Black Priestess of Varda Dominant

  'All right,' she agreed reluctantly.

  'Now!'

  Instinctively she knew the way.

  'Eldyn! El-ve-dyn! Stay near me!' She sensed Krasno's appeal even as their thought-world crumbled back into the featureless opacity of limbo, and she responded amid the nothingness.

  CHAPTER VII

  The irregular walls, roof and floor were crystals of all shapes and colors. Some glowed, shedding polychromatic light. She rolled over—his body responded with a heavy stiffness—and beside her lay the red-haired boy. This was the Chamber, a natural formation possessing strange characteristics possible only in Varda. In the Chamber they had cheated death by giving their bodies complete rest.

  She moved her left arm. It moved! Her breath went out in a sigh of happiness as she looked at it, her two eyes focusing with difficulty at first. It was less heavily muscled and the skin was white and tender. It looked newer. Here in the Chamber she had grown it like a—like a crawfish. And the mortal dagger wound had healed scarlessly.

  Krasno opened his eyes and stretched. She looked over to see if he had fared as well.

  He caught her look. Instantly his face flushed and he snatched up a cloak one of the rescue party had left beside him, wrapped it around himself. Eldyn was surprised. The prudery of bodily modesty had seemed entirely lacking from his character. In his home he had always been charmingly natural and unembarrassed.

  He saw she had discovered her new arm and eye.

  'Pleased?' he asked.

  She nodded vigorously, forgetting everything else.

  She felt a pull, a tugging deep within herself. Krasno felt it too and jumped up.

  'Come,' he urged. 'We must get out of the Chamber at once.'

  Together they climbed a crystal-lined passage so steep it was almost a shaft. Her muscles felt stale, unused and stiff. They came out on the rugged slope of a mountain, high above the forest line, and the opening to the Chamber was a small black hole amid a cluster of boulders.

  Eldyn shivered in the chill wind after the tingling warmth of the Chamber, and Krasno drew his cloak more closely around the tattered remains of his clothing. There was a flash of movement among the rocks and Tikta came running, chattering happily. Krasno stroked its soft fur and the lemur-thing placed its paws on his head in the way Eldyn had learned meant mental communication.

  She watched his face become set and grim.

  'Things are going badly,' he said.

  He hurried her down the jagged slope, telling her as they went that the Forest People were gathering. It was risky, an unprecedented move of desperation, for if any large numbers were killed or captured Varda's entire defense against Sassa would collapse. The Gateway could be fully opened.

  But Krasno was unable to maintain the pace at which he started. He tired rapidly, and often they rested at his suggestion. He seemed clumsy, unsure of his footing, and frequently she helped his over the rougher places.

  'Do you remember the Thin World?' he asked during one pause.

  'N-no,' she admitted. She could remember Earth and Varda, remember her battle with the Luvans. But about the Thin World she could recall only that there was such a—was it a place?

  'But you must!' he wailed. 'You must!'

  'I don't,' she insisted.

  He sighed. 'Perhaps it will come back to you.'

  * * * *

  Finally they were out of the mountains, the blue forest moss squeaking beneath their feet as they walked. Once they stopped for a brief sleep, and although Eldyn found it uncomfortably hot on the forest floor Krasno kept his long cloak wrapped closely.

  'Where are we going?' she asked, very tired of this hiking and of the boy's reproachful glances. Even the little lemur-thing seemed to stare disapproval at her lack of memory.

  'To my people, of course. Perhaps they will allow me to return now. Every one of us will be needed to counteract the two Earth minds working with the Faith.'

  'Ugh!' Eldyn grunted, furious over him reiterated hints that Marion—his Marion, for he had come to her that last night on Earth—was Of the Faith.

  They continued walking in strained silence.

  'Can't you remember anything?' he asked again, his lips trembling. 'About the Thin World? That you are El-ve-dyn?'

  'No.'

  Her tone was unintentionally sharp, for she was irked by her inability to remember. There was something—something she couldn't quite grasp. He responded by bursting into a flood of tears and she stared at him, astonished. He had seemed such a well-balanced boy, one who did not cry easily. And so healthy and active too. But now—

  He was still sobbing intermittently when three heavily armed women stepped from among the trees and approached with swords and blast rods drawn.

  Eldyn tensed instantly at their hostile attitude, and though she was unarmed she prepared to resist.

  But Krasno grasped her arm. 'No. They are my people. We must go with them quietly.'

  With a guard on either side and the third behind they were hustled through the forest. Krasno stumbled occasionally and Eldyn took his arm. They were not allowed to speak to each other, and the guards were so watchful they seemed almost afraid of their unarmed prisoners.

  Once three tubular silvery ships like the one which had hunted Eldyn on her first night in Varda cruised overhead in echelon formation. Instantly their guards forced them into hiding.

  'Kill both if they signal,' the leading guard directed.

  Neither Eldyn nor Krasno had the slightest intention of signaling the aircraft of the Faith, and with their captors they breathed a sigh of relief when the ships vanished in the distance.

  Their hurried progress continued, with Krasno panting and stumbling. Perspiration beaded his face, but still he kept the heavy cloak around himself.

  Finally one of the guards whistled and almost at once they were surrounded by armed women who stared at them in hostile silence for a moment, then forced them into a black opening at the base of a tree.

  The tunnel smelled musty and unused and the huge underground room smelled the same. But the room was in use now, packed from wall to wall with Forest People.

  Sudden silence fell as the captives were led in, and hundreds of eyes turned toward them. Krasno gasped and his face grew pale—

  'Oh, Eldyn! They think we—'

  'Be quiet!' one of the guards snapped, prodding his roughly in the back.

  Eldyn's fists clenched despite the swords ringing her in, but Krasno's look counseled to wait.

  Something was very, very wrong with many of the Forest People. Their skins were red and raw and their bodies were swollen and bloated, as though they had been severely burned or were in the last stages of some dreadful disease.

  A woman—she might have been good looking at one time—pushed toward them. His feverish eyes were sunk deep in pockets of swollen flesh and his poor, distorted face twitched uncontrollably.

  'You did this, red warlock of Sassa—and you, Earthwoman!' His voice was so cracked with hate that Krasno stepped back.

  A middle-aged woman put her arm gently around him, and he was sobbing and leaning heavily upon her as she led hea away.

  'Sassa-creatures!' she growled, her eyes flashing venom.

  All at once Eldyn realized she could read thoughts, just as Krasno had read hers. She knew what these Forest People were thinking and her face went tight as she felt their concentrated hate. For every one of them believed that Krasno had been deliberately allowed to escape from the Fortress as part of the Faith's dark plot. Didn't he carry the slave-mark? And they were sure that she, Eldyn, was as much Of the Faith as her two fellow-worldlings.

  The ancient, white-haired woman in charge of the meeting pounded for attention. She peered at the prisoners with searing loathing and spoke to Krasno.

  'The Council erred when it sentenced you to exile,' she declared grimly. 'It should have been death. But this mistake which has cost so many lives will be rectified.'

  There was a growl of approval.

/>   'And this Earthwoman—'

  Krasno straightened. 'This Earthwoman is El-ve-dyn!' he shouted.

  For a moment there was incredulous silence.

  'You lie, Sassa-creature!' screamed one of the bloated, dying women.

  'Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!' The chant roared deafeningly from the low ceiling and the old leader made no attempt to stop it.

  Krasno raised his arms high in a plea for silence. He got silence, sudden and complete, but in an unexpected way. For as he raised his arms the cloak fell open and the tattered and bloodstained clothing beneath hid little. There was a startled gasp from the crowd, then a hum of shocked comment.

  But it was not his semi-nudity that caused the sensation. His condition, the heaviness of his body, were obvious.

  He saw that his secret had been disclosed.

  'This woman is El-ve-dyn!' His voice was firm and defiant now, pitched to cut through the noise. 'Though she has refused to save our world, which only she can do, Varda must have another chance.'

  Eldyn was held in outraged motionlessness as an angry mutter spread.

  'Forest People!' Krasno lifted his voice. 'The Earthwoman is the mother of my child—although she herself did not know it until now!'

  Eldyn wanted to shout a denial. But she understood why he had been so unsure of his footing descending the mountains, why he had tired so easily.

  'This Earthwoman could be El-ve-dyn of the prophecy if she would, but she will not. But some day—if the Gateway can be held long enough—perhaps our child will accept the burden its mother has shirked. The child will inherit characteristics of a Closed World mind. It was all I could do for Varda.'

  His voice broke in a sob.

  Eldyn read a thought in his mind, a thought intended for her alone.

  'And besides, I love her.'

  Her brain was awhirl. It was all utterly impossible. But her confusion was interrupted by a stir in the back of the hall. Bolan entered, shoved her way to the dais. She spoke to the old leader and there were cries of angry protest from those near enough to hear.

  'But—'the old woman began.

  'A trick to regain our confidence,' someone broke in loudly. 'Even Luvans would be sacrificed to defeat us.'

  The old woman spoke to Bolan again, and Bolan turned to stare at her brother with disbelief changing to undisguised loathing.

  'But he is the only one who knows the arrangement of the Fortress,' she said aloud. 'Kill his and you doom our attack to failure.'

  There was a babble of disagreement.

  'I say this not as his brother—if he has chosen a mate outside our own People I hereby declare his no longer my sister—but as chosen leader of our attack.'

  Amid the ensuing uproar the old woman made a gesture to the guards, and with her newfound telepathic ability Eldyn caught the thought-command.

  'Take them to the side rooms, apart from each other. We must consider this.'

  * * * *

  Alone in a tiny cell Eldyn tried to bring her whirling thoughts to order. Krasno had lied. He must have lied. Why? But for a moment his mind had been so open to her telepathic sense that lying was improbable. And—

  She felt a sudden mental wrench, a dislocation, a twisting—a million ideas spun through her brain—and she remembered. Memories of the Thin World—those very memories whose lack had made Krasno cry so bitterly—all at once. They had been there all the time, but buried, and the quick series of emotional shocks had brought them to the surface. Gone was the irksome, nagging feeling that had made her speak so harshly to the poor boy, replaced by a sense of surety and power.

  Krasno had returned to the Chamber, to their real bodies, while she had remained in the Thin World. It could have—must have—happened that way. She remembered the secret, knowing smile he had worn, and the hints she had detected in his mind. And thought was a powerful force in Varda, controlling material objects. And time in the Thin World was different, variable.

  It had been his patriotic urge to give Varda a chance at no matter what cost to himself. But she suspected there was also a shrewd masculine attempt to involve her emotionally in the fate of his world. It was most disconcerting.

  Then that other thought—that most surprising thought of all. So he loved her. So what? She had not encouraged him.

  She tried to shrug it off, tried to tell herself she had no responsibility whatsoever in the matter. But her heart spoke otherwise. She tried to grow angry at Krasno for the unfair advantage he had taken—and failed miserably.

  * * * *

  She made no resistance as she was led back into the hall. Memories of the Thin World, of the nature of interacting bound charges, were arranging themselves in her mind. And she understood how to use that knowledge. Her was a triple mind with an understanding of Earth, of Varda, and of the Thin World. But somehow there was little satisfaction and no happiness in the belief that soon she could return to Earth.

  The old woman began, for the benefit of the crowd, with a lengthy explanation that there was still some doubt in Krasno's case. He had, after all, given them the Luvans’ secret, and he was necessary to the plan to infiltrate the Fortress and assassinate the leaders of the Faith, but still he bore the slave-mark.

  'He will be kept under guard and his mind will be intensively probed,' the old woman announced. 'The child with the Earth taint will be destroyed at birth.'

  'No!' Krasno shrieked. 'No!'

  Eldyn felt a twinge at his frantic, pitiful cry, but she hardened her heart and did not face him.

  She did not wait for the inevitable death sentence to be pronounced upon her. She turned away, almost casually, and walked toward the passage. She must find Marion, attend to the matter of Victoria, and then return to Earth. And she must go first to the dread Fortress of Syn, for she would have need of the Gateway.

  But she was filled with a deep sadness for Krasno and her—their—unborn child.

  At first the Forest People did not guess her intention for she screened her thoughts. Then two warriors leaped to block her path with upraised swords. Eldyn thought, and for the fragment of time it took to pass them they remained immobile. A knife whistled toward her unprotected back. She felt it coming and with incredible swiftness whirled and caught it in midair.

  'Up! Up! Higher!' Eldyn concentrated as a blast rod was drawn somewhere behind her. The sizzling lethal charge passed over her head and tore a gaping scar in the plastic ceiling as the aim of the operator was disturbed by her penetrating thought.

  She risked one look at Krasno. He was struggling to tear loose from his guards and follow.

  'El-ve-dyn!' he called. In his voice was the anguish of one who has lost hope. Then she ran, knowing that as soon as the Forest People recovered from their surprise she would be no match for their massed mental powers.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Mottled splotches of tree filtered sunlight flashed across her body. She ran, wishing she had not looked back at Krasno, guiding herself by the sun, and when she grew tired she used her new knowledge to postpone fatigue. Her body would have to pay a price later, but for that she was prepared.

  She knew now that she must inevitably come into conflict not only with the Faith, but with the Sassa-thing itself. For Sassa held the Gateway. She smiled wryly to herself as she considered fragmentary plans. Perhaps she was El-ve-dyn after all.

  The forest thinned to allow glimpses of the Mountains that Move, and then she was clambering up the same barren, rock strewn slopes she and Krasno had descended so slowly together.

  She found the entrance to the Chamber without difficulty, for that black hole among the rocks was fixed indelibly in her memory. Then she had to drive herself, push herself step after lagging step down the steep tunnel until she stood amid the warmth and polychromatic glow of the crystal-lined grotto. She felt her spirit, her self, float free from her body. It was like swimming in a riptide, requiring a conscious and constant effort to hover near and not be swept out again into the Thin World.

&
nbsp; And then, deliberately, Eldyn's self did strange and terrible things to the body that lay crumpled on the rough floor. There was a psychic pain that ripped and tore at the self, more intense and poignant than any purely physical torment, and it continued for a timeless age.

  When at long last a body staggered up the tunnel its left arm was a stump and one eye blinked and squinted in a ruined, disfigured face. By her own choosing she was outwardly as she had been during those last unhappy months on Earth. The mental changes were invisible.

  Above the Chamber the mountains grew steeper, rougher, and to an already exhausted cripple the difficulties were almost insuperable. Time after time she narrowly avoided rock slides loosened by the constant earthquakes, and there were ledges where the slightest misstep meant death, and crevices from which noxious, choking fumes puffed in irregular spurts. And always there was the howling, shrieking wind that strove to wreck her precarious balance and send her tumbling to destruction.

  She wished she had an antigravity egg. With time and proper facilities she could have constructed one. She understood how. But she was not in the Thin World and could not produce one from nothing merely by thinking about it.

  And she could not have used it anyhow. It was necessary that her maimed body be tortured almost to the point of collapse. The Gateway must be reached through Sassa, and Sassa could be reached only through the Faith. But one who was of the Faith could not be false to Sassa.

  Scratched and bleeding, half-frozen, her shoes worn through and the palm of her single hand shredded by jagged rocks, she crossed the summit and made the long descent to the semi-desert plateau on the other side. Near the bottom a small stream trickled across the rocks, and Eldyn drank deeply, although the water stank of chemicals leached from the volcanic core of the range.

  The domain of the Faith was huge, and for three days she plodded across the drifting brownish sands. Her breath whistled noisily in a throat parched with thirst and seared by alkali dust. Baneath the tattered remains of her shirt her ribs showed starkly through weather-scoured, sun-blistered skin, but she welcomed the emaciation and each scratch of the cactus-like plants. It was all necessary.

  As the merciless sun rose for the fourth day she sighted a column of mist ahead. In the afternoon she topped a slight rise and looked down upon a small lake steaming in the brazen sunlight. On its shore two dozen mud and wattle huts huddled together for mutual protection. A settlement of the primitive Puva tribeswomen, the original non-mutants. Eldyn hid in the scanty shade of a boulder and slept a couple of hours.