The group of elders, ten of them, now clustered closer, and one of them stretched out a finger before I could offer a warning. Briefly he touched the star-stone—and instantly snatched his finger back, the skin of its tip scorched and blackened. For a moment anguish showed on his face, then he turned to his colleagues.
“The stone is genuine—and yet.” he stared fascinated at Tracy, “the girl is unhurt!”
“Elders, I go now.” Armandra broke in, stronger now, commanding everyone’s attention. “But there are things I would know. See to the strangers and ask what questions you will, but do not keep these people here too long. They are to be our special guests until I decide on the best way to employ their talents.” She turned to move on, paused.
“This man,” she barely looked at me, “Oontawa will return for him. She will bring him to me.” With that she turned and walked with her handmaiden from the hall.
When the two had gone, the oldest of the ten elders invited us to talk. He was an Eskimo of very ancient lineage, a tough old ivory chief of tribes forgotten except in Arctic legend. Explaining that his English was very, very bad, he spoke through Jimmy Franklin, turning his attention immediately to Tracy.
I had noticed that the elders seated themselves carefully out of her way for an obvious reason. How to explain her immunity to the star-stones whose shape was the greatest symbol of benign power known to the People of the Plateau? Despite their perfectly natural dread of the real item, it was necessary that we tell our entire story right from the beginning. This we did, using Jimmy as our interpreter whenever we were in difficulties.
The elders were fascinated with our story, astounded that we had deliberately set out to track Ithaqua down, and when our tale was done they stood up to give us their applause. Then their youngest member, a man until now silent, finally said, “Permit me to introduce myself. I am Charlie Tacomah, a Shawnee late of the Motherworld.”
“A Shawnee who speaks perfect English,” Jimmy answered him, eyeing the tall, bronzed figure whose features, though fine, were plainly American Indian. “But Nashville and Chattanooga are a long way from the Arctic Circle, and you are a much younger man than the others here.”
“I think he’s a man pretty much like yourself, Jimmy,” Whitey said. “A man of the reservations, who figured that there might be better things in life. I guess his ambitions led him astray, though.”
The elder nodded, glancing at Whitey appreciatively. “Yes, it was twenty-eight years ago. After the war when I got back home to Memphis, I found the same old prejudices. I wanted to do something about it, decided to write a book on all the Indian tribes, ancient and modern. I eventually, travelled north, seeking out the little-known Eskimo, tribes, and—”
“We can guess,” I broke in on him sympathetically. “You fell afoul of Ithaqua. He brought you to Borea.”
Charlie Tacomah nodded. “I lived for a few days with the Children of the Winds, then ran off and came here. The elders found out that I was something of a military strategist—I had been a major in the infantry—and I became adviser to the old warlords. Five years ago Northan took over as warlord, controlling all of the plateau’s army, and I was granted a seat in the Council of Elders.
“Of all the People of the Plateau, I reckon that about sixty of them have arrived here on Borea within the last twenty or thirty years. They learn to fit in pretty quickly. Of course, the great majority of folks that Ithaqua brings stay out on the plains, too frightened to try to escape. If an escapee is recaptured,” he shrugged, “Ithaqua has his own ways of punishing deserters.”
“And now?” Tracy prompted him after a moment’s silence. “What’s to become of us?”
“Well, you heard what Armandra said. There’s not a great deal we can do with you just yet. Right now, though, it is my pleasure to show you all around the plateau; a fascinating place, as you’ll see. Eventually my colleagues’ proposals will be put before Armandra for her approval. It is not anticipated that you will be required to contribute in any mundane fashion to the plateau’s welfare. Of course, you are far different from run-of-the-mill newcomers.”
As he finished speaking Oontawa returned. Tracy cocked her head to one side and smiled wickedly at me. She whispered: “Here comes the handmaiden, Hank. Before she takes you to Armandra, you’d better promise me you’ll be a good boy. I’ve noticed the way you look at the Woman of the Winds.”
“Star-stones or not,” I told her, grinning, “another crack like that, little sister, and you go over my knee—and I’ll do a bit of wind-raising myself!”
And so I started out with Oontawa for Armandra’s apartments, and it immediately became apparent that the Priestess of the Plateau dwelt in the topmost levels of her realm. Staircase after stone staircase we climbed, ever spiralling upward through basalt caverns and tunnels until I was sure we must soon reach the battlements of the roof; and we could not have been far short of that roof when finally we came to the first corridor I had seen with its own selected guardsmen.
During our long climb the symbols above tunnel entrances or at the feet of the staircases had been gradually narrowing down to a handful, but already I had guessed which symbol led to Armandra: that of a flash of lightning. Sure enough, above that last, guarded corridor entrance, the lightning flash was the sole remaining symbols, and I saw that beyond it even the tunnel walls themselves were draped with priceless furs.
Two huge squat Eskimo guards, each attended by a towering white bear that swayed and yawned in a rock-cut niche to his rear, stood up straight and saluted with their viciously barbed, ceremonial harpoons as we passed. Flambeaux were now absent where natural light flooded in through windows lining the vast curve of the outer wall. By “windows” I may give the wrong impression; I paused to look out through one of them and found myself staring into a shaft, for the window was cut through a wall of rock all of fifteen feet thick!
Closer to our destination the light flooded in more brightly, and here I saw that the thickness of the outer wall was much diminished. We came to a huge, iron-barred balcony with a stone ceiling; the balcony reached out from the face of the plateau into open air. Now I saw indeed that we were at a great height above the white waste. Fighting the wind that howled in from outside, I put my head out between the bars and looked down. More than two hundred and fifty feet beneath me, the rocky base of the plateau froze into the surface of the surrounding ground. Craning my neck I looked upward and saw that the topmost ramparts were still some twenty to thirty feet higher than this level, that the solid rock above my head must form the ceiling of Armandra’s rooms.
I turned to Oontawa, saying; “A dangerous place. A careless person could be sucked out by the wind, or fall through the bars.”
She nodded. “Yes, Armandra sometimes—walks out—from here. When she seeks solitude.”
With those innocent words; so naively spoken, the Indian girl brought back to me all that I had tried to forget of the woman who was about to give me audience. Here was I, going to Armandra’s apartments almost like some fancy courtier on his way to the boudoir of a precocious princess, and yet it was not like that at all. Armandra was more goddess than woman, as much an alien creature as a human being, and I was merely a man of the Motherworld.
Oontawa chattered away as we walked the perimeter corridor, practicing her English and doubtlessly trying to be very informative, but I scarcely heard a word she said; my mind was now fully on her mistress. Perhaps fifty yards beyond the great balcony we came to a curtained entrance where the lightning flash symbol was inlaid in gold; the door to Armandra’s quarters. Oontawa passed through the curtains ahead of me, murmuring something as she went, but again my mind was not on what the Indian girl was saying. I followed directly behind her through the curtains.
The room beyond was gorgeously appointed, rich as an eastern sultan’s wildest dreams of opulence. Delicately carved, curtained archways led off into adjoining rooms; soft furs of a texture and coloring guaranteed to delight any furrier of the Motherw
orld overlapped across the floor; the white walls were carved with pillars and arches and intricate arabesques; gold and silver ornaments stood in arched niches in the walls, and fretted agate and marble furniture was cushioned with white furs as soft as freshly fallen snow. But in the very center of the room stood the greatest wonder of all—Armandra, rising naked from a crystal pool!
We saw each other and froze, and simultaneously Oontawa realized that I had followed her into the chamber of her mistress without waiting. She turned with a sharp cry of consternation, her almond eyes wide and flashing.
“Calm yourself, Oontawa,” Armandra said. “I am sure that my guest has seen naked women before. The Motherworld is full of ‘fascinating’ women!”
Stepping from the pool she folded herself in a white fur wrap that covered her body completely. Before her feet vanished in the robe’s folds, I thought for a moment that I saw something odd about them. What it was I could not have said exactly, just that they seemed to be—scarred? It had been only a glimpse.
“Well,” she continued, shaking her red hair and sprinkling crystal droplets all about; “you might as well sit, Hank Silberhutte, or do all men of the Motherworld stand like statues with their mouths open?”
At that I offered an awkward, embarrassed grin, in answer to which I saw mischievous lights dancing momentarily in the depths of her fjord eyes. “Oontawa, leave us,” she told the girl. “I will call you when I want you. Oh!—” she called out in an afterthought as, with a look of disbelief stamped upon her face, the girl turned to go. “Though I trust you above all others, Oontawa, make sure you say nothing of this man’s unfortunate eagerness to attend me; there are those it would surely enrage. You may see to it that the elders, too, remain silent about this interview. Particularly those with whom the warlord has influence.”
Oontawa. bowed and went out through the curtains. I sat at a delicately carved table, hardly daring to rest the weight of my arms upon it in case it fell apart. Armandra seated herself upon the fur cushions of a settee carved of a single gigantic agate, hugging her robe about her and gazing at me curiously.
She said: “Are your hands gentle, Hank Silberhutte?”
Again she had me tongue-tied. “My hands?”
“Are they gentle,” she frowned impatiently, “for the drying of my hair?”
“They can be gentle,” I answered, “when they need to be.”
“Good. Come and dry my hair.”
I went to her and took the square of woven material that she handed me. She continued: “I know that your hands can be hard, for you knocked down that strutting bear, Northan. But I expect that they are soft, too; how else would you handle all of those ‘fascinating’ women of the Motherworld?”
I caught up her damp tresses and began to dry them, pausing to turn her head away so that I could make a decent job of it.
“Your hands are gentle,” she told me, laughing at me out of sea green eyes. “Perhaps I’ll find a place for you as a handmaiden, and—”
At that point I stopped her. To say what she had said to any man, which most ordinary women of Earth would know better than to do, would surely be folly. To say it to a Texan …
I turned her head back and kissed her fiercely, feeling her fingers fly to the back of my neck and head to tear at my hair, ignoring the shock and anger obvious in her suddenly squirming, furiously fighting body, until she no longer fought but sank her nails into my neck and drank as deeply as I.
For a moment only!
Then, as I relaxed my hold upon her, she snatched herself back from me and slapped me so hard that my ears rang.
“You beautiful witch!” I said through clenched teeth.
But now she tilted her head warningly and I thought her eyes were suddenly flecked with pink. Those great eyes widened and, seemingly of its own accord, the still damp hair of her head fitted eerily to float free of her shoulders. For a moment she was a goddess again, utterly inhuman. But then, amazingly, she burst into tears and buried her face in her hands!
V
Armandra Chooses a Mate
(Recorded through the Medium of Juanita Alvarez)
Her tears were the perfectly normal tears of a woman face to farce with utter mental and physical frustration. The tears of a woman, not a being of supermundane powers. Telepathically probing the edge of her emotions, gently, so as to remain undiscovered, I found a stark island of bitter frustration afloat in a sea of loneliness.
Whitey’s words came back to me, about Ithaqua’s need for a companion: It’s a terrible lonely existence, he had said, walking the spaces between the spheres. How much more true for a human or half-human child of the Snow Thing with alien powers trapped in a human psyche, framed by human emotions?
Carefully, concentrating on what I was doing, I allowed sympathy to flow along the line of one-way communication I had established, and instantly the bleak hopelessness in Armandra’s mind began to soften. She lifted her head and leaned toward me, searching my face with eyes as round as saucers. Her tears were already drying.
“Was it really you, Hank, that came to me when my father held me fast?”
I nodded, answering her in a manner guaranteed to satisfy her curiosity and quell any last doubt she might have. “Yes.” I said. “It really was. It’s a power I have.”
And she could see that it was so, that I was speaking in her mind. Proof of my success showed in her frown, then in the widening of eyes already huge. “A very dangerous power,” she said, forming her words carefully. “How can any woman trust a man who listens to her thoughts?”
“She must first learn to believe that he would not listen uninvited,” I answered. Then I launched into an explanation of my telepathic power, briefly telling her what I had already made known to the Council of Elders. “So you see,” I finished, “that among my colleagues of the Motherworld it is considered outrageous for one telepath to ‘listen’ to another without his permission. But in any case, mv own power is rather special.”
And there I paused, for how could I say that I was limited to intercourse with alien thoughts, the hideous mental gibberings of monsters, when Armandra herself was now a vehicle for my talent? I groped for words. “I can only detect the thoughts of—of very special Beings.”
“Other people?”
“There is one other woman I can talk to in this fashion,” I hedged, “and she is like a sister, the same as Tracy.”
“But you have listened to my mind. Is it not so?”
“No, not really. When you spied upon your father out over the frozen wastes, it was not telepathy that trapped me there when you were trapped. It was your own power, yours and your father’s, a power in no way like mine. It is far greater, different.”
She nodded, warming to the empathy growing between us. “I believe you. I know it is true. The power I have, which came to me from my father, is not like yours. But have you not listened to my mind within the last few moments, here in this very room?”
“No,” I again denied it. “I merely felt your hurt, your loneliness, and tried to comfort you. I have not stolen a single thought out of your lovely head, though any man might easily be tempted to try Particularly if he thought you were thinking about him.” I stared at her pointedly.
“One day, Hank Silberhutte, I might invite you into my head,” she said, quite seriously. “Would you come to me if I called you? If I needed you?”
“That I promise.”
“But wait,” she said. “I have heard your voice talking to my mind, yes, but how do we know if—”
“Would you like to try an experiment?”
She nodded eagerly.
“Then think something at me, anything. See if I can read it in your mind.”
She opened her eyes wide and stared straight at me. It was very strange, that sensation, like the chiming of golden bells at the bottom of some mental well, rising slowly to the surface, forming pictures. I looked, then chuckled as the mischievous lights again lit in Armandra’s eyes. “Yes,” I nodde
d, “I think perhaps Northan would be angry if he knew I was here. But it does not worry me. Do you fear him, Armandra?”
“Fear Northan? I fear only Ithaqua—but I know that many of my people, even a handful of the elders, do fear the warlord.” Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “He is ambitious. And he does not like his ambitions thwarted. You must watch out for him, Hank. Be very watchful of Northan.”
“It surprises me,” I said, “that he was not in the Hall of the Elders for your—seeing.”
“No, he would be celebrating the victory of the ships over the wolf-warriors. Sometimes the celebrations last for days. Oh, they strut and boast, as their forefathers did before them. In many ways they are like children.”
“Well,” I answered, “the battle was well won, with your help. But without you Northan would have been hard put. And he lost a lot of face when I returned his blows. I can hardly see that he has much to celebrate!”
“Oh, he’ll knock a few heads together, find excuses for your beating him on his own ship and awe his cronies with feats of strength.” Again her eyes narrowed. “I know Northan the Warlord. It will not take him long to regain whatever face he feels he has lost. He is ambitious.” Again that word.
“And what is his ambition, do you think?”
“Is it not obvious?” she lifted her eyebrows. “He desires to share these apartments with me. For while the People of the Plateau are satisfied with their princess, Northan would give them a king, a High Priest. And in a way the elders aid him, for they want me to have children.”
“But you do not want him?”
“I could do worse,” she tossed her hair, dry now, and began to comb it. “Does the thought annoy you?”
“No,” I immediately answered, then bit my tongue and spoke in her mind. “You damn well know it does!”
She laughed. “Because I am fascinating, and beautiful?”
“Those are good reasons,” I agreed.
“I am not all beautiful,” she told me, her face becoming serious in an instant. “You saw my feet when I left the pool?”