Jayta backed away, she was at the door now. Tallahassee's hands went to those four buttons on the front of the box that had controlled the cage. It might be in breaking out of that prison that she had also broken this. But she could try.
Her fingertips spread and punched—hard.
There was a glow on the wires of the cage at the back where they were still intact. She leaped back, pushing Jayta before her, to reach the outer wall.
"The stairway—let us make the stairway!" she cried out, catching the priestess's hand in a hard grip and hurrying her along.
-17-
They were well down on the stairs leading to the lower level, hearing the clatter of the guards' boots on the stone before them and seeing the beams of their torches, when the answer to Tallahassee's reckless gesture came. There was a roar of sound and a fierce burst of light from behind. The thick walls about them shook.
Both women took the last few stairs in leaps they would not have attempted earlier. The sound had deafened them, but Tallahassee waved the guard on and they plunged ahead to the second stairway leading to the Candace's chambers. Here they had to climb in single file and she came last, panting and dizzy from the shock of the explosion.
At the top they found Naldamak and Moniga. Sela was at the outer chamber door, listening. Tallahassee saw Naldamak's lips move as if she asked some question, and she had to shake her head.
"The noise—I am deaf," she said. "But we have destroyed, I believe, much that Khasti could have used against us."
She dropped, gasping for breath, on the end of the Candace's bed. Sela brought her a goblet of water and she drank thirstily.
The curtains had been drawn back from the windows opening onto the private garden so a night wind, scented by flowers, felt soothing against her hot face and arms. It was good to be here, to have another making the decisions.
Slowly her hearing came back.
There was a clamor in the halls—a duller roar from the city. Naldamak stood by one of the garden windows, her head tilted a little as she listened and perhaps so judged what might be happening from the very waves of sound. Tallahassee saw her lips move and this time caught a whisper of what she said.
"The Temple is free—Zyhlarz has spoken to us—"
An Amazon came swiftly through the outer chamber, saluted the Candace. "Sun-in-Glory, the gate barriers have been broken. But those of the Elephant are strong."
"If I show myself," Naldamak's answer came swift, "then they will be in open rebellion, and I do not think that after that they will find they have any cause."
"Glory—" The Amazon tried to step before her. "You are but one. A single blow, sent with ill fortune arming it, can bring you down. We are not enough to protect you—"
"There are those and that which none of these can face," the Candace returned. "We go to the Temple by the inner way."
Jayta's lion mask nodded in support and Tallahassee arose reluctantly. This was Ashake's work, but the memory now swelled in her so she could not resist.
Amazons closed about Naldamak and her two companions. They threaded halls, twice seeing dead lying crumpled against the walls. Their forces had met opposition here even in the heart of Naldamak's palace. Down another flight of stairs—in the distance shouting, the crackling fire of weapons. Then they entered the private way to the Temple, the way that Khasti had closed.
The Candace was running now, and Tallahassee had hard work to keep up with her, tired as she was and still partly dazed by the destruction in the laboratory.
But when they reached the other end of that corridor they found others before them. The Amazons of the guard pushed past Naldamak to form a wall of defense of their own bodies, using their weapons to pick off those who wheeled in shocked surprise to meet them. It would seem that, Khasti's invisible barrier having failed, he had sent men of the deep south, those who had never owned the belief of Amun, to hold in the priests.
Beyond those fighters Tallahassee saw one body wrapped in temple white—a white now dappled with scarlet. But the Amazons were finding targets, too. And Tallahassee, moved by Ashake's horror at what might happen, threw herself at the Candace, bearing her to the floor of the passage even as a flash of light passed over their heads, the discharge of a weapon new to her.
The Amazons plunged on, their battle screams rising above the sound of the weapons. It was the very fury of the women, whose fabled ferocity had been a legend for generations, that must have shaken the barbarians, battle-thirsty as they were. They went down in a struggling, heaving mass beneath the sheer weight of the maddened women.
The skirmish was over before it had scarcely begun. But three of the Amazons lay among the dead as the Candace and Tallahassee struggled to their feet.
"Blood in the Temple!" cried Jayta. "What blasphemy have they wrought here?"
"Evil," replied Naldamak. She looked to the Amazons. "Sworn Swords, what have I to say to you who have served me with life and death. Sisters in battle are you."
"Glory," their captain, nursing an arm from which blood flowed, replied, "it is our right to make smooth your path. There is no honor in doing one's duty. But it would seem"—she nodded toward the dead priest beyond—"that those of evil have already made an entrance here. I beg of you, go with care—"
"That I not undo all you have wrought? Yes. A life that has been bought by the blood of friends must not be thrown away. But within lies that which can end this slaughter."
They went on into the lower floor of the Temple warily, the Amazons scouting ahead. Naldamak spoke to Tallahassee and Jayta.
"There is no welcome. Do you not feel it? There is silence where there should be the force about us."
Ashake memory provided fear. Yes, to those of the Blood, of the Talent, there should have been an instant sense of coming home, of companionship, when they entered. Were—had Khasti brought death to all here? No rebel, not even a southern barbarian, would have dared such a thing. They had their own gods and sorcerers, but many feared with a healthy fear the Power of the Temple, alien though it might be to them.
Jayta held up her hand. "Do not seek!" she commanded. "Such a thought call could be a warning. We must go ahead in body only, keeping our minds closed."
They had come to the foot of the steps that led to the great central chamber, the very heart of the Temple. Tallahassee saw now, that, in Naldamak's hold, the Rod had become a staff of shining glory, producing a bright fire. And the Key Jayta held blazed high in answer.
The Candace turned at the foot of the stairs to face the Amazons.
"Sisters, here we part, for none but those of the Power may enter the inner way—not because of any need for secrecy, but because you, yourselves, would be burned by the fire that dwells herein and that only initiates can stand."
"Glory," protested the captain, "if the barbarians have come this way before you—"
"Then they are already dead or mindless," returned Naldamak. "This is of the Power. I forbid you on your Oaths to follow."
The captain looked as if she would raise a second protest, but Naldamak was already ascending the stair and Tallahassee fell in on her left, a step behind, Jayta on her right.
On the three climbed, alone, and all the while they listened, with their minds and their bodies rather than their ears. It could well be that they were ascending into a place of death. For what the Candace had said in warning was the truth, no one not prepared to stand the emanations of this place could live within the strength of the force that generations upon generations of calling upon the Talent had built here. Like the Rod and the Key, it was a reservoir, but a much greater one, of all the Power they had drawn upon.
They stepped out into the vast chamber. The very walls here were alight with ripples of energy. And by that light they saw those whom they had come to seek. A dozen men and women, white robed, mostly old. And to their fore, Zyhlarz himself, his dark face thinner, sharpened, and yet masterful.
Facing him—Khasti!
And at that moment Ta
llahassee sensed what was going on. They were engaged in a silent duel. The stranger out of nowhere had shielded his mind by some secret of his own, and between his hands was a circle of brilliant shining metal, the focus of what he sought to use to batter down the defenses of the Temple company.
They were matched so evenly, power thrust against power, that they seemed nearly dead to any mental probing. Nor did any face in that silent company of priests or priestesses change as Naldamak and the others came swiftly up behind Khasti's back.
The Candace held the burning rod now as a hunter might hold a lance, bringing it near shoulder high. And she was edging to the right of the immobile Khasti as if she would come even with him before she attacked.
She stopped and her two followers drew level with her. Jayta, holding up, heart high, the blazing Key, reached out her other hand and touched Naldamak's shoulder, giving good room to the Rod. Ashake's memory moved Tallahassee to do the same on the Candace's left.
It was like thrusting one's hands into a fire. There was heat in the flesh she touched, enough to nearly make Tallahassee jerk back her fingers. Now followed a drain from her own body, into Naldamak's.
At the same moment Khasti turned his head, though they had come noiselessly across the pavement. His eyes widened but he did not move.
Naldamak cast the Rod. It was a clean, well-aimed throw, passing through the ring of metal that Khasti held.
He threw back his head and laughed. "Not so easily do you win. Mistress of Magic."
"Stranger—your time here is finished. Choose death or go—"
"What death, Candace? Look to your Rod—it dies."
It was true. The Rod on the floor of the Temple had faded in brilliance as the coals of a fire will subside into grey and powdered ash. But there was no horror or fear on Naldamak's face.
"The Soul of Amun dies not, stranger." She held out her hand and the Rod arose from the floor, returned to her. Once in her grasp it flowered again with the same brilliance, yet Tallahassee felt the drain of her energy into the Queen's increase even as that brilliance grew.
"With this"—Khasti held the ring a fraction higher as if so to draw all their attention—"I can drain your 'soul' again and again and yet not be harmed."
"Daughter-of-Apedemek"—it was Zyhlarz's resonant voice that cut across Khasti's arrogant words—"whom have you brought with you into this place?"
He pointed into the air between Khasti and the Candace. Tallahassee could see the curling of the air, even though she had not yet felt the presence of the wraiths.
"Ask of them who and what they are, Son-of-Apedemek," Jayta replied. "They sought us in darkness, but they seek another more eagerly."
Again Khasti laughed. "They are my discarded tools, priest. To such can I reduce men. They served me, not too well. Now they would come to beg life once again. In their weakness they cannot harm me."
"Opener of Forbidden Gates," Zyhlarz answered him, "perhaps you have opened one too many."
There were three writhings in the air. They moved to box Khasti in on three sides. But he shrugged and smiled.
"I am not one to be driven from my goal by ghosts—nor by such 'Knowledge' as you cling to, old man. The Talent has run very thin, has it not? And my machines can best it in the end."
Tallahassee raised her own voice then:
"Akini!" she called. "I name your name, I give you what I have to offer . . ."
She held out the hand that had hung by her side, but she did not break contact with the Candace and through her with Jayta. One of the troublings in the air, the one behind Khasti, swooped closer.
"She has named a name!" Zyhlarz's voice swelled through the lofty hall. "Let hers be the Power!"
Just as energy had drained from her as Naldamak had wrought with the Rod—seemingly to no purpose—now it came flooding into her.
Her flesh tingled along the length of her slender body. She could feel a stirring on her scalp as if her clipped hair moved, each strand rising to discharge some force.
Something touched her outheld palm—so cold that it was like a thrust of pain following on the stroke of a knife. But Tallahassee held steady. And from that touch, even as had happened in the cage, a substance arose, milked out of her, absorbed by the thing in the air.
She saw Khasti half wheel, turn his circuit in her direction, but between him and her those two other disturbances of the air slid into place, so that his figure wavered before her eyes. But she did not drop her hand and the thing that fed on her strength continued to draw nourishment.
What was forming in the air bore no resemblance to a manlike form though that had been what she expected to see. Rather it was a serpent, ever thickening, ever pulling on her strength, draining not only herself but her companions also. Now, dimly, she could hear a rising chant from Jayta, saw from the corner of her eyes to the right that the Priestess was using the flashing Key to draw lines in the air, lines that glowed dimly and hung even after the key withdrew.
Tallahassee thought, with a stab of fear, that her strength was being sapped past the point of no return. Yet that thing she had allowed to fasten on her did not abate its sucking. Had she condemned them all to failure?
"Akini!" That was Zyhlarz's call. "The door has been made ready—do you come through!"
The snake-thing loosed its hold from the girl's palm and her hand dropped weakly of its own volition to her side. She could see, even without turning her head, that there was indeed a doorway sketched upon the air.
But Khasti, his lips flattened against his teeth, his eyes showing a trace of madness, was raising his circlet, not aimed any longer at the priests and priestesses he had held so long at bay, but rather as if he would focus whatever force he controlled through it on the door in the air.
"Akini!" After Zyhlarz's call, her own voice sounded very weak and thin as if it came not from her lips and throat but from a far distance.
The serpent coiled in the air, looping as if it rejoiced to own even this much of a form. But neither it nor the whirling wraiths made any attempt to go through that opening Jayta had provided for them. A door to here from there, wherever there might be. Yet they did not come.
Instead the whorls kept guard between Khasti and the three he menaced. And the serpent thing—it launched at him as might a rope sent flying on Tallahassee's own world to ensnare a wild steer. It lifted itself above the level of his hands and the circlet, making for his head. He tried to dodge, dropped the thing he held, raising his arms to beat off the serpent.
But it was not to be denied. Wreathing itself around his head, it blotted out his features, covered his face instantly. He tore at it with no effect, staggering forward. Now the whorls ranged themselves on either side so that when he stumbled and wavered, he seemed to bounce from one to the other, they keeping him upright and urging him on. It was he whom they hurried, blinded, perhaps suffocating under the serpent folds, into the door Jayta had opened.
He took one step and then another—and—was gone! The door vanished even as he passed through, leaving an eerie feeling of emptiness in the chamber, as if something had been closed, drawing with it a part of their lives in a way Tallahassee could not describe even to herself.
"But—I thought they wanted to come through to us," she said blankly. The Temple people were hurrying forward. "Why did they not come through?"
"Perhaps they could not. They had been so long exiled to that existence. What they wanted more," Jayta said slowly, "was him who had sent them there."
"Then—he will be a wraith . . ." Tallahassee could see the peril of that. She had felt the danger from those others, and they had been weaklings in strength of purpose when compared to the stranger out of the desert. What if he returned so to haunt them?
"They closed the door, Daughter." Zyhlarz was beside her. "You had the courage to treat with them after a fashion, and they have now removed him who alone had the power to destroy everything we are and have done."
"He was—" Jayta said, but Zyhlarz held up
his hand in warning.
"Let it not be spoken aloud as to what he was. Such knowledge lies buried in the past and well buried. It is enough he was not of our flesh or of our world."
"There are those who have come seeking him," Naldamak said then.
"They will have their own way of knowing that he is gone. And on such a journey as even they are not ready to face. Time and space may be conquered by man—there remain other dimensions we dare not venture into if we would remain human."
* * *
Tallahassee sat in the Candace's garden. The city which had been in turmoil was now patrolled by loyal guards. Also the Temple was open so that there flowed out of it a peace that could soothe inflamed minds and quiet restless spirits.
Restless spirits! Since the vanishing of Khasti she had found herself at intervals watching the air, listening, sending out that inner sense of which Ashake made so much to test for alien thought, an alien wraith. Was it true that when Khasti had been swept away, by the "tools" he had despised, he had indeed been sealed from this world? He had been summarily thrown into another space-time even as she had been in the ruins of ancient Meroë?
Another space-time . . .
She was Tallahassee tonight as she sat here alone in the dusk. Though her begrimed uniform had been changed for the silken robes of her borrowed personality, a wig of ceremony covered her head, she was not Ashake!
She thought of what Jayta had hinted in the last council they had held a few hours ago—that Khasti had not come out of time but out of space. That the fabric of Khem itself in the earliest days had been born of the experiments made by intelligences not of this world, and that their blood and gifts had lingered on in certain descendants, to become part of another path of knowledge, turning inward. Thus, those whose far-off forefathers had known the stars now chose rather to know themselves, perhaps better than any of their species had done before.
They had seen no more of that second stranger. Perhaps they could believe it was true he and those he represented had known of their quarry's fate and gone their own ways thereafter.