Android at Arms (28 page)

The stone glowed, flashed as he had never seen it do before. It pointed directly into this land. How much longer did he have, Andas wondered, before death attacked his body? The thought made him shift to top speed.

Thus he overshot his goal and was aware of it only when the gem signaled it. He circled about, also intent on what the visa-screen showed of the land below.

It was no true valley the ring brought him to, but the hollow of a giant crater. And, as he went on hover, Andas was aware of something else. About him the linked belt was warming, rousing in answer to some energy, while through his body he began to feel a vibration, almost as painful as the one that had accompanied the crawlers.

He put the skimmer on descend. There was no need to take any precaution over his arrival. Andas did not in the least doubt that those who sheltered in this hole knew of his coming. But he watched the screen carefully.

The very heart of the crater was a lake, though the waters there did not mirror the sky above, but were a dead slate gray. Around its shores there was vegetation. It had a withered, dead look, lacking the brilliant color and shadow one saw in normal plants.

Farther away from the water were heaps of some graywhite material set in loose order. And while they resembled no buildings he had ever seen, Andas believed them to be shelters for those who made this dismal mountain cup their home.

He brought the skimmer down on the only nearly level space he sighted. The visa-screen showed him that and a portion of sand and gravel beyond, as well as scraps of blighted vegetation—but no one moved. If there was a reception party, it was in hiding.

With care he unwired the ring, being careful not to touch the band itself. That he dared not do while he wore the belt, for their powers were so opposed, one to the other, that he believed such a connection might be fatal to him. Into the ring he inserted the end of an officer's baton, which Yolyos had smoothed down to serve that purpose. And holding this before him, he left the skimmer.

The nearest of the shelters was close enough to see clearly, and he was startled at its material. There was no mistaking the nature of the loglike objects piled to form its walls—bones—huge bones! He had never heard of an animal large enough to yield such. But why not—was not this the Valley of Bones—though that was a literal statement he had not known.

Andas's right hand hovered about his belt but did not quite touch it. With his left he held the baton well away from his body. The glow of the ring was torch-like through the gloom of the valley.

Again he looked about for some sign his arrival was known—that they were prepared to move against him. Nothing stirred. There were no sounds. If bird or insect lived in this gloom, it was silent now. There was a feeling of waiting that made him want to linger by the open hatch of the skimmer as his only refuge.

Perhaps all his race was conditioned to expect the worst here. There were too many old terror tales about the ruler of this pocket—and of much more when she wished to reach out and touch this one or that to be her follower. But the fact that he knew he was a walking dead man was armor. Fear of dissolution was now longer hers to threaten.

So Andas walked away from the skimmer, from all the world that he knew, carrying the ring as a torch. And since the huts of bones seemed the logical place to start searching for whoever dwelt here, he went to those.

Sometime later he reached the end of that line of weird dwellings, having found each empty, though there was good evidence that they were occupied. But where were those he sought? That sense of expectancy, of being on the brink of action, had never left him. Yet no movement, no sound, indicated that he was not alone in the valley.

Would the ring continue to lead him? He could try an experiment. Andas loosed his grasp on the baton until he held it by only the lightest of grips. Then he spoke for the first time. Though he purposely kept his voice low, yet his words rang unusually loud in his own ears.

“To thy mistress, go!”

The baton quivered, moved. He tried not to hold it too tightly lest he hinder that movement, yet he must not drop it. It turned at a sharp angle left. And he pivoted to face that way. The baton stiffened to point, and he found he could not make it waver.

Away from the bone-walled huts it led him, from the lake, from the skimmer. It was like a spear aimed at the steep side of the crater.

Then he saw that he walked a marked way, sided by stumpy pillars, first knee high, then waist, and finally topping his shoulders, and these were also bones.

So walled in, Andas came to an opening in the cliff. As he paused, there was a flash within, a leap of greenish flame. He smelled a stench that was worse than the odor of the crawlers.

Then a voice called, “You have sought us out, Emperor. Have you then come to seek your crown? But your hour is past—even as the crown has passed to one who can better wear it!”

In the green of the flames he saw the gathered company. Back against the wall on either side were a sprinkling of men, who stood, staring in a kind of despair and complete surrender, as if all their strength had been drained. But in the center was a group of women, and behind them another, enthroned.

Andas raised his eyes to the face of that one. On her head was the Imperial crown, the sacred one worn only when the ruler took his oath of allegiance. It was death for a lesser man to touch it. At the sight of that in this place, anger blazed hot in him.

The head on which it rested was held high with an arrogance he thought not even an empress in her own right could have shown. Her face had the perfection of a soulless, emotionless statue, with only the eyes and a cruel curl of mouth betraying life.

Her body was bare of any robe, but she held on her knees, so that it covered her to the base of her throat, a huge mask. That mask was demonic, yet not ugly. Rather it seemed great beauty had been twisted to serve great evil, so that it was degraded and debased.

“Andas.” He saw the cruel smile grows as she spoke. “Emperor that wished to be. Behold your empress! Give homage as it is due!”

As she spoke, the mask before her looked at him also with a compelling stare. He shivered, knowing that it, too, had life—or was in some way an extension of a life force that had no human connection, more to be feared than merely alien.

“Homage, Andas, humble homage—” She made a chant of the words. And that chant was taken up by the women gathered at the foot of the throne until it beat in his head. But he stood erect and did not answer.

It appeared that she was not expecting such defiance, for now she ran tongue tip across her lips and ceased that chant. But a moment later she spoke again.

“You cannot stand against me any longer, Emperor of rags and tatters, of a ruined empire. If you have come to surrender—”

“I have not come to surrender, witch.” Andas spoke for the first time, and his words cut across hers as swords might clang blade on blade in a duel.

“Yet you bear our emblem as a banner!” She laughed, pointing with her chin to the ring.

“Not as a truce flag, Kidaya, but as a torch to show me your path.”

“And you have walked it—to your end, Emperor of ashes and dead men!”

“Not yet!” From whence came that flash of inspiration he never afterward knew. It was like an order sent ringing through his head by the will of a power beyond his own knowledge.

He readied the baton as if it were a throwing spear, such as a man uses for skill hunting. And he hurled it, so that the ring at its tip entered straight into the mouth of the mask.

Then he saw the lips move, close upon the wand and snap it. The portion bearing the ring, with the ring, vanished.

“To like fares like!” he cried, and the words also came from somewhere outside his own mind.

There was a moan running through the company. But Andas was no longer aware of them—he saw only Kidaya. Now, as her mask of confidence broke and she allowed emotion to show fleetingly upon her face—consuming hate—he traced a likeness to the Princess Abena, faint though it was. The princess was at the beginning of a crooked and shadowed road. This woman had walked the full way to stand at its end.

She laughed. “My poor littling! Now you have thrown away what small protection you ever had. As the Old Woman has eaten your safeguard, so shall she now eat you.” She fell then to crooning, rubbing her hands caressingly along the sides of the mask, so that Andas could see that she did not need to steady the thing on her knees, but that it rested there of itself.

Kidaya crooned, and the mask began to grow larger and larger until it hid all of her, save her slender feet and the hands that still gentled it. If this was illusion, the hallucinatory power behind it was very great.

The eyes were alive, and they looked upon him with a stare as if to draw him forward to death, while the mouth opened and a great tongue used its tip to beckon him.

Andas could feel the urge, the need to reach that mouth. But what he wore about him kept him steady, though the pull was nigh unbearable. And all the time the mask grew.

Still Andas waited for the signal he was sure would come. Move too soon and that which manifested itself in the mask would not be drawn far enough into this plane of existence to be destroyed. Wait! But the need to go to it—He swayed as he stood, torn between the witchery of the mask and the counter force about his body.

He could not stand it much longer—he would be torn apart!

The signal he waited for came with a flash of energy filling his whole body. Andas raised his hands and began to trace in the air the contours of the mask. From his lips poured the ancient chant he had learned at the fort. It was the sound and tone of those words that should release the energy now filling his entire being and aim it as he made of himself a vessel of destruction.

His whole body quivered and shook with what filled it. Andas believed he could actually see faint threads of light shooting from the tips of his fingers. And then he obeyed the call of the mask, leaping up to meet it as if he were its prisoner at last.

There was—

But no man could—would—be allowed to remember what came then. There was nothingness and the dark.

He was cold. He had never been so cold in his life. Life? No, this was death, which had been his burden and finally finished him. But could one smell in death? Could one feel? If so, then old speculations were at fault. Smell, feel, hear—for there was moaning he could hear.

See? Andas opened his eyes. He lay on rock, looking at blasted, blackened stone, so stained it might have been worked upon by blaster fire.

Stone? Memory came back. So, he was not dead. He levered himself to his knees and swung his head slowly from side to side. And what he saw sickened him somewhat but did not pierce far, for it was as if the cold he felt created an ice barrier between him and the world.

He could not get to his feet, but he crawled out of that hollow until he crouched in the open between the bone walls of the pathway. He was no sooner in the open than there was a resounding crash from within. A great billow of gritty dust puffed out, so he cried aloud and threw up his arms to cover his face. But afterward there was no moaning in the dark.

Andas crawled on, and the stones and gravel cut his hands and knees. He felt no pain, for the cold kept him in its hold, and no other sensation could pass it. Finally he came to the skimmer.

It took the last of his strength to crawl within and tumble into the pilot's seat. He had to raise two bleeding hands to set the controls, nor was he fully aware as the craft raised from the valley and swung around on the recorded tape that would take it home.

For a while he was limp, inert, preserved from all feeling. That he had accomplished what he had gone to do, that what occupied the mask had been destroyed in this world, at least for a space, and with it those who had served it, he knew. But he felt no triumph. It was like watching a taped story in which one was not personally involved.

He had hoped to die swiftly and cleanly in that final moment when he made of himself the ultimate weapon. But it seemed that the very power he had invoked had preserved him, to die more horribly and lingeringly. That, too, he was able to face with detachment, which he dimly hoped would continue to hold. If the energy had burned out of him all fear and emotion, so much the better.

At last he either lapsed into a stupor or slept while the skimmer bore him away from those ominous mountains toward a land waiting to be reborn.

When Andas awoke, he was not in the skimmer, but lying on a cot bed, and around him were the walls of the fort. So he had made it back after all—or the skimmer had made it for him on tape command. But again there was no feeling of triumph in him, only a vast weariness. He wanted to close his eyes and sleep. Perhaps this was the first symptom he must endure before the end.

Someone moved into his line of vision. Shara stood there—but with a difference about her. Those tight braids were gone. Her hair made a soft halo about a face that was still far too thin and drawn. Again the years had fallen from her. She was young, and in her burned a light that made her far different from the woman who had wept over the dying emperor. But though she did not weep for him, she would watch a second emperor die. Suddenly feeling broke through the cold that encased him. There was no one to weep for him. And the desolate loneliness was more than he could bear. Andas closed his eyes. But it seemed she would spare him nothing.

“Andas! Andas!”

Reluctantly he looked at her once more. She was on her knees beside his bed so her face was close. There were tears in her eyes after all. One spilled over to form a clear droplet on her brown cheek.

“Andas—”

“It is done,” he told her. “The Old Woman-is destroyed—perhaps forever. Rule in safety, Empress!”

“Only with an emperor!” she replied. “Andas, the medic—he could not find any radiation deterioration. You will not die, not now!”