3
SHE must not allow herself to think of Starrex now, only of her dream. She must create and have no fear that her creation would be less perfect than her hopes. Tamisan closed her eyes, firmed her will and drew into her imagination all the threads of the studies’ spinning. She began the weaving of a dream.
For a moment, perhaps two fingers’ count of moments, this was like the beginning of any dream and then—
She was not looking on, watching intently, critically, a fabric she spun with dexterity. No, it was rather as if that web suddenly became real and she was caught tightly in it, even as a blue-winged drotail might be enmeshed in a foss-spider’s deadly nest curtain!
This was no dreaming such as Tamisan had ever known before, and panic gripped so harshly in her throat and chest that she might have screamed, save that she had no voice left. She fell down and down from a point above, to strike among bushes which took some of her weight, but with an impact which left her bruised and half senseless. She lay unmoving, gasping, her eyes closed, fearing to open them to see that she was indeed caught in a wild nightmare and not properly dreaming.
As she lay there, she came slowly out of her dazed bewilderment; she tried to get control, not only over her fears, but her dreaming powers. Then she opened her eyes cautiously.
An arch of sky was overhead, palidly green, with traces, like long, clutching fingers, of thin gray cloud. As real as any sky might be, did she walk under it in her own time and world. Her own time and world!
The idea she had built upon to astound Starrex came back to her now. Had the fact that she had worked with a new theory, trying to bring a twist to dreaming which might pierce the indifference of a bored man, precipitated this?
Tamisan sat up, wincing at the protest of her bruises, to look about her. Her vantage point was the crest of a small knob of earth. But the land about her was no wilderness. The turf was smooth and cropped, and here and there were outcrops of rock cleverly carved and clothed with flowering vines—some of them; others were starkly bare, brooding. And all faced down slope to a wall.
These forms varied from vaguely acceptable humanoid shapes to grotesque monsters. And Tamisan decided that she liked the aspect of none when she studied them more closely. These were not of her imagining.
Beyond the wall began a cluster of buildings. Used to seeing the sky towers and the lesser, if more substantial structures beneath those which were of her own world, these looked unusually squat and heavy. The highest she could see from here was no more than three stories. Men did not build to the stars here, they hugged the earth closely.
But where was here? Not her dream—Tamisan closed her eyes and concentrated on the beginnings of her planned dream. That had been about going into another world, born of her imagining, yes—but not this! Her basic idea had been simple enough, if not one which had been used to her knowledge by any dreamer before her. It all hinged on the idea that the past history of her world had been altered many times during its flow—and she had taken three key-points of alteration, studied on what might have resulted had those been given the opposite decision by fate.
Now, keeping her eyes firmly closed against this seeming reality into which she had fallen, Tamisan concentrated with fierce intentness upon her chosen points.
“The Welcome of the Over-Queen Ahta—” she recited the first.
What if the first star ship on its landing had not been accepted as a supernatural event and the small kingdom in which it had touched earth had not accepted its crew as godlings, but rather had greeted them instead with those poisoned darts the spacemen had later seen used? That was her first decision.
“The loss of the Wanderer.” That was the second.
A colony ship driven far from its assigned course by computer failure, so that it had had to make a landing here or let its passengers die. If that failure had not occurred and the Wanderer not landed to start an unplanned colony . . .
“The death of Sylt the Sweet-Tongued before he reached the Altar of Ictio.”
A prophet who might never have arisen to ruthless power, leading to a blood-crazed insurrection from temple to temple, setting darkness on three-quarters of this world.
She had chosen those points, but she had not even been sure that one might not have canceled out another.
Sylt had led the rebellion against the colonists from the Wanderer. If the welcome had not occurred . . . Tamisan could not be sure—she had only tried to find a pattern sequence of events and then envision a modern world stemming from those changes.
However—she opened her eyes again—this was not her imagined world! Nor did one in a dream rub bruises, sit on damp sod, feel wind pull at clothes, and allow the first patter of rain to wet hair and robe. She put both hands to her head—what of the dream cap?
Her fingers found a weaving of metal right enough, but there were no cords from it. And for the first time she remembered that she had been linked with Starrex and Kas when this happened.
Tamisan got to her feet to look around her, half expecting to see the other two somewhere near. But she was alone, and the rain was falling heavier. There was a roofed space near the wall, and Tamisan hurried for it.
Three twisted pillars supported a small dome of roof. There were no walls, and she huddled in the very center, trying to escape the wind-borne moisture. She could not keep pushing away the feeling that this was no dream but true reality.
If—if one could dream true! Tamisan fought panic and tried to examine the possibilities. Had she somehow landed in a Ty-Kry which might have existed had her three checkpoints actually been the decisions she envisioned? If so—could one get back by simply visioning them in reverse?
She shut her eyes and concentrated . . .
There was a sensation of stomach-turning giddiness. She swung out, to be jerked back—swung out, to return once more. Shaking with nausea, Tamisan stopped trying. She shuddered, opening her eyes to the rain. Then again she strove to understand what had happened. That swing had in it some of the sensation of dream breaking. It did! Which meant that she was in a dream. But it was just as apparent that she had been held prisoner here. How? And why? Or—her eyes narrowed a little, though she was looking inward, not at the rain-misted garden before her—by whom?
Suppose—suppose one or both of those who had prepared to share her dream had also come into this place—though not right here—then she must find them. They must return together or the missing one would anchor the others. Find them—and now!
For the first time she looked down at the garment clinging dank and damp to her slender body. It was not the gray slip of a dreamer, for it was long, brushing her ankles. And in color it was a dusky violet, a shade she found strangely pleasing and right.
From its hem to her knees there was a border of intricate embroidery so entwined and ornate that she found it hard to define in any detail, though it seemed oddly enough that the longer she studied it, the more it appeared to be not threads on cloth, but words on a page of manuscript such as she had viewed in the ancient history video tapes. The threads were a metallic green and silver, with only a few minor touches of a lighter shade of violet.
Around her waist was a belt of silver links, clasped by a broad buckle of the same metal set with purple stones. This supported a pouch with a metal top. The dress or robe was laced from the belt to her throat with silver cords run through metal eyelets in the material. And her sleeves were long and full, though from the elbow down they were slit to four parts, those fluttering away from her arms when she raised them to loose the crown.
What she brought away from her head was not the familiar skull cap made to fit over her cropped hair. Rather it was a circlet of silver with inner wires or strips rising to a conical point that added a foot or more to her height. On that point was a beautifully fashioned flying thing, its wings a little lifted as if to take off, the glitter of tiny jewels marking its eyes.
It was so made that, as she turned the crown around, its long neck changed po
sition and the wings moved a fraction. Thus at first she was almost startled enough to drop the circlet, thinking it might just be alive.
But the whole she recognized from one of the history tapes. The bird was the flacar of Olava. Wearing it so meant that she was a Mouth! A Mouth of Olava—half priestess, part sorceress—and oddly enough, entertainer. But fortune had favored her in this; a Mouth of Olava might wander anywhere without question, searching, and seem merely to be about her normal business.
Tamisan ran her hand over her head before she replaced the crown. Her fingers did not find the bristly stubble of a dreamer, but rather soft, mist-dampened strands which curled down long enough to brush her forehead and tuft at the nape of her neck.
She had imagined garments for herself in dreams, of course. But this time she had not provided herself with such, and so the fact that she stood as a Mouth of Olava was not of her willing. But Olava was part of the time of the Over-Queen’s rule. Had she somehow swept herself back in time? The sooner she found knowledge of where—and when—she was, the better.
The rain was slackening and Tamisan moved out from under the dome. She bunched up her robe in both hands to climb back up the slope. At its top she turned slowly, trying to find some proof that she had not been tossed alone into this strange world.
Save for the figures of stone and beds of rank-looking growth, there was nothing to be seen. The wall and the dome structure lay below. But when she faced about, there was a second slope leading to a still higher point which was crowned by a roof to be seen only in bits and patches through a screen of oarn trees. The roof had a ridge which terminated at either side in a sharp upcurve, giving the building the odd appearance of an ear on either end. And it was green with a glittering surface, almost brilliantly so in spite of the clouds overhead.
To her right and left Tamisan caught glimpses of the wall curving, and more stone figures with flower or shrub plantings. Gathering up her skirts more firmly, she began to walk up the curve of the higher slope in search of some road or path leading to the roof.
She came across what she sought as she detoured to avoid a thicket of heavy brush in which were impaled huge scarlet flowers. It was a wide roadway paved with small colored pebbles embedded in a solid surface, and it led from an open gateway up the swell of the slope to the front of the rear structure.
In shape the building was vaguely familiar, though Tamisan could not identify it. Unless it resembled something she had seen in the tri-dees. The door was of the same brilliant green as the roof, but the walls were a pale yellow, cut sharply at regular intervals by windows, very narrow, and so tall that they ran from floor to roof level.
Even as she stood there wondering where she had seen such a house before, a woman came out. Like Tamisan she wore a long-skirted robe with laced bodice and slit sleeves. But hers was the same green as that of the door, so that, standing against it, only her head and arms were clearly visible. She gestured with vigor, and Tamisan suddenly realized that it must be she who was being summoned—as if she were expected—
Again she fought down unease. In a dream she was well used to meetings and partings, but always those were of her own devising, did not happen for a purpose which was not of her wish. Her dream people were toys, game pieces, to be moved hither and thither at her will, she being always in command over them.
“Tamisan—they wait—come quickly!” the woman called.
4
TAMISAN was minded in that instant to run in the other direction. But the need to learn what had happened to her made her take what might be the dangerous course of joining the woman.
“Fah—you are wet! This is no hour for walking in the garden. The First Standing asks for a reading from the Mouth. If you would have lavishly from her purse, hurry lest she grows too impatient to wait!”
The door gave upon a narrow entryway, and the woman in green propelled Tamisan toward a second opening directly facing her. She came so into a large room where a circle of couches was centered. By each stood a small table now burdened with dishes which serving maids were bearing away as if a meal had just been concluded. And tall candlesticks, matching Tamisan’s own height, stood also between the divans, the candles in each, as thick as her forearm, alight to give forth not only radiance but a sweet odor as they burned.
Midpoint in the divan circle was a tall-backed chair over which arched a canopy. And in that sat a woman, a goblet in her hand. She had a fur cloak pulled about her shoulders hiding almost all of her robe, save that here and there a shimmer of gold caught fire from the candlelight. Only her face was visible in a hood of the same metallic-seeming fabric, and it was that of the very old, seamed with deep wrinkles, sunken of eye.
The divans, Tamisan marked, were occupied by both men and women, the women flanking the chair, the men farthest away from the ancient noblewoman. And directly facing her was a second impressive chair, lacking only the canopy; before it was a table on which stood, at each of its four corners, four small basins, one cream, one pale rose, one faintly blue, and the fourth sea-foam green.
Tamisan’s store of knowledge gave her some preparation. This was the setting for the magic of a Mouth, and it was apparent that her service as a foreseer was about to be demanded. What had she done in allowing herself to be drawn here? Could she make pretense her servant well enough to deceive this company?
“I hunger, Mouth of Olava, I hunger—not for that which will feed the body, but for that which satisfies the mind.” The old woman leaned forward a little. Her voice might be the thin one of age, but it carried with it the force of authority, of one who has not had her word or desire questioned for a long time.
She must improvise, Tamisan knew. She was a dreamer and she had wrought in dreams many strange things. Let her but remember that now. Her damp skirts clung clammily to her legs and thighs as she came forward, saying nothing to the woman in return, but seating herself in the chair facing her client. She was drawing on faint stirrings of a memory which seemed not truly her own for guidance, though she had not yet realized that fully.
“What would you know, First Standing?” She raised her hands to her forehead in an instinctive gesture, touching forefingers to her temples, right and left.
“What comes to me—and mine.” The last two words had come almost as an afterthought.
Tamisan’s hands went out without her conscious ordering. She stifled her amazement—this was as if she were repeating an act as well learned as her dreamer’s technique had been. With her left hand she gathered up a palm full of the sand from the cream bowl. It was a shade or two darker than the container. She tossed this with a sharp movement of her wrist, and it settled smoothly as a film on the tabletop.
What she was doing was not of her concious mind, as if another had taken charge of her actions. And judging by the way the woman in the chair leaned forward, the hush that had fallen on her companions, this was right and proper.
Without any order from her mind, Tamisan’s right hand went now to the blue bowl with its dark blue sand. But this was not tossed. Instead, she held the fine grains in her fist and that upright, passing it slowly over the table top so that a very tiny trickle of grit fed down to make a pattern on the first film.
And it was a pattern, not a random scattering. What she had so drawn was a recognizable sword with a basket-shaped hilt and a slightly curved blade tapering to a narrow point.
Now her hand moved to the pink bowl. The sand she gathered up there was a dark red, more vivid than the other colors, as if she dealt now with flecks of newly shed blood. Once more she used her upheld fist, and the shifting stream, fed from her palm, became a space ship! It was slightly different in outline from those she had seen all her life, but it was unmistakably a ship. And it was drawn on the table top as if it threatened to descend upon the pointed sword. Or was it that the sword threatened it?
She heard a gasp of surprise—or was it fear? But that sound had not come from the woman who had bade her foretell. It must have broken from some o
ther member of the company intent upon Tamisan’s painting with the flowing sand.
It was to the fourth bowl now that her right hand moved. But she did not take up a full fistful, rather a generous pinch between thumb and forefinger. She held the sand high above the picture and released it. The green specks floated down—to gather in a sign like a circle with one portion missing.
She stared at that, and it seemed to alter a little under the intentness of her watching. What it had changed to was a symbol she knew well, one which brought a small gasp from her. It was the seal, simplified it was true, but still readable, of the House of Starrex, and it overlaid both the edge of the ship and the tip of the sword.
“Read you this!” The noblewoman demanded sharply.
And from somewhere the words came readily to Tamisan. “The sword is the sword of Ty-Kry raised in defense.”
“Assured, assured.” The murmur ran along the divans.
“The ship comes as a danger—”
“That thing—a ship? But it is no ship—”
“It is a ship from the stars.”
“A woe—woe and woe—” That was no murmur now but a full-throated cry of fright. “As in the days of our fathers when we had to deal with the false ones. Ahta—let the spirit of Ahta be shield to our arms, a sword in our hands!”
The noblewoman made a silencing gesture with one hand. “Enough! Crying to the reverend spirits may bring comfort, but they are not noted for helping those not standing to arms on their own behalf. There have been other sky ships since Ahta’s days, and with them we have dealt—to our purpose. If another comes, we are forewarned, which is also forearmed. But what lies there in green, O Mouth of Olava, which surprised even you?”
Tamisan had had precious moments in which to think. If it were true as she had deduced, that she was tied to this world by those she had brought with her, then she must find them. And it was clear that they were not of this company. Therefore this last must be made to work for her.