Storm Over Warlock

  11. THE WITCH

  There were patches of light in the inner valley marking thephosphorescent plants, some creeping at ground level, others tall assaplings. On other nights Shann had welcomed that wan radiance, but nowhe lay in as relaxed a position as possible, marking each of thosepotential betrayers as he tried to counterfeit the attitude of sleep andat the same time plan out his route.

  He had purposely settled in a pool of shadow, the wolverines beside him.And he thought that the bulk of the animal's bodies would cover his ownwithdrawal when the time came to move. One arm lying limply across hismiddle was in reality clutching to him an intricate arrangement of smallhide straps which he had made by sacrificing most of the remainder ofhis painfully acquired thongs. The trap must be set in place soon!

  Now that he had charted a path to the crucial point avoiding all lightplants, Shann was ready to move. The Terran pressed his hand on Taggi'shead in the one imperative command the wolverine was apt to obey--theorder to stay where he was.

  Shann sat up and gave the same voiceless instruction to Togi. Then heinched out of the hollow, a worm's progress to that narrow way along thecliff top--the path which anyone or anything coming up from that seagate on the beach would have to pass in order to witness the shorelineoccupied by the half-built outrigger.

  So much of his plan was based upon luck and guesses, but those were allShann had. And as he worked at the stretching of his snare, the Terran'sheart pounded, and he tensed at every sound out of the night. Havingtested all the anchoring of his net, he tugged at a last knot, and thencrouched to listen not only with his ears, but with all his strength ofmind and body.

  Pound of waves, whistle of wind, the sleepy complaint of some bird.... Aregular splashing! One of the fish in the lagoon? Or what he awaited?The Terran retreated as noiselessly as he had come, heading for thehollow where he had bedded down.

  He reached there breathless, his heart pumping, his mouth dry as if hehad been racing. Taggi stirred and thrust a nose inquiringly againstShann's arm. But the wolverine made no sound, as if he, too, realizedthat some menace lay beyond the rim of the valley. Would that other comeup the path Shann had trapped? Or had he been wrong? Was the enemyalready stalking him from the other beach? The grip of his stunner wasslippery in his damp hand; he hated this waiting.

  The canoe ... his work on it had been a careless botching. Better tohave the job done right. Why, it was perfectly clear now how he had beenmistaken! His whole work plan was wrong; he could see the right way ofdoing things laid out as clear as a blueprint in his mind. A picture inhis mind!

  Shann stood up and both wolverines moved uneasily, though neither made asound. A picture in his mind! But this time he wasn't asleep; he wasn'tdreaming a dream--to be used for his own defeat. Only (that other couldnot know this) the pressure which had planted the idea of new work to bedone in his mind--an idea one part of him accepted as fact--had nottaken warning from his move. He was supposed to be under control; theTerran was sure of that. All right, so he would play that part. He mustif he would entice the trapper into his trap.

  He holstered his stunner, walked out into the open, paying no heed nowto the patches of light through which he must pass on his way to thepath his own feet had already worn to the boat beach. As he went, Shanntried to counterfeit what he believed would be the gait of a man undercompulsion.

  Now he was on the rim fronting the downslope, fighting against hisdesire to turn and see for himself if anything had climbed behind. Thecanoe was all wrong, a bad job which he must make better at once so thatin the morning he would be free of this island prison.

  The pressure of that other's will grew stronger. And the Terran readinto that the overconfidence which he believed would be part of theenemy's character. The one who was sending him to destroy his own workhad no suspicion that the victim was not entirely malleable, ready to beused as he himself would use a knife or a force ax. Shann strodesteadily downslope. With a small spurt of fear he knew that in a waythat unseen other was right; the pressure was taking over, even thoughhe was awake this time. The Terran tried to will his hand to hisstunner, but his fingers fell instead on the hilt of his knife. He drewthe blade as panic seethed in his head, chilling him from within. He hadunderestimated the other's power....

  And that panic flared into open fight, making him forget his carefulplans. Now he _must_ wrench free from this control. The knife was movingto slash a hide lashing, directed by his hand, but not his will.

  A soundless gasp, a flash of dismay rocked him, but neither was his gaspnor his dismay. That pressure snapped off; he was free. But the otherwasn't! Knife still in fist, Shann turned and ran upslope, his torch inhis other hand. He could see a shape now writhing, fighting, outlinedagainst a light bush. And, fearing that the stranger might win free anddisappear, the Terran spotlighted the captive in the beam, reckless ofThrog or enemy reinforcements.

  The other crouched, plainly startled by the sudden burst of light. Shannstopped abruptly. He had not really built up any mental picture of whathe had expected to find in his snare, but this prisoner was as weirdlyalien to him as a Throg. The light on the torch was reflected off askin which glittered as if scaled, glittered with the brilliance ofjewels in bands and coils of color spreading from the throat down thechest, spiraling about upper arms, around waist and thighs, as if thestranger wore a treasure house of gems as part of a living body. Exceptfor those patterned loops, coils, and bands, the body had no clothing,though a belt about the slender middle supported a pair of pouches andsome odd implements held in loops.

  Roughly the figure was more humanoid than the Throgs. The upper limbswere not too unlike Shann's arms, though the hands had four digits ofequal length instead of five. But the features were nonhuman, closer tosaurian in contour. It had large eyes, blazing yellow in the dazzle ofthe flash, with vertical slits of green for pupils. A nose united withthe jaw to make a snout, and above the domed forehead a sharp V-point ofraised spiky growth extended back and down until behind the shoulderblades it widened and expanded to resemble a pair of wings.

  The captive no longer struggled, but sat quietly in the tangle of thesnare Shann had set, watching the Terran steadily as if there were nodifficulty in seeing through the brilliance of the beam to the man whoheld it. And, oddly enough, Shann experienced no repulsion toward itsreptilian appearance as he had upon first sighting the beetle-Throg. Onimpulse he put down his torch on a rock and walked into the light toface squarely the thing out of the sea.

  Still eying Shann, the captive raised one limb and gave an absent-mindedtug to the belt it wore. Shann, noting that gesture, was struck by awild surmise, leading him to study the prisoner more narrowly. Allowingfor the alien structure of bone, the nonhuman skin; this creature wasdelicate, graceful, in its way beautiful, with a fragility of limb whichbacked up his suspicions. Moved by no pressure from the other, but byhis own will and sense of fitness, Shann stooped to cut the control lineof his snare.

  The captive continued to watch as Shann sheathed his blade and thenheld out his hand. Yellow eyes, never blinking since his initialappearance, regarded him, not with any trace of fear or dismay, but witha calm measurement which was curiosity based upon a strong belief in itsown superiority. He did not know how he knew, but Shann was certain thatthe creature out of the sea was still entirely confident, that it madeno fight because it did not conceive of any possible danger from him.And again, oddly enough, he was not irritated by this unconsciousarrogance; rather he was intrigued and amused.

  "Friends?" Shann used the basic galactic speech devised by Survey andthe Free Traders, semantics which depended upon the proper inflection ofvoice and tone to project meaning when the words were foreign.

  The other made no sound, and the Terran began to wonder if his captivehad any audible form of speech. He withdrew a step or two then pulled atthe snare, drawing the cords away from the creature's slender ankles.Rolling the thongs into a ball, he tossed the crude net back over hisshoulder.

  "Friends?" he repeated ag
ain, showing his empty hands, trying to givethat one word the proper inflection, hoping the other could read hispeaceful intent in his features if not by his speech.

  In one lithe, flowing movement the alien arose. Fully erect, theWarlockian had a frail appearance. Shann, for his breed, was not tall.But the native was still smaller, not more than five feet, that stiff Vof head crest just topping Shann's shoulder. Whether any of thosefittings at its belt could be a weapon the Terran had no way of telling.However, the other made no move to draw any of them.

  Instead, one of the four-digit hands came up. Shann felt the feathertouch of strange finger tips on his chin, across his lips, up his cheek,to at last press firmly on his forehead at a spot just between theeyebrows. What followed was communication of a sort, not in words or inany describable flow of thoughts. There was no feeling of enmity--atleast nothing strong enough to be called that. Curiosity, yes, and thena growing doubt, not of the Terran himself, but of the other'spreconceived ideas concerning him. Shann was other than the native hadjudged him, and the stranger was disturbed, that self-confidence alittle ruffled. And also Shann was right in his guess. He smiled, hisamusement growing--not aimed at his companion on this cliff top, but athimself. For he was dealing with a woman, a very young woman, andsomeone as fully feminine in her way as any human girl could be.

  "Friends?" he asked for the third time.

  But the other still exuded a wariness, a wariness mixed with surprise.And the tenuous message which passed between them then astounded Shann.To this Warlockian out of the night he was not following the properpattern of male behaviour at all; he should have been in awe of theother merely because of her sex. A diffidence rather than an assumptionof equality should have colored his response, judged by her standards.At first, he caught a flash of anger at this preposterous attitude ofhis; then her curiosity won, but there was still no reply to hisquestion.

  The finger tips no longer made contact between them. Stepping back, herhands now reached for one of the pouches at her belt. Shann watched thatmovement carefully. And because he did not trust her too far, hewhistled.

  Her head came up. She might be dumb, but plainly she was not deaf. Andshe gazed down into the hollow as the wolverines answered his summonswith growls. Her profile reminded Shann of something for an instant; butit should have been golden-yellow instead of silver with two jeweledpatterns ringing the snout. Yes, that small plaque he had seen in thecabin of one of the ship's officers. A very old Terran legend--"Dragon,"the officer had named the creature. Only that one had possessed aserpent's body, a lizard's legs and wings.

  Shann gave a sudden start, aware his thoughts had made him careless, orhad she in some way led him into that bypath of memory for her ownpurposes? Because now she held some object in the curve of her curledfingers, regarding him with those unblinking yellow eyes. Eyes ...eyes.... Shann dimly heard the alarm cry of the wolverines. He tried tosnap draw his stunner, but it was too late.

  There was a haze about him hiding the rocks, the island valley with itsradiant plants, the night sky, the bright beam of the torch. Now hemoved through that haze as one walks through a dream approachingnightmare, striding with an effort as if wading through a deterringflood. Sound, sight--one after another those senses were taken from him.Desperately Shann held to one thing, his own sense of identity. He wasShann Lantee, Terran breed, out of Tyr, of the Survey Service. Some partof him repeated those facts with vast urgency against an almostoverwhelming force which strove to defeat that awareness of self, makinghim nothing but a tool--or a weapon--for another's use.

  The Terran fought, soundlessly but fiercely, on a battleground which waswithin him, knowing in a detached way that his body obeyed another'scommands.

  "I am Shann--" he cried without audible speech. "I am myself. I have twohands, two legs.... I think for myself! I am a _man_----"

  And to that came an answer of sorts, a blow of will striking at hisresistance, a will which struggled to drown him before ebbing, leavingbehind it a faint suggestion of bewilderment, of a dawn of concern.

  "I am a _man_!" he hurled that assertion as he might have thrust deepwith one of the crude spears he had used against the Throgs. For againstwhat he faced now his weapons were as crude as spears fronting blasters."I am Shann Lantee, Terran, man...." Those were facts; no haze couldsweep them from his mind or take away that heritage.

  And again there was the lightening of the pressure, the slight recoil,which could only be a prelude to another assault upon his laststronghold. He clutched his three facts to him as a shield, groping forothers which might have afforded a weapon of rebuttal.

  Dreams, these Warlockians dealt in and through dreams. And the oppositeof dreams are facts! His name, his breed, his sex--these were facts.And Warlock itself was a fact. The earth under his boots was a fact. Thewater which washed around the island was a fact. The air he breathed wasa fact. Flesh, blood, bones--facts, all of them. Now he was a strugglingidentity imprisoned in a rebel body. But that body was real. He tried tofeel it. Blood pumped from his heart, his lungs filled and emptied; hestruggled to feel those processes.

  With a terrifying shock, the envelope which had held him vanished. Shannwas choking, struggling in water. He flailed out with his arms, kickedhis legs. One hand grated painfully against stone. Hardly knowing whathe did, but fighting for his life, Shann caught at that rock and drewhis head out of water. Coughing and gasping, half drowned, he was weakwith the panic of his close brush with death.

  For a long moment he could only cling to the rock which had saved him,retching and dazed, as the water washed about his body, a currenttugging at his trailing legs. There was light of a sort here, patches ofgreen which glowed with the same subdued light as the bushes of theouter world, for he was no longer under the night sky. A rock-roof wasbut inches over his head; he must be in some cave or tunnel under thesurface of the sea. Again a gust of panic shook him as he felt trapped.

  The water continued to pull at Shann, and in his weakened condition itwas a temptation to yield to that pull; the more he fought it the morehe was exhausted. At last the Terran turned on his back, trying to floatwith the stream, sure he could no longer battle it.

  Luckily those few inches of space above the surface of the watercontinued, and he had air to breathe. But the fear of that ending, ofbeing swept under the surface, chewed at his nerves. And his bodilydanger burned away the last of the spell which had held him, brought himinto this place, wherever it might be.

  Was it only his heightened imagination, or had the current grownswifter? Shann tried to gauge the speed of his passage by the way thepatches of green light slipped by. Now he turned and began to swimslowly, feeling as if his arms were leaden weights, his ribs a cage tobind his aching lungs.

  Another patch of light ... larger ... spreading across the roof overhead. Then, he was out! Out of the tunnel into a cavern so vast that itsarching roof was like a skydome far above his head. But here the patchesof light were brighter, and they were arranged in odd groups which had afamiliar look to them.

  Only, better than freedom overhead, there was a shore not too distant.Shann swam for that haven, summoning up the last rags of his strength,knowing that if he could not reach it very soon he was finished. Somehowhe made it and lay gasping, his cheek resting on sand finer than any ofthe outer world, his fingers digging into it for purchase to drag hisbody on. But when he collapsed, his legs were still awash in water.

  No footfall could be heard on that sand. But he knew that he was nolonger alone. He braced his hands and with painful effort levered up hisbody. Somehow he made it to his knees, but he could not stand. Insteadhe half tumbled back, so that he faced them from a sitting position.

  _Them_--there were three of them--the dragon-headed ones with theirslender, jewel-set bodies glittering even in this subdued light, theiryellow eyes fastened on him with a remoteness which did not approach anyhuman emotion, save perhaps that of a cold and limited wonder. Butbehind them came a fourth, one he knew by the patterns on her body.
r />   Shann clasped his hands about his knees to still the trembling of hisbody, and eyed them back with all the defiance he could muster. Nor didhe doubt that he had been brought here, his body as captive to theirwill, as had been that of their spy or messenger in his crude snare onthe island.

  "Well, you have me," he said hoarsely. "Now what?"

  His words boomed weirdly out over the water, were echoed from the dimouter reaches of the cavern. There was no answer. They merely stoodwatching him. Shann stiffened, determined to hold to his defiance andto that identity which he now knew was his weapon against the powersthey used.

  The one who had somehow drawn him there moved at last, circling aroundthe other three with a suggestion of diffidence in her manner. Shannjerked back his head as her hand stretched to touch his face. And then,guessing that she sought her peculiar form of communication, hesubmitted to her finger tips, though now his skin crawled under thatlight but firm pressure and he shrank from the contract.

  There were no sensations this time. To his amazement a concrete inquiryshaped itself in his brain, as clear as if the question had been askedaloud: "Who are you?"

  "Shann...." he began vocally, and then turned words into thoughts."Shann Lantee, Terran, man." He made his answer the same which had kepthim from succumbing to their complete domination.

  "Name--Shann Lantee, man--yes." The other accepted those, "Terran?" Thatwas a question.

  Did these people have any notion of space travel? Could they understandthe concept of another world holding intelligent beings?

  "I come from another world...." He tried to make a clean-cut picture inhis mind--a globe in space, a ship blasting free....

  "Look!" The fingers still rested between his eyebrows, but with herother hand the Warlockian was pointing up to the dome of the cavern.

  Shann followed her order. He studied those patches of light which hadseemed so vaguely familiar at his first sighting, studying them closelyto know them for what they were. A star map! A map of the heavens asthey could be seen from the outer crust of Warlock.

  "Yes, I come from the stars," he answered, booming with his voice.

  The fingers dropped from his forehead; the scaled head swung around toexchange glances, which were perhaps some unheard communication withthe other three. Then the hand was extended again.

  "Come!"

  Fingers fell from his head to his right wrist, closing there withsurprising strength; and some of that strength together with a newenergy flowed from them into him, so that he found and kept his feet asthe other drew him up.