"You're mistaken! You have to be! I-"
"You're tired," said Dumarest sharply. The man's voice had risen to poise on the edge of hysteria. "We all are and Usan's hurt. She needs to sleep. Later we can examine the area. There might be something in the mist."
"Yes." Sufan snatched at the suggestion like a starving dog at a bone. "Yes, Earl, that must be it. The mist, of course, it would hide the treasure. We must look for it."
"Later," said Dumarest. "First we sleep."
Chapter Fifteen
Dumarest woke after two hours at the touch of Marek's hand. The man had stood the first watch-a precaution Dumarest had insisted on-and had seemed glad to do it. An opportunity to be alone, perhaps, though he and Pacula had spoken together before she had gone to rest.
"Earl?"
"I'm awake. Anything?"
"No, but Usan is restless and so is the girl. I heard her moaning." His voice held a note of concern. "To be blind in a place like this! Earl, without us she'd wander until she died!"
"You care?"
"Yes. A weakness, but I care. Somehow she has touched me and I-"
"Remember?" Dumarest's voice was soft. "Another girl, perhaps? Another woman. Who does she remind you of, Marek? Your wife?"
"You know?"
"A little. What happened?"
"Something I prefer not to remember, yet I cannot forget. My wife and daughter. She would have been a little younger than Embira. That surprises you?" His hand drifted toward his face. "Always I have looked young. A genetic trait, but that is not important. I was clever, proud of my skill, unable to consider the possibility I could ever be wrong. There was sickness, a mutated plague carried by a trader, and both fell victim. I knew exactly what had to be done. A selected strain of antibiotic, untested, but logically the answer. Something developed by the Cyclan."
Dumarest said flatly, "And?"
"I went to them and begged for a supply. They gave it at a price. My germ plasm for experimental uses-I would have given my life!"
And had given it, in a way; his seed used to breed, the genes manipulated so as to strengthen his trait, raw material used by the Cyclan in their quest for the perfect type.
"And the antibiotic failed?"
"It failed." Marek's voice was bitter. "Had I waited a few more days, a week at the most, all would have been well. A vaccine had been developed and-"
"You didn't know," said Dumarest. "And it wouldn't have helped. You did your best."
"I killed them, Earl. I went begging for the thing which took their life. The Cyclan warned me of the danger but I wouldn't listen. And what did they care? To them it was a test, no more. Had they lived I would have been in their debt and how could I have refused what they asked?"
By a simple rejection, but he wouldn't have thought of that. To him they would have given life and repayment would have been in small ways. Without knowing it he would have become an agent of the Cyclan.
Perhaps he was one? Dumarest studied the man's face and decided against it. His grief was too restrained, too deeply etched into his being. Too honest to blame others he had taken the fault on himself, but never could he forget those who had placed the instrument of death into his hands.
He said, "Get some sleep, now Marek."
"I'm not tired."
"Then rest, close your eyes and relax." He added, "Later Pacula and the girl could need you."
She was restless as Marek had said, twisting where she lay, her lips moving as if she cried out in nightmare. Gently he touched her, his hand caressing the golden mane of her hair, and, like a child, she turned toward him.
"Earl?"
"I'm here, Embira. Go back to sleep now. Relax and sleep. Sleep."
"Stay with me, darling. Stay…"
She had been barely awake and drifted into sleep as he watched. Usan was also restless but with more obvious cause. The wound on her scalp showed an ugly redness, inflammation spreading from the torn area. Beneath his touch Dumarest felt a fevered heat.
Rising he walked to the opening of the chamber in which they had settled. Strands ran across it attached to canteens; if anything touched the ropes an alarm would be given. Turning he walked through the room and out on the colonnade.
The silence was complete.
It was something almost tangible as if sound had never been discovered. A heavy, brooding stillness in which the slight tap of the gun he carried against a pillar roared like thunder. There were no echoes, the sound dying as if muffled in cotton. Standing, he looked at the mist.
At the treasure of Balhadorha.
It was nothing, just mist rising above an open area, the vapor thick toward the center and shielding the ground. Its continuous movement caught and held his attention, plumes drifting to fall, to rise again as if touched by an unfelt wind or stirred by invisible forces. A swirling which, like the leaping flames of an open fire, gave birth to images of fantasy. A chelach, a krell, the face of a man long dead, a smiling woman, the twisting thrust of a naked blade.
Dumarest blinked and they were gone, but the mist remained, a fleecy cloud of bluish gray illuminated by the soaring height of the inverted cone. A kaleidoscope, devoid of color, replacing it with moving form and substance, whisps and tendrils forming patterns and hinting at familiar objects.
Had those who built the city worshiped here? Had they streamed from their chambers to stand in the colonnade, eyes toward the center, attention focused, adoring the mist? There were stranger objects of adoration. On Yulthan men knelt before a mass of meteoric iron chanting to the accompaniment of murmuring gongs. On Kaldarah women praised a mighty tree and wore bells which tinkled with delicate chimings as they danced.
One man's meat was another man's poison. One man's cross was another man's treasure.
Was Marek right? Was the mist all there was to be found in the city?
If so, what of his hopes of finding the location of Earth?
"Earl!" The cry was a scream cutting the air with the impact of edged steel. "Earl! For God's sake! No! No!"
Embira's voice carrying a raw terror. Dumarest jerked, turned, saw the edge of the colonnade fifty feet away, reached it at a run, the gun cradled in his arms. Sufan Noyoka glared at him, fighting with Marek's aid, to hold a struggling figure.
"Earl!" he panted. "Quickly! The girl's gone mad!"
She was like a thing possessed, her body arching, muscles taut beneath the skin, a thin rill of spittle running from her mouth. Her blind eyes were wide, starting, her face disfigured with pain.
"Embira!" Dumarest reached her, touched her face, her throat. There was no time for drugs. Already the tension of her muscles threatened to snap bone and tear ligaments. His fingers found the carotids, pressed, cutting off the blood supply to the brain. Within seconds she slumped, unconscious, relaxing as she fell. "What happened?"
"I don't know." Sufan Noyoka dabbed at his face. The girl's fingernails had drawn deep furrows over his cheek. "I'd woken and was getting food when suddenly she screamed and went mad."
"Not mad." Pacula eased the girl's limbs and drew hair from her face and eyes. "She must have had an attack of some kind. I was getting water from one of the canteens when I heard her cry out. The rest you know." Pausing, she said bleakly. "Did you have to hurt her?"