"Not so—"
"Would you see it closer to make sure? Look then!" Andas felt so much the master of the field that he took three swift strides so that he could hold out the ring at the height of the Emperor's eyes, close enough for him to make sure it was as Andas reported.
"No male can wear this, but it was against her breast when she brought it forth against me. What now of your First Daughter? Though I shall see this does not serve her again. But once one deals with the Old Woman, there is no retreat before death—or after. So, I leave you to think on that also, android, during the short time left you—"
He never finished the sentence. The wide door of the chamber opened without warning, and only his reflexes saved him, for the thing that came scuttling in was a robot, and it aimed a cloud of vapor at him.
Andas jerked back, coughing, his eyes smarting as the edge of the mist touched him. His head whirled dizzily, but he made it to the panel. And, thank the five powers of Akmedu, it snapped shut under his frantic shove. He was still coughing, reeling, not sure how long he could keep his feet, but he forced himself along back down the passage. The false emperor, if he carried all Andas's memories, could comb him out. He would have to fog his trail as well as the robot had almost fogged him! And right now he was sure of nothing, save that he had made it into the ways, that in one hand he held the key and in the other the ring. The latter he fumbled quickly back into his seam pocket. The less he had to do with it, the better.
How had he avoided the robot's attack? It would—it did—seem impossible now that he considered it, unless it was true, that other old legend, that he who rightfully carried the key had for the space that it was in his possession the strength of Akmedu!
But powers of the unseen, while they might be potent enough in the right time and place, were not to be depended upon. By all accounts they acted erratically and sometimes even turned against believers who strove to use them. He put no faith in the key except that it would do for him exactly what he planned, prove that he alone had the right to bear it into the temple and use it to unlock the secret there. And if he lived through the next few hours, when he was sure that the false emperor would exert every effort to take him, that was just what he was going to do.
The lamp—what had he done with the lamp? He could not remember now, and there was no time to return and hunt for it. But that meant he must slow his pace, not take a headlong tumble down those stairs at the under-moat section. And it was very hard to slow when every bit of him drove ahead. He must keep alive and out of captivity until he could reach the temple and prove his identity.
Beyond that he did not think. Steps—yes, he had reached the underwater way. He shrank from allowing his fingers to slide along the wall, for they crossed those trails of slime, and he had to center his will on keeping touch in spite of such defilement. He wished he had paced off this dank section and knew by counting where he was and how far he had to go. The smell, dark, and slime seemed to last forever.
Then, steps again, and with them a lift of spirit. He had the key pressed tight against him. Though its cold metal never seemed to warm any in his grasp, yet it was to his spirit now what a lamp could have been for his body. The last step—he was in a corridor comparatively free of the moat section's taint.
He had time now to think coherently, if that whiff of vapor had not left him dull-witted. To return the same way he had come would be the rankest folly. The princess might already have started the hunt. So there remained a long detour, and of all its windings he was not sure.
If only he had not the responsibility for the others, was free to pick his own route, retire into one of the more hidden ways! But if the false emperor had been schooled with all his memories— How had they accomplished this recall for their android anyway? They must have kidnaped him first, put him in two-com—though that was risky. But it did not matter how they had done it, only that it had been done. And he could not hope to have a secret that grinning non-man back there did not share.
So, his own choice was to weave a wild pattern that would eventually bring him to the Court of the Seven Draks and those he had left. How had they fared? The hunt must have started after the crash of the skimmer. But somehow he believed that if any being could escape the guard, it would be Yolyos, though burdened with Grasty and the girl. Well, they would have to take their chances, just as he was doing.
He had had an amazing run of luck. Not that he dared build on that. Only a fool believed that fortune always turned a bright face in his direction. Count now—
He tried to make better time, but still he had to count passage openings. And he slipped into one that took him at an abrupt angle from the corridor of the princess's room. Andas cursed the loss of the lamp until he was aware of that strange little gleam from the front of his coverall. His fingers probed and found the ring.
What—? He pulled it out of hiding and was answered by a heightened glow—perhaps no greater than that of the songul's lower wing at mating time. It was nothing he could really see by, yet it heartened him. He dared not slip it on his finger—it was too charged with all he had been taught to fear from earliest childhood. Yet neither did he put it back into hiding, but held it before him between thumb and forefinger as if it were a lamp and could give him the sight he needed.
There was a forking of the ways at sharp angles. Andas hesitated and then chose left. It was hard to think of what lay above the surface and translate that into what portion of the assemblage of buildings he might be heading for. His only guide was memory. This might almost be the maze in the Garden of Scented Fronds. If one continued to choose always the left path, it would eventually bring him out close to the Court of the Seven Draks.
Andas had made his fourth such turn when he stopped short and forced his breath to the lightest possible in and out flow as he listened. No, he had not been mistaken—sounds! Andas knew of old that such carried through these passages in an odd fashion, sometimes sounding farther off than they were, sometimes reversing that process. So he could not be sure how close the trailer was.
He thought, or rather he hoped, that there were not robots after him. Those he feared more than any guardsman. Men could be, with luck, fooled by someone who knew these passages. But a robot, perhaps set to hunt for only the faint emanations of human body heat, would track relentlessly.
If he were at all sure of his present position, and he clung to belief that he was, there was a chance ahead he might have an opportunity to see his hunter from a position that would be safe for a short time.
Andas felt along the wall carefully as he went. But it was that so-faint gleam of the ring that served him better than he thought could happen, for with it he caught a glint of metal and so located the first of those loops set deeply into the stone, intended as a skeleton ladder. He tested the first by swinging his full weight on it, though that did not mean they were all as stable.
Stowing both ring and key safely within his coverall, Andas began to climb. He was well above the second floor of the palace apartment in which this was hidden as a shaft when he thought himself safe enough to brace inside that opening and wait. No robot he knew of could climb in such a narrow way as this. And long before it could broadcast his position, he could reach the roof above and strike out in the open for a while if the need arose. Now the dark below showed a glimmer of light. A robot would not carry a lamp, nor would it trail with one—too easy to alert its quarry. Guards then, so Andas felt above him for the next hoop. Still he lingered. Guards could follow him up if they saw the rungs on the wall; guards could even aim a stunner up this vent and bring him down helplessly without exerting any trouble. Guards could—
The light of the torch was very dim, yet to one who had moved through the utter dark of the ways it was bright enough. If the one who bore it was alone, Andas could leap down behind him, knock him out, and take that torch and the weapons he must be carrying. The plan built in his mind as a mason would set stone to stone for a wall, though anyone coming on this hunt alo
ne would be a fool—unless he was playing bait—
Only one half-seen figure passed below. And the more he thought, the more desperately Andas wanted the torch and the weapons the other had. He rested his forehead against the gritty stone of the vent side and tried to picture more clearly what lay ahead.
Yes, there were two side passages not too far beyond. And if the hunter had come too far ahead of his fellows, Andas could be on him and away, giving any who followed a choice of three different routes down which to trail him. He had not been in their hands, so they had no personna reading they could feed into a trailer to follow him exactly.
He made his decision and slid down as fast as he could. The light was still ahead. He caught glimpses of it, though it was shut off from time to time by the bulk of the man who carried it. Andas listened—and then he ran lightly forward.
His hand was already aimed for a knock-out blow when he caught better sight of the man he hunted. That was enough to blunt his blow so that he did not kill, or even stun, though he carried the other before him to the floor where they lay, the attacked struggling feebly under him.
"Yolyos!" Andas pulled back. Luckily the light, a very small hand torch, had not smashed during their fall. Andas grabbed it up and turned it full on his own face.
"Yolyos!" he repeated, hardly able to believe that the Salariki was really here.
-9-
Andas switched the light from his own face to that of the Salariki, who was holding his head, giving low growls of pain. There was a dark smear of blood just above that aggressive bristle of coarse mustache, and Yolyos's ears were flattened to his skull, his eyes narrowed to warning slits.
Then Andas noticed something else. The fur-hair on one of the alien's broad shoulders was crisped and singed, a red mark rising under the blackened stubs of hair. He had had a very narrow escape from the blaster.
"Ssss—" the sound was close to a hiss. "Sssooo I have found you, or you me, Prince. And by your welcome, you expected others." The Salariki's voice had begun with that angry hiss but became more articulate.
"The others—where are they?" Andas listened intently but could pick up no other sound.
"You might well ask. But for the fact I proved faster than he expected, I might well be cooked now."
"Who expected? How did you come here?"
"It is something of a tale. But do we sit here while I tell it? I think by your manner of greeting you have reason to fear other life in these wall roads."
Andas was recalled to the peril at hand. "Yes!"
He arose, the Salariki with him. But Andas had to know what had happened. If it was unwise to continue back to where he had left the others, then he must revise plans.
"You were discovered? I must be sure, for if we cannot go back to the Court of the Seven Draks—"
"The idea when I left seemed to be that you would. They have a reception party waiting. No, I should advise hastening in the other direction, any other direction!"
"Elys—Grasty?"
He heard a snarling sound from Yolyos.
"Yes, our delicate little Elys, she deliberately brought this about. I think we misjudged her as badly as if we were cubs to be netted by the first pair of eyes turned in our direction. Elys who would die without water, who was to be protected, who—"
"You might tell me what happened, or do I play a guessing game?" interrupted Andas.
"I am not quite sure myself—that is the trouble. One moment I was trying out the secret fastening that controlled the door through which you had gone. I thought it well to know how to do that quickly. The next, something struck me on the side of the head, and I was on the floor. I saw more stars for a second or two then than can be sighted in the heavens of any planet I know.
"While I was still seeing double and triple, Grasty landed his big belly on my back, and he had a force knife to my throat before I could get my wits to working—"
"A force knife! But where did he—"
"You can well ask. Perhaps Turpyn supplied it. How can we be sure how deeply that one was concerned with our kidnaping? Or maybe that she-wyvern conjured it out of midair. Grasty was only her claw man in the matter. She made that clear.
"And what she was going to do—well, she was prepared to bargain with the guard. Had it all worked out, she was sure she could appear before them, an unarmed woman, and they would not flame first and ask questions afterward. When they gave her a chance to talk, she would tell them all about you—buy their favor so. She was very sure that you were not going to achieve anything with your own actions here, and she would gain credit with the powers in control by her play of being more or less your prisoner, ready to tell all about your invasion of their palace. If you remember, she had plenty of time on board ship alone with Grasty to work out a plan to be put into action at the first chance. And Grasty's playing injured was a part of that.
"They were both sure that whoever had put up the fortune it must have cost to get you out of circulation would be most grateful to anyone who would push you back under his claws once more. Practical and logical, that is Elys. You really have to admire her straight thinking, always accepting that her ultimate goal is the preservation and aid of her own plans."
"But you got away—"
"Yes. We heard the arrival of a guard unit. I think they were wearing anti-grav belts and had come across the roofs. So Elys ran out into the middle of the court to meet them. She raised some very pitiful screams for help. I would have believed her—you would have too, Prince.
"Grasty is no fighting man—was, I should say. He was distracted by the action in the court. Elys was doing some splendid acting, running to throw herself at the first man to set foot down. She took a chance there. He might have turned her into a cinder, but she gauged his reaction correctly.
"By that time I had my wits back in my skull, and I took action, too. Grasty, I am sure, never tangled with a Salariki before. We have our own little tricks. At any rate, I got to my feet, his wrist in my teeth, and there was no using the force blade then. He squealed, and I was trying to knock him out when a blaster flamed us. One could see the entire beauty of Elys's plan then. She wanted to get us both burned to a crisp. Then it would be her word against yours—if you lived long enough to say anything. And who would be believed?
"However, the First Ancestress was with me. Grasty took that blast. I continued to hold him as a shield and backed into your doorway, pushed him out and slammed it, hoping they did not know the trick of its opening. I went along, I can't tell you now in which direction. But I found a box with some things in it, a large torch, which was burned out, this one, a container or two, supplies, I think. They were dusty—must have been there a long time."
"One of my father's caches. He left them so when exploring sections new to him." Andas answered. He was still bewildered by Yolyos's story. That Elys would so turn on them—he could hardly believe it. Yet, as the Salariki had pointed out, her actions had a cruel logic. And, after all, what had he known of the alien girl? Also no one could judge an alien, or even a man of another world, by one's own standards of conduct. What was accepted, a matter of established custom and moral right, on one world might be high crime on another. Elys was undoubtedly acting according to her own ethics. Not that that made it any more acceptable— But what of the ring in his own possession?
What that represented was evil according to his beliefs. Yet it had been worn and used by a woman of his own blood. So how could he sit in judgment on Elys? It only remained that their party had been cut to two. And inwardly he was glad that it was the Salariki out of their number who was left to accompany him now.
"What about you?" Yolyos asked. "I would judge you have not been too successful if you are expecting hunters to sniff along your trail here."
Andas hesitated. The accusation made by both Abena and the false emperor (though there was good reason to discount them both) gnawed at him. But he could not be the substitute! He was alive, he felt pain, he had to eat, sleep—he was real!
br /> "You have learned something that has clouded your mind."
Andas was startled at those words. How had the other guessed? Esper? But never before had the other given hint of esper powers. And if he had concealed such a talent, could he otherwise be trusted? Again Andas halted and turned to flash the lamp directly at the bloodstained face.
"You—you are esper!" He made the accusation boldly, bluntly, hoping to shock the other into the truth. But how could you surprise an esper, his common sense demanded a second later. It was impossible.
"No. We do not read minds," Yolyos told him. "We read scents—"
"Scents?" What could the alien mean?
"You know how we are addicted to our scent bags? Well, those are worn not only for the purpose of enjoyment, but they are also protective. We can scent fear, danger, anger, unease of spirit—emotions. And think you what that would mean to have always in your nostrils! You would find it hard to concentrate. So we set up our own scent screens."
"But you did not scent Elys's coming betrayal."
"No, because she was alien, more so than she looked physically. To me she was always—fish!" He brought out that last word as if he were in some way at fault for not being able to penetrate the natural defenses of the girl. "Now Grasty was so filled with fear that that overlaid everything, so with him I had no warning either.
"But you I can read, for in ways your species is not too far removed from mine. We are both mammals, though our distant ancestors were dissimilar. I have seen a creature called 'cat' on one of your trading ships and have been told that such is a more primitive example of my own line. We had a creature on Sargol—now extinct—which might have been your far-off ancestor. Your emotions are not too far different from ours, save that at times they can be overwhelmingly strong. Any of us leaving Sargol for other worlds, even on short visits, must undergo conditioning—just as a mind-reading esper must build up his defenses against crowds, when the burden of their mingled thoughts could well drive them mad.