Wheel of Stars

by Andre Norton

  Ortha’s own skin tingled, her hair lifted from her head. She twisted in what was not so much pain as an answer to force which struck too near. Once more she heard the lifting of the bar and the door opened.

  The Arm? Ortha fully expected to see him again, triumphant from the defeat of an Outer One. But this figure was heavily cloaked, the head hooded, as it slipped silently within, shutting the door quickly, setting shoulders against the barrier as if to add its own body to a defense.

  An aura of rising force seeped from the visitor, touched the girl. Only one who had complete command over the Power and had recently used it could project so strongly. Then that hood shrouded head gave an impatient shake and the covering fell away.

  First the Arm—now the Voice!

  Ortha arose with an effort. She felt as weak as she always did when she came from a prolonged session at the Mirror. Yet she refused to allow her visitor to see her tremble, not as long as she could hold herself erect. She even managed to raise her right hand in salute of reverence to the woman who stood there, breathing fast, harshly, the fatigue of her Power calling still upon her.

  “High stands our Mother the Sun,” Ortha said. “Blessed be Her Voice. Against the Dark shall the Light come forth to victory.”

  The Voice inclined her head a fraction. “Blessed be—”

  From somewhere Ortha found strength, perhaps it was born of her own sense of outrage and anger—perhaps it belonged rightfully to that Gwennan-to-come.

  “Blessed be, oh Voice? That is no greeting for one who walks the path of the Dark. Did you not meet without one whom you must believe was my servant—summoned to loose me from—”

  The Voice drew a last panting breath. Her own hand came up before her—not in any salute but rather as if she waved away some buzzing, annoying insect.

  “There are times when one must be sacrificed for the good of many.” She stood away from the door, moved forward purposefully. “What you foresaw—was indeed the truth.”

  “And because I saw it I now await the death of a Dark One here—is that the proper award for seeing truth, oh Voice, who is named True Daughter of the Mother, vassal of all Power?” Moments earlier Ortha would never have believed that she could summon from some inner source the ability to answer so, with all the outrage of her spirit.

  “What you saw was the death of the world. How many of those listening to you—and those were initiates with training and knowledge, the courage and talent to use it—how many think you even of them could face what you saw and remain firm leaders for these last days? There is a flaw in most of our kind. We still fear death in spite of all our beliefs, our strengths, the signs we have been granted that death is not absolute but only another stage on the road of life. We may know and accept that in our minds, even hold it warm in our hearts, still there is a last fearful portion of us which remains unconvinced—and that portion can be awakened into such fierce life that it will wrest a man’s spirit and a woman’s talent, twist, eat them up, leaving them mad.

  “The Councillors of Vahal have among them one who is Power touched, who speaks with the Tongue—though she sees not with the Mirror, but has a talent of another kind. She has prophesied much lately. Therefore they came to learn whether she spoke of the past or the future. It was their right to demand a seeing and it could not be refused them. It was hoped by us that so fragmentary was the speech of the Vahalian that they could be satisfied—but there is no way of changing a message of the Mirror.”

  “Except to vilify me—claim I was Dark-led or broken of mind!” Ortha interrupted. “For that I cannot and will not forgive even one who is the full channel of Power!” Anger filled her at last, all bewilderment burned away. They were indeed playing games, these she had always believed in, had held in high reverence—who she thought never spoke except with the truth (or their own Power would turn on them leaving them sterile and sour). Her power had not done that—even though they might have desired it so.

  “Why not slay me now with your flame? Or might that arouse questions in others which you cannot answer glibly enough? Do you intend rather to force me into false words—parade me before all who heard to prove me mind-broken, a thing at fault? We have been taught that do we turn the Power to any purpose of our own it shall eat us up. Slay me then, Voice—Or will you suffer for such a deed hereafter—Is that teaching also another lie? What is truth now?”

  She had fully expected to see some sign of anger on the other’s fair face. No one spoke so to the Voice. She was above all the people of the world—even as her Mother the Sun was above the earth. Yet Ortha dared to accuse her. Instant death should have been the Seer’s portion. Perhaps that final fear, of which the Voice had spoken, no longer dwelt in her. She had known death before—she remembered those deaths. Some had been hard—but the pain and horror of them had not lasted.

  “What has he told you?” The Voice startled her out of her own thoughts by the quick demand. Ortha knew that this woman spoke now of the Arm.

  “That,” the girl answered deliberately, “there are places of refuge—one near here—in which a selected few shall ride out the end of our world—to come forth again into a new one.”

  “That is so,” the Voice acknowledged in a monotone. “But it was not to tell you only that which brought him here.”

  “No, it was something else—his belief that he did not share the knowledge of the right place of safety—that there were two minds about the needs of those in the future—if there is any future at all.”

  The Voice pressed both her hands together and Ortha saw the force of that gesture, yet her expression did not reveal anything but calm.

  “That is also true,” she agreed. “It is in the minds of some of us that the Power is greater than those who trust in it—that they may use it to enforce authority in the future. There will survive only a few after the churning of earth and sea. Many of those will be broken in mind. They shall, for the very needs of life, force from themselves full memory, wall it away. The Power itself can well be disrupted, set to flow in other patterns. Those who survive may fear all they once clung to, they may turn away from all belief. People shall arise who know nothing of the greatness of the past. Perhaps a goodly portion shall sink to company with beasts, turning to the Dark eagerly, fleeing from the Light they will believe failed them.

  “Those of us who must carry the burden of full memory—we shall be the teachers, not the rulers. We shall not dare move freely, lest they think us gods above them. We must dwell ever apart, nursing memory—feeding it bit by bit to any who have minds which will open enough to admit precious scraps. There will be a long period of horror, much sorrow. Some we tutor shall be hunted down, slain by their own kind, some will learn and turn to obey their ambitions, strive to use what they know to enforce over-rule, control others. There will be many failures, and with each, a bit of ourselves shall die. Yes, there will be survivors from out of the Temple—but not such as shall stride forth to be kings or gods—”

  “And this then is the question upon which you have differed? But what does it matter to me? I am one disgraced—swept from your path—”

  “He came to you—and he is one who would be a god. He would use your farseeing. He—”

  Ortha swayed, not now from any weakness, but because the floor under her shifted as might the sand on a river’s verge when water washed it away. She heard a cry so loud that it reached her even through the thick rock of these walls. The Voice turned, flung open the door, and ran, dropping her cloak, that she might go the faster, even as a stone thudded from aloft, missing her in that flight by hardly more than a finger’s breadth.

  8

  The cell door stood open. Again the earth moved as Ortha fought to retain her balance. This soon had the end followed her foreseeing? Had the first of the missiles out of space already struck—or had the world, sensing the tumult and death waiting, begun to answer with its own fear some pull from the largest of those wandering visitors?

  Yes, the door was open
—

  Ortha pulled on her reserves of strength and wavered toward that way to her own freedom—her hands out as if she must keep her footing on a narrow bridge which might at any moment give way. She shouldered by the once barred door which swung as if an unseen hand had given it a push.

  Another earth tremor brought new falling stones. One struck the girl’s shoulder with force enough to wring a cry of pain out of her. Her arm swung limply as she tottered on. There was a maze of corridors down here and she knew none of them. When they had brought her to the prisoner level she had been too overset with bewilderment to take any heed of how they had come.

  The light bars set into the stone of the walls were dim, but their current had not failed. Nor would it as long as the earth lines continued unbroken. At least she was not caught in the dark. Now she chose a way blindly—for she had no guide.

  The passage curved. Here were other doors, some also sprung ajar, perhaps by the earth movements. That shifting continued, each quake a little stronger, so that once or twice Ortha had to set her shoulders to the wall, her good arm out-spread along that, her fingers seeking some irregularity in the stone to which they could cling for support.

  Instinct drove her on—and with it fear—She would not surrender, allow herself to be trapped here if she could find any passage out. At last she came upon a stair and pulled herself from one step to the next. In all the time since she had left her cell she had neither seen nor heard another. She might have been abandoned in these depths. The quakes subsided for a space—though she was sure that they might return at any moment.

  From above she now heard sounds, cries of people stricken with mind-rending terror, together with crashes of what could only be falling stones—perhaps even parts of walls. She did not see now where she went, rather that memory picture of what the Mirror had foretold. Soon enough would come that wave—

  Her other arm ached, and, if it brushed against the wall, there followed a thrust of agony strong enough to bring tears to her eyes, flowing down her dust-powdered cheeks. If there had ever been any guards on duty here they had fled at the first tremors. She took heart from the fact that the lights remained—therefore the Power still abode.

  Thus Ortha climbed from the dungeons of the temple to an upper hall where she leaned exhausted against the wall, feeling a queer detachment. She might be wandering through some dream induced by the Mirror, one in which she had no role save that of an onlooker to play.

  Against the far wall lay a body, face down—the golden yellow of the temple cloak outflung but not far enough to hide a growing stream of thick scarlet which curled across once pure white stone. Leading from that, marked in the same hideous painting of red were tracks—not of human feet—but of giant talons, sharp printed where they first showed by the dead prey, dwindling then into splotches.

  Ortha swallowed the bile which arose in her throat—then she retched, spewing forth the meager contents of her stomach, for she had fasted before the Mirror seeing and had little in her. That trail made plain that more than one kind of terror had struck. The earth might be in uproar—but certain safeguards must have fallen and those from Outside loosed.

  She slipped along the support of the wall, keeping as far as she could from that loathsome set of tracks. Now she could smell the attacker, that stench—And she must squeeze past the dead before she could win to the next doorway.

  However, she had at last gained corridors which she knew and she turned into that which led to the great hall—to the Mirror. Perhaps from that her talent could pull nourishment. It was her rightful place—perhaps safe—

  Safe? Where was there safety to be found now? Yet she saw no more bodies, no one at all. The temple, which had been a small city in itself with a multitude of servants, appeared now deserted. She stumbled on into the Sky Hall.

  The golden thrones were vacant, the Mirror—

  Ortha cried out and fell to her knees. Her broken arm was afire with pain so sharp that for a moment she could not catch her breath. But what she looked upon was worse than any injury of body. The tripod seat lay on its side, and before that the frame of the Mirror swung back and forth. But the sheen of that surface into which she had so often gazed was gone. All which was left were splinters, shattered dull metal on the floor. The Mirror had been destroyed.

  Her heart pounded irregularly as she gasped and tried to form the Words of Departure, of Severance. The Mirror was dead and she—her life was irrevocably bound to it—what remained for her?

  It was then that she discovered that what the Voice had said concerning humanity was true, that in her a part still fought for breath, to move, to keep on living. She hauled herself forward, hitching along on her knees, until she could put out her good hand and touch the splintered metal. The edge of one piece pierced a finger, she saw her own blood gather in a full drop to spatter on the floor. It was growing darker—there was a thickening of the clouds overhead. No Mother Sun shone now, still it was not yet night. This was a false darkness drawing in to blanket the death of the world. Then—through that dusk burst an upward fountaining of fire—a distant pillar so vast that its flames lighted the country-side.

  Ortha remembered the Mirror vision. Just so had rising mountains of earth broken at their crowns to spew forth the inner fires of the world. One—and now there was another beyond it. A powdery fog settled down about her, bit into her eyes, covered her skin with acrid, stinging ash, clogged her nostrils when she gasped for breath.

  Once more she heard screaming from the city beyond. Those there must have gone mad, running to seek shelter where there could be none, hoping for survival. But how could any hope for that when the planet itself died?

  She dragged herself away from the shattered Mirror, the symbol of her broken life. How soon would it follow now—that curling wave from the sea—driven forever from the bed once appointed to hold it?

  That rumored place of safety—had the Voice reached it? But Ortha doubted if any wisdom of her kind could provide safe refuge. The Voice, the Arm, those they had headed—all were deluded. Ortha laughed as she pulled herself yet farther along. The first step of the throne dais was before her. She mounted that, then the next. The lights on the walls, which had begun to glow after the massing of the clouds, were but sparks—they were falling. So—the Power itself was ebbing. Would it produce some last strong manifestation at the core of those lines crossing which lay below?

  Power—she had lived by and for the Power. Her own talent was not enough to control it, she could only call upon it as a source to give birth to the seeing. The Mirror was broken—her talent—dead.

  She caught at the arm of the nearest throne, that of the Voice. How often had she stood in the court below during the Hymn of Evening, or that of First Morning Light and watched the Voice, filled with power, weave patterns of blessing over all—filaments of which drifted on, out through the city, making sure that all which was good and right was strengthened, and the Dark held at bay? Ortha got to her feet somehow, half fell, half aimed her body into that seat. She was daring what might remain of the Force, challenging it by doing so. But what did that matter, was she not already dead with her Mirror? Let the Power flame her into nothingness for her boldness, that would be a quicker and better end than to live and see the last horror of all—the rise of that wave above the line of eastern hills.

  A third banner of earth fire shot skyward now. The smoke set her to a coughing which tore painfully at her throat and lungs, near blinded her streaming eyes as she wept in torment. She leaned back in the throne and closed those eyes.

  The roaring of the earth fires continued steadily. Once more the whole temple rocked. She heard an answering crash of stone. But she did not look to see if any had fallen near.

  “Take me—” she did not realize that she spoke the words until she felt the movement of her lips, for she could not hear through the roar of the earth fires. “Take me now—”

  She began slowly to follow the disciplines she had been taught, throwing open
her mind as she would have done had she still sat before the Mirror. Opening her eyes, she stared ahead at the swirling dust as if that were some counterfeit of the shining surface she had always known answerable to her talent.

  The dust was beginning to form a veil in the air, or so it seemed to her dimmed sight. But what was stronger still, inside her there was rising a new strength which she did not understand. This was not Mirror power—it was rawer, wilder, it pummeled from within against the frailty of her flesh, pressed against the bones which formed her frame, strove to force out parts of her and replace those. She coughed continually from the poisons in the air. Now there was liquid in her mouth which spewed forth as a scarlet lacing through the thick dust. Her head—there was that which had forced its way into her brain—which pushed—pushed—Her eyes were wells of pain.

  Ortha’s body quivered and shook. She moaned and could not hear her moans. For now the dust flattened out, forming a curtain hung between the dais of the thrones and all else in the world. It was dusky, shadowed—still on it began to move that which was not of its own substance, rather what had been summoned by the new thing in her to display itself.

  Again she watched the death of the world, far less clearly than the Mirror had shown it. Nor could she close her eyes—for what she saw came through her and was a part of her.

  Death—ever death. Waters which steamed away from flaming islands that arose and sank again. Mountains built themselves up from the land. Forests burnt to ash, rivers dried or changed in their courses as if some great hand plucked up those ribbons of water and whipped them here or there. From the sky above fell the continued bombardment of the lesser wanderers. Then there appeared that master intruder itself lurking—a dead, cratered globe swinging closer and closer to the earth it had come to slay.