Ice and Shadow (35 page)

Three times Zurzal called again for the tape Sopt s’Qu had supplied of the scene of the Great Ingathering and sat for a long space of time before it in study, as if by his will alone he could somehow transfer that picture to the scanner and have it appear when desired. Yet it was always the same and the Zacathan would shut it off with a hiss of exasperation.

His neck frill was in constant agitation and the colors, while not bright, ran through a variety of hues. Zurzal was not taking this waiting with the same philosophical adaption to circumstances as he had earlier shown. Jofre debated concerning a second assay at exploration by night and decided against it. The Zacathan was plainly not ready to settle in and he had no desire to leave the other alone.

In spite of his attempts to forget her, his own thoughts played with the puzzle of the Jewelbright. That she was assuredly issha he had not the least doubt, yet she had not responded to his Slip-shadow recognition signal—if she had seen it and somehow he believed that she had. That she was on an oathed mission must be the truth—otherwise she would not be here—no issha would willingly leave Asborgan on some whim. No, she had been introduced into the Holder’s household for a very definite purpose, even as others of her Sisters had from time to time found themselves in the halls of lords they were oathed either to protect or bring down. And somehow Jofre did not believe that this one was here to protect—no.

He felt a certain frustration that he could not share his speculations and doubts. Not only did there remain the fact that they might be constantly under observation through the loopholes those violently patterned walls contained but he had no right to interfere or betray another oathed.

They spent a restless night and in the morning Zurzal attempted to view the world through that screening device Jofre had earlier watched.

“That is their monument to the past.” The Zacathan identified a building which flashed onto the screen while a voice blared out in the native tongue a stream of words so fast Jofre could identify perhaps only one in ten.

The screen viewed the structure from slightly above, as if they were seated in a flitter swinging in there for a landing. Jofre caught sight of something to the far right.

“Spaceport!” He was sure that he had seen, through an opening between that forest of grim buildings, the rise of a ship on pad.

“Yesssss—” the hiss of the Zacathan was low. “To the south, I think.”

They would surely be transported again by flitter Jofre believed. If they made their move, once aboard that, could they hope to reach the port? But what good would that do—

Zurzal might have picked that question out of his mind. “There is a Prime Control base there—otherwise off-world ships could not land. Reaching that—”

“The Patrol would protect us?” Jofre allowed his doubt of that to be plainly read in his tone. “The port at Wayright must have been patrolled—yet here we are.”

Zurzal nodded. “Yesssss—that is ssssooo—but we were but helpless baggage then and they treated us as such.”

“And as we come in with blasters ablaze and demand aid here—” Jofre could not believe that the other could be so naive as to believe that.

“I am Zacathan,” Zurzal said. “My race has immunity on most worlds. Also, when we raise our voices, planet lords listen. I think we would have a very good chance to claim sanctuary.”

“But first we have to get out of there—” Jofre jerked his thumb to the scene on the screen. That had changed somewhat. They were now looking at the loom of the building from ground level facing an impressive flight of stairs. And those were occupied, with rows of statue-straight, well-armed guards, and behind them a massing of people moving restlessly back and forth as might waves kept out by the barriers of a portside landing.

“Just ssssoooo—” replied Zurzal, but he was looking now, not towards the screen, but at Jofre. If the latter had also been befrilled that appendage might have gone into a rising flap. He was being challenged in a way and he found that there was that within him which was rising with a fierce eagerness to meet that challenge.

CHAPTER 17

THE TSSEKIANS,
it would appear, had also foreseen that the task of ferrying Zurzal, Jofre, and the scanner to the place where they wanted them was going to be a problem. Perhaps they could not reduce the two to the point of becoming baggage to be towed around with impunity, but they mustered such a guard that each of the off-worlders was wedged in between two towering Tssekians and under constant eyes of those matching step with them.

There was no way in this compact and ever vigilant company, Jofre had to admit to himself, that he could make a move towards freedom. When the flitter landed them in a cleared space which guards held open with cracks of riot staffs before the steps of the Ingathering hall, he needed only to see that seething sea of a crowd to realize that massed bodies alone could wall them from escape.

Through the subdued roar of the voices about them even the commands of their guards did not carry and they were shoved in the direction of the steps leading upward.

So they came into the long hall which had been shown them on the viewer. There was the dais, the chairs which had been midpoint of that older scene, but there was no one on that perch now. Gathered below and to one side was a clot of brightly uniformed men with here and there a woman in rich robes and bejeweled. To the fore of that small assembly was the Holder with the Jewelbright a step or two behind him, the Jat reaching up one paw to grasp the edge of his brilliant golden tunic.

Between the newcomers and the chair was a spiderweb of wires, interlocking a number of installations all set at different angles and heights but meant to focus on the dais. These were under the control of men also in uniform but intolerant of the guards, giving harsh orders now and then.

“They prepare the broadcast.” Zurzal had somehow managed to come near to Jofre.

They certainly must be very sure of the results they wished, the Slip-shadow thought. But how could they be? There was some trick in this—there must be. Only he could not ferret out what it was nor how it would work.

The guards pushed the two of them on, Zurzal insisting on carrying the scanner as usual. They had to be careful of those crossing lines on the pavement as they advanced. Zurzal opened the case; Jofre, as before, unrolled and made ready the supports. The Zacathan lingered on sighting the scanner so that it was aimed at just the angle he wished. Behind them rang out orders from one of the broadcast experts.

Jofre shot a glance to the left. The Holder looked at perfect ease, exuding such an air of confidence that Jofre’s own wariness became like a taut string within him. He continued to steady the scanner with his right hand but his left rested on his knee not too far from the end of the Makwire in his girdle.

Having made a last finicky adjustment, the Zacathan turned his head toward the Holder and nodded.

Jofre had turned his attention in another direction—in time to see one of those attendants at the nearest of the broadcaster machines hurriedly slip a cone over the forepoint of his machine. Had there been a mistake in the setup that must be remedied at once? The off-worlder had no idea how those machines worked but there was something in that hasty action which, to his watchful eyes, presented a suggestion of trouble.

Their guards were impatiently motioned away by those running the other machines, though there were protests until one of the officers from that brilliant group marched over and snapped an order which made them move. Zurzal and Jofre were alone well beyond arm’s length of any of the Tssekians for the first time since they had left their quarters.

The Holder raised his hand at the same time Jofre’s fingers closed about the end of the Makwire. With a supple twist of the wrist the issha freed it, to lie three quarters of its length among the mass of wiring. The possibilities he had before him now had doubled. And he was sure that, aided by the last few days of practice, his wrist had lost none of its cunning.

Zurzal reached over and pushed the control of the scanner. Three breaths later there was a shimmer on the dais, which had more life and gathered more quickly into definable shapes than that mist had evoked at the ruins.

From the massed group of notables to the side arose a hum of astonishment. It was plain to Jofre at least that they had really not expected this response. What had they then expected? Something to issue from the unknown machines about them?

The shimmer was gone; they might have been looking at an enlargement of the same scene Jofre and Zurzal had studied on the record given them. But this was no frozen picture. These people on the dais moved, shifted in their seats. The representation of Fer s’Rang moved, raised his hands, spoke—words which rang out and even seemed to echo hollowly down from the ceiling above.

And the picture held, grew bolder!

Jofre shifted weight. Those about him seemed bemused by what they were watching. His chain weapon was a serpent ready to strike.

Taynad stared at the dais and then quickly looked to the Holder. He had taken a half step backward as if he had been confronted by some sheer surprise which he had not thought to face. Beside him the Jat jerked at his tunic, waved its other paw in the air, plainly distraught by the emotions broadcast now from the man it was bonded to.

The Jewelbright sent one swift glance at the other man, the Horde Commander. There had been a smirk on his face, but now there was forming another expression altogether, one rooted in fear. Her fingers moved as she flexed them. Emotion was so thick that it lay about them like a mountain fog exiling each from the other, and it was true fear!

However, almost all eyes were fixed on the dais, on those actors out of time. Jofre looked now for the one who had puzzled him in the painting they had been shown, the man who had lingered on the lower step. His hands—

On impulse Jofre gave a small shove to the scanner and it seemed, in answer to that, that figure became not only brighter to the sight but somehow more dominant in the scene. Its hands went to mouth level in a swift movement as the representation of Fer s’Rang turned to address one of the other seated lords.

The Great Leader made a sudden movement, raised a hand to the side of his throat. He took a step forward, his other hand sawing at the air and then he crashed down. While the man on the step below was already in motion upward to raise him, his hand sweeping across the dying man’s neck as he did so.

There was a rising howl of sound and Jofre saw that those at the machines about were frenziedly busy. He put his weapon into use. It twisted among the cords on the floor. He gave a jerk with full shoulder strength, aware that Zurzal’s scaled hand had joined his in that hold.

The nearest of the broadcasting machines crashed down. There were screams and cries and that scene on the dais abruptly disappeared. Zurzal was again back at the scanner.

A blaster bolt of fire skimmed from the mass of officers. There was struggling there and the screaming of the woman. Guards moved in—two of them towards Jofre and the Zacathan. But Jofre was ready. He took a leap, not away, but at the men and the wire flicked to imprison a wrist holding a blaster. The Shadow jerked the one who had held it forward into the line of his own comrades’ fire. Again Jofre struck and the other guard dropped his gun, caught at his face, hands over his eyes, as he screamed thinly.

Other blaster beams were sweeping back and forth. Jofre grabbed up the weapon one of his victims had dropped and tossed it to Zurzal. Pacifist the Zacathans might be, but they were ready to protect their own lives and Zurzal fired twice. Jofre was jerking at that mass of wiring across the floor, sweeping it back and forth until its tangles brought down two more of the guards.

Then he had their weapons, the precise blows he gave both of the entangled men putting them speedily out of the fight.

He looked back over his shoulder to the Zacathan and gestured with one of those hands in which he tightly gripped the weapon, expecting every breathless moment to be either cut down by a stass ray or fried by a blaster.

Hostages? Jofre looked to that milling mass of spectators. There were uniformed guards plowing into that for there were apparently a number of small fights in progress. He saw bodies in bright uniforms lying underfoot. And some of the guards had apparently turned against their own officers.

The Holder? The man was gone from his position.

Jofre tensed. It was as if a voice had shouted in his ear, someone at his side had screamed aloud in fear. Yet it was not sound but raw emotion and he swung towards that. He had reached the edge of the dais, that man whose fear was being so broadcast. Dragging at him as if to urge faster flight was the Jat and behind those two by several steps the Jewelbright.

Jofre gave a leap which carried him over the wreckage of the wires and landed behind the Holder. In a moment his arm was over the other’s shoulder, bringing pressure to bear on the Tssekian’s throat.

“Be quiet,” Jofre hissed in the other’s ear, “and move—or you die!”

The Jat was kicking at him, but not with enough strength to shake that hold. Now another moved beside him.

“These witless waglogs have turned on each other to the death. It is as if the Old Ones have sent them mad!”

He knew her scent. At least she was not oathed as bodyguard or he would have now been dead.

“Move!” He shoved the Holder around the end of the dais to where the Zacathan, blaster in hand, stood over the scanner. Jofre could see over his prisoner’s shoulder now. There was such wildness in the struggle in the audience hall that the Jewelbright might indeed have been right. These Tssekians could have all been struck mad, for they were fighting each other. Now there dropped on ropes from above other armed fighters, both men and women, wearing no uniforms except a band of green about the upper arm, and these moved in upon the fighters.

To reach the outside they would have to win through that mess on the floor and Jofre was not sure they could. He was trying to evaluate all possible advantages, if there were any, for this action or that, when a party of those who had come down from above began to draw in upon the four of them in a grim-faced half circle.

“Pass us—or this one dies!” Jofre shouted in the trade tongue, hoping that he would be understood.

The leader of those confronting him, a man as tall and wide-shouldered as Harse, and certainly with all that guard’s grim presence, made no move to lower his own weapon. Jofre staggered; a sudden and more vicious attack from the Jat had nearly rocked him from his feet. But a moment later the Jewelbright took a hand in the matter and captured the creature in a grasp strong enough to pull it back.

Zurzal had shouldered the scanner, paying no heed to its tripod stand, using a side strap above the maimed arm to support it, as he covered the distance between them in two strides.

“Pass or this one dies!” Jofre tightened his hold on the Holder’s throat. The man was already gasping for breath, his hands flailing out to no purpose as he had no weapon now and Jofre was positioned out of reach behind him.

“There is a problem here.” The leader of the opposition had again edged closer so that his voice carried even through the clamor. His weapon hand was steady but Jofre, reading the subtle change in the other’s eyes, did not think that he was about to be crisped at once by blaster fire. At least the fellow was speaking trade tongue. “You have what we are very anxious to get—yield your prisoner—”

In Jofre’s grip the Holder struggled wildly. It was plain to the issha that this was not a friendly party seeking to rescue their leader.

“Why?” It was not he who asked that question but Zurzal. The Jewelbright said nothing, merely held to her place beside Jofre, both hands gripping the upper front limbs of the Jat in spite of the creature’s frenzied fight for freedom. That she possessed issha-trained strength was very plain to see.

“He is more our meat than yours, Learned One,” the green-banded leader returned promptly. “We have certain plans for him.”

One of his squad moved closer and growled a sentence. The melee in the chamber seemed to be dying down. Here and there a knot of uniforms still fought, but it was apparent that those who had swung down from aloft were fast gaining control of the conflict.

“Plans for us also—” Jofre stated. “What are those?”

“Not perhaps what you might fear,” returned the other. “Learned One,” now he spoke directly to Zurzal, “you have served our cause even inadvertently.” With his free hand he pointed to the scanner which now dangled down the Zacathan’s back. “We are a little in your debt—even more when you turn that one over to us. I think you will find us grateful.”

Two of the squad, one of these a woman, Jofre noted, split off now and came inward, one from either side as if to box in him and his captive.

“These are rebels.” For the first time the Jewelbright spoke and flatly.

“Partisans of freedom, lady.” The leader was smiling now, almost gallant in his attitude, but there was no lessening of alert menace in those still edging towards Jofre.

“And our coming—was it part of a plan which you also shared?” asked Zurzal. “Well,” he did not wait for any answer, “perhaps we can deal after all. Though I think that your party had another end for me in view two days ago.”

The leader shrugged. “We have hotheads, such are the bane of any party, Learned One. Those who made that decision have been disciplined for it. Now—give us that man—”

Jofre interrupted. “One does not throw away a weapon untried, Commander,” he gave the man the only rank he could guess. “You admit that your followers tried to burn us down at the ruins. How can it be that we are now to forget that? You did not take this prisoner; we hold him—”

“So you can decide what is to be done with him?” queried the other. “How long can you stand there, guard, and hold him? You need both hands to the purpose, are you then able to sprout another pair to beat us off?”

“He will kill—” It was the woman approaching from the left who spoke then. “We need that one for—” She stopped abruptly, near in mid word as if she realized that she might be giving away something of importance and the commander favored her with a quick frown before his eyes clicked back to center on Jofre.