as she had already proposed, supported Kaskar—Ramsay—rather than cause any dissension—yes, he could conceive of Berthal’s being driven by hatred and a sense of injustice to the strongest aid he could find—Ochall. If only Ramsay himself had those he could depend upon—
Ramsay realized that he was striding up and down. Thecla was watching him. As his eyes met hers she spoke.
“You have the foretelling of Adise. Did the Enlightened Ones give you no other word?”
Dedan—Dream— He shook his head. Why had he begun to believe in impossibilities? Perhaps because he was caught in something beyond all the logic of his own world.
“They told you nothing?” Thecla must have taken that shake of his head as answer to that question.
“Something,” he answered absently. Then he turned and regarded her narrowly. Would Thecla help? To allow himself to dream—here— unguarded? There was a danger in that which he sensed as one might suddenly sniff an evil stench.
“I must,” he told her, “dream—and dreaming—”
He saw her hands close tightly on her veil. “You must not be disturbed,” she stated firmly, as if she knew exactly what he proposed. “Dream—I shall wait.”
She moved to the door, and now, with her own hands, she shot home the bolt to lock them in. Ramsay had a last weighing of his trust in her. He had to believe—after all, their purpose was now nearly united.
Stretching himself on a divan, he closed his eyes. Dream—this was not what he had done before, a bringing to the surface of memory-old dreams to wring them of impressions and facts he needed. This was an attempt to reach out, to form a dream born of his own need and desire. And he did not know how to do it. Dedan—in his mind he held a picture of the Free Captai
n. Not as he had seen him last in the litter, but as the mercenary had been at their first meeting, assured, vibrant with life and ambition. Dedan—he centered on that creation of his mind—Dedan!
He concentrated on creating Dedan. Was he dreaming—or merely exercising his imagination? He dared let no doubt trouble his thoughts—Dedan! The very intensity of his struggle to maintain that mind image, reach out to the personality it signified, was such an effort as no physical action had ever seemed to be. Dedan—
Ramsay—was—elsewhere! Not in any chamber such as he had had in the Grove of the Enlightened Ones. No, this was a state of being that was divorced from all he had known. He entered it with a sharp, breaking sensation, as if he had bodily leaped through some fragile screen to reach it.
There was—nothingness—
Then, up through the nothingness, as a plant might grow from the ground, arose—Dedan! First he seemed as Ramsay had striven to picture him. Yet there was about him a lack of response. His eyes were closed, he was more a puppet—a statue.
Was Dedan—dead?
Ramsay’s concentration faltered. He saw that figure begin to sink again. No—Dedan!
His urgency of thought was like a shout to hail the personality he sought. There was a slow lifting of those eyelids in a face wiped free of all emotion, a face not of earth. The eyes were alive, if the face that framed them was not.
Dedan—to me! To me, at Lom!
Ramsay hurled that thought feverishly, afraid that any moment he would lose this contact, if contact it was. Now he saw the pale lips of the Free Captain open, move in words he could not hear. Feverishly he fought for the other’s answer. But there came only the movement of lips. Then—
The nothingness changed abruptly. It formed a swirl of alien veiling, cloud, he was not sure, and Ramsay knew that in that cloud others moved, listened, were startled by his invasion. From those others he shrank. His will shriveled; he wanted only escape lest he see what would come out of nothingness.
His desire for escape was as sharp now as his need to reach Dedan had been. He gasped, fought, broke free. And was awake.
There was still only the low lamplight warring against the dark. But he had awakened once to an overpowering scent of flowers, so now there was also a fragrance, more delicate and elusive. Then he was conscious that hands gripped his, as if they had drawn him back—or anchored him—to safety.
The hands were Thecla’s. She sat on cushions by his side, watching him. There was a measure of relief in her eyes when she saw that he knew her.
“You have dreamed.” The girl stated that as fact, not as a question.
Ramsay croaked an answer from a mouth still dried with the fear of those last moments in the nothingness. “I—I do not know. This was different.” Yet there would be proof—if Dedan came to him, then he would have his proof that he could exert a measure of control over this strange new faculty—whether it was “dreaming” or something else.
“Who is Dedan?” Thecla asked.
Ramsay levered himself up on one elbow to face her more squarely.
“How did you know—?”
“You called upon that name,” she returned quickly before his question was half voiced.
So he had called aloud! But in his dream— vision—he had only thought. Real—unreal—Again he shook his head, trying to throw off the dazed feeling that closed about him.
“He is—was—a Free Captain of the mercenaries, one who will have good reason to hate Ochall when he learns the truth. If I can reach him—”
He was talking too much. Why let Thecla, anyone within Lom, know that he felt the need for someone he believed he could implicitly trust?
“Any enemy of Ochall’s,” Thecla returned—she had risen from her cushions; about her once more she had drawn her cloak of pride and dignity, “should be useful at this moment. I hope that he comes to your calling—”
Somehow she had moved farther from him than one could measure. Now she was draping her veil once more about her head and shoulders in a way that made Ramsay sense that a barrier had risen between them. He had not consciously voiced his doubts. Perhaps she had guessed in some fashion—that a mercenary First Captain had his full trust over all others in Lom.
Before Ramsay could sort out his tangle of thoughts and surmises, blurt out thanks, Thecla had released the latch, was gone. He pulled himself up from the couch. Waveringly, feeling nearly as weak and unsteady as he had when the Enlightened Ones had drawn him and the others to the grove, he gained his feet. He staggered across the room to set that latch firm once more. Thecla had come upon him earlier without warning; who else might be prowling the corridors of the Palace, eager to have a private meeting with Kaskar?
His head ached with a steady throb that made him queasy. And he had to steer a way with caution back to the divan, afraid at any moment that he might go down again. Melkolf—Berthal—Ochall— The names followed him on and on into troubled sleep.
Ramsay woke with a sense of disorientation. There was a pounding—voices— He moved sluggishly, stiff, his body aching. The noise continued, he turned his head. Daylight swept through windows, though its brightness was filtered by drawn curtains. There was a door, latched—and the noise came from beyond that.
He could make no sense of that gabble of sound, but the urgency of those beyond his door he was now able to feel. Getting up jerkily, he was relieved to discover that the sickness he could dimly remember no longer plagued him. He was able to walk firmly to the door, lift the barring latch.
For a moment or two he half believed that he was under attack, for three of those outside had been backed against that door. Jasum, in the uniform of Vidin, was the centermost of the trio, while opposing him were two differently clad. At the sight of Ramsay the two drew back, saluted, relieving him of the suspicion that a palace revolution might be in progress.
“What is this?” He raised his own voice. Jasum turned smartly, about to salute.
“Your Supreme Mightiness, these men say they have news of importance—that they must speak with you. But it is not fitting that those not of Ulad intrude upon the Emperor unannounced and without stating their reason for their coming—not even if they are of Olyroun.”
“Olyroun? Admit them—alone!” Ramsay added when he saw signs that Jasum was preparing to play not only court usher but bodyguard.
“As the Throne speaks—so shall it be!” the officer returned, but when he stood aside there was an uneasy shadow on his face. And he closed the door behind the Olyroun guardsmen with what Ramsay thought was reluctant slowness. Was Jasum perhaps Ochall’s man? Again that feeling that he could truly trust no one plagued Ramsay.
Once the door was closed, he turned to the two standing at strict attention.
“This so important message—?”
“Supreme Mightiness, it is our lady! She cannot be found—and there are—”
Ramsay stiffened. “Cannot be found? What say her ladies—the Lady Grishilda?”
“Supreme Mightiness, the Lady Grishilda sleeps and none can wake her. The Reverend Osythes has been summoned and—”
“Let us go!” Ramsay wasted no more time. One of the guardsmen leaped to open the door, nearly sending Jasum flying with the force of his push, so close had the Vidinian been to the portal.
“Attend me,” snapped Ramsay as he strode by, keeping pace with the Olyrounians who had sought him out. If this was some further intrigue, then he would resolve it here and now! No longer was he going to accept secret upon secret. Yet he had a growing premonition that this was no act planned by Thecla. To arouse the palace and cause an open search was not her way.
“When was this discovered?”
“Our lady had audience with Her Splendor Enthroned. When she did not come and sent no message—then Her Splendor Enthroned inquired. The door of our lady’s inner chamber was fast locked. There was no answer to any summons. Then Fentwer”—the speaker pointed to the other guard—“swung from the balcony of the outer presence chamber.
He found the Lady Grishilda lying upon the floor deep asleep. Our lady’s bed was empty. There was no sign of what had happened to her, but neither is there any other way out, except the door where we stood guard—and the balcony. We cannot believe our lady would have gone that way—”
No way out, thought Ramsay as his pace increased to a half trot. Yet Thecla had come to him, and he did not believe that anyone, except perhaps Grishilda, was aware of that visit. He dismissed the thought that Thecla would have been a party to any drugging or other interference with her own senior lady-in-waiting. They were too much in each other’s confidence.
Which meant that Thecla might not have returned to her own chamber after she left him— And someone, for some reason, had made sure Grishilda would not be able to testify to facts. At least not for a while.
His memory reached back to his first awakening. Thecla had in some manner then either hypnotized or dazed the guardsmen by the bier. She was reputed to have some of the natural gift of the Enlightened Ones. But Grishilda—could the lady-in-waiting have deliberately submitted to such for some reason to benefit her young mistress?
No, again his knowledge, though that was small, of the bond between Thecla and the older woman denied that possibility. Osythes? He also possessed those “powers” so vaguely defined, and held in awe by most. For what reason?
Ochall? Kaskar’s enslavement was attributed to some abnormal control. Ochall wanted Olyroun— needed its ores—Where was Ochall at this moment?
They crossed from one corridor to another, turned into a third. Halfway down there was a door Ramsay recognized. Thecla had once more been given the same chambers in which she had concealed him. There were guards about, some in the tunics of Olyroun, others wearing the eagle-like badge of the palace. They drew to either side as Ramsay came into their sight. Then he was through the outer presence chamber and into Thecla’s bedroom.
On a divan to one side lay Grishilda and over her stood the Shaman. As Ramsay entered he glanced up.
“Well?”
