Ice and Shadow (16 page)

“It is one I would not ordinarily speak of to any, be he even close brother-kin, unless he knew it by right of birth. But because it is akin to what you have told me, I will speak of it now. The Guardians—we worship them after a fashion, and to most they are supernatural beings. But in my House there is a tale that he who founded our line was a direct servant of Guardians—who were
not
immortals as all believe, but had flesh and substance. And he did certain tasks for them in that far beginning which were connected with the ordering of Reveny life.

“When men awoke here at the Guardians’ bidding and set about living, my forefather retained hazy memories of another time and place. These he kept to himself, speaking of them only to his son, and so it passed through my line. We have in addition other things. There have been soothspeakers of our name. That is how I am sure that the Queen was not what she seemed when she found the Crown and ordered my death.

“Now you make plain she was not being moved by the control of any mind-globe, but that she, the Duke, all of us, are game pieces moved about to fulfill some plan made by men long dead, ones who had no right to set our forefathers into such patterns. But you fear that to destroy these controls would be to destroy us also.”

“My uncle feared that. He wants to bring in the experts of the Service. They would study the installation, make sure—if they came at all.”

“If
they came at all!” That was bitter. “Then they would have chosen, had you not broken
their
pattern, to let us live forever under the domination of chattering metal things! What right have they to allow such slavery? Or are they themselves slaves to other patterns? Is it so from star to star, with no one really free?”

He was now echoing one of her own recent thoughts.

“And these men of your Service,
if
they come, would take time, maybe years, to study before they moved. Is that not so?”

“Yes.”

“And all that while we would continue to be secretly ruled. Ludorica, who is good, would do evil. Reddick, who wishes to bring war and worse upon Reveny, who would slay even the Queen if by her death he could take the Crown, would continue in power. I—I shall do what I can against him. But if these machines will otherwise, I am defeated before I begin!”

“The installation can be destroyed.”

“There was Arothner, which lost its crown—”

“The Princess told me that story,” Roane admitted.

“Then you know what chanced there. To risk that—for Reveny—for all the world!”

“The result may not be the same. A lost crown could differ in effect from a silenced machine.”

“But the risk—it is too great!”

“The choice is yours.” She had done what she could. If he said now that Clio must remain in slavery, let it be so.

She turned her wrist again and this time his grasp loosened and fell away. With its going she felt as alone as if he had arisen and walked from her. There was no road back. She was locked in a prison she had built herself stone by stone. Yet she was unable to regret what lay behind.

Roane settled her shoulders against the harsh stone of the wall, raised her knees, and folded her arms across them as a pillow for her head. That emptiness she had earlier welcomed now became a billowing fog of fatigue. She did not care if morning, light, or the need to take up the burden of living ever came again.

But tired as she was, sleep did not come. Instead her thoughts twisted and turned as an insomniac might twist and turn upon a bed during a wakeful night. She walked again on other worlds, relived this small fragment of the past and that. It seemed to her that she had always been part of a set pattern, also, imposed upon her by Uncle Offlas, by the life he introduced her to. Was it true as Nelis had said, that even from star to star there was no freedom? Yet the rules of the Service called for no interference, no meddling even for good in the destiny of a troubled world.

Pattern upon pattern, tie and bond upon tie and bond, no freedom. Roane stirred and then once more that hand out of the dark reached her, slipping across her shoulders to draw her to rest close to the warmth, the safe anchorage of another body, human, alive, no longer exiled alone in the dark.

“What is it, Roane? Why do you cry?” His voice was a breath warm against her cheek. And she knew then that tears did wet her face and that she wept as she could not ever remember having done since she was a small and lonesome child.

“I think it is because I am alone.” She tried to put that desolation into words.

“But that you are not! Is it because you come from the stars and here find no kin? Would you return to your people? I promise I shall take you to them—”

“They will not want me now.”

“Do not think that others believe in that fashion.” The grasp about her shoulders was very comforting. “I have been wondering—why was it, do you think, that you saw the Queen and Reddick in this dream? You were not reaching as a Soothspeaker does to read some peril or fact needful to your life. Yet you saw that which brought you to Hitherhow, to aid in my escape. And such visions are not ordinary. From whence came this one?”

Perhaps he was kindly trying to make her think of something else. But there was certainly a strangeness to that dream.

“I do not know. But I am sure I have no esper powers. My people understand these things, they checked me. It was important that they make sure.”

“Yet you have also said that you have done things on this world which were counter to all your training, to what you were taught was lawful. And I do not believe that you are one who has ever deliberately chosen to break rules and flout authority before. Is that not so?”

“I do not know why, but when I first saw the Princess, in that tower, I had to help her. Uncle Offlas said you were all conditioned. Perhaps when I had left the safeguards of our camp that also influenced me.”

“Yet you could see these machines. The Princess could not. So if there was conditioning, for you it was not complete.”

“What difference does it make now? I broke the Service rules, I—perhaps it was I who started the whole tangle. The Princess would not have known of the Crown had she not gone to the cave. And if she had not found the Crown—”

“Roane, Roane, do not take on yourself guilt for a whole country!”

Fingers touched her cheek gently, exploring, though that arm was still a barrier between her and dark loneliness.

“You are crying once more! I tell you, this is not of your doing! You have brought good, not evil. Had you not taken the Princess from Reddick’s men then, you might have left her to her death. And had you not come to Hitherhow—I might have died, too, and been a long time in doing it.”

“There was the Sergeant, Mattine, the others—”

“Who could well have thrown
their
lives away and to no avail. Nor would we ever have known of these machines. For had you not taken the Princess there for shelter, would you ever have found them?”

“Perhaps.”

“And perhaps not. Nor without the knowledge you have gained from us would you have known what they were. No—there is a meaning to be read in all you have done, if we can see it.”

“I do not understand.”

“Neither do I. I can only sense it is there, a reason to move you to aid the Princess, and later to do all else. You say that those we know as the Guardians are long dead, have been judged evil by those beyond the stars. They used men as tools and it did not last. Now your people fear to upset what they have done. But—why have you told this story to the one man in Reveny who could believe it, because his far-off ancestor escaped the full blight sent on Clio?”

“Chance—fortune—I do not know—”

“Neither do I. Save that it is making me think. Roane, can you find this cave again?”

“Do you mean you wish to free the Crown?”

“I do not know. I think that I shall not be sure until I stand there and know what such slavery means. But that I must do; I know it now. Can you take me there?”

“If we dare go back. It lies near Hitherhow.”

“Dare we not now?” he countered.

“The LB may have come. If not, they—Uncle Offlas, Sandar—they will try to keep us away and they have weapons—”

“Did you not use one such on me? Yes, I have tasted the power of those strange arms of yours. But that we must chance also. And I think time is fast running out.”

“You mean we go now? Before the Sergeant and Mattine return?”

“I think for what we may have to do we should have as little company as possible. But let us wait for dawn before we take the trail. Sleep if you can, Roane.”

He did not release her, so that Roane’s head slipped down to rest against him as indeed she found now she could sleep.

CHAPTER 16

ROANE AWOKE
as if summoned by some imperative call, though there was silence as she roused. The light of dawn lay outside their small corner of refuge. Imfry’s arm was still about her. They had huddled together in the night. Turning her head with care, she saw he still slept, or at least his eyes were closed.

There was a stubble of dark beard on his jaw, yet in sleep he looked much younger, unguarded, that rigidity of feature which usually masked him gone. There were lines perhaps born of pain, or the burden of decisions, but now they were faint. Studying him so, Roane thought of the one part of her dream she had not told him—the face she had seen at its ending.

For that had not been Ludorica’s, nor Reddick’s, and yet it had stung her into action.

Had Nelis been right in his theory that some force had moved her to play the part she had since she had landed on Clio? Superstition, common on a backward world, Uncle Offlas would term that, note it as a native trait on his tapes put aside for the anthropologists to study.

Many worlds had their strong faiths in powers greater than human, clung to beliefs in purposes beyond the comprehension of man. She had watched worshipers in temples, been moved once or twice by ceremonies which seemed to give those who took part an inner security and peace. But there were many gods, goddesses, nameless spirits and powers—unless each and every one was a small splinter of something greater toward which her species yearned and groped blindly. A something they must
have
to believe in, or be vanquished.

All her training balanced against the thought that she was moved now by any such influence! But if she could so think—Roane envied those with the faith, even those who looked upon Guardians here as beings to whom they could appeal in times of stress.

If they destroyed the installation would they in a way also be destroying the spirit which was Clio? What might enter in thereafter to fill the void?

Roane shook her head—fancies. She had been too often in the past ordered to restrain such imaginings. And if she had ever betrayed such irresponsible speculation before the Service she might even have been considered a suitable candidate for mental reschooling.

She shuddered at that thought, gazed out over the tumbled walls of the fort. There was already a tinge of red-gold in the sky—sunrise.

“Nelis—” She spoke his name softly, moved out of the hold he had kept on her during the dark hours, though his arm tightened even as she put it aside. Then his eyes opened, squinted in the light.

“Dawn,” Roane told him, thinking he might still be in the lingering backwash of a dream.

“Dawn—” he repeated as if the word had little meaning. Then the lines of his face tightened once more, alert intelligence and awareness flooded back. He straightened up with a grunt, as if stiff and sore, and stretched.

“Your medicines do well by one.” He flexed his arms again and then gently touched the plasta-skin covering over his wound before he picked up the jacket the Sergeant had left behind. “Have you any more of that strange food?”

“Enough.” She knelt to open her bag. The night lenses—how had she come to forget that she had those? They could have started last night with their aid. And there was the tool—she could put the last charge in that now.

“Another of your strange weapons?”

“Not quite so. But it was what freed you from that cage. It can be used as a cutter or a digger—breaking stone, melting metal. But I have not the proper energy charges for it, only one of these left, and they are meant to power a beamer.” She screwed the butt back on and laid it to one side. He picked it up.

“This is not what you used on me in the forest—”

“No. That was taken from me.”

“But that is your best weapon?”

“It merely stuns. There are others more forceful, but we are forbidden to carry them on sealed worlds. There is a blaster which slays with fire, other devices. But those are employed only in the last resort.”

He held the projectile thrower he termed a “gun” in one hand, the tool in the other, comparing them. “Your people work in metal in a way we cannot begin to equal. Just as we ride duocorns, you visit stars. What is it like to stride from world to world, m’lady?”

“It is like being always before a constantly changing picture. Sometimes it is good, sometimes”—she remembered and shivered—“it can be very bad.”

“As this world has been for you?”

“No! That is not so! Here—” She had found the ration tubes, twisted the cap of the first and handed it to him, taking up another for herself, using all, as they needed the strength. The warm semiliquid did not seem to taste as it always had, but even flatter, less appetizing.

She finished it quickly, squeezed the tube flat, put it under a stone before she reclosed her pack. The sky was now afire with sunrise. Had Imfry changed his mind during the night, or did he still want to go to the installation? She glanced up to where he stood, his head half turned from her, looking toward the blue-shadowed roll of the heights beyond.

“We head west.” He pointed. “There are Thunderbolt and Lhang’s Beard—”

So he was picking out landmarks. But once they were down in the forest cover, how could those guide them? She asked as much.

“We are not so helpless as you would believe, m’lady.” He pressed the wide buckle on his belt, showed her a small dial within. “This is a device which works as effectively for path finding for us as your off-world trappings do for you. Now—” He surveyed the ground closely, knelt at a smooth stretch of earth, and there began to set up a tight circle of bits of rock, the center left bare while he flattened and smoothed it. With his fingertip he gouged a series of lines and dashes there, digging them in as deeply as he could.

“For Wuldon and the others,” he told her. “This will let them know the direction in which we have gone and that we appoint a meeting place for later.”

The warmth of the sun was on the rocks as they started on the down trail. Roane, looking about her, and then hastily averting her eyes from anything but the path, thought it had been well she had come up in the dark. It would have been difficult for her to make that climb otherwise. The zigzag of the trail brought them to the bottom, where Imfry consulted his belt disk and struck out briskly.

There was no straight trail, of course. They detoured, lost time, came back. But if any hunt for them was in progress, it had not spread so far. There were birds and once or twice short glimpses of animals, but no sign men had ever walked this way.

They traveled in silence for the most part, and Imfry moved with an energy which suggested his wound no longer gave him any trouble. Roane refused to think of what lay ahead. It was enough to savor this one day which lay as a safe haven between the past and the future. She made no complaint at the steady pace her companion set, though now and again he did pause, suggest they rest. It was then he talked, though nothing of what they did, or had done, or would do—almost as if to speak of what concerned them most was to summon ill fortune.

Rather he painted for her the Reveny, the Clio, that he knew. And Roane listened as to a tale told in the Markets of Thoth, where, as all know, the most skillful of story spinners compete. He spread before her his homestead of Imfry-Manholm, which lay in mountain country where they raised the long-fleeced corbs, and grew, on small terraces bitten out of the steep slopes, vines which bore those berries from which the sharp-tanged winter wines were pressed.

“My brother is lord there, being the younger son. Though his mother ruled in his name during his childhood—she being my father’s second lady. He came to take liege oath at Urkermark last year. He is a good lad, steady. And he is already ring-promised to the daughter of Hormford Stead across the valley.”

Imfry dug his boot heel into the soft earth as they sat side by side on the moss-cushioned trunk of a fallen tree.

“The younger son inherits? On most worlds it is the eldest.”

“But this is the sensible way. A man’s older sons are usually well grown, settled in lives of their own, at his death hour. But the youngest may still be unable to make his way in the world. Therefore it is only just that he be so provided for. I was a court fosterling, because of my mother—” He paused for a long moment and stared down at the hole he was excavating. “My father had good reason to believe my rise in the world would be favored. My sister was ringed young to the son of his best friend—Ward Marshal Ereck. But what of your life, m’lady?”

“There is little to tell. I am without parents, raised in a Service créche where my Uncle sought me out. I tested well for memory work and in certain learning arts, so he knew I could be a useful member of a team. So has it been.”

“And you are perhaps ringed to this cousin of yours?”

“Sandar?” For a moment the speaking of his name evoked a sharp picture of him in her mind. Perhaps once, in the very beginning, she had nursed a few small colorless dreams. But those had been quickly quenched by working with Sandar—with whom her role had been that of a kind of dull-witted servant—and Roane found the memory of them embarrassing now.

“Certainly not Sandar!” she repeated firmly.

“But some other—on one of your star worlds?” he persisted.

“There is no time in the Service, or at least as Uncle Offlas plans one’s life, for such things. He does not even think of me as a woman. I am another pair of hands, often clumsy ones, to his mind. He takes me with him because, as I am his kin, he is allowed to use me on sealed worlds, where a stranger might cause trouble.” Suddenly Roane laughed. “But this time he was not fortunate—I have done just as he has always feared someone would do. And do you know, Nelis—I think—I hope—I no longer care!”

For that was true! Last night when she had told him her story a burden
had
rolled away. Uncle Offlas—she did not
have
to be his puppet. Let him blacken her to the Service—she had a world before her here. They could not hunt her down, or at least she thought they would not dare.

“Strange ways—” Imfry’s comment did not seem to be exactly an apt answer, but he did not enlarge upon it, only got to his feet as a signal to push on.

That odd lightheartedness with which she had begun this march, that feeling of being apart from the past and the future, being in the safe present, faded as they went. She had thought, for a few moments, that she did not have to fear Uncle Offlas. Perhaps she did not, if she kept away from where he was to be found. But she was heading right back there. Why?

“Please.” She slipped around a bush to match pace with Imfry. “We must take care. You cannot guess what they can do. If the LB has come there will be more—”

“But you have said that the crown machine is the control—that we must destroy it. Was that not what you urged on me?”

“Yes. But I forgot—” To her vast surprise and self-disgust, she felt tears rising again. What
was
the matter with her? She had never done this in her life. She was no longer herself. Desperately she fought for control. “Yes. I am sorry—it is the only thing to be done.” She fell behind, intent on restraining her troubling emotions. “I only urge caution. They have instruments which can detect us at a distance.”

He shrugged. “We can only do our best and hope for the continuing favor of fortune. We are”—he consulted his guide disk—“not too far from the cave. And we shall approach it from the side where Reddick’s men broke in.”

Now she was able to watch a master woodsman at work. It seemed to Roane he melted into the brush, able to become invisible at will, while she sweated over her own efforts, which now appeared infinitely clumsy, to follow his example. But she applauded the caution he brought to the advance. If there were no repellers or detects—

They looked out on a slope of raw earth eroded by rain, flanking the hole Reddick’s men had made. Imfry spoke so low Roane had almost to read the words from his lips as he shaped them: “Is there any warning set here?”

“I do not think so. Unless they have a new one. I burned out the repeller.”

His body was as tense as a runner’s waiting at the mark. “Get in, as quick as you can!” And he was off in a dash to cover the stretch of open ground, disappear between mounds of earth and rock. Roane followed, to stand where Ludorica had held the crown in her hands.

“Wait!” She held up her hand in swift warning. From her former experience with the distort Roane knew she could feel that were it present. As Imfry’s skill had been their guide in the woods, maybe she could serve equally well here.

Roane slipped into the rough passage, heard him move in her wake. So far, there was no trace of the protective measures she feared. But she could hear, every time she paused to listen, the faint pulsations of the installation.

They came to the smoothed portion of corridor. There was a faint glow from the machine chamber. Roane touched his arm, put her lips close to his ear.

“What do you see—right there?” She indicated the faint light.

“Nothing.”

“You hear?” she persisted.

“Nothing. It may be that I cannot. The Princess could not, you said.”

If that were true—had she failed before they had begun? Would he take on faith what she might describe to him? She slipped her hand down to lace his fingers with hers.

“Come!” Hand in hand, linked as children on their way to some day of play, they crept along, edging warily toward the open panel.

Sandar? Uncle Offlas? If they were still within—Roane had no way of making sure. However, if she and Imfry were not spotted at the door, then there were places of concealment inside. Even the crowned pillars were tall enough to provide temporary cover.

At the panel Roane loosed her hold, pushed a step across the threshold. The mutter of noise, those lights which seemed so bright since she had been moving in the dark. But she could see no one there.

“Now!”

Roane could not see the expression on his face, but he caught her hand, held it in bruising pressure.

“You—went—into—the—wall!” He spaced his words as if he were struggling for some control.