Then she was granted momentary respite. One of the worshippers dropped to the floor. Then another, and still a third. Sassa surged against the invisible barrier, almost came through, then recoiled in temporary frustration. The efforts of the entity so drained its worshippers that fully half the group slumped awkwardly to the curving floor. The ruddy tinge of the Gateway faded back to yellow. A wave of malignant hatred poured through for all living creatures who did not acknowledge the overlordship of Sassa.
Syn saw and acted. Unconscious worshippers could not help Sassa come through. A nod to Wyr stopped the force, and another caused the Rebel captive to be swung over the Vat and lowered. She vanished in the lavender liquid without a sound, without a struggle, unwilling to give the bestial devotees of the Faith the satisfaction they craved.
Marion's hand closed over Eldyn's, thrusting the blast rod into her belt, hiding it beneath her loose fitting coat. A quick glance passed between his and Wyr and the big woman nodded almost imperceptibly. Almost. Next time.
The hook of the hoist swung back empty and the guards prodded the third victim into position. Quickly they tied his hands, placed a loop of the bindings over the hook, and one of them forced the drug that would counteract the slave potions into his mouth. Eldyn held her breath.
For the next to die would be Krasno.
The boy gulped, then twisted his head as the counteragent took effect. He looked up to see Syn leaning from the platform, gloatingly awaiting his screams of hopeless terror. But in the moment of recovery he glared up at the priest with eyes filled with loathing instead of fear.
Syn's mouth twisted with hate at the boy's defiance. Personal hate, for Krasno had injured his pride and his dignity by escaping from the slave pits. It had been an unforgivable affront, and now the high priest flung taunting words at his victim.
Krasno's lips moved as though pleading for mercy and Syn bent lower to hear and enjoy. And then the Rebel boy turned his face upward and deliberately spat at his tormentor. Eldyn's heart leaped in admiration. It was an unladylike but magnificent gesture of defiance and contempt. Syn jumped back, his face dark with rage, and nodded a signal to Wyr. She seized the lever.
Once more Sassa-force pounded through the machine, more fiendishly intense than ever. Once more Eldyn felt the ravenings of the alien monster who sensed that this was The Night, and once more battled the overwhelming compulsion to abandon the unequal struggle and with her own thoughts help Sassa to come through.
Right then she almost died. She had forgotten Victoria.
But Marion had become sufficiently adept to hold a part of himself aloof from Sassa's influence, and he saved her.
'Behind you!' he hissed. 'It's Victoria! Kill!' There was surprise and genuine fear in his voice. He had not expected Victoria to come after Eldyn.
Eldyn abandoned all pretense and whirled.
Under other circumstances she might have enjoyed the disconcerted look that overspread Victoria's narrow face. Victoria, a few feet away, carried a dagger which she had obviously expected to plunge into Eldyn's unprotected back without resistance, as Highness Syn had ordered. Syn's vague suspicions had been enough to order Eldyn's death.
'The blast rod! Shoot her!' Marion whispered urgently, and then he was tumbling aside to avoid the searing backfire of the weapon.
But the moment for which Eldyn waited had not yet arrived.
Victoria struck out. Eldyn sidestepped. And then she fell, tripped by a loop of the cable attached to her wrist. Victoria gave a hoarse cry of triumph and moved in. Eldyn felt the slashing pain of a flesh wound.
'The blast rod, you fool!' Marion cried.
But Eldyn made no attempt to draw the power weapon. As she regained her feet she snatched a short, heavy sword from the belt of a subordinate officer who was so immersed in the Observance that she was only just becoming aware of the disturbance.
A frightened expression twisted Victoria's mouth as she saw her adversary no longer empty-handed, but she knew by the vengeful gleam in Eldyn's single eye that this time one of them must surely die. She still held the advantage, for the Force of Sassa confused Eldyn's thoughts with alien impressions, interfered with her muscular coordination, drained her strength. And the cable attached to her wrist hindered her movements.
But Victoria Schenley's own fear of this woman she had crippled but twice failed to kill proved her undoing. One of her panicky lunges caught the cable—and sheared through it.
Eldyn almost fainted as the Force of Sassa ceased and for a second her stomach muscles contracted in a tight, cramping knot. But she was freed from Sassa!
The light of the Gateway gleamed red on Victoria's weapon. But the renegade had forgotten to close her mind—if she had ever learned how—and with the Force of Sassa no longer confusing her Eldyn knew exactly when and where and how the attack would come.
Victoria lunged. Eldyn swayed clear and caught Victoria's dagger hand between her side and the stump of her amputated left arm. Before Victoria could jerk free Eldyn plunged her blade into Victoria's throat.
There was a gurgling moan, the warmth and acrid odor of spurting blood, the clatter of Victoria's dagger on the floor. It was over so suddenly that Eldyn felt no thrill of revenge, no elation. For an instant she stared at the corpse, stunned. It was the first time she had ever killed a human.
A scream spun her around. Krasno! In the brightening glare of the Gateway his body seemed afire as he swung above the terrible Vat.
With a bellow Eldyn plunged toward the elevated chair upon which Wyr sat, pushing aside the spellbound devotees of Sassa. She must stop the lowering of the hoist, and at once!
But she had forgotten Marion. 'Eldyn!' he screamed and threw his arms around her, pinioning her single hand at her side. His pale face was inhuman with fury at the deception she had practiced upon his and fear of the deadly position in which he found himself. There could be no explanation. If Eldyn did not kill him, Syn assuredly would.
Krasno shrieked again, this time in pain as his toes touched the liquid of the Vat, and even through the crackling, spitting crescendo Eldyn heard him.
The short stub of her arm drew back, swung, and needles of fire raced through it as she struck Marion's jaw. His grip slackened and with a heave of her muscles she broke loose. She raised her sword—and knew herself for a sentimental fool. Earth repressions still in her mind would not let her kill a man. Not even this man.
The huge grey paw of a Luvan raked the side of her face and she weaved just in time to evade the clutching talons. Three of the monsters towered above her, slow-moving but inexorable. Automatically Eldyn threw her sword full into the face of the nearest and ducked, beneath its outstretched arms.
Wyr looked up from her controls with murder in her eyes and half rose in her seat to rasp her great sword from its sheath.
Eldyn swerved aside, avoiding combat with the larger woman. The hell-glow of the Gateway was deepening to crimson and the ripping crackles had reached a deafening pitch. Soon, too soon, Krasno would vanish in the Vat and Sassa would come through. Her last chance would be lost if she allowed Wyr to interfere.
With a clumsy leap she vaulted to the transparent platform of the high priest. She leaned far over the Vat, reaching toward the hook from which Krasno swung. Her one hand made pawing motions in the air. But the distance was too great.
Krasno saw her, guessed her intentions, and gave her a look at once appealing and resigned. Then his eyes opened wide at the sight of her maimed body. He turned his eyes upward to where the grossly incredible form of Sassa was bulging in the crimson light and shouted. His words went unheard but Eldyn received his thought. He was begging her to ignore him, to leave his to his fate and do whatever she could to halt the alien entity.
But that Eldyn could not and would not do. Such a sacrifice would be worse than useless. The crimson tint of the Gateway, the crescendo crackling, the bulging of Sassa against the weakening thought barrier, all told her that Sassa needed only the additional strength of Krasno
's life to come through in an unstoppable rush.
She crouched at the edge of the platform, measuring the distance as best she could with her single eye, and then the entire power of her legs was unleashed in a leap that carried her far out over the deadly Vat, her one arm stretched outward and upward. For an instant she thought she had misjudged and was plunging to destruction. Then her fingers touched the hook, clutched it, and she crashed against Krasno.
They swung together, pendulum fashion, carried in an arc by the force of Eldyn's leap. Out away from the platform, toward the other side of the Vat. Out, and then back again.
Eldyn's legs reached, feeling for the narrow rim at the platform's edge. Her toes touched it, slipped, held. Her body stretched on a slant between hook and platform, every muscle strained. Krasno, shorter than she and unable to touch the ledge, dangled vertically over the Vat, but above the surface.
Above them something in the Gateway glared, malevolently down. Its silent call reached the high priest who stood encrimsoned in the lurid glare with outstretched arms reaching in unclean yearning toward the thing to which he had surrendered his humanity. Until then he had been too deep in communion with Sassa to notice the Earthwoman.
But at Sassa's warning he spun about. A shrill sound of pure rage issued from his throat as he threw himself upon her. He was a harpy, an animal, his teeth and pointed fingernails punishing weapons. In silent fury he clawed and bit, trying to break her bold on Sassa's destined victim. And Eldyn was too fully occupied to protect herself in any way.
Wyr started up the platform, sword in hand, but Syn paused to wave her back.
'No!' he commanded. 'At your controls! Sassa comes!'
Puzzled, her slow thoughts in confusion at the sudden shift in events, Wyr obeyed.
Marion too joined the fight, scrambling to the platform which would be the focus of Sassa's power. He had picked up Victoria's jeweled dagger and with it he now lunged at Syn's back. But not to save Eldyn. To save himself from Syn's vengeance and become ruler of Varda. For the Power would descend upon whomever Of the Faith occupied the platform.
The blade sank home to the hilt. Syn opened his mouth, but if he screamed it was lost in the swelling roar of Sassa's coming. The impetus of Marion's rush carried the Black Priestess’ body forward toward the Vat.
His body crashed against Eldyn and her overstrained body gave way. Her toes slipped from the platform's edge, and she and Krasno once more swung out over the Vat—while Syn's white form plummeted on down.
There was a dull splash—and Syn, Beloved of Sassa, was no more. Nothing settled through the evil lavender depths.
The temple of Sassa was now in an uproar. Eldyn and Krasno hung in slow-swinging arcs, and Marion stood paralyzed, fingers taloned and shoulders raised.
Through the tumult he and Eldyn's eyes met—and held. In what seemed to them both an age, their thoughts took concrete form. Marion somehow realized that she was his sole obstacle now. Eldyn would have to be removed before he could fill Syn's place.
Eldyn, too—in this split-second that seemed eternity—had made her decision. From the Gateway came a sound that stopped the blood in her veins. Syn himself had furnished the final needed burst of life energy.
Sassa was coming through!
Marion was evil. But Sassa was the greater evil. With all her Thin World knowledge, Eldyn knew that the instant of balance was at hand, the time to strike and disrupt that balance of bound charges.
Marion leaped forward as her swing carried Eldyn and Krasno back toward the platform. He slashed with Victoria's knife, slashed at Eldyn's fingers.
The thrust was true. The edge bit into bone and severed cleanly. Eldyn's mutilated hand slipped from the chains. And she and Krasno fell toward the Vat.
But even as she fell Eldyn's hand drove down—what was left of it—and snatched the blast rod Marion had placed in her belt. Falling, she aimed at the lurid flaming thing that was Sassa.
The Sassa-creature sensed her intention, turned its force into Marion's receptive mind and drove his into a blind attack. With an inhuman scream he launched himself from the platform after Eldyn, his dagger thrusting forward and down as he fell.
In midair Eldyn pressed the button and with the supreme effort of her life ignored the frothing Vat below and the agony of the rod's backfire to concentrate the resonant power into the Gateway, into the terrible Thing solidifying there, and with Vardan control of mind over matter to warp the discharge of the particular frequency her Thin World knowledge told hers was necessary.
A blazing cone from the rod sizzled and spat. The crimson glare of the Gateway flashed through the spectrum, exploded in a scintillating violet flare, and went black. There was the stunning crash of a world being torn asunder and through it an alien cry of rage—and of dawning terror.
In the upper hemisphere of the globe a group of white-glowing pinpoints appeared, arranged in a pattern that had grown familiar. The stars of Varda shining through! With incredible speed the rift in the temple of Sassa spread. Collapse!
As she plunged toward the Vat she knew she had won, knew she had found the proper modulation to disrupt the finely balanced system of resonant bound charges of the Gateway. And she knew the alien thing called Sassa had been caught between worlds, in no world at all, doomed to dwindle into the nothingness from which it had arisen by feeding upon stolen lives.
She felt one last wave of malignancy, a wave that faded and left only her own bodily pain. Then that too became indistinct even though her finger still stabbed the button of the ruined blast rod smoking red hot against her palm. And she was falling, not into the Vat but through limitless space.
The shattered remnants of the Globe and the Gateway dissolved in a tearing, melting sensation as though the very atoms of her being were rearranging themselves, a strain that made her mind shriek in torment and flee to the verge of madness.
There was a flashing glimpse of a grotto, of crystalline, polychromatic light and tingling warmth—the Chamber. Then that and the pain too were gone and she fell interminably through blackness.
* * * *
Seconds ... hours ... eons. And she struck with unexpected mildness on a hard, flat surface.
She opened one eye—and the other. She placed the palms of her hands—both hands—against the floor and pushed herself to a sitting posture.
The fluorescent lights of her own laboratory cast shadowless brilliance upon her. The charge collectors still whined, their pitch lowering slowly as she listened, and the air was still pungent with ozone. It couldn't be—or could it?—that only a few moments of Earth time had elapsed?
A man lay on the floor a few feet away, and she knew that she and he had both been near enough the neutral focus of the forces she had unleashed to escape destruction. And her arm, her eye—even the hand Marion had so cruelly slashed—these parts of her had somehow in the transit between Varda and Earth—his body had been made whole again.
She stared hard at the man, for was a different Marion Matson, hardly recognizable. There were deep lines and wrinkles in his face and his revealing Vardan costume showed only too clearly how his once sleek body had become flabby and misshapen. In that last effort Sassa had fed ruthlessly upon its own worshippers, and her blast rod discharge had prevented their rejuvenation by lives stolen in the Vat.
While her mind was still adjusting itself she noticed the copper bar lying across the contacts of her experimental mechanism, and with Thin World knowledge she knew exactly what effect it had had upon the resonance of the bound charges. After a while she stopped merely looking and went to work.
She picked up a rod of nonconductive plastic and flipped the copper bar aside. Methodically she replaced blown fuses and threw in the circuit breakers controlling the bound charge concentrators. The hum rose rapidly. The machine was not seriously damaged.
A voice startled her.
'Oh! Eldyn! You saved me!'
Marion had regained consciousness. With grim amusement Eldyn admitted to herse
lf that he still thought rapidly and bluffed well. But she kept on working, not answering him.
'Eldyn!' His voice was impatient. She turned slowly.
He smiled and held his arms out seductively, and the effect was indescribably grotesque. She felt a malicious urge to bring him face to face with a mirror. But he would discover him condition soon enough. She could look at his now without emotion. There was no longer any hatred in her mind, and no pity either. She turned back to work.
'Eldyn! Speak to me!' His voice trembled between fright and anger. He was not used to being ignored.
But her mind was buzzing.
She knew she could easily be the foremost scientist of Earth, and although the miraculous restoration of her arm and eye would be hard to explain there could be prestige and wealth and power. Easily. Even though the inanimate materials of Earth, more refractory than those of Varda, would not respond directly with thoughts, her knowledge could be modified and applied
And she knew that for El-ve-dyn of Varda life would not be easy. A savage environment—the task of exterminating any of the mutant Puvas who had escaped—the even more difficult task of weaning the surviving Forest People away from the sullen suspiciousness that generations of hunted terror had made a fixed habit—leading and driving them to become the Superiors once more, the leaders of Varda. It would mean life-long struggle, discomfort and danger, exile from her home world, and work, work, work to start the world of her beloved once more upon the path toward civilization. And there would be those who would always view her efforts with suspicion, even hate and openly oppose her.
She made intricate calculations with fighting speed and her hands obeyed effortlessly, adjusting the mechanism to limit its field of effect, setting up a deliberate overload that would reduce it to molten metal and shards of shattered glass and plastic. It would never do to leave this minor Gateway open now. Some day, perhaps...
Krasno, too, had been near enough to the neutral focus of escape, and all at once she knew with irrational surety that their child would be—twins.
She picked up the copper bar.