Storm Over Warlock
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Andre Norton >> Storm Over Warlock
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Someone else was crossing that strip of beach. Passing the Wyvern as if
he did not see them, Thorvald came directly to Shann. A few seconds
later he had the torn arm stretched across his own bent knee, examining
the still bleeding hurt.
"That's a nasty one," he commented.
Shann heard the words and they made sense, but the instability of his
surroundings was increasing, while Thorvald's handling sent sharp stabs
of pain up his arm and somehow into his head, where they ended in red
bursts to cloud his sight.
Out of the reddish mist which had fogged most of the landscape there
emerged a single object, a round white disk. And in Shann's clouded mind
a well-rooted apprehension stirred. He struck out with his one hand, and
through luck connected. The disk flew out of sight. His vision cleared
enough so he could sight the Wyvern who had been leaning over Thorvald's
shoulder centering her weird weapon on him. Making a great effort, Shann
got out the words, words which he also shaped in his mind as he said
them aloud: "You're not taking me over--again!"
There was no emotion to be read on that jewel-banded face or in her
unblinking eyes. He caught at Thorvald, determined to get across his
warning.
"Don't let them use those disks on us!"
"I'll do my best."
Only the haze had taken Thorvald again. Did one of the Wyverns have a
disk focused on them? Were they being pulled into one of those blank
periods, to awaken as prisoners once more--say, in the cavern of the
veil? The Terran fought with every ounce of will power to escape
unconsciousness, but he failed.
This time he did not awaken half-drowning in an underground stream or
facing a green mist. And there was an ache in his arm which was somehow
reassuring with the very insistence of pain. Before opening his eyes,
his fingers crossed the smooth slick of a bandage there, went on to
investigate by touch a sleep mat such as he had found in the cavern
structure. Was he back in that web of rooms and corridors?
Shann delayed opening his eyes until a kind of shame drove him to it. He
first saw an oval opening almost the length of his body as it was
stretched only a foot of two below the sill of that window. And through
its transparent surface came the golden light of the sun--no green mist,
no crystals mocking the stars.
The room in which he lay was small with smooth walls, much like that in
which he had been imprisoned on the island. And there were no other
furnishings save the mat on which he rested. Over him was a light cover
netted of fibers resembling yarn, with feathers knotted into it to
provide a downy upper surface. His clothing was gone, but the single
covering was too warm and he pushed it away from his shoulders and chest
as he wriggled up to see the view beyond the window.
His torn arm came into full view. From wrist to elbow it was encased in
an opaque skin sheath, unlike any bandage of his own world. Surely that
had not come out of any Survey aid pack. Shann gazed toward the window,
but beyond lay only a reach of sky. Except for a lemon cloud or two
ruffled high above the horizon, nothing broke that soft amber curtain.
He might be quartered in a tower well above ground level, which did not
match his former experience with Wyvern accommodations.
"Back with us again?" Thorvald, one hand lifting a door panel, came in.
His ragged uniform was gone, and he wore only breeches of a sleek green
material and his own scuffed-and-battered boots.
Shann settled back on the mat. "Where are we?"
"I think you might term this the capital city," Thorvald answered. "In
relation to the mainland, we're on an island well out to sea--westward."
"How did we get here?" That climb in the slab, the stream underground....
Had it been an interior river running under the bed of the sea? But
Shann was not prepared for the other's reply.
"By wishing."
"By _what_?"
Thorvald nodded, his expression serious. "They wished us here. Listen,
Lantee, when you jumped down to mix it with that fork-tailed thing, did
you wish you had the wolverines with you?"
Shann thought back; his memories of what had occurred before that battle
were none too clear. But, yes, he had wished Taggi and Togi present at
that moment to distract the enraged beast.
"You mean I wished them?" The whole idea was probably a part of the
Wyvern jargon of dreaming and he added, "Or did I just dream
everything?" There was the bandage on his arm, the soreness under that
bandage. But also there had been Logally's lash brand back in the
cavern, which had bitten into his flesh with the pain of a real blow.
"No, you weren't dreaming. You happened to be tuned in one of those
handy little gadgets our lady friends here use. And, so tuned in, your
desire for the wolverines being pretty powerful just then, they came."
Shann grimaced. This was unbelievable. Yet there were his meetings with
Logally and Trav. How could anyone rationally explain them? And how had
he, in the beginning, been jumped from the top of the cliff on the
island of his marooning into the midst of an underground flood without
any conscious memory of an intermediate journey?
"How does it work?" he asked simply.
Thorvald laughed. "You tell me. They have these disks, one to a Wyvern,
and they control forces with them. Back there on the beach we
interrupted a class in such control; they were the novices learning
their trade. We've stumbled on something here which can't be defined or
understood by any of our previous standards of comparison. It's frankly
magic, judged by our terms."
"Are we prisoners?" Shann wanted to know.
"Ask me something I'm sure of. I've been free to come and go within
limits. No one's exhibited any signs of hostility; most of them simply
ignore me. I've had two interviews, via this mind-reading act of theirs,
with their rulers, or elders, or chief sorceresses--all three titles
seem to apply. They ask questions, I answer as best I can, but sometimes
we appear to have no common meeting ground. Then I ask some questions,
they evade gracefully, or reply in a kind of unintelligible double-talk,
and that's as far as our communication has progressed so far."
"Taggi and Togi?"
"Have a run of their own and as far as I can tell are better satisfied
with life than I am. Oddly enough, they respond more quickly and more
intelligently to orders. Perhaps this business of being shunted around
by the disks has conditioned them in some way."
"What about these Wyverns? Are they all female?"
"No, but their tribal system is strictly matriarchal, which follows a
pattern even Terra once knew: the fertile earth mother and her
priestesses, who became the witches when the gods overruled the
goddesses. The males are few in number and lack the power to activate
the disks. In fact," Thorvald laughed ruefully, "one gathers that in
this civilization our opposite numbers have, more or less, the status of
pets at the best, and necessary evils at the worst. Which put _us_ at a
disadvantage from the start."
"You think that they won't take us seriously because we are males?"
"Might just work out that way. I've tried to get through to them about
danger from the Throgs, telling them what it would mean to them to have
the beetle-heads settle in here for good. They just brush aside the
whole idea."
"Can't you argue that the Throgs are males, too? Or aren't they?"
The Survey officer shook his head. "That's a point no human can answer.
We've been sparring with Throgs for years and there have been libraries
of reports written about them and their behavior patterns, all of which
add up to about two paragraphs of proven facts and hundreds of surmises
beginning with the probable and skimming out into the wild fantastic.
You can claim anything about a Throg and find a lot of very intelligent
souls ready to believe you. But whether those beetle-heads squatting
over on the mainland are able to answer to 'he,' 'she,' or 'it,' your
solution is just as good as mine. We've always considered the ones we
fight to be males, but they might just as possibly be amazons. Frankly,
these Wyverns couldn't care less either; at least that's the impression
they give."
"But anyway," Shann observed, "it hasn't come to 'we're all girls
together' either."
Thorvald laughed again. "Not so you can notice. We're not the only
unwilling visitor in the vicinity."
Shann sat up. "A Throg?"
"A something. Non-Warlockian, or non-Wyvern. And perhaps trouble for
us."
"You haven't seen this other?"
Thorvald sat down cross-legged. The amber light from the window made
red-gold of his hair, added ruddiness to his less-gaunt features.
"No, I haven't. As far as I can tell, the stranger's not right here. I
caught stray thought beams twice--surprise expressed by newly arrived
Wyverns who met me and apparently expected to be fronted by something
quite physically different."
"Another Terran scout?"
"No. I imagine that to the Wyverns we must look a lot alike. Just as we
couldn't tell one of them from her sister if their body patterns didn't
differ. Discovered one thing about those patterns--the more intricate
they run, the higher the 'power,' not of the immediate wearer, but of
her ancestors. They're marked when they qualify for their disk and
presented with the rating of the greatest witch in their family line as
an inducement to live up to those deeds and surpass them if possible.
Quite a bit of logic to that. Given the right conditioning, such a
system might even work in our service."
That nugget of information was the stuff from which Survey reports were
made. But at the moment the information concerning the other captive was
of more value to Shann. He steadied his body against the wall with his
good hand and got to his feet. Thorvald watched him.
"I take it you have visions of action. Tell me, Lantee, why _did_ you
take that header off the cliff to mix it with fork-tail?"
Shann wondered himself. He had no reason for that impulsive act. "I
don't know----"
"Chivalry? Fair Wyvern in distress?" the other prodded. "Or did the back
lash from one of those disks draw you in?"
"I don't know----"
"And why did you use your knife instead of your stunner?"
Shann was startled. For the first time he realized that he had fronted
the greatest native menace they had discovered on Warlock with the more
primitive of his weapons. Why had he not tried the stunner on the beast?
He had just never thought of it when he had taken that leap into the
role of dragon slayer.
"Not that it would have done you any good to try the ray; it has no
effect on fork-tail."
"You tried it?"
"Naturally. But you didn't know that, or did you pick up that
information earlier?"
"No," answer Shann slowly. "No, I don't know why I used the knife. The
stunner would have been more natural." Suddenly he shivered, and the
face he turned to Thorvald was very sober.
"How much do they control us?" he asked, his voice dropping to a half
whisper as if the walls about them could pick up those words and relay
them to other ears. "What can they do?"
"A good question." Thorvald lost his light tone. "Yes, what can they
feed into our minds without our knowing? Perhaps those disks are only
window dressing, and they can work without them. A great deal will
depend upon the impression we can make on these witches." He began to
smile again, more wryly. "The name we gave this planet is certainly a
misnomer. A warlock is a male sorcerer, not a witch."
"And what are the chances of our becoming warlocks ourselves?"
Again Thorvald's smile faded, but he gave a curt little nod to Shann as
if approving that thought. "That is something we are going to look into,
and now! If we have to convince some stubborn females, as well as fight
Throgs, well"--he shrugged--"we'll have a busy, busy, time."
16. THIRD PRISONER
"Well, it works as good as new." Shann held his hand and arm out into
the full path of the sun. He had just stripped off the skin-case
bandage, to show the raw seam of a half-healed scar, but as he flexed
muscles, bent and twisted his arm, there was only a small residue of
soreness left.
"Now what, or where?" he asked Thorvald with some eagerness. Several
days' imprisonment in this room had made him impatient for the outer
world again. Like the officer, he now wore breeches of the green fabric,
the only material known to the Wyverns, and his own badly worn boots.
Oddly enough, the Terrans' weapons, stunner and knife, had been left to
them, a point which made them uneasy, since it suggested that the
Wyverns believed they had nothing to fear from clumsy alien arms.
"Your guess is as good as mine," Thorvald answered that double question.
"But it is you they want to see; they insisted upon it, rather
emphatically in fact."
The Wyvern city existed as a series of cell-like hollows in the interior
of a rock-walled island. Outside there had been no tampering with the
natural rugged features of the escarpment, and within, the silence was
almost complete. For all the Terrans could learn, the population of the
stone-walled hive might have been several thousand, or just the handful
that they had seen with their own eyes along the passages which had been
declared open territory for them.
Shann half expected to find again a skull-walled chamber where witches
tossed colored sticks to determine his future. But he came with Thorvald
into an oval room in which most of the outer wall was a window. And
seeing what lay framed in that, Shann halted, again uncertain as to
whether he actually saw that, or whether he was willed into visualizing
a scene by the choice of his hostesses.
They were lower now than the room in which he had nursed his wound, not
far above water level. And this window faced the sea. Across a stretch
of green water was his red-purple skull, the waves lapping its lower
jaw, spreading their foam in between the gaping rock-fringe which formed
its teeth. And from the eye hollows flapped the clak-claks of the sea
coast, coming and going as if they carried to some imprisoned brain
within that giant bone case messages from the outer world.
"My dream----" Shann said.
"Your dream." Thorvald had not echoed that; the answer had come in his
brain.
Shann turned his head and surveyed the Wyvern awaiting them with a
concentration which was close to the rudeness of an outright stare, a
stare which held no friendship. For by her skin patterns he knew her for
the one who had led that triumvir who had sent him into the cavern of
the mist. And with her was the younger witch he had trapped on the night
that all this baffling action had begun.
"We meet again," he said slowly. "To what purpose?"
"To our purpose ... and yours----"
"I do not doubt that it is to yours." The Terran's thoughts fell easily
now into a formal pattern he would not have used with one of his own
kind. "But I do not expect any good to me...."
There was no readable expression on her face; he did not expect to see
any. But in their uneven mind touch he caught a fleeting suggestion of
bewilderment on her part, as if she found his mental processes as hard
to understand as a puzzle with few leading clues.
"We mean you no ill, star voyager. You are far more than we first
thought you, for you have dreamed false and have known. Now dream true,
and know it also."
"Yet," he challenged, "you would set me a task without my consent."
"We have a task for you, but already it was set in the pattern of your
true dreaming. And we do not set such patterns, star man; that is done
by the Greatest Power of all. Each lives within her appointed pattern
from the First Awakening to the Final Dream. So we do not ask of you any
more than that which is already laid for your doing."
She arose with that languid grace which was a part of their delicate
jeweled bodies and came to stand beside him, a child in size, making his
Terran flesh and bones awkward, clodlike in contrast. She stretched out
her four-digit hand, her slender arm ringed with gemmed circles and
bands, measuring it beside his own, bearing that livid scar.
"We are different, star man, yet still are we both dreamers. And dreams
hold power. Your dreams brought you across the dark which lies between
sun and distant sun. Our dreams carry us on even stranger roads. And
yonder"--one of her fingers stiffened to a point, indicating the
skull--"there is another who dreams with power, a power which will
destroy us all unless the pattern is broken speedily."
"And I must go to seek this dreamer?" His vision of climbing through
that nose hole was to be realized then.
"You go."
Thorvald stirred and the Wyvern turned her head to him. "Alone," she
added. "For this is your dream only, as it has been from the beginning.
There is for each his own dream, and another cannot walk through it to
alter the pattern, even to save a life."
Shann grinned crookedly, without humor. "It seems that I'm elected," he
said as much to himself as to Thorvald. "But what do I do with this
other dreamer?"
"What your pattern moves you to do. Save that you do not slay him----"
"Throg!" Thorvald started forward. "You can't just walk in on a Throg
barehanded and be bound by orders such as that!"
The Wyvern must have caught the sense of that vocal protest, for her
communication touched them both. "We cannot deal with that one as his
mind is closed to us. Yet he is an elder among his kind and his people
have been searching land and sea for him since his air rider broke upon
the rocks and he entered into hiding over there. Make your peace with
him if you can, and also take him hence, for his dreams are not ours,
and he brings confusion to the Reachers when they retire to run the
Trails of Seeking."
"Must be an important Throg," Shann deduced. "They could have an officer
of the beetle-heads under wraps over there. Could we use him to bargain
with the rest?"
Thorvald's frown did not lighten. "We've never been able to establish
any form of contact in the past, though our best qualified minds,
reinforced by training, have tried...."
Shann did not take fire at that rather delicate estimate of his own lack
of preparation for the carrying out of diplomatic negotiations with the
enemy; he knew it was true. But there was one thing he could try--if the
Wyverns permitted.
"Will you give a disk of power to this star man?" He pointed to
Thorvald. "For he is my Elder One and a Reacher for Knowledge. With such
a focus his dream could march with mine when I go to the Throg, and
perhaps that can aid in my doing what I could not accomplish alone. For
that is the secret of _my_ people, Elder One. We link our powers
together to make a shield against our enemies, a common tool for the
work we must do."
"And so it is with us also, star voyager. We are not so unlike as the
foolish might think. We learned much of you while you both wandered in
the Place of False Dreams. But our power disks are our own and can not
be given to a stranger while their owners live. However...." She turned
again with an abruptness foreign to the usual Wyvern manner and faced
the older Terran.
The officer might have been obeying an unvoiced order as he put out his
hands and laid them palm to palm on those she held up to him, bending
his head so gray eyes met golden ones. The web of communication which
had held all three of them snapped. Thorvald and the Wyvern were linked
in a tight circuit which excluded Shann.
Then the latter became conscious of movement beside him. The younger
Wyvern had joined him to watch the clak-claks in their circling of the
bare dome of the skull island.
"Why do they fly so?" Shann asked her.
"Within they nest, care for their young. Also they hunt the rock
creatures that swarm in the lower darkness."
"The rock creatures?" If the skull's interior was infested by some other
native fauna, he wanted to know it.
By some method of her own the young Wyvern conveyed a strong impression
of revulsion, which was her personal reaction to the "rock creatures."
"Yet you imprison the Throg there----" he remarked.
"Not so!" Her denial was instantaneous and vehement. "The other worlder
fled into that place in spite of our calling. There he stays in hiding.
Once we drew him out to the sea, but he broke the power and fled inside
again."
"Broke free----" Shann pounced upon that. "From disk control?"
"But surely." Her reply held something of wonder. "Why do you ask, star
voyager? Did you not also break free from the power of the disk when I
led you by the underground ways, awaking in the river? Do you then rate
this other one as less than your own breed that you think him incapable
of the same action?"
"Of Throgs I know as much as this...." He held up his hand, measuring
off a fraction of space between thumb and forefinger.
"Yet you knew them before you came to this world."
"My people have known them for long. We have met and fought many times
among the stars."
"And never have you talked mind to mind?"
"Never. We have sought for that, but there has been no communication
between us, neither of mind nor of voice."
"This one you name Throg is truly not as you," she assented. "And we are
not as you, being alien and female. Yet, star man, you and I have shared
a dream."
Shann stared at her, startled, not so much by what she said as the human
shading of those words in his mind. Or had that also been illusion?
"In the veil ...that creature which came to you on wings when you
remembered that. A good dream, though it came out of the past and so was
false in the present. But I have gathered it into my own store: such a
fine dream, one that you have cherished."
"Trav was to be cherished," he agreed soberly. "I found her in a broken
sleep cage at a spaceport when I was a child. We were both cold and
hungry, alone and hurt. So I stole and was glad that I stole Trav. For a
little space we both were very happy...." Forcibly he stifled memory.
"So, though we are unlike in body and in mind, yet we find beauty
together if only in a dream. Therefore, between your people and mine
there can _be_ a common speech. And I may show you my dream store for
your enjoyment, star voyager."
A flickering of pictures, some weird, some beautiful, all a little
distorted--not only by haste, but also by the haze of alienness which
was a part of her memory pattern--crossed Shann's mind.
"Such a sharing would be a rich feast," he agreed.
"All right!" Those crisp words in his own tongue brought Shann away from
the window to Thorvald. The Survey officer was no longer locked hand to
hand with the Wyvern witch, but his features were alive with a new
eagerness.
"We are going to try your idea, Lantee. They'll provide me with a new,
unmarked disk, show me how to use it. And I'll do what I can to back you
with it. But they insist that you go today."
"What do they really want me to do? Just rout out that Throg? Or try to
talk him into being a go-between with his people? That _does_ come under
the heading of dreaming!"
"They want him out of there, back with his own kind if possible.
Apparently he's a disruptive influence for them; he causes some kind of
a mental foul up which interferes drastically with their 'power.' They
haven't been able to get him to make any contact with them. This Elder
One is firm about your being the one ordained for the job, and that
you'll know what action to take when you get there."
"Must have thrown the sticks for me again," Shann commented.
"Well, they've definitely picked you to smoke out the Throg, and they
can't be talked into changing their minds about that."
"I'll be the smoked one if he has a blaster."
"They say he's unarmed----"
"What do they know about our weapons or a Throg's?"
"The other one has no arms." Wyvern words in his mind again. "This fact
gives him great fear. That which he has depended upon is broken. And
since he has no weapon, he is shut into a prison of his own terrors."
But an adult Throg, even unarmed, was not to be considered easy meat,
Shann thought. Armored with horny skin, armed with claws and those
crushing mandibles of the beetle mouth ... a third again as tall as he
himself was. No, even unarmed, the Throg had to be considered a menace.
Shann was still thinking along that line as he splashed through the surf
which broke about the lower jaw of the skull island, climbed up one of
the pointed rocks which masqueraded as a tooth, and reached for a higher
hold to lead him to the nose slit, the gateway to the alien's hiding
place.
The clak-claks screamed and dived about him, highly resentful of his
intrusion. And when they grew so bold as to buffet him with their wings,
threaten him with their tearing beaks, he was glad to reach the broken
rock edging his chosen door and duck inside. Once there, Shann looked
back. There was no sighting the cliff window where Thorvald stood, nor
was he aware in any way of mental contact with the Survey officer; their
hope of such a linkage might be futile.
Shann was reluctant to venture farther. His eyes had sufficiently
adjusted to the limited supply of light, and now the Terran brought out
the one aid the Wyverns had granted him, a green crystal such as those
which had played the role of stars on the cavern roof. He clipped its
simple loop setting to the front of his belt, leaving his hands free.
Then, having filled his lungs for the last time with clean, sea-washed
air, he started into the dome of the skull.
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