Hunt the Space-Witch! (14 page)

Corun Govleq smiled. “Masterful, sire. I had merely thought we could despatch three or four cruisers to level Dykran—but this is much better.
Much
better!”

“Good. Notify the Proconsul on Dykran of what we're doing, and ask our man on Aldryne to find the Hammer. Have them both report back to me regularly. And if there are any other problems today, solve them yourself. I have a headache.”

“My sympathies, sire,” Corun Govleq said.

As he backed out of the Imperial presence, he saw the old man lift the gyro-toy and peer once again into its soothing, mysterious center.

The Emperor's word traveled down the long chain of command, from functionary to functionary, from bureau to bureau, until at length, a good many days later, it reached the ears of Fellamon Darhuel, Imperial Proconsul for Aldryne of the Aldryne system.

Darhuel was a peaceful, philosophical man who much preferred translating ancient poetry into the Five Tongues of the Galaxy to collecting taxes from the sullen people of Aldryne. He had only one consolation in his job: that he had drawn Aldryne for his assignment and not the bleak neighbor world of Dykran where the malcontents spoke up loudly and the Proconsul's life was ever in danger.

The Hammer of Aldryne? He shrugged when the message crystal delivered its burden. The Hammer was a legend, and one that did the Empire no credit, either. Now the good Emperor wanted it?

Very well, Fellamon Darhuel agreed. The Emperor's word could hardly be ignored. He summoned his subprefect, a slim Sobralian youngster named Deevog Hoth, and said, “Order up a squad of men and take a jaunt over to the Temple of the Suns. We're going to have to make an arrest.”

“Certainly. Who's the pickup?”

“Vail Duyair,” the Proconsul said.

Deevog Hoth recoiled.
“Vail Duyair?
The high priest? What goes?”

“It becomes necessary to interrogate Vail Duyair,” Darhuel said blandly. “Bring him to me.”

Frowning in mystification, Deevog Hoth made a gesture of assent and departed.

Less than an hour later—he was a punctual man—he returned, bringing with him Vail Duyair.

The old priest looked as if he had given them a hard time. His green robe was rent in several places, his white hair was uncoifed, and the sunburst insigne at his throat was hanging slightly askew. He faced Darhuel defiantly and said, “For what reason do you interrupt evening services, Proconsul?”

Fellamon Darhuel flinched before the old man's stern gaze. He answered, “There are questions that must be asked. There are those who would have you reveal the Hammer of Aldryne.”

“The Hammer of Aldryne is no concern of the Empire's at this stage,” Vail Duyair said slowly. “It will be … some day. Not now.”

“By order of His Majesty Dervon XIV, Emperor of All the Galaxies,” Darhuel said sonorously, “I am empowered to interrogate you until you yield to me the location and secret of the Hammer. Be reasonable, Duyair; I don't want to have to hurt you.”

With great dignity the priest straightened his hair and rearranged the platinum insigne. “The Hammer is not for the Emperor's command. The Hammer will some day crush the Emperor's skull.”

Fellamon Darhuel scowled. “Come on, old man. Enough oratory. What's the Hammer, and where's it kept?”

“The Hammer is not for the Emperor's command,” Duyair repeated stonily.

The Proconsul drew a deep breath. His interrogators were not subtle men; the priest would surely not live through the treatment. But what choice did he have?

His nervous fingers caressed the vellum manuscript of
Gonaidan Sonnets
he had been studying. He was anxious to return to his work.

Sighing regretfully, he pushed the communicator stud on his desk, and when the blue light flashed, said, “Have the interrogator come up here, will you?”

Chapter Two

Later that night a long dark car drew up before the Temple and waited there, turbo-electric engines thrumming, while the body of Vail Duyair was brought inside. As silently as they came, the men of the Proconsul left, having delivered the corpse to the priests of the Temple.

The old man was committed to the pyre with full ritual; Lugaur Holsp, as ranking priest, presided and offered the blessings due a martyr. When the service was over, he shut off the atomic blast of the crematorium and dismissed the gathered priests and acolytes.

The next morning Ras Duyair was awakened by the forceful arm of an acolyte.

Sleepily he said, “What do you want?”

“Lugaur Holsp summons you to a Convocation, Ras Duyair!”

Duyair yawned. “Tell him I'll be right there.”

When he entered the Inner Room of the Temple, Holsp was seated at the High Seat garbed in ceremonial robes. At his right and left sat the ranking priests of the hierarchy, Thubar Frin and Helmat Sorgvoy. Duyair paused before the triumvirate and automatically made the genuflection due a High Priest in ceremonial garb.

“Are you, then, my father's successor?” he asked.

Lugaur Holsp nodded solemnly. “By a decision rendered early this morning. The workings of the Temple shall continue as before. There are some questions we must ask you, Ras.”

“Go ahead,” Duyair said.

“Your father died for refusing to yield the secret of the Hammer.” A skeptical note crept into Holsp's cold voice. “You were closer to your father than any of us. Did he ever admit to you actually being in possession of the secret?”

“Of course. Many times.”

Lugaur Holsp's eyes grew beady. “It was his conviction, was it not, that the secret of the Hammer should reside always with the High Priest of this Temple. Am I right?”

“You are,” Duyair admitted, wondering what Holsp was driving at.

“The incumbent High Priest, who is myself, is
not
in possession of this secret. It is my opinion that the true secret of the Hammer is that there
is
no secret—and no Hammer! That it is a carefully fostered myth which the priesthood of this Temple has nurtured for centuries and which was so important to your father that he died rather than reveal its mythical nature.”

“That's a lie,” Duyair said promptly. “Of course the Hammer exists! You, the High Priest of this Temple, doubting that?”

Duyair saw Holsp exchange glances with the two silent priests flanking him. Then Holsp said: “I am relieved to know this. The late Vail Duyair must, then, have made provisions for transference of possession of the secret.”

“Quite possibly.”

“I am the duly elected High Priest, succeeding your father. I do not have possession. I assume, then, that your late father must have entrusted the secret to you—and I call upon you, as a loyal junior priest of this Temple, to turn the secret over to its rightful possessor.”

“You?”

“Yes.”

Duyair eyed Holsp suspiciously. Something was exceedingly wrong here.

It had been generally known for some time that Holsp would succeed the elder Duyair whenever the old priest's time came. Ras had known that; his father had known that. In that case, then, why hadn't Vail Duyair taken steps to see that the Hammer secret was given to Holsp?

It didn't make sense. The old man had frequently told his son of the existence of the secret—though never the secret itself. Ras Duyair did not know it. But he had assumed Holsp was party to it, and to find out that he was not—!

Duyair realized his father must have had some good reason for denying Holsp the secret. Either the Hammer
was
a myth—no, that was inconceivable—or Holsp was in some way untrustworthy.

“Your silence is overly extended,” Holsp said. “Will you turn over to me at once the secret?”

Duyair smiled grimly. “The secret is a secret to me as well as you, Lugaur.”

“What!”

“My father never deemed me worthy of knowing it. I always assumed it was
you
he had told it to.”

“This is impossible. Vail Duyair would never have let the secret die with him; he
must
have told you. I order you to reveal it!”

Duyair shrugged. “Order me to slay the Emperor as well or halt the tides. The secret is not mine for the giving, Lugaur Holsp.”

Holsp was openly fuming now. He rose from his graven seat and slammed his hand down on the table. “You Duyairs are stubborn to a fault! Well, the Emperor is not the only one who knows the art of torture.”

“Lugaur! Are you crazy?” Duyair shouted.

“Crazy? No, I merely object to defiance on the part of—Ras, will you yield the secret willingly to its rightful possessor?”

“I tell you, Lugaur, I don't know the secret and never did.”

“Very well,” Holsp said bitingly. “We'll pry it out of you!”

Proconsul Fellamon Darhuel spent the better part of that morning on the dreary business of dictating a report to the Emperor. He covered the Duyair incident in full, describing how the most refined Imperial tortures failed to bring forth the desired secret, and philosophically concluded that these out-world peoples seemed to have hidden reserves of strength that some Imperials might do well to copy.

Concluding his work, he activated the playback and listened to his words. The last few sentences jarred him; they sounded insulting and arrogant. He deleted them.

Lifting his voicewrite again, he patched on a new ending: “The stubbornness of these religious fanatics is beyond belief.” That sounded much better, he thought. He punched the permanizer and a moment later the message sprang forth, inscribed on a coiled tape the size of his thumb, coded and ready to go.

He took from a shelf a tiny crystalline capsule, inserted the message, sealed the capsule. He dropped the capsule in the diplomatic pouch being readied for the courier who departed for Dervonar that afternoon.

There
. The Emperor would have a full report of the matter, and Darhuel hoped it would do him much good.

I wash my hands of the thing
, he thought, turning back to the delicate acrostic verses of the long-dead Gonaidans.

Gradually he regained his calm.

But those who received the capsule felt no such calm. A hypership brought the courier across space from Aldryne to Dervonar in one huge gulp; later the same day the tiny crystal was delivered, along with three thousand similar crystals from three thousand other proconsuls scattered across the galaxy, to the main sorting room of the Imperial Diplomatic Clearinghouse.

It lay at the bottom of a heap for the better part of an hour until a nimble-fingered, eager-eyed clerk, aware of the order that any messages from Aldryne were to receive top handling priority, found it.

From there the capsule worked its way rapidly upward through the chain of bureaucrats of increasing authority until the Undersecretary for External Affairs brought it to the Assistant Secretary for External Affairs, who took it to the Minister of the Outer Marches, Corun Govleq.

Govleq was the first one in the entire string with authority enough to read the message. He did, and promptly sought an audience with His Majesty, Dervon XIV.

Dervon was busy listening to a new music tape brought him by an itinerant tonesmith of Zoastro; Govleq took the rare liberty of entering the royal presence without being announced.

Clangorous tones thundered in the throne room as he entered. The Emperor glanced up wearily, unreproachfully, and sighed.

“Well, Govleq? What crisis now?”

“Word from Aldryne, Highness. A report from your Proconsul there has reached us.” Govleq proffered the message cube in his palm.

“Have you heard it?” the Emperor asked.

“Yes, sire.”

“Well? What does it say?”

“They have interrogated Vail Duyair—he's the High Priest of that solar cult. The old man refused to yield the secret of the Hammer and died under interrogation!”

The Emperor frowned. “How unfortunate. What is this Hammer you mention?”

Govleq manfully refrained from swearing and set about tactfully refreshing the Imperial memory. Finally Dervon said, “Oh.
That
Hammer. Well, it was a fine idea, anyway. Too bad it didn't work out.”

“The rebellion on Dykran, sire—”

“Bother the rebellion on Dykran! No, I don't mean that. I'm very tense this morning; I think it's that damned music. What of the rebellion, Govleq?”

“Status remains quo so far. But word from Dykran is that an explosion is due almost momentarily. And now that a High Priest has been tortured to death on the neighboring world of Aldryne, we can expect the entire Aldryne system to rebel.”

“A serious matter,” the Emperor said gravely. “These things have a way of spreading from system to system. Hmm. We'll have to stop this. Yes. Stop it. Send special investigators to Aldryne and Dykran. Get full reports. Take care of it, Govleq. Take care of it. This could be bad. Very bad.”

“Of course, sire,” Govleq said. “I'll expedite the matter at once.” He rolled his eyes despairingly to the ceiling, wondering just how he was going to put down what looked like a noisy insurrection in the making.

But he would find a way. The Empire would prevail. It always had, and it always would.

“Turn up the volume,” the Emperor said. “I can hardly hear the music.”

The vault of the Temple of the Suns was a cold, dank place, wet with ancient slime. Ras Duyair remembered vaguely having played here as a child, enjoying it despite his father's reproaches; he also remembered being taken down to the vault for some hazily recalled indoctrination on his thirteenth birthday.

But now he walked between two priests of the Temple, and Lugaur Holsp walked behind. They entered the vault.

“It will be quiet down here,” Holsp said. “Ras, don't be stubborn. Tell us where the Hammer is.”

“I've told you. I don't know. I honestly don't know, Lugaur.”

The High Priest shrugged and said, “As you wish. Thubar, we'll have to torture him.”