We were dropping toward the wide lawns now and still no opposition showed itself. Then the towering blue spires were looming over us, and we saw men forming up behind the blue-stained steel gates of the Great Pavilion.
"A reception committee," I said. "Hold tight, fellas. Don't start anything. The further in we get peaceably the less that leaves to do the hard way."
The cars settled down gently, well grouped, and Torbu and I climbed out. As quickly as the other boats disgorged their men, ranks were closed, and we moved off toward the gates. Itzenca, as mascot, brought up the rear. Still no excitement, no rush by the Palace guards. Had too many centuries of calm made them lackadaisical, or did Ommodurad use some other brand of visitor-repellent we couldn't see from here?
We made it to the gate ... and it opened.
"In we go," I said, "but be ready...."
The uniformed men inside the compound, obviously chosen for their beef content, kept their distance, looked at us queryingly. We pulled up on a broad blue-paved drive and waited for the next move.
It was a long five minutes before a hard case in a beetle-backed carapace or armor and a puffy pink cape bustled down the palace steps and came up to us.
"Who comes in force to the Sapphire Palace?" he demanded, glancing past me at my team-mates.
"I'm Owner Drgon, fellow," I barked. "These are my honor guard. What provincial welcome is this, from the Great Owner to a loyal liege-man?"
That punctured his pomposity a little. He apologized—in a half-hearted way, mumbled something about arrangements, and beckoned over a couple of sidemen. One of them came over and spoke to Torbu, who looked my way, hand on dagger hilt.
"What's this?" I said. "Where I go, my men go."
"There is the matter of caste," said my pink-caped greeter. "Packs of retainers are not ushereden masseinto the presence of Lord Ommodurad, Owner of Owners."
I thought that one over and failed to come up with a plausible loop-hole.
"Okay, Torbu," I said. "Keep the boys together and behave yourselves. I'll see you in an hour. Oh, and see that Itzenca gets made comfy."
The beetle man snapped a few orders, then waved me toward the palace with the slightest bow I ever saw. A six-man guard kept me company up the steps and into the Great Pavilion.
I guess I expected the usual velvet-draped audience chamber or barbarically splendid Hall, complete with pipers, fools, and ceremonial guards. What I got was an office, about sixteen by eighteen, blue-carpeted and tasteful ... but bare-looking. I stopped in front of a block of blue-veined grey marble with a couple of quill pens in a crystal holder and, underneath, leg room for a behemoth, who was sitting behind the desk.
He got to his feet with all the ponderous mass of Nero Wolfe but a lot more agility and grace. "You wish?" he rumbled.
"I'm Owner Drgon, ah ... Great Owner," I said. I'd planned to give my host the friendly-but-dumb routine. I was going to find the second part of the act easy. There was something about Ommodurad that made me feel like a mouse who'd just changed his mind about the cheese. Qohey had been big, but this guy could crush skulls as most men pinch peanut hulls, and in his eyes was the kind of remote look that came of three millennia of not even having to mention the power he asserted.
"You ignore superstition," observed the Big Owner. He didn't waste many words, it seemed. Gope had said he was the silent type. It wasn't a bad lead; I decided to follow it.
"Don't believe in 'em," I said.
"To your business then," he continued. "Why?"
"Just been chosen Owner at Bar-Ponderone," I said. "Felt it was only fitting that I come and do obeisance before Your Grace."
"That expression is not used."
"Oh." This fellow had a disconcerting way of not getting sucked in. "Lord Ommodurad?"
He nodded just perceptibly, then turned to the foremost of the herd who had brought me in. "Quarters for the guest and his retinue." His eyes had already withdrawn, like the head of a Galapagos turtle into its enormous shell, and were remote, in contemplation of eternal verities. I piped up again.
"Ah, pardon me." The piercing stare of Ommodurad's eyes was on me again. "There was a friend of mine—swell guy, but impulsive. It seems he challenged the former Owner of Bar-Ponderone...."
Ommodurad did no more than twitch an eyebrow but suddenly the air was electric. His stare didn't waver by a millimeter but the lazy slouch of the six guards had altered to sprung steel. They hadn't moved but I felt them now all around me and not a foot away. I had a sinking feeling that I'd gone too far.
"—so I thought maybe I'd crave Your Excellency's help, if possible, to locate my pal," I finished weakly. For an interminable minute the Owner of Owners bored into me with his eyes. Then he raised a finger a quarter of an inch. The guards relaxed.
"Quarters for the guest and his retinue," repeated Ommodurad. He withdrew then ... without moving. I was dismissed.
I went quietly, attended by my hulking escort.
I tried hard not to let my expression show any excitement, but I was feeling plenty.
Ommodurad was close-mouthed for a reason. I was willing to bet that he had his memories of the Good Time intact.
Instead of the debased modern dialect that I'd heard everywhere since my arrival, Ommodurad spoke flawless Old Vallonian.
It was 27 o'clock and the Palace of Sapphires was silent. I was alone in the ornate bed chamber the Great Owner had assigned me. It was a nice room but I wouldn't learn anything staying in it. Nobody had said I was confined to quarters. I'd do a little scouting and see what I could pick up, if anything. I slung on the holster and .38 and slid out of the darkened chamber into the scarcely lighter corridor beyond. I saw a guard at the far end; he ignored me. I headed in the opposite direction.
None of the rooms were locked. There was no arsenal at the Palace and no archives that lesser folk than the Great Owner could use with profit. Everything was easy of access. I guessed that Ommodurad rightly counted on indifference to keep snoopers away. Here and there guards eyed me as I passed along but they said nothing.
I saw again by Cintelight the office where Ommodurad had received me and near it an ostentatious hall with black onyx floor and ceiling, gold hangings, and ceremonial ringboard. But the center of attraction was the familiar motif of the concentric circles of the Two Worlds, sketched in beaten gold across the broad wall of black marble behind the throne. Here the idea had been elaborated on. Outward from both the inner and outer circles flamed waving lines of sunburst, and at dead center a boss, like a sword hilt in form, chased in black and gold, erupted a foot from the wall. It was the first time I'd seen the symbol since I'd arrived on Vallon. I found it strangely exciting—like a footprint in the sand.
I went on, and came into a purple-vaulted hall where I saw a squad of guards, the same six who'd kept me such close company earlier in the day. They were drawn up at parade rest, three on each side of a massive ivory door. Somebody lived in safety and splendor on the other side.
Six sets of hard eyes turned my way. It was too late to duck back out of sight. I trotted up to the first of the row of guards. "Say, fella," I stage-whispered, "where's the ah—you know."
"Every bed chamber is equipped," he said gruffly, raising his sword and fingering its tip lovingly.
"Yeah? I never noticed." I moved off, looking chastened.
On the ground floor I found Torbu and his cohort quartered in a barrack-room off the main entry hall. They had gotten hold of a few pipes of melon wine and were staging a small party with the help of several upstairs maids.
"We're still in enemy territory," I reminded Torbu. "I want every man ready. So save some of that booze for tomorrow."
"No fear, boss," said Torbu. "All my bullies got a eye on the door and a hand on a knife-hilt."
"Have you seen or heard anything useful?"
"Naw. These local dullards fall dumb at the first query."
"Keep your ears cocked. I want at least two men awake and on the alert all night."
"You bet, noble Drgon."
I judged distances carefully as I went back up the two flights to my own room. Inside I dropped into a brocaded easy chair and tried to add up what I'd seen.
First: Ommodurad's apartment, as nearly as I could judge, was directly over my own, two floors up. That was a break—or maybe I was where I was for easier surveillance. I'd skip that angle, I decided. It tended to discourage me and I needed all the enthusiasm I could generate.
Second: I wasn't going to learn anything useful trotting around corridors. Ommodurad wasn't the kind to leave traces of skullduggery lying around where the guests would see them.
And third: I should have known better than to hit this fortress with two squads and a .38 in the first place. Foster was here; Qohey had said so and the Great Owner's reaction to my mention of him confirmed it. What was it about Foster, anyway, that made him so interesting to these Top People? I'd have to ask him that when I found him. But to do that I'd have to leave the beaten track.
I went to the wide double window and looked up. A cloud swept from the great three-quarters face of Cinte, blue in the southern sky, and I could see an elaborately carved facade ranging up past a row of windows above my own to a railed balcony bathed in a pale light from the apartment within. If my calculations were correct that would be Ommodurad's digs. The front door was guarded like an octogenarian's harem but the back way looked like a breeze.
I pulled my head back in and thought about it. It was risky ... but it had that element of the unexpected that just might let me get away with it. Tomorrow the Owner of Owners might have thought it through and switched me to another room ... or to a cell in the basement. Then too, wall-scaling didn't occur to these Vallonians as readily as it did to a short-timer from Earth. They had too much to lose to risk it on a chancy climb.
Too much thinking is never a good idea when your pulse is telling you it's time for action. I rolled a heavy armoire fairly soundlessly over the deep-pile carpet and lodged it against the door. That might slow down a casual caller. I slipped the magazine out of the automatic, fitted nine greasy brass cartridges into it, slammed it home, dropped the pistol back in the holster. It had a comforting weight. I buttoned the strap over it and went back to the window.
The clouds were back across Cinte's floodlight; that would help. I stepped out. The deep carving gave me easy handholds and I made it to the next window sill without even working up a light sweat. Compared with my last climb, back in Lima, this was a cinch.
I rested a minute, then clambered around the dark window—just in case there was an insomniac on the other side of the glass—and went on up. I reached the balcony, had a hairy moment as I groped outward for a hold on the smooth floor-tiling above ... and then I was pulling up and over the ornamental iron work.
The balcony was narrow, about twenty feet long, giving on half a dozen tall glass doors. Three showed light behind heavy drapes, three were dark. I moved close, tried to see something past the edge of the drapes. No go. I put an ear to the glass, thought maybe I heard a sound, like a distant volcano. That would be Ommodurad's brass rumble. The bear was in his cave.
I went along to the dark doors and on impulse tried a handle. It turned and the door swung in soundlessly. I felt my pulse pick up a double-time beat. I stood peering past the edge of the door into the ink-black interior. It didn't look inviting. In fact it looked as repellent as hell. Even a country boy like me could see that to step into the dragon's den without even a zippo to spot the footstools with would be the act of a nitwit.
I swallowed hard, got a firm grip on my pistol, and went in.
A soft fold of drapery brushed my face and I had the pistol out and my back to the wall with a speed that would have made Earp faint with envy. My adrenals gave a couple of wild jumps and my nervous system followed with a variety of sensations, none pleasant. I could hear Ommodurad's voice better now, muttering beyond the partition. If I could make out what he was saying....
I edged along the wall, found a heavy door, closed and locked. No help there. I felt my way further, found another door. Delicately I tried the handle.
A closet, half filled with racked garments. But I could hear more clearly now. Maybe it was a double closet with communicating doors to both the room I was in and the next one where the Great Owner was still rambling on. Apparently something had overcome his aversion to talking. There were pauses that must have been filled in by the replies of somebody else who didn't have the vocal timbre Ommodurad did.
I felt my way through the hanging clothing, felt over the closet walls. I was out of luck: there was no other door. I put an ear to the wall. I could catch an occasional word:
"... ring ... Okk-Hamiloth ... vaults...."
It sounded like something I'd like to hear more about. How could I get closer? On impulse I reached up, touched a low ceiling ... and felt a ridge like the trim around an access panel to a crawl-space.
I crossed my fingers, stood on tip-toe to push at the panel. Nothing moved. I felt around in the dark, encountered a low shelf covered with shoes. I investigated; it was movable. I eased it aside a foot or two, piled the shoes on the floor, and stepped up.
The panel was two feet long on a side, with no discernible hinges or catch. I pushed some more, then gritted my teeth and heaved. There was a startlingly loud Crack! and the panel lifted. I blinked away the dust that settled in my eyes, reached to feel around within the opening, touched nothing but rough floor boards.
I cocked my head, listening. Ommodurad had stopped talking and another voice said something. Then there was a heavy thump, the clump of feet, and a metallic sound. After a moment the Great Owner's voice came again ... and the other voice answered.
I stretched, grabbed the edge of the opening, and pulled myself up. I leaned forward, got a leg up, and rolled silently onto the rough floor. Feeling my way, I crawled, felt a wall rising, followed it, turned a corner.... The voices were louder, quite suddenly. I saw why: there was a ventilating register ahead, gridded light gleaming through it. I crept along to the opening, lay flat, peered through it and saw three men.
Ommodurad was standing with his back to me, a giant figure swathed to the eyes in purple robes. Beside him a lean red-head with a leg that had been broken and badly set stood round-shouldered, clutching a rod of office. The third man was Foster.
Foster stood, legs braced apart as though to withstand an earthquake, hands manacled before him. He looked steadily at the red-head, like a man marking a tree for cutting.
"I know nothing of these crimes," he said.
Ommodurad turned, swept out of sight. The red-head motioned. Foster turned away, moving stiffly, passed from my view. I heard a door open and close. I lay where I was and tried to sort out half a dozen conflicting impulses that clamored for attention. I finally decided it might do some good to gather more information. It had been bad luck that I had arrived at my peephole a few minutes too late to hear what the interview had been all about. But I might still make use of my strategic advantage.
I felt over the register, found fasteners at the corners. They lifted easily and the metal grating tilted back into my hands. I laid it aside, poked my head out. The room was empty, as far as I could see. It was time to take a few chances. I reversed my position, let my legs through the opening, and dropped softly to the floor. I reached back up and managed to prop the grating in position—just in case.
It was a fancy chamber, hung in purple and furnished for a king. I poked through the pigeon-holes of a secretary, opened a few cupboards, peered under the bed. It looked like I wasn't going to find any useful clues lying around loose.
I went to the glass doors to the balcony, unlocked one and left it ajar—in case I wanted to leave in a hurry. There was another door across the room. I went over and tried it: locked.
That gave me something definite to look for: a key. I rummaged some more in the secretary, then tried the drawer in a small table beside a broad couch and came up with a nice little steel key that looked like maybe....
I tried it. It was. Luck was still coming my way. I pushed open the door, saw a dark room beyond. I felt for a light switch, flicked it on, pushed the door shut behind me.
The room looked like the popular idea of a necromancer's study. The windowless walls were lined with shelves packed with books. The high black-draped ceiling hung like a hovering bat above the ramparted floor of bare, dark-polished wood. Narrow tables choked with books and instruments stood along a side of the chamber and at the far end I saw a deep-cushioned couch with a heavy dome-shaped apparatus like a beauty shop hair-dryer mounted at one end. I recognized it: it was a memory reinforcing machine, the first I had seen on Vallon.
I crossed the room and examined it. The last one I had seen—on the far-voyager in the room near the library—had been a stark utility model. This was a deluxe job, with soft upholstery and bright metal fittings and more dials and idiot lights than a late model Detroit status symbol. This solved one of the problems that had been hovering around the edge of my mind. I had fetched Foster's memory back to him but without a machine to use it in, it was just a tantalizing souvenir. Now all I had to do was sneak him away from Ommodurad, make it back here....
All of a sudden I felt tired, vulnerable, helpless and all alone. What was Ommodurad's interest in Foster? Why did he hide away here, keeping the rest of Vallon away with rumors of magic and spells? What connection did he have with the disaster that had befallen the Two Worlds—now reduced to One, and a poor one at that.
And why was I, a plain Joe named Legion, mixed up in it right to the eyebrows, when I could be sitting safe at home in a clean federal pen?
The answer to the last one wasn't too hard to recite: I had had a pal once, a smooth character named Foster, who had pulled me back from the ragged edge just when I was about to make a bigger mistake than usual. He had been a gentleman in the best sense of the word, and he had treated me like one. Together we had shared a strange adventure that had made me rich and had showed me that it was never too late to straighten your back and take on whatever the Fates handed out.
I had come running his way when trouble got too thick back home. And I'd found him in a worse spot than I was in. He had come back, after the most agonizing exile a man had ever suffered, to find his world fallen back into savagery, and his memory still eluding him. Now he was in chains, without friends and without hope ... but still not broken, still standing on his own two feet....
But he was wrong on one point: he had one little hope. Not much: just a hard-luck guy with a penchant for bad decisions, but I was here and I was free. I had my pistol on my hip and a neat back way into the Owner's bedroom, and if I played it right and watched my timing and had maybe just a little luck, say about the amount it took to hit the Irish Sweepstakes, I might bring it off yet.
Right now it was time to return to my crawl-space. Ommodurad might come back and talk some more, tip me off to a vulnerable spot in the armor of his fortress. I went to the door, flicked off the light, turned the handle ... and went rigid.
Ommodurad was back. He pulled off the purple cloak, tossed it aside, strode to a wall bar. I clung to the crack of the door, not daring to move even to close it.
"But my lord," the voice of the red-head said, "I trow he remembers—"
"Not so," Ommodurad's voice rumbled. "On the morrow I strip his mind to the bare clean jelly...."
"Let me, dread lord. With my steel I'll have the truth o' him."
"Such a one as he your steel has never known!" the bass voice snarled.
"Great Owner, I crave but one hour ... tomorrow, in the Ceremonial Chamber. I shall environ him with the emblems of the past—"
"Enough!" Ommodurad's fist slammed against the bar, made glasses jump. "On such starveling lackwits as you a mighty empire hangs. It is a crime before the Gods and on his head I lay it." The Owner tossed off a glass. "I grant thy boon. Now begone, babbler of folly."
The red-head ducked, grinning, disappeared.
The big man threw off his clothes then. He clambered up on the wide couch, touched a switch somewhere, and the room was dark. Within five minutes I heard the heavy breathing of deep sleep.
I had found out one thing anyway: tomorrow was Foster's last day. One way or another Ommodurad and the red-head between them would destroy him. That didn't leave much time. But since the project was already hopeless it didn't make much difference.
I had a choice of moves now: I could tip-toe across to the register and try to wiggle through it without waking up the brontosaurus on the bed ... or I could try for the balcony door a foot from where he slept ... or I could stay put and wait him out. The last idea had the virtue of requiring no immediately daring adventures. I could just curl up on the floor, or, better still, on the padded couch....
A weird idea was taking shape in my mind. I felt in my pocket, pulled out the two small cylinders that represented two men's memories of hundreds of years of living. One belonged to Foster, the one with the black and golden bands, but the other was the property of a stranger who had died three thousand years ago, out in space....
This cylinder, barely three inches long, held all the memories of a man who had been Foster's confidant when he was Qulqlan, a man who knew what had happened aboard the ship, what the purpose of the expedition had been, and what conditions they had left behind on Vallon.
I needed that knowledge. The cylinder could tell me plenty, including, possibly, the reason for Ommodurad's interest in Foster.
It was simple to use. I merely placed the cylinder in the receptacle in the side of the machine, took my place, lowered the helmet into position ... and in an hour or so I would awaken with another man's memories stored in my brain, to use as I saw fit.
It would be a crime to waste the opportunity. The machine I had found here was probably the only one still in existence on Vallon. I had blundered my way into the one room in the palace that could help me in what I had to do; I had been lucky.
I went across to the soft cushioned chair, spotted the recess in its side, and thrust the plain cylinder into it.
I sat on the couch, lay back, reached up to pull the head-piece down into position, against my skull....
There was an instant of pain—like a pre-frontal lobotomy performed without anesthetic.
Then blackness.
I stood beside the royal couch where Qulqlan the Rthr lay and I saw that this was the hour for which I had waited long, for the Change was on him....
The time-scale stood at the third hour of the Death watch; all aboard slept save myself alone. I must move swiftly and at the Dawn watch show them the deed well done.
I shook the sleeping man, him who had once been the Rthr—king no more, by the law of the Change. He wakened slowly, looked about him, with the clear eyes of the newborn.
"Rise," I commanded. And the king obeyed.
"Follow me," I said. He made to question me, after the manner of those newly wakened from their Change. I bade him be silent. Like a lamb he came and I led him through shadowed ways to the cage of the Hunters. They rose, keen in their hunger, to my coming, as I had trained them.
I took the arm of Qulqlan and thrust it into the cage. The Hunters clustered, taking the mark of their prey. He watched, innocent eyes wide.
"That which you feel is pain, mindless one," I spoke. "It is a thing of which you will learn much in the time before you." Then they had done, and I set the time catch.
In my chambers I cloaked the innocent in a plain purple robe and afterward led him to the cradle where the life boat lay....
And by virtue of the curse of the Gods which is upon me one was there before me. I waited not but moved as the haik strikes and took him fair in the back with my dagger. I dragged his body into hiding behind the flared foot of a column. But no sooner was he hidden well away than others came from the shadows, summoned by some device I know not of. They asked of the Rthr wherefore he walked by night, robed in the colors of Ammaerln of Bros-Ilyond. And I knew black despair, that my grand design foundered thus in the shallows of their zeal.
Yet I spoke forth, with a great show of anger, that I, Ammaerln, vizier and companion to the Rthr, did but walk and speak in confidence with my liege lord.
But they persisted, Gholad foremost among them. And then one saw the hidden corpse and in an instant they ringed me in.
Then did I draw the long blade and hold it at the throat of Qulqlan. "Press me not, or your king will surely die," I said. And they feared me and shrank back.
"Do you dream that I, Ammaerln, wisest of the wise, have come for the love of far-voyaging?" I raged. "Long have I plotted against this hour; to lure the king a-voyaging in this his princely yacht, his faithful vizier at his side, that the Change might come on him far from his court. Then would the ancient wrong be redressed.
"There are those men born to rule as inevitably as the dream-tree seeks the sun—and such a one am I! Long has this one, now mindless, denied to me my destiny. But behold: I, with a stroke, shall set things aright.
"Below us lies a green world, peopled by savages. Not one am I to take blood vengeance on a man newborn from the Change. Instead I shall set him free to take up his life there below. May the Fates lead him again to royal state if that be their will—"
But there were naught but fools among them and they drew steel. I cried out to them that all, all should share!
But they heeded me not but rushed upon me. Then did I turn to Qulqlan and drive the long blade at his throat, but Gholad threw himself before him and fell, impaled in the throat. Then they pressed me and I did strike out against three who hemmed me close, and though they took many wounds they persisted in their madness, one leaping in to strike and another at my back, so that I whirled and slashed at shadows who danced away.
In the end I hunted them down in those corners whither they had dragged themselves and each did I put to the sword. And I turned at last to find the Rthr gone and some few with him, and madness took me that I had been gulled like a tinker by common men.
In the chamber of the memory couch would I find them. There they would seek to give back to the mindless one that memory of past glories which I had schemed so long to deny him. Almost I wept to see such cunning wasted. Terrible in my wrath I came upon them there. There were but two and, though they stood shoulder in the entry way, their poor dirks were no match for my long blade. I struck them dead and went to the couch, to lay my hand on the cylinder marked with the vile gold and black of Qulqlan, that I might destroy it and, with it, the Rthr, forever—
And I heard a sound and whirled about. A hideous figure staggered to me from the gloom and for an instant I saw the flash of steel in the bloody hand of the accursed Gholad whom I had left for dead. Then I knew cold agony between my ribs....
Gholad lay slumped against the wall, his face greenish above the blood-soaked tunic. When he spoke air whistled through his slashed throat.
"Have done, traitor who once was honored of the king," he whispered. "Have you no pity for him who once ruled in justice and splendor at High Okk-Hamiloth?"
"Had you not robbed me of my destiny, murderous dog," I croaked, "that splendor would have been mine."
"You came upon him helpless," gasped Gholad. "Make some amends now for your shame. Let the Rthr have his mind, which is more precious than his life."
"I but rest to gather strength. Soon will I rise and turn him from the couch. Then will I die content."
"Once you were his friend," Gholad whispered. "By his side you fought, when both of you were young. Remember that ... and have pity. To leave him here, in this ship of death, mindless and alone...."
"I have loosed the Hunters!" I shrieked in triumph. "With them will the Rthr share this tomb until the end of time!"
Then I searched within me and found a last terrible strength and I rose up ... and even as my hand reached out to pluck away the mind trace of the king I felt the bloody fingers of Gholad on my ankle, and then my strength was gone. And I was falling headlong into that dark well of death from which there is no returning....
I woke up and lay for a long time in the dark without moving, trying to remember the fragments of a strange dream of violence and death. I could still taste the lingering dregs of some bitter emotion. For a moment I couldn't remember what it was I had to do; then with a start I recalled where I was. I had lain down on the couch and pulled the head-piece into place—
It hadn't worked.
I thought hard, tried to tap a new reservoir of memories, drew a blank. Maybe my Earth-mind was too alien for the Vallonian memory-trace to affect. It was another good idea that hadn't worked out. But at least I had had a good rest. Now it was time to get moving. First: to see if Ommodurad was still asleep. I started to sit up—
Nothing happened.
I had a moment of vertigo, as my inner ear tried to accommodate to having stayed in the same place after automatically adjusting to my intention of rising. I lay perfectly still and tried to think it through.
I had tried to move ... and hadn't so much as twitched a muscle. I was paralyzed ... or tied up ... or maybe, if I was lucky, imagining things. I could try it again and next time—
I was afraid to try. Suppose I tried and nothing happened—again? This was ridiculous. All I had to do was sit up. I—
Nothing. I lay in the dark and tried to will an arm to move, my head to turn. It was as though I had no arm, no head—just a mind, alone in the dark. I strained to sense the ropes that held me down; still nothing. No ropes, no arms, no body. There was no pressure against me from the couch, no vagrant itch or cramp, no physical sensation. I was a disembodied brain, lying nestled in a great bed of pitch-black cotton wool.
Then, abruptly, I was aware of myself—not the gross mechanism of clumsy bone and muscle, but the neuro-electric field generated within the massive structure of a brain alive with flashing currents and a lightning interplay of molecular forces. A sense of orientation grew. I occupied a block of cells ... here in the left hemisphere. The mass of neural tissue loomed over me, gigantic. And "I" ... "I" was reduced to the elemental ego, who possessed as a material appurtenance "my" arms and legs, "my" body, "my" brain.... Relieved of outside stimuli I was able now to conceptualize myself as I actually was: an insubstantial state existing in an immaterial continuum, created by the action of neural currents within the cerebrum, as a magnetic field is created in space by the flow of electricity.
And I knew what had happened. I had opened my mind to invasion by alien memories. The other mind had seized upon the sensory centers, driven me to this dark corner. I was a fugitive within my own skull.
For a timeless time I lay stunned, immured now as the massive stones of Bar-Ponderone had never confined me. My basic self-awareness still survived, but was shunted aside, cut off from any contact with the body itself.
With shadowy fingers of imagination I clawed at the walls surrounding me, fought for a glimpse of light, for a way out.
And found none.
Then, at last, I began again to think.
I must analyze my awareness of my surroundings, seek out channels through which impulses from sensory nerves flowed, and tap them.
I tried cautiously; an extension of my self-concept reached out with ultimate delicacy. There were the ranked infinities of cells, there the rushing torrents of gross fluid, there the taut cables of the interconnecting web, and there—
Barrier! Blank and impregnable the wall reared up. My questing tendril of self-stuff raced over the surface like an ant over a melon, and found no tiniest fissure.
I withdrew. To dissipate my forces was senseless. I must select a point of attack, hurl against it all the power of my surviving identity.
The last of the phantom emotions that had clung—for how long?—to the incorporeal mind field had faded now, leaving me with no more than an intellectual determination to reassert myself. Dimly I recognized this sign of my waning sense of identity but there was no surge of instinctive fear. Instead I coolly assessed my resources—and almost at once stumbled into an unused channel, here within my own self-field. For a moment I recoiled from the outer configuration of the stored patterns ... and then I remembered.
I had been in the water, struggling, while the Red soldier waited, rifle aimed. And then: a flood of data, flowing with cold, impersonal precision. And I had deftly marshalled the forces of my body to survive.
And once more: as I hung by numbed fingers under the cornice of the Yordano Tower, the cold voice had spoken.
And I had forgotten. The miracle had been pushed back, rejected by the conscious mind. But now I knew: this was the knowledge that I had received from the background briefing device that I had used in my island strong-room before I fled. This was the survival data known to all Old Vallonians of the days of the Two Worlds. It had lain here, unused; the secrets of superhuman strength and endurance ... buried by the imbecile censor-self's aversion to the alien.
But the ego alone remained now, stripped of the burden of neurosis, freed from subconscious pressures. The levels of the mind were laid bare, and I saw close at hand the regions where dreams were born, the barren sources of instinctive fear-patterns, the linkages to the blinding emotions; and all lay now under my overt control.
Without further hesitation I tapped the stored Vallonian knowledge, encompassed it, made it mine. There again I approached the barrier, spread out across it, probed in vain—
"...vile primitive...."
The thought thundered out with crushing force. I recoiled, then renewed my attack, alert now. I knew what to do.
I sought and found a line of synaptic weakness, burrowed at it—
"...intolerable...vestigial...erasure...."
I struck instantly, slipped past the impervious shield, laid firm hold on the optic receptor bank. The alien mind threw itself against me, but too late. I held secure and the assault faded, withdrew. Cautiously I extended my interpretive receptivity. There was a pattern of pulses, oscillations in the lambda/mu range. I tuned, focussed—
Abruptly I was seeing. For a moment my fragile equilibrium tottered, as I strove to integrate the flow of external stimuli into my bodiless self-concept. Then a balance was struck: I held my ground and stared through the one eye I had recaptured from the usurper.
And I reeled again!
Bright daylight blazed in the chamber of Ommodurad. The scene shifted as the body moved about, crossing the room, turning.... I had assumed that the body still lay in the dark but instead, it walked, without my knowledge, propelled by a stranger.
The field of vision flashed across the couch. Ommodurad was gone.
I sensed that the entire left lobe, disoriented by the loss of the eye, had slipped now to secondary awareness, its defenses weakened. I retreated momentarily from my optic outpost, laid a temporary traumatic block across the access nerves to keep the intruder from reasserting possession, and concentrated my force in an attack on the auricular channels. It was an easy rout. I seized on the nerve trunk, then instantly reoccupied the eye, co-ordinated its impressions with those coming in along the aural nerves ... and heard my voice mouth a curse.
The body was standing beside a bare wall with a hand laid upon it. In the wall a recess partly obscured by a sliding panel stood empty.
The body turned, strode to a doorway, emerged into a gloomy violet-shadowed corridor. The glance flicked from the face of one guard to another. They stared in open-mouthed surprise, brought weapons up.
"You dare to bar the path to the Lord Ammaerln?" My voice slashed at the men. "Stand aside, as you value your lives."
And the body pushed past them, strode off along the corridor. It passed through a great archway, descended a flight of marble stairs, came along a hall I had seen on my tour of the Palace of Sapphires and into the Onyx Chamber with the great golden sunburst that covered the high black wall.
In the Great Owner's chair at the ringboard Ommodurad sat scowling at the lame courtier whose red hair was hidden now under a black cowl. Between them Foster stood, the heavy manacles dragging at his wrists.
Ommodurad turned; his face paled, then flushed dark rose, teeth bared.
The gaze of my eye fixed on Foster. Foster stared back, a look of incredulity growing on his face.
"My Lord Rthr," my voice said. The eye swept down and fixed on the manacles. The body drew back a step, as if in horror.
"You overreach yourself, Ommodurad!" my voice cried harshly.
Ommodurad stepped toward me, his immense arm raised.
"Lay not a hand on me, dog of a usurper!" my voice roared out. "By the Gods, would you take me for common clay!"
And, unbelievably, Ommodurad paused, stared in my face.
"I know you as the upstart Drgon, petty Owner," he rumbled. "But I trow I see another there behind your pale eyes."
"Foul was the crime that brought me to this pass," my voice said. "But ... know that your master, Ammaerln, stands before you, in the body of a primitive!"
"Ammaerln...!" Ommodurad jerked as though he had been struck.
My body turned, dismissing him. The eye rested on Foster.
"My liege," my voice said unctuously. "I swear the dog dies for this treason—"
"It is a mindless one, intruder," Ommodurad broke in. "Seek no favor with the Rthr, for he that was Rthr is no more. You deal with me now."
My body whirled on Ommodurad. "Give a thought to your tone, lest your ambitions prove your death!"
Ommodurad put a hand to his dagger. "Ammaerln of Bros-Ilyond you may be, or a changeling from dark regions I know not of. But know that this day I hold all power in Vallon."
"And what of this one who was once Qulqlan? What consort do you hold with him you say is mindless?" I saw my hand sweep out in a contemptuous gesture at Foster.
"An end to patience!" the Great Owner roared. He started toward my body.
"Does the fool, Ommodurad, forget the power of the great Ammaerln?" my voice said softly. And the towering figure hesitated once more, searching my face. "The Rthr's hour is past ... and so is yours, bungler and fool. Your self-delusion is ended." My voice rose in a bellow: "Know that I ... Ammaerln, the great ... have returned to rule at High Okk-Hamiloth...."
He threw back his head, and laughed a choked throaty laugh that was half sob.
"Know, demon, or madman, or ancient prince of evil: for thirty centuries have I brooded alone, sealed from an empire by a single key!"
I felt the shock rack through and through the invader mind. This was the opportunity I had hoped for. Quick as thought I moved, slashed at the wavering shield, and was past it—
Upon the mind-picture of Foster's face was now superimposed another: that of Qulqlan, Rthr of all Vallon, ruler of the Two Worlds!
And other pictures, snatched from the intruder mind, were present now in the Earth-consciousness of me, Legion:
the vaults, deep in the rock under the fabled city of Okk-Hamiloth, where the mind-trace of every citizen was stored, sealed by the Rthr and keyed to his mind alone;
Ammaerln, urging the king to embark on a far-voyage, stressing the burden of government, tempting him to bring with him the royal mind-trace;
Qulqlan's acquiescence and Ammaerln's secret joy at the advancement of his scheme;
the coming of the Change for the Rthr, aboard ship, far out in space, and the vizier's bold stroke;
and then the fools who found him at the lifeboat ... and the loss of all, all....
There my own lived memories took up the tale: the awakening of Foster, unsuspecting, and his recording of the mind of the dying Ammaerln; the flight from the Hunters; the memory-trace of the king, that lay for three millennia among neolithic bones until I, a primitive, plucked it from its place; and the pocket of a coarse fibre garment where the cylinder lay now, on a hip of the body I inhabited and as inaccessible to me as if it had been a million miles away.
But there was a second memory-trace—Ammaerln. I had crossed a galaxy to come to Foster, and with me, locked in an unmarked pewter cylinder, I had brought Foster's ancient nemesis.
I had given it life, and a body.
Foster, once Rthr, had survived against all logic and had come back from the dead: the last hope of a golden age....
To meet his fate at my hands.
"Three thousand years," I heard my voice saying. "Three thousand years have the men of Vallon lived mindless, with the power that was Vallon locked away in a vault without a key. And now, you think to force this mind—that is no mind—to unseal the vault?"
"I know it for a hopeless task," Ommodurad said. "At first I thought—since he speaks the tongue of old Vallon—that he dissembled. But he knows nothing. This is but the dry husk of the Rthr ... and I sicken of the sight. I would fain kill him now and let the long farce end."
"Not so!" my voice cut in. "Once I decreed exile to the mindless one. So be it!"
The face of Ommodurad twisted in its rage. "Your witless chatterings! I tire of them."
"Wait!" my voice snarled. "Would you put aside the key?"
There was a silence as Ommodurad stared at my face. I saw my hand rise into view. Gripped in it was Foster's memory-trace.
"The Two Worlds lie in my hand," my voice spoke. "Observe well the black and golden bands of the royal memory-trace. Who holds this key is all-powerful. As for the mindless body yonder, let it be destroyed."
Ommodurad locked eyes with mine. Then, "Let the deed be done," he said.
The red-head drew a long stiletto from under his cloak, smiling. I could wait no longer....
Along the link I had kept through the intruder's barrier I poured the last of the stored energy of my mind. I felt the enemy recoil, then strike back with crushing force. But I was past the shield.
As the invader reached out to encircle me I shattered my unified forward impulse into myriad nervous streamlets that flowed on, under, over, and around the opposing force; I spread myself through and through the inner mass, drawing new power from the trunk sources.
Now! I struck for the right optic center, clamped down with a death grip.
The enemy mind went mad as the darkness closed in. I heard my voice scream and I saw in vivid pantomime the vision that threatened the invader: the red-head darting, the stiletto flashing—
And then the invading mind broke, swirled into chaos, and was gone....
I reeled, shocked and alone inside my skull. The brain loomed, dark and untenanted now. I began to move, crept along the major nerve paths, reoccupied the cortex—