FORERUNNER FORAY

by Andre Norton

  He set the laser with care, aiming it twice at nearby rocks to mark the results before he tried it on the wall. Then he moved the finger of the beam up and down within the faint lines of the ancient opening, cutting out a space no wider than a man. The brilliant beam of a belt torch thrust into the space beyond.

  “Let us go to Turan!” Iuban laughed.

  Ziantha raised one hand to her throat, the other still cradled the artifact against her breast. She was choking, she could not breathe. For a second or two the sensation was so severe she felt that death itself was a single flicker of an eyelid away. Then the sensation faded, and she could not fight as Yasa pushed her along hard on Iuban’s heels through the break in the wall.

  The Jack captain’s lamp flooded the space into which they had come. But it showed dire destruction. This had been a tomb once, yes, and a richly furnished one. But other grave robbers had preceded them. There was a wreckage of plundered chests, now crumbling into dust, objects which had lost their meaning and value when they had been mishandled by those in search of precious and portable loot.

  “An abort!” Iuban swung the torch back and forth. “A thrice-damned abort!”

  “Be careful!” Yasa cried and caught his arm as he would have moved forward. “We will not know that until after a careful, and I mean a very careful, search is made of what is still here. Tomb robbers often leave what seems of little value to them, but is worth much to others. So do not disturb anything—but widen the passage in that we may shift and hunt—“

  “You think anything of value still lies in this muck?” But he did retreat a step or two. “Well, I think it is an abort. But if you can make something out of it—“

  Ziantha leaned back against the wall. How could she fight this terrible fear that came upon her in waves, left her weak and sick? Did not the others feel it? They must! It penetrated all through this foul chamber, born not of the wreckage which filled three-quarters of it, but of something else—something beyond—

  She turned and pushed through the crack of door, feeling as if that fear were reaching forth great black claws to drag her back. There was a shout behind, words she could not hear, for the beat of her own pounding heart seemed to deafen her. Then there were hands on her, holding her prisoner though she still struggled feebly to flee that place of black horror.

  “Tried to run for it—“ Iuban’s voice over her head. But Yasa touched her, even as the iron grip of the captain held her.

  “What is it?” demanded the Salarika. There was a note in her hissing voice which Ziantha had to obey.

  “Death—beyond the far wall—death!” And then she screamed for the horror had her in its hold as if that formless evil rather than the captain kept her from flight, screamed and screamed again.

  A slap across her face, hard enough to shock her. She whimpered in pain, at the fact that they would not understand, that they held her captive so close to—to -- She would close her mind! She must close her mind!

  And with the last bit of strength she could summon, Ziantha hurled the artifact from her desperately, as if in that act alone could she find any safety of body or mind.

  “Ziantha!” Yasa’s voice was a summons to attention, a demand.

  The girl whimpered again, wanting to fall on the ground, to dig into the earth and stone as a cover, to hide—from what? She did not know now, only that it was terror incarnate, and it had almost swallowed her up.

  “Ziantha—beyond the wall is what?”

  “No—and no—and no!” She cried that into Yasa’s face. They could not use her to destroy herself; she would not let them.

  Perhaps Yasa could read her resolution, for she spoke now to Iuban. “Loose her! She is at the breaking point; any more will snap either her talent or her mind. Loose her to me!”

  “What trick is she trying?” Iuban demanded.

  “No trick, Captain. But there is something in there—we had better move with caution.”

  “Captain—look here!” One of the crewmen had knelt beside a rock to the right. He had picked up a shard in which was nested a glitter of spun silver. The artifact had broken open, the focus-gem must now be revealed. Iuban took that half of the figurine, pulled apart the protecting fiber. The gem blazed forth as if there were a fire lighted in it at this exposure to the open air. Ziantha heard the crewman give a low whistle. As Iuban was about to pick out the gem, Yasa spoke:

  “Care with that. If it is what I think it may be, then much is now clear—“

  “What it may be—“ he echoed. “And what is that? An emperor’s toy, perhaps?”

  “A focus-stone,” she replied. And Ziantha wondered at how Yasa had so quickly guessed.

  “A stone,” The Salarika continued, “used continually by some sensitive as a focus for power. Such things build up vast psychic energy over the years. If this is such a one and Ziantha can use it—why, no secret on this world pertaining to the race of the one who used it can be hidden from her. We may have found the key to more riches than a single plundered tomb!”

  “And we may have listened to a likely tale,” he countered. “I would see this proved.”

  “You shall. But not now; she is too spent. Let her rest while we make certain of what lies within here. And if this does prove an abort, we can try elsewhere with the stone.”

  Yasa would help her, Yasa must help her! Once they were alone she could explain, let the Salarika know that deadly peril waited any further dealings with Turan—or this world—or the focus-stone! If Ogan came, he would know the danger. She could make him understand best of all that there were doors one must not open, for behind those lay -- Ziantha would not let herself think of that! She must not!

  The girl concentrated on holding that barrier within her so much that she was no longer entirely aware of what went on about her. Somehow she had got back to the ship, was lying on a bunk, shivering with reaction while Yasa gave her reassurance.

  “Ogan—“ Ziantha whispered. “Ogan must know—it is very dangerous.”

  Yasa nodded. “That I can believe. A stone of power—able to work through such a disguise. Perhaps only a linkage dares use it. Now rest, cubling, rest well. I shall keep these Jacks busy until Ogan comes and we are able to do as we would about the whole matter.”

  That Yasa had given her a sedating drug she knew and was thankful for. That would push her so deeply into sleep that dreams would not trouble her. And she carried with her that last reassurance. A linkage, yes—she, Ogan and Harath working together might be able to use the focus-stone. But not alone, she must not do it alone!

  She was cold—so cold -- She was lost in the dark. This was a dream—

  “—another shot, Captain?”

  “Try it. She’s no use to us this way. And when that she-cat comes out of the one we used on her she’ll be after us. Give it to this one now.”

  Pain and cold. Ziantha opened her eyes. There was a bright light showing broken things covered with dust, a wall beyond. She was held upright facing that wall in a grip she could not resist.

  Iuban reached out, caught at her hair in a painful hold, for it was so short his nails scraped her scalp as his fingers tightened. So he held her to face him.

  “Wake up, you witch!” He shook her head viciously. “Wake up!”

  A dream—it must be a dream. This was Turan’s place; they had no right here. The guards would come and then what would happen to them would be very painful, prolonged, while they cried aloud for the death which was not allowed them. To disturb the rest of Turan was to bring full vengeance.

  “She’s awake,” Iuban, still holding her hair with that painful pull, looked straight into her eyes. “You will do this,” he spoke slowly, spacing his words as if he feared she might not understand. “You will take this thing, and you will look into it and tell us what is hidden here. Do you understand?”

  Ziantha could not find the words to answer him. This was a dream, it must be. If it was not -- No, she could not! She could not use the stone where Turan lay! Th
ere was the gate to something—

  “Ogan,” cried her mind in rising terror. “Ogan, Harath!”

  She met—Harath—and through him, with him, not Ogan—a new mind, one which greeted her search with a surge of power. Hold for us, it ordered.

  “She has to handle the thing, I think,” someone behind her said.

  “Take it then!” Iuban set the weight of his will against hers.

  She would not! But those behind her, those who held her upright here were forcing her arm up though she fought. Her strength was nothing compared to theirs.

  “Harath—I cannot—they are making me use the stone! Harath—they make me—“

  Iuban had caught one of her hands, was crushing her fingers, straightening them from the fist she tried to keep clenched. In his other hand she could see the blaze of the gem, afire with a life she knew was evil, though she tried to keep from looking at it.

  “Harath!” desperately she pleaded.

  “Hold—“ came the answer. Harath’s, together with that other’s—the stranger’s. “We are almost—“

  Iuban ground the gem into the hollow of her palm. With his grip on her hair he pulled her head forward.

  “Look!” he ordered.

  His compulsion was such that she was forced to his will. The glowing stone was warm against her shrinking flesh. Its color deepened. It had life, power, reaching out, pulling her, drawing her through—

  She screamed and heard shouting far off, the crackle of weapon fire. But it was too late. She was falling forward into the heart of the stone, which was now a lake of blazing energy ready to engulf her utterly.

  7

  The sickly sweetness of bruised camphor-lilies was drugging her; she could not breathe. No, she could not breathe because she was locked in here with Turan! Turan who was dead, as she would be when the air failed and she would enter the last sleep of all.

  She was Vintra, war-captive from Turan’s last battle, the one in which he had taken his deathblow.

  Vintra? Who was Vintra? Where was this dark place? Ziantha tried to move, heard a harsh clink of metal through the oppressive dark. She was—chained! Chained to a wall, and no frantic fight against those bonds left her with more than cut and bruised wrists and the knowledge that she had used up precious air by her struggles.

  She was Vintra—no, Ziantha! Crouching against the wall she tried to sort out her whirling thoughts, decide which were true and which hallucinations. She must be caught in some trance nightmare. Ogan had warned her of such a danger. That was why she must never enter the deep trance alone. Nearby there must be one skilled enough to break the trance if she were caught in a killing hallucination.

  Ogan—Harath -- The thought of them steadied her.

  In the tomb of Turan, Iuban had forced her to focus on the gem. This was the result. But it was real! She felt the chains, gasped in the lack of air. She was—

  Vintra! It was like the turning of a wheel in her head, making her first one person and then the other. Vintra was to die here, part of a funeral gift to Turan, because she was the only prisoner of note taken during the last skirmish at the mountain pass. In her a great rage surged against Turan and his kind. She would die here, gasping out her life like a korb drawn from its water home, but she would be avenged! And that avenging—

  The pictures in her mind -- What, who was she?

  Ziantha! Once more the wheel had turned. She was Ziantha, and she must get back, out of the trance. Ogan—Harath -- ! Frantically the girl sent out mind-calls, begging for help to save her from this dream that was worse than any she had ever faced before on the out-plane, though it was true that when one was trained to enter a sensitive’s calling one had to face all one’s fears, meannesses of spirit. Ill acts were given form and substance in trances. Only when one conquered those did one win to psychic control. In the past such terrors had been real also, but now, as she forced herself to employ one familiar safeguard after another, there was no change. She had known this was different, that she had no defense here. No, she must be awakened, anchored to her own time and plane by more strength than she herself could summon.

  Harath—Ogan! She made mind pictures, cast for them.

  A faint stirring! Surely she had caught that! By all the power of That Which Was Beyond Reckoning, she had felt that answer! Ziantha turned all her talent force into one plea: draw me forth—draw me forth—or I die!

  Yes! A stir—there was an answer. But it did not come straight, as she expected. It rather flowed, like water finding its way around great rocks half damming a river course, as if it fought.

  “Harath! I am here! Come for me! Do not leave me to die in the dark, choking out life, imprisoned in what I cannot understand. Come!”

  Not Harath!

  There was a personality here. But not Harath—not Ogan. From the other plane then? She touched thought.

  Shock, horror—a horror so great that that other personality was reeling as a man might under a deathblow.

  “Help me,” it cried. She could not understand. This had come at her call—why then -- ?

  “Dead! Dead!”

  An answer out of the dark fraught with terror.

  “I am not dead!” Ziantha denied. She would not accept that, for if she did there would never be any escape. She would be caught in Vintra.

  “Dead”—the repetition was fainter. Going—the other was going—to leave her here! No!

  She might have screamed that aloud. The sound seemed to ring around and around in her head.

  “No!”

  There was silence through which she could hear the gasping from her laboring lungs. Then—from the other:

  “Where is this place?”

  Words—not mind-send, but words to her.

  “The tomb of Turan,” she answered with the truth that Vintra knew.

  “And I—I am Turan—“ the voice grated. “But I am not Turan!” The denial followed the recognition swiftly, as if the same fear she had known when Vintra had taken over gripped him.

  Sounds of movement. Then a mind command, quick and urgent: “Light!”

  A glow, growing stronger. Why had she not thought of that? Straightway she sent out her own energy to feed his, to strengthen the glow.

  “There is no air, we shall die.” She added her urgent warning.

  “Go to the sunder plane, quickly!”

  His command brought her mind back into the protective pattern, which she should also have done for herself. She took the steps of out-of-body, something she had always been reluctant to try. And so, safe for a time, looked about her.

  There lay the body from which she had just freed herself, tangled in chains. To her left was a two-step dais on which rested Turan, his High Commander’s cloak spread over him, the lilies massed, brown-petaled, dying. Even as she saw him, candles at the head and foot of his resting place flared high.

  “The spirit door!” that other’s voice in her head. “There!”

  She had not remembered, not until he spoke, for that was of Vintra’s knowledge not her own. But there was the spirit door set in the rock above Turan.

  “Draw back the bar there—“

  Their only hope. For if that faintly twitching body she had just left died, then she was also lost. Ziantha made reentry, knew the life force was fast fading. With the last spurt of energy she could summon, she joined her power to the other’s, fastened thought to the bar. Together they wrought; fear rose in her—they could not—

  She heard a stir, for it was dark again, since all their talent was focused on that one act.

  “My arm—my right arm—“ wheezed the voice.

  She fed him her power. And then she fell into darkness again without learning whether death came with it.

  “Vintra!” Her body ached, she cried out in pain as hands pressed her ribs again and again, forcing air in and out.

  “I live—let—be!”

  There was light again. The candles flamed steadily to show the spirit door hanging open. From it came ai
r, chill but blessedly fresh. Turan knelt beside her, now inspecting the fastenings of the chains.

  “A pretty custom,” he commented. “Human sacrifice to honor a war hero.”

  “You—Turan—“ She tried to edge away from him. Turan was dead. Even now his body showed those wounds the priests of Vut had repaired that he might go to Nether World intact of person. Yet they looked fully healed, as if they had been ordinary hurts nature mended.

  “Not Turan,” he shook his head, “though I appear to share some identity with him from time to time. Not any more than you are Vintra. But it would seem we must play parts until we find a way back.”

  “You, you were the one with Harath!” Ziantha guessed. “The one who was coming when Iuban made me use the focus-stone.”

  “I was.” But he did not identify himself further. “Now what is this about the focus-stone? Apparently some trick of psychometry hurled us back into this and the more I know how and why the better. Tell me!” It was a sharp order, but she was only too willing to obey it.

  He had found the trick of the chain fastenings, and now they fell from her, and he kicked them away into a corner. Ziantha began her tale with the first sight of the artifact, and all that had happened to her since she had fallen under the peculiar spell that ugly lump with its hidden and perhaps fatal heart had exerted on her.

  “A gem such as that now on your forehead?”

  Startled, Ziantha raised her hands to her head. There was an elaborate headdress confining hair much longer than her own. And from those bands a drop set with a gem rested just above her eyes. She wrested the band from her so she could see the stone.

  It was the focus-stone! Or enough like it to be. Ziantha thought she could tell with a touch, yet she dared not. Who knew what might happen if she tried again?

  “Is it?” he who was now Turan demanded a second time.

  Ziantha looked miserably at the crown. She had firmly exiled Vintra, but as she stared down at the stone that other identity stirred, gathered strength. Perhaps she might learn the power of the stone, but in doing so she could also lose that other who had been meant to die here in Turan’s tomb.