A bad throw; the blade spun, glittering, without true direction or force. A harmless distraction but Valaban responded to the threat of edge and point. He backed, slammed into the cage- and turned as sickle claws lashed through the bars in a blur of fur and fury.
Razor talons which caught his face just below the hairline, ripping down to strip the flesh from the bones, to leave a carmined skull in which rolled agonized eyes and the grinning parody of a smile.
Shakira lifted his glass and, looking at the wine it contained, said thoughtfully, "Who would have guessed the old man had so much blood?" Then, to Dumarest, he added, "I read that in a book once. Or something like it. It was a long time ago now and I wonder why I should remember it. But it seems apt."
Too apt for comfort and Dumarest tried not to remember the screaming thing lying in a pool of its own blood. The silence which came when severed arteries had ceased their spurting had signaled a merciful end.
"You knew," said Shakira. "But how? Zucco I could understand but Valaban? He seemed so harmless." He took a sip of his wine and smiling, said, "It would have been more logical to have suspected me."
"I did." Dumarest was blunt. "But you aren't that stupid. Only a fool or a sadist would warn a victim of his knowledge and Zucco was both. He couldn't resist having his little joke using Reiza and the cards. Valaban wanted Krystyna dead because she could lead me to Zucco and he would betray Valaban. Odd how both wanted the same thing."
"Zucco I suspected," admitted Shakira. "He was too ambitious."
"Which is why you wanted me to fight him. The only way you could defeat him-his telepathic ability had you cornered had you tried anything else." Dumarest took a sip of his own wine. "You took a chance there. I could have lost."
"As I told you, I'm an expert at assessing a person's skill. Zucco was a champion only because he'd never met a man of your caliber. A true survivor in every sense of the word. But Valaban?" Shakira shook his head. "He seemed so contented."
"A pauper in a small kingdom." The wine was rich and pungent and Dumarest held it in his mouth before letting it trickle down his throat. The combat was over but the battle had still to be won. Twelve hours, Valaban had said. How long did he really have? "He betrayed himself in small ways. No man who'd worked for the circus as long as he had would have so little knowledge. He'd know most of what had happened and all about those he worked with. And he was an expert with pheromones. It would have been easy for him to have arranged Hayter's death-maybe the price of Zucco's cooperation. And to have arranged the klachen's attack. Reiza's scarf was a deliberate plant to divert suspicion. He wanted me to concentrate on Zucco."
"And all the time he was an agent of the Cyclan." Shakira finished his wine and said, "They must want you very badly, Earl."
"They do."
"So I gathered. The cyber who came looking for you was most insistent. Cyber Tron-Valaban mentioned him."
"You can find him at the Dubedat Hotel." Dumarest met the other's eyes, holding them as he rose from his chair. Around him the office took on a new quietness as if the very walls could sense the mounting tension. "Are you thinking of selling me?"
"No, Earl!" Shakira lifted his hands. "No-I swear it!"
"Could you?"
"Elagonya no longer has power over you. I have kept to our bargain. Freedom from restraint, money," Shakira gestured to the bag lying on the desk, "and fortunately you are not in need of medical attention. Only Melome is left."
She rose as they entered her room, running forward to catch Dumarest by the hand, her face radiant with smiles.
"Earl! You came! I knew you would!"
"And you know why."
"Yes." A shadow touched her face, gone as soon as born. "Elagonya explained why you must do what you do and why I must not be a selfish child. To deny is not to love, Earl, and I love you."
"In your fashion, Melome."
"Yes," she agreed. "In my fashion as you love me in yours. Shall we begin?"
He sat and she took her place facing him, also cross-legged so they resembled two idols set as a pair on some ancient altar. Then she stirred, extending her hands for Dumarest to take.
As he closed his fingers around them he said, "You know what I need, Melome, please help me to find it. Send me back to that time in the past when I knew terror. The fear of discovery when I was in the captain's cabin. I must go back to that time. I must!"
To see the open book, to read it, to gain the coordinates of Earth!
To put an end to the long and painful search.
Music flowed from the recorder as Shakira touched a control, the air filling with the wail of pipes and the sonorous beat of a drum. Dumarest felt the hands he held grow chill as if the girl was withdrawing all but essential energy in order to power her song. One which came as it had come before, filling his mind, the room, the universe with its dominating cadences.
And again he was thrown on a mental journey back through time.
To feel again the stomach-gripping fear, the chill, the pain of terror.
A wind thick with knives and a sky blotched by the baleful eyes of a single moon. Snow on the ground and ice rimming the pond. A night in which too many would die and he knew that he would be one of them.
The blanket he wore was torn, thin, crusted with dirt. More dirt masked his face and rimmed his mouth, the coating marked with paths of mucous from his nostrils, wind-born tears from his eyes. A child, begging, knowing that charity was dead. To steal was his only hope of survival. To be caught was to know pain.
And he had been caught.
The hand which gripped his wrist forced it closer to the fire, the pot smoking above it. A container half-full of seething stew, thin, odorous, but containing the nourishment he had to have.
"A thief," said the man holding him. "Caught him reaching for the pot. Guess he thought I was asleep."
"His bad luck you weren't." The other's voice was thick with drowsiness. "He get anything?"
"No."
"Good. We won't have to slice off a foot so as to make it up. Just teach him a lesson and let him go."
Harsh times and harsh justice and the lesson wouldn't be easy to take. The terror mounted as his hand was forced closer to the fire, closer until he felt the burning kiss of flame, the searing of his skin, the agony which flowed from the spot.
One small against the possibility of what could happen if his captor chose.
A finger burned to the bone. A hand burned to the wrist.
"God! God! God, please God! Make him let me go!"
Then his free hand dipping, plunging into the soup, lifting from the seething liquid to splash the near-boiling wetness into his captor's face. Freedom as the man cried out and then the running, the hiding, the plunging of burned hands into the snow. The luck as a rodent, startled by his action, crashed from hiding to land against his chest.
"No," said Dumarest. "No."
"Earl?" Melome's face was a blur before him. "Do you want to stop?"
"The wrong time. Too early." Dumarest heard his voice, thick, mumbling. "Try again. Later. Later."
"You should rest." Shakira's voice held a genuine concern. "Take a glass of wine."
Sit and talk and waste the time that was left. To squander the precious minutes and lose the chance of learning what he had to know.
"Keep going."