Tales From High Hallack, Volume 2

by Andre Norton

  “I will not,” I said firmly. Though I could not find any true reason why—except those eyes.

  “You shall!” She thrust her head forward and her hood fell away, her eyes bored into me. Then I saw her gaze change a fraction; she caught her breath. “No. . .” Her voice was a half whisper. “Not that—the blood—”

  I am no voice of the All Mother, I wear no robe of the Three Lordly Ones—I am no shaman of any tribe. Still, there awoke in me then something that I had sensed twice before this day—an ancient knowledge. Nor was that of the Quintka. Partly of their blood I might be—yet who knew what other strain my dead mother had granted me?

  What I did came in that moment as natural as breathing—I brought forth both hands as I took two quick steps toward my monster. He pawed at the buckle of his cloak and that fell away from him, leaving his nightmare body bare. My hands fell to his shoulders, the roughness of his skin was harsh under mine. He had to bend a little from his height. All that filled the world now were his green eyes—and in them was a flashing light of eagerness, of hope reborn, of pain now fading—

  “By the thorn and by the tree,

  By the moon and by the sea,

  By the truth and by the right,

  By the touch and by the sight,

  Let that which is twisted,

  Straightened be.

  That the imprisoned go free!”

  I pressed my lips to the slimy cold of his toad mouth. Fighting revulsion—pushing it utterly from me.

  When I drew back I cried aloud—words that had no meaning, yet were of power—and I felt that power fill me until I could hold no more. My fingers crooked, bit into his odious flesh. I tore with my nails— The skin parted, as might rotted cloth. As cloak so old that nothing was left but tatters, that skin gave to my frantic hands, rent, and fell away.

  No monster, but a man—a true man—as I shredded from him that foul overcovering. I heard a shriek behind me—a keening that arose and arose. Then the man I had freed flung out one arm, to set me behind him, confronting the woman. She had her beringed hand up, held close to her lips, ugly and open, as she mouthed words across the surface of that head-set ring. Frantically she spilled forth spells. His hand shot out, caught hers. He twisted her finger, pulled free the ring, and flung it to the ground.

  There was a barking cry from Ort. One of his ponderous hind feet swept between the two at ground level, stamped that circlet into the beaten earth.

  The woman wailed then spat before she fled. Where the ring had been pounded there was a small thread of smoke. Ort leaned forward and spat in turn, full upon the thread, setting it into nothingness.

  “So be it!” A deep voice.

  A well-muscled arm swooped, fingers caught up the cloak, once more twisting it about a bare body, but this time a human body. “So be it.”

  “You are a man—” The power that had filled me vanished as quickly as it had come. I was left with only amazement and a need to understand.

  He nodded. Gone from him was all but the eyes— those were rightly his, marking him even through the foulness of the spell. “I am Ran Den Fur—a fool who went where no man ventured, and by my folly I learned. Now . . .” He gazed about him. I saw the cloak move as he drew a deep breath, as if inhaling new life to rid him of the old. “I shall live again—and perhaps I have put folly behind me.”

  He looked at me with the same intentness as when he had tned to link earlier.

  “I have much to thank you for, lady. We shall have time—now—even in the shadow of Thotharn, we still have time.”

  Get Out of My Dream!

  Perilous Dreams (1976) DAW

  Every world had its own rites, laws, and customs. Itlothis Sb Nath considered herself, in position of a Per-Search agent, well adjusted to such barriers and delays in carrying out her assignments. But inwardly she admitted that she had never faced just this problem before.

  Though she was not seated in an easyrest, which would automatically afford her slim body maximum comfort, she hoped the woman facing her got the impression she was entirely relaxed and certain of herself during their interview. That this . . . this Foostmam was stubborn was nothing new. Itlothis had been trained to handle both human and pseudohuman antagonism. But the situation itself baffled her and must not be allowed to continue so.

  She continued to smile as she stated her case slowly and clearly for perhaps the twentieth time in two days. Patience was one of the best virtues for an agent, providing both armor and weapon.

  “Gentle Fem, you have seen my orders. You will admit those are imperative. You say that Oslan Sb Atto is one of your present clients. My instructions contain authority to speak with him. This is a matter of time, he must be alerted to the situation at his home estate. That is of utmost future importance, not only to him, but to others. We do not interfere on another world unless the Over-Council approves.”

  There was no change in the other’s expression. By the Twenty Hairs of Ing! Itlothis might as well be addressing a recorder, or even the time-eroded wall behind the Foostmam.

  “This one you seek,” the woman’s voice was monotonous, as if she were entranced, but her eyes were alert, alive, cunningly intelligent, “lies in the dream rooms. I have told you the truth, Gentle Fem. One does not disturb a dreamer. It would be dangerous for both your planetman and the dreamer herself. He contracted for a week’s dreaming, provided his own recorded background tapes for the instruction of the dreamer. Today is only the second day . . .”

  Itlothis curbed a strong desire to pound the table between them, snarl with irritation. She had heard the same words, or those enough like them to seem the same, for six times now. Even two more days’ delay and she could not answer for success in her mission. Oslan Sb Atto had to be awakened, told of the situation on Benold, then shipped out on the first available starship.

  “Surely he has to wake to eat,” she said.

  “The dreamer and her client are nourished intravenously in such cases,” the Foostmam replied. Itlothis did not know whether she detected a note of triumph in that or not. However, she was not prepared to so easily accept defeat.

  Now she leaned forward to touch fingertip to the green disk among those she had spread out on the table. Her polished nail clicked on that ultimate in credentials which any agent could ever hope to carry. Even if that disk had been produced off world by an agency not native to this planet, an agency which held to the pretense of never interfering in local rule, yet the sight of it should open every door in this city of Ty-Kry.

  “Gentle Fem, be sure I would not ask you to undertake any act which would endanger your dreamer or her client. But I understand there is a way which such dreaming can be interrupted . . . if another enters the dream knowingly to deliver a message of importance to the client.”

  For the first time a shade of expression flitted across the gaunt face of this hard-featured woman, who might well have played model for some of the archaic statues Itlothis had noted at this older end of the city where the sky towers of the newer growth did not sprout.

  “Who? . . .” she began and then folded her lips tightly together.

  Within Itlothis felt a spark of excitement. She had found the key!

  “Who told me that?” she finished the other’s half-uttered question smoothly. “Does it matter? It is often necessary for me to learn such things. But this can be done, can it not?’

  Very reluctantly the other gave the smallest nod.

  “Of course,” Itlothis continued, “I have made a report to the Council representative of what I wish to do. He will send the chief medico on his staff, that we may so fulfill regulations with a trained observer.”

  The Foostmam was again impassive. If she accepted that hint as a threat or a warning, she gave no sign that Itlothis’s implied mistrust caused her any dismay.

  “This method is not always successful,” was her only comment. “Annota is our best dreamer. I cannot now match her skill. There are unemployed only . . .” She must have touched s
ome signal for there flashed on the wall to her right a brilliant panel bearing symbols unreadable to the off-world agent. For a long moment the Foostmam studied those. “You can have Eleudd. She is young but shows promise, and once before she was used as an invasion dreamer.”

  “Good enough.” Itlothis arose. “I shall summon the medico and we will have this dream invasion. Your cooperation is appreciated, Foostmam.” But not, she added silently, your delay in according it.

  She was so well pleased at gaining her point that it was not until the medico arrived, and they entered the dream chamber, did Itlothis realize that she was facing a weirder adventure than she had in any previous assignment. It was one thing to trace a quarry through more than one world across the inhabited galaxy, as she had done for a number of planet years. But to seek one in a dream was something new. She did not think she quite liked the idea, but to fail now was unthinkable.

  The dreamers of Ty-Kry were very well known. Operating out of the very ancient hive presided over by the Foostmam, they could create imaginary worlds, adventures, which they were able to share with anyone able to pay their high fees. Some of the dreamers were permanently leased out to a household of the multi-credit class inhabiting the upper reaches of the sky towers, where their services were for the amusement of a single individual or house-clan. Others remained at the Hive, their clients coming to them.

  While entwined mentally with a dreamer, that client entered a world seeming utterly real. And an action dreamer of A rating was now fashionably expensive. Itlothis surveyed the room in which her quarry now lay lost in his dream.

  There were two couches (the Foostmam was overseeing the preparation of two more which would crowd the room to capacity). On one lay a girl, thin, pallid of skin, half her head hidden in a helmet of metal which was connected by wires to another such covering Oslan’s head where he rested on the adjoining couch. There was also an apparatus standing between their resting places hung with bottles feeding liquid into the veins of their arms.

  Itlothis could see little of Oslan’s face, for the helmet covered it to nose level. But she identified him. This was the man she had hunted. And she longed to put an end to her frustration at once by jerking off that dream cap, bringing him back. Only the certain knowledge that such an action was highly dangerous made her control her fingers.

  The Foostmam’s attendants had set up one couch beside the dreamer and a tech made careful linkages of wires between that of the cap now worn by the girl, and the one waiting to be donned. While a second couch was placed beyond Oslan’s, another cap adjusted to match his.

  That uneasiness was growing in Itlothis, akin now to fear. She hated beyond all else to be under another’s will in this fashion. On the other hand, the need for bringing Oslan back was imperative. And she had the medico to play guard.

  Though she showed no outward reluctance as she followed the orders of the Foostmam, settled herself on the waiting divan and allowed the helmet to be fitted on, yet Itlothis had a last few moments of panic when she wanted to throw off that headgear, light and comfortably padded within that it was, to run from this room. . . .

  They had no way of telling into what kind of an adventure Oslan had been introduced. No two dreams were ever alike, and the dreamer herself did not often foresee what pattern her creations would follow once she began the weaving of her fantasies. Also the Foostmam had been careful to point out that Oslan had supplied the research tapes and not relied on those from the Hive collection. Thus Itlothis could not know what kind of a world she might now face.

  She could never afterward be sure how one did enter the dream world. Was there a moment of complete unconsciousness akin to normal sleep before one opened one’s eyes upon . . . this?

  Itlothis only knew that she was suddenly standing on the rough top of a cliff where rocks were wind-worn into strange shapes among which a flow of air whistled in queer and mournful moaning. There was another sound also, the drum of what she recognized as surf, from below.

  But, she knew this place! She was at Yulgreave, on her own home world! She need only turn away from the sea’s face to see the ancient, very ancient ruins of Yul in all their haunted somberness. Her mind was giddy. She had been prepared for some strange, weird dream world, then she had been abruptly returned to the planet of her own birth! Why . . . how . . .

  Itlothis looked for Yul, to make sure of her situation.

  But . . .

  No ruins!

  Instead heavy and massive towers arose unbroken, as if they had grown out of the cliff’s own substance, as a tree grows from the earth, not as if they had been laid stone upon stone by man or manlike creatures. The ancient fortress in all its strength was far more imposing in every way than the ruins she knew . . . larger, extending farther than the remaining evidences of her own age suggested.

  And, remembering what her own time deemed Yul to be, Itlothis shrank back until her shoulders scraped against one of the cliff pinnacles. She did not want to see Yul whole, yet she found she could not turn away her eyes, the dark rise of tower and wall drew her.

  Yul had been in ruins when the first of her own species had come to Benold’s world a thousand planet years ago. There were other scattered traces of some very ancient civilization to be seen. But the least destroyed was Yul. Yet, eager as her own kind had always been to explore the mysteries of those who had preceded them in rulership of any colonized world, the settlers on Benold did not willingly seek out Yul. There was that about the crumbling walls which made them uneasy, weighed so upon the spirit of any intruder that sooner or later he withdrew in haste.

  So, though it was viewed from a distance, as Itlothis viewed it now, and tri-dees of it were common, those were all taken from without. Why had Oslan wanted to see Yul as it might once have been?

  The puzzle of that overrode much of her initial aversion. That this dream had a real purpose she guessed. It was not merely a form of pleasant escape. The girl moved away from the crag against which she had sheltered and began to reconsider her mission.

  Oslan Sb Atto, he was heir to the vast Atto holdings, after the custom of Benold. Thus when Atto Sb Naton had died six planet months ago it had been very necessary that his heir take up Clan-Chief duties as soon as possible. His brother, Lars Sb Atto, had hired Itlothis’s agency to bring back with the utmost dispatch the heir who had cruised off world. Later, when the continued absence of the Atto heir had taken on political ramifications, the search became a Council matter.

  But why had Oslan come to the dreamer’s planet, sought out the Hive, and entered a dream set on his own home world in the far past? It was as if he, in turn, might be searching something for importance. Itlothis thought this the truth.

  What did he so hunt?

  Well, the sooner she discovered that, the sooner they would both be freed to return to the right Benold and Oslan’s duties there. Though Itlothis hated the very thought of what must follow, she began to walk toward Yul, certain, as if Oslan himself had told her, that there lay the core of this tangle.

  At least the visible forms of life familiar in her own time had not altered. Overhead swooped the seapars, their crooning cries carrying above the boom of surf, their brilliant orange, blue, and green plumage bright even on this day when the sun was cloud-veiled. Among the rocks grew small plants, almost as gray-brown as the stones about them, putting out ambitious runners toward the next cupful of soil caught between the crags.

  Itlothis kept a wary watch on Yul. Though its walls were now entire, its towers reaching high, unbroken, she could detect no sign that it was any more inhabited than in her own time. No banners were set on those towers, nothing showed in the windows, which were like lidless eyes staring both seaward and toward the rise of sharp hills to the west.

  Yul lay on the edge of the Atto holdings. Itlothis had seen it last when going to confer with Lars Sb Atto before leaving Benold. They had flown hither from Killamarsh, crossing the mass of ruins to reach that inner valley beyond the hills.

 
In fact, the House of Atto could claim this cliff and the ruins had they so wished. But the ill repute of Yul had made it no man’s territory.

  Determinedly Itlothis scrambled over the rough way, listening to the cries of the seapars, studying the grim pile of Yul. She had thought that plunged into Oslan’s dream, she would meet him immediately. But apparently that did not follow. Very well, she must hunt him down.

  As she approached the now unbreached outer wall, the huge blocks of its making added to her uneasiness. There was a gate in that wall, she knew. Oddly enough it did not face the interior of the land, but the sea. And, if she were to reach that, she must follow a perilous route along the verge of the cliff.

  There was no road, nor even path. That there had been none such had always baffled the experts among her own people. Why had the only gate not fronted on some road impressive enough to match the walls? Also there was no trace of harbor below, no sign this had ever been part of a port.

  Itlothis hesitated, surveying the way before her with a doubt which began to shake her self-confidence. She had initiated this quest believing that all her experience and training prepared her for any action. After all, she was a top agent, one with an unbroken number of successfully concluded cases behind her. But then always she had been operating in a normal world . . . normal as to reality. Here she felt more and more cast adrift, all those familiar skills and safeguards challenged.

  In any real world . . . she drew a deep breath. She must make herself accept for the present that this was a real world. If she could not regain her confidence she might be totally lost. After all many of the planets on which she had operated with high efficiency had been weird and strange. Thus, she must not think of this as being a fantasy Benold, but rather one of those strange worlds. If she could hold to that, she must regain command of the situation.