Two of the brown-armoured soldiers of the Legion of Ketl escorted Eyil into the chamber. Hele’a went to her and drew away her cloak. Others dragged something forth from the shadows: a narrow wooden trestle with wide-splayed legs, angled so that one end was higher than the other. On this they laid her upon her back, made her ankles fast at the lower end on either side so that she straddled the thing, and then bound her wrists down to links on the upper legs similarly. She made no protest but permitted the troopers to handle her as though she were a sack of Dmz-grain. All the while she gazed steadily at Prince Dhich’une. She seemed not to see Harsan.
“Eyil!” Harsan cried, “Eyil-!”
She turned her her head toward him, her black tresses falling away from her face. Her eyes were underscored with dark circles of weeping. He could not read her expression: fear, shame, remorse-a mixture of all three?
“Mighty Prince,” he called, “Prince Dhich’une! The Lady Eyil hiVriyen has no part in this matter. She knows nothing of the Llyani relics!”
The still features looked upon him. “Possibly. However, we would have you aid us, priest. You know my power already; yet you refuse me. One more lesson appears to be needed to make you zealous in my cause.”
Harsan attempted to lie. “The Lady is of no real concern to me, mighty Prince-a girl with whom I made liaison upon the road…”
“Not so. Vridekka sees into your heart as easily as a maiden gazes into a mirror. Hele’a? The silver box.”
The ugly little Ghatoni stood by the trestle upon which Eyil lay. He extracted something from a little casket, no bigger than his thumb.
It was tiny, mottled brown and crimson. It wriggled in his fingers.
Eyil gasped. Even from where Harsan lay he could see that the whites of her eyes showed all round, and her face had taken on a waxy pallor.
“One of the servitors of the Worm Lord,” Hele’a announced. He bent and placed the little worm upon the satiny golden skin of Eyil’s abdomen, just above the darkness between her thighs. “It seeks a home, a dark, warm place where it may eat and grow fat…”
Harsan’s resolve crumbled. “I will tell you, mighty Prince- all-whatever I know!” He tried to say more but found that again his tongue would not move, and his lips refused to form the words.
“Tell on, then,” Dhich’une said implacably.
He struggled. All that the Globe of Instruction had contained lay like spring flood waters behind the dam of his lips. But the accursed dam would not break! He strove until the cords stood out in his neck, his teeth grated upon one another, and breath choked in his nostrils. He could utter no word related to what the Skull-Prince sought.
“You see, you are still obstinate,” Prince Dhich’une chided gently.
“Oh, my Lord-I try-”
Eyil strained her head forward to watch the little red-brown worm crawling upon her belly. It left a thin trail of viscous slime.
She spoke for the first time. “Give them what they seek, Harsan,” she pleaded. Her voice sounded somehow artificial, brittle and false.
The hideous worm threw back its sightless sucker-ringed mouth and then curved forward to touch her skin. There could have been little pain, but the horror and apprehension must have been great indeed. Eyil choked and then shrieked. “Tell them, Harsan, tell them! It will kill me!” The sincerity of terror now rang in her words.
“Not there, not yet,” Hele’a said, prodding the worm’s questing head away with his finger. A spot of bright red stained her abdomen where the obscene little mouth had caressed her. Eyil writhed upon the trestle, but the creature did not fall away. It continued its slow progress down over her belly.
Words, pleas, prayers, imprecations whirled through Harsan’s mind. With the Mind-seer beside him, he knew he could not lie. He opened his mouth and promises poured forth: he would serve as the Prince commanded, whatever the task!
All at once there was another violent onrush within his brain. The chamber faded, and he fell shrieking through emptiness again, dizzy, nauseous with vertigo. His thoughts, memories, yearnings-all were ransacked and pillaged by a callous, skillful plunderer: Vridekka! He could no longer hear Eyil’s pleas nor feel the agony in his own wrists as he jerked and tore at his bonds. Pictures arose unbidden before his eyes: the patient Pe Choi tutors of his forest childhood; the sprawling bulk of the Monastery of the Sapient Eye, the crumpled Inner Range drowsing green and gold behind it; Zaren at work upon one of his devices; the warm, reassuring gleam of the great golden image of Lord Thumis within its sanctuary; Eyil asleep in his arms upon the velvet cushions of her litter; the priest at Hauma (what was his name?); Chtik p’Qwe and Kerektu hiKhanmu deep in argument. Then a clear vision of a jagged, leaning black tower, wave-wrack pale around its sea-ringed skirts, where fangs of dark grey stone reached hungrily out into the crashing foam of a lead-hued ocean. Then a ritual of some sort: men and women-and others- doing incomprehensible and obscene things to one another, a tangled mass of limbs and nude, coppery bodies. The white metal sphere, the hideous Thunru’u, Hele’a’s weazened features merging with the skull-visage of Prince Dhich’une-and-and- then-nothing…
Blank.
Vridekka bowed toward the dais. “He will cooperate with us now. I can get no further details-the shield remains intact-yet his willingness to save the girl is clear. I know this priest’s life as though I had spent all my years within his skin.”
“Remove the Worm of Death before it enters her,” the Prince commanded. “We shall require her again later when this lesson grows dim in the young man’s memory.” Hele’a hastened to recapture the tiny creature.
“There is one matter, mighty Lord.” The Mind-seer approached the dais and muttered.
Prince Dhich’une’s head snapped back as though he had been struck.
“Return the priest to his senses. Quickly!”
Harsan floated muzzily up into consciousness. He found himself looking towards Eyil. She seemed dazed but unharmed. The Worm of Death was gone, and her face told him that it had not been allowed to bore within. Her limbs were glazed with perspiration, and she trembled yet with remembered terror, tears of mingled fear and relief staining her cheeks. Harsan became aware of Prince Dhich’une leaning over him, a white-faced phantom in the dancing torchlight and shadow.
“I will serve you, mighty Prince…’’He could say no more.
“Indeed, you shall serve me,” the Prince responded in a strangely altered tone, “but I now must know one thing more.” He bent very close and whispered, “Tell me, priest, when did you ever see the great black citadel of Ke’er?”
“What?” This made no sense whatever.
“Come, boy, the keep of Baron Aid’s fortress is famed throughout all the northlands. How is it that you know that place?” “My Lord, I know not what you mean! I have never been north of our monastery-” Suddenly he saw again that vision of the grim citadel clinging to the crags above the gloomy sea. He was too amazed to continue.
“Mighty Prince,” Vridekka interjected softly, “my probe was strong-so strong that it may have picked up images from the minds of others than this priest. The ritual he saw-and I saw with him-was almost certainly from the girl: it is the initiation into the Third Circle of the Temple of Hrihayal.”
“But Ke’er, man! Has she ever seen Ke’er?”
“I think not, my Lord. I shall try to discover who amongst us here has so clear a picture of the Baron’s capital.”
The old Mind-seer pivoted to face the chamber. Sensing something amiss, all stood transfixed, an orange and brown tableau. The scribes glanced at one another with faces of fear; those guards who bore swords loosened them in their belt-clips, and those with halberds gripped them the tighter. Harsan raised his head and saw that Eyil, too, was watching.
Vridekka pulled at his long chin. His scuffed leather sandals made soft hushing noises upon the flagstones of the floor. He went to a scribe, looked him up and down; then to a guard, hooked a finger against the man’s cheek and drew his head around to face him; then to the dais, and then back again to the table upon which Harsan lay.
At last he approached Prince Dhich’une and whispered, “Mighty Master, there is now no sign of Ke’er in anyone’s mind. Someone knows well how to block his thoughts.”
He turned to Eyil-and as quickly whirled back again; he shouted, “Yan Kor! Victory to the Baron of Yan Kor!”
Scribes scattered, pencases clattering. Swords flew out, and halberds leaped up to menace him.
Prince Dhich’une smiled.
“What did you see?”
“A hint, master. A flash as of green-lacquered armour in someone’s memory.” Without warning, he cried again, “Yilrana! Avenge my Yilrana!”
There was tumult. A glimpse of a strangely beautiful, sloeeyed woman with tresses piled in curls and ringlets flickered through Harsan’s mind, but he could not tell whether this came from within himself or from without. Soldiers stared this way and that. The scribes below the dais huddled amidst their clutter of papers and pigments, terrified. A servant dropped an ewer with a mighty clang-
And that seemed to do it.
Vridekka’s bony finger swung round as surely as the needle of a compass, pointing, pointing-
To Hele’a of Ghaton!
There was a blur of motion. The tiny silver casket flew from the Ghatoni’s hand to clatter open upon the floor; five wriggling brown worms spilled out. His other hand dipped into his robe and came forth again as swiftly as an Alash- snake’s striking. He held a nut-sized, grey object in his fingers.
“An ‘Eye!’ ” someone yelled.
There was bedlam.
A sword grated awkwardly upon the wall by Hele’a’s head. Two halberds clashed and tangled as their wielders both attempted to engage the Ghatoni at once. Scribes bleated and scrambled for nonexistent cover. Prince Dhich’une shouted something, but none heard him over the uproar. The dishes and globlets went ringing and bouncing in all directions. Someone hurled himself against the table upon which Harsan lay, overturned it, and sent him toppling helplessly to the floor beneath it.
It was this that saved his life.
A faint, sweet, musical note sang through the chamber, a vibration almost too high for hearing, and Harsan felt the passage of a cascade of cold above him, so bitter that it burned. Crystals of ice showered down, and the planks of the table became agony, so frigid that he wrenched himself wildly away from contact with them.
Vridekka was scrambling up beside him-it had been he who had tipped over the table-fumbling for something within his tattered robe.
There was light.
Not the ruddy, orange-red warmth of the torches, but a flaring, bloody, crimson glare that burned itself into Harsan’s retinas even though he lay behind the fallen table.
All was silence.
Then he heard Prince Dhich’une’s voice calling something, and a babble of voices poured forth in reply. Vridekka clambered to his feet, one bony knee in Harsan’s ribs. There were footsteps, shouts, and the rattle of armour and weapons, excited yelling… Hands tugged at the table, and someone cursed at its unexpected cold. It was dragged upright, Harsan perforce along with it. He writhed against the icy surface, yelped involuntarily in pain. The table was still almost too frigid to touch!
Harsan would have cried a further warning, for Hele’a of Ghaton still stood, the dull-gleaming “Eye” in his fingers, mouth open, poised to fire. Then he saw that Hele’a did not move, did not seem to breathe. The man’s posture was curiously stiff, as though he were a waxen doll.
Prince Dhich’une now stepped around a soldier who was gingerly flicking the Worms of Death back into their casket. The Prince carried another “Eye,” one with an iris that glinted darkly red.
“Mighty Prince,” Vridekka wheezed, “you are safe?”
“Had I to depend upon my favoured Legion of Ketl, I might have been as empty of life as the Desert of Sighs! Fortunately I am not one to go without a second shaft for my bow. The ‘Excellent Ruby Eye’ has drawn his fangs-”
“ ‘Excellent Ruby Eye?’ ” Harsan hardly knew that he had spoken.
“Yes, priest. But for it-and me-you would now be frozen meat to baffle the embalmers in the City of the Dead! For it was at you that Hele’a aimed his own ‘Eye of Frigid Breath,’ not at me, not at Vridekka. It seems that the Baron of Yan Kor prefers the Man of Gold to remain lost for all time to come, rather than see it in our hands.”
“But Hele’a, mighty Prince?” That was Vridekka. “An agent of such loyalty-he could have slain you at any moment…” “Baron Aid doubtless schooled him well.” The bone-painted lips curved up in a wry grimace. “The best dagger is the one your foe cannot see. Hele’a served me faithfully for many years, and I was remiss to trust so many of my purposes to him. But… thus it is. We have been lucky to unveil him this night; else he might have done us greater harm in the days to come. You, Vridekka, were clever to try him with the name of the Baron’s dead mistress.”
“Mention of Yilrana carries much emotion for all who dwell near to the Baron of Yan Kor, my Lord. This I knew.”
“We are grateful.” Prince Dhich’une moved to stand before the motionless figure of Hele’a. “He is trapped now, as a fish in the ice of his own northern seas, frozen forever in one long, eternal moment out of time. He knows nothing, senses nothing- until he is released again by the ‘Eye.’ Were I to use it to free him, he would return to that precise instant in which he was caught: take another breath, depress the stud of his weapon, and think those same thoughts he held at the moment of his capture.” “None can touch him now, mighty Prince.” The old mind-seer, too, went to gaze into Hele’a’s open, staring eyes. “Will you not let me have him, My Lord? His mind-screens may be of the strongest, but I have many strings to pluck as well.”
The Prince chuckled. “I am tempted to immure him in the pits beneath this prison, Vridekka, even in the Ultimate Labyrinth from which no one has ever come forth again.-Or leave him in his present plight and sink him in the bottomless swamps off Thayuri Isle where he would lie until Lord Vimuhla’s conflagration bums all life from Tekumel at the very terminus of time.” He seemed to shake himself. “No, he may serve us better in still another role. What is the hour?”
One of the soldiers replied, “The Tunkul — gong of the temple of Ksarul across the river has struck the half-night, my Lord.” “Four Kiren — two hours-still remain, then…” Dhich’une mused. “Vridekka, I entrust Hele’a to you, but your questioning must needs be brief. The High Adept of our Temple of Sarku has appointed me officiant at this night’s Giving of Praise unto the One of Mouths. Would it not be salutary for Hele’a of Ghaton to be guested at that feast? There will be many present-and some who will doubtless report our hospitality back to the Baron of Yan Kor. He shall thus gain fresh insight into our alertness and our unwillingness to be spied upon.”
The blank, black marble eyes turned to Harsan and thence to Eyil. “These two shall join our celebrations as well-another lesson in obedience may not be superfluous. And there will be one there whom I wish them to meet. Do you unbind them, Vridekka, place them in a cell, and then escort them to the great hall of our Temple of Rising from the Tomb when the time draws nigh.”