He lay in his grass nest and tried to sort out the events of the past few days. This was a land in which Esper powers were allowed free range. He had no idea of how he had come here, but it seemed to his feverish mind that he had been granted another chance—one in which the scales of justice were more balanced in his favor. If he could only find the girl, learn from her—
Tentatively, without real hope, he sent out a questing thought. Nothing. He moved impatiently, wrenching his leg, so that his head swam with pain. His throat and mouth were dry. The lap of water sounded in his ears. He was thirsty again, but he could not crawl down slope and up once more. Craike closed his eyes wearily.
V
Craike’s memory of the hours which followed thereafter was dim. Had he seen a demon in the doorway? A slavering wolf? A red bear?
Then the girl sat there, cross-legged as he had seen her on the mesa, her cloak of hair about her. A hand emerged from the cloak to lay wood on the fire. Illusions?
But would an illusion turn to him, put firm, cool fingers upon his wound, somehow driving out by touch the pain and fire which burned there? Would an illusion raise his head, cradling it against her so that the soft silk of her hair lay against his cheek and throat, urging on him liquid out of a crude bowl? Would an illusion sing softly to herself while she drew a fish-bone comb back and forth through her hair, until the song and the sweep of the comb lulled him into a sleep so deep that no dream walked there?
He awoke clear headed. Yet that last illusion lingered. She came from the sun-drenched world without, a bowl of fruit in her hand. For a long moment she stood gazing at him searchingly. But when he tried mind contact, he met that wall. It was not unheeding, but a refusal to answer.
Her hair was now braided. But about her face the lock which the guardsman had shorn made an untidy fringe. Around her thin body was a strip of hide, purposefully arranged to mask all femininity.
“So,” Craike spoke rustily, “you are real.”
She did not smile. “I am real. You no longer dream with fever.”
“Who are you?” He asked the first of his long hoarded questions.
“I am Takya.” She added nothing to that.
“You are Takya, and you are a witch.”
“I am Takya, and I have the power.” It was an assertion of fact rather than agreement.
She settled in her favorite cross-legged position, selected a fruit from her bowl and examined it with the interest of a housewife who has shopped for supplies on a limited budget. Then she placed it in his hand before she chose another for herself. He bit into the plumlike globe. If she would only drop her barrier, let him communicate in the way which was fuller and deeper than speech.
“You also have the power.”
Craike decided to be no more communicative than she. He replied to that with a curt nod.
“Yet you have not been horned.”
“Not as you have been. But in my own world, yes.”
“Your world?” Her eyes held some of the feral glow of a hunting cat’s. “What world, and why were you horned there, man of sand and ash power?”
Without knowing why Craike related the events of the days past. Takya listened, he was certain, with more than ears alone. She picked up a stick from the pile of firewood and drew patterns in the sand and ash, patterns which had something to do with her listening.
“Your power was great enough to break a world wall.” She snapped the stick between two fingers, threw it into the flames.
“A world wall?”
“We of the power have long known that different worlds lie together in such a fashion.” She held up her hand with the fingers tight lying one to another. “Sometimes there comes a moment when two touch so closely that the power can carry one through, if at that moment there is a desperate need for escape. But those places of meeting cannot be readily found, and the moment of their touch can lay only for an instant. Have you in your world no reports of men and women who have vanished almost in sight of their fellows?”
Remembering old tales, he nodded.
“I have seen a summoning from another world,” she continued with a shiver, running both hands down the length of her braids as if so she evoked a shield for both mind and body. “To summon so is a great evil, for no man can hold in check the power of something alien. You broke the will of the Black Hoods when I was a beast running from their hunt. When I made the serpent to warn you off, you changed it: into a fox. And when the Black Hoods would have shorn my power—” she looped the braids about her wrists, caressing, treasuring them against her small breasts, “again you broke their hold and set me free for a second time. But this you could not have done had you been born into this world, for our power must follow set laws. Yours lies outside our patterns and can cut across those laws, even as the knife cut this.” She touched the rough patch of hair at her temple.
“Follow patterns? Then it was those patterns in stone which drew you down from the mesa?”
“Yes. Takyi, my womb brother, whom they slew there, was blood of my blood, bone of my bone. When they crushed him, then they could use him to draw me, and I could not resist. But in the slaying of his husk they freed me, to their great torment as Tousuth shall discover in time.”
“Tell me of this country. Who are the Black Hoods and why did they horn you? Are you not of their breed since you have the power?”
But Tayka did not answer at once in words. Nor did she, as he had hoped, lower her mind barrier.
Her fingers now held one long hair she had pulled from her head, and this she began to weave in and out, swiftly, intricately, in a complicated series of loops and crossed strands. After a moment Craike did not see the white fingers, nor the black hair they passed in loops from one to another. Rather did he see the pictures she wrought in her weaving.
There was a wide land, largely wilderness. The impressions he had gathered from Kaluf and the traders crystallized into vivid life. Small holdings here and there were ruled by petty lords; new settlements were carved out by a scattered people moving up from the south in great wheeled wains, bringing flocks and herds and their carefully treasured seed. They stopped here and there for a season to sow and reap, until they decided upon a site for their final rooting. Tiny city-states were protected by the Black Hoods, the Espers who purposefully interbred their own gifted stock, keeping their children apart.
Takya and her brother came; such sometimes, if rarely, came from the common people. They were carefully watched by the Black Hoods, then discovered to be a new mutation, condemned as such to be used for experimentation. But for a while they were protected by the local lord who wanted Takya.
But he might not take her unwilling. The power that was hers as a virgin was wholly rift from her should she be forced, and he had wanted that power obedient to him, as a check upon the monopoly of the Black Hoods. So with some patience he had set himself to a peaceful wooing. But the Black Hoods had moved first.
Had they accomplished her taking, the end they had intended for her was not as easy as death. She wove a picture of it, with all its degradation and shame stark and open, for Craike’s seeing.
“Then the Hooded Ones are evil?”
“Not wholly.” She untwisted the hair and put it with care into the fire. “They do much good, and without them people would suffer. But I, Takya, am different. And after me, when I mate, there will be others also different; how different we are not yet sure. The Hooded Ones want no change; by their thinking that means disaster. So they would use me to their own purposes. Only I, Tayka, shall not be so used!”
“No, you shall not.” The vehemence of his own outburst startled him. Craike wanted nothing so much at that moment than to come to grips with the Black Hoods, who had planned this systematic hunt.
“What will you do now?” he asked more calmly, wishing she would share her thoughts with him.
“This is a strong place. Did you cleanse it?”
He nodded impatiently.
“So I thought. That
was also a task one born to this world might not have performed. But those who pass are not yet aware of the cleansing. They will not trouble us, but pay tribute.”
Craike found her complacency irritating. To lie up here and live on the offerings of river travelers did not appeal to him.
“This stone piling is older work than Sampur and much better,” she continued. “It must have been a fortress for some of those forgotten ones who held lands and then vanished long before we came from the south. If it is repaired no lord of this district would have so good a roof.”
“Two of us to rebuild it?” he laughed.
“Two of us, working thus.”
A block of stone, the size of a brick, which had fallen from the sill of one of the needle-narrow windows, arose slowly in the air and settled into the space from which it had tumbled. Was it illusion or reality? Craike got to his feet and lurched to the window. His hand fell upon the stone which moved easily in his grasp. He took it out, weighed it, and then gently returned it to its place. This was not illusion.
“But illusion, too—if need be.” There was, for the first time, a warm note of amusement in her tone. “Look on your tower, river lord!”
He limped to the door. Outside it was warm and sunny, but it was a site of ruins. Then the picture changed. Brown drifts of grass vanished from the terrace; the fallen stone was all in place. A hard-faced sentry stood wary-eyed on a repaired river arch. Another guardsman led out ponies, saddle-padded and ready; other men were about garrison tasks.
Craike grinned. The sentry on the arch lost his helm, his jerkin. He now wore the tight tunic of the Security Police; his spear was a gas rifle. The ponies misted, and in their place a speedster sat on the stone. He heard her laugh.
“Your guard, your traveling machine. But how grim, ugly. This is better!”
Guards, machine, all were swept away. Craike caught his breath at the sight of delicate winged creatures dancing in the air, displaying a joy of life he had never known. Fawns, little people of the wild, came to mingle with shapes of such beauty and desire that at last he turned his head away.
“Illusion.” Her voice was hard and mocking.
But Craike could not believe that what he had seen had been born from hardness and mockery.
“All illusions. We shall be better now with warriors. As for plans, can you suggest any better than to remain here and take what fortune sends, for a space?”
“Those winged dancers—where?”
“Illusions!” she returned harshly. “But such games tire one. I do not think we shall conjure up any garrison before they are needed. Come, do not tear open those wounds of yours anew, for healing is no illusion and drains one even more of the power.”
The clawed furrows were healing cleanly, though he would bear their scars for life. He hobbled back to the grass bed and dropped upon it, but regretted the erasure of the sprites she had shown him.
Once he was safely in place, Takya left with the curt explanation that she had things to do. But Craike was restless, too much so to remain long inside the tower. He waited until she had gone and then, with the aid of his staff, climbed to the end of the span above the river. From here the twin tower on the other bank looked the same as the one from which he had come. Whether it was also haunted Craike did not know. But, as he looked about, he could see the sense of Tayka’s suggestion. A few illusion sentries would discourage any ordinary intrusion.
Takya’s housekeeping had changed the rock of offerings. All the rotten debris was gone and none of the odor of decay now offended the nostrils at a change of wind. But at best it was a most uncertain source of supply. There could not be too many farms up river, nor too many travelers taking the waterway.
As if to refute that, his Esper sense brought him sudden warning of strangers beyond the upper bend. But, Craike tensed, these were no peasants bound for the market at Sampur. Fear, pain, anger—such emotions heralded their coming. There were three, and one was hurt. But they were not Esper; nor did they serve the Black Hoods, though they were, or had been, fighting men.
A brutal journey over the mountains where they had lost comrades, the finding of this river, the theft of the dugout they now used so expertly—it was all there for him to read. And beneath that there was something else, which, when he found it, gave Craike a quick decision in their favor—a deep hatred of the Black Hoods! They were outlaws, very close to despair, keeping on a hopeless trail because it was not in them to surrender.
Craike contacted them subtly. They must not think they were heading into an Esper trap. He would plant a little hope, a faint suggestion that there was a safe camping place ahead; that was all he could do at present. But so he drew them on.
“No!” A ruthless order cut across his line of contact, striking at the delicate thread with which he was playing the strangers in. But Craike stood firm. “Yes, yes, and yes!”
He was on guard instantly. Takya, mistress of illusion as she had proved herself to be, might act. But surprisingly she did not. The dugout came into view, carried more by the current than the efforts of its crew. One lay full length in the bottom, while the bow paddler had slumped forward. But the man in the stern was bringing them in. And Craike strengthened his invisible, unheard invitation to urge him on.
VI
Takya had not yet begun to fight. As the dugout swung toward the offering ledge one of the Black Hoods’ guardsmen appeared there, his drawn sword taking fire from the sun. The fugitive steersman faltered until the current drew his craft on. Craike caught the full force of the stranger’s despair, all the keener for the hope of moments before. The Esper’s irritation against Takya flared into anger.
He made the illusion reel back, hands clutching at his breast from which protruded the shaft of an arrow. Craike had seen no bows here, but it was a weapon to suit his world. This should prove to Takya he meant what he had said.
The steersman was hidden as the dugout passed under the arch. There was a scrap of beach, the same to which Craike had swum on his first coming. He urged the man to that, beaming good will.
But the paddler was almost done, and neither of his companions could aid him. He drove the crude craft to the bank, and its bow grated on the rough gravel. Then he crawled over the bodies of the other two and fell rather than jumped ashore, turning to pull up the canoe as best he could.
Craike started down. But he might have known that Takya was not so easily defeated. Though they maintained an alliance of sorts she accepted no order from him.
A brand was teleported from the tower fire, striking spear-wise in the dry brush along the slope. Craike’s mouth set. He tried no more arguments. They had already tested power against power, and he was willing to so battle again. But this was not the time. However, the fire was no illusion, and he could not fight it, crippled as he was. Or could he?
It was not spreading too fast, though Takya might spur it by the forces at her command. Now, there was just the spot! Craike steadied himself against a mound of fallen masonry and wept out his staff, dislodging a boulder and a shower of gravel. He had guessed right. The stone rolled to crush out the brand, and the gravel he continued to push after it smothered the creeping flames.
Red tongues dashed spitefully high in a sheet of flame, and Craike laughed. That was illusion; she was angry. He produced a giant pail in the air, tilted it forward, splashed its contents into the heart of that conflagration. He felt the lash of her rage, standing under it unmoved. So might she bring her own breed to heel, but she would learn he was not of that ilk.
“Holla!” That call was no illusion; it begged help.
Craike picked a careful path down slope until he saw the dugout and the man who had landed it. The Esper waved an invitation and at his summons the fugitive covered the distance between them.
He was a big man of the same brawny race as those of Sampur, his braids of reddish hair hanging well below his wide shoulders. There was the raw line of a half-healed wound down the angle of his jaw, and his sunken eyes
were very tired. For a moment he stood downslope from Craike, his hands on his hips, his head back, measuring the Esper with the shrewdness of a canny officer who had long known how to judge and handle raw levies.
“I am Jorik of the Eagles’ Tower.” The statement was made with the same confidence as the announcement of rank from one of the petty lords. “Though”—he shrugged—“the Eagles’ Tower stands no more with one stone upon the other. You have a stout lair here”—he hesitated before he concluded—“friend.”
“I am Craike,” the Esper answered as simply, “and I am also one who has run from enemies. This lair is an old one, though still useful.”
“Might the enemies from whom you run wear black hoods?” countered Jorik. “It seems to me that things I have just seen here have the stink of that about them.”
“You are right; I am no friend to the Black Hoods.”
“But you have the power.”
“I have power,” Craike tried to make the distinction clear. “You are welcome, Jorik. So all are welcome here who are no friends to Black Hoods.”
The big warrior shrugged. “We can no longer run. If the time has come to make a last stand, this is as good as place as any. My men are done.” He glanced back at the two in the dugout. “They are good men, but we were pressed when they caught us in the upper pass. Once there were twenty hands of us,” he held up his fist and spread the fingers wide for counting. “They drew us out of the tower with their sorcerers’ tricks, and then put us to the hunt.”
“Why did they wish to make an end to you?”
Jorik laughed shortly. “They dislike those who will not fit into their neat patterns. We are free mountain men, and no Black Hood helped us win the Eagles’ Tower; none aided us to hunt. When we took our furs down to the valley, they wanted to levy tribute. But what spell of theirs trapped the beasts in our deadfalls or brought them to our spears? We pay not for what we have not bought. Neither would we have made war on them. Only, when we spoke out and said it so, there were others who were encouraged to do likewise, and the Black Hoods must put an end to us before their rule was broken. So they did.”