B
'ronth the Utalian left footprints in the snow.
Otherwise, B'ronth was invisible. But if a hidden observer watched the Utalian's slow progress across the ice fields of Nadia he would see where the ice was soft or where snow had fallen during the night into the gullies, the unexpected, mysterious appearance of footprints, a left staggered after a right, then another left, then a right again, then a left.
Actually, B'ronth the Utalian was not invisible. But like all Utalians, he was a chameleon of a man. Within seconds his skin would assume the color of its environment, utterly and completely. Thus, from above B'ronth the Utalian was the dazzling white of the Nadian ice-fields; from below, looking up at the pale cloudless sky, he was cold, transparent blue.
All morning he had been trailing the girl. He had reached her camp on the road to Nadia only moments after she had quit it in company with an old man. From the tattered snow cloaks they wore, they both clearly were wayfarers. B'ronth could have challenged them at once, sprinting across the ice toward them, but he hadn't done that. B'ronth the Utalian was a coward. He accepted the fact objectively: his people were notorious cowards. The proper time would come, he told himself. There would come a time when the girl and the old man were helpless. Then he, B'ronth, would strike.
The day before an Abarian warrior had given him a description of the girl and had promised him a bag of gold for her capture, half a bag of gold if he killed her and could prove it. A bag of gold, he thought. He would take her alive. It was a long, cold road to Nadia City. True, B'ronth the Utalian was small of stature, a puny creature like all his people. And there were certain disadvantages in his perfect camouflage. He was walking naked across the ice-fields in order to remain unseen. His flesh shivered and his bones were stiff. But a Nadian boy named Lulukee, whom B'ronth had promised half the gold, was not many minutes' march behind him with warm clothing, food, and drink. After he captured the girl....
Invisible, he mounted a rise where solid sheet ice adhered to the shoulder of a rocky hill. Below him, traversing a snow-floored valley and so far away that they were mere dots against the snow, were the old man and the girl.
B'ronth the Utalian chuckled. The sound was swept up instantly and dispersed by the wind. It was a cold wind and it all but froze B'ronth to the marrow, but the Nadian sun was surprisingly warm and now seemed to beam down on him with promise of his golden reward. Shivering both from cold and delight, the invisible Utalian walked swiftly down into the snow-mantled valley.
There would be a trail of footprints for the boy Lulukee to follow....
"Cold, Hammeth?" Ylia asked her companion.
"No, girl. I'll manage if you will. Is it much further?"
"Half a day's march to Nadia City yet, I'm afraid," Ylia said. "We could rest if you wish."
The man was extremely old by Tarthian standards, probably three hundred and fifty years old. He wore a snow-cape ofpurullianfur which the wind whipped about his bony frame and up over his completely bald head. "I'm sorry, Ylia," he said suddenly. There were tears in his eyes which the cold and the wind did not explain.
"What for? You came to the cave. You accompanied me here to Nadia."
"When Retoc the Abarian almost killed the White God, I fled with the others."
"If you didn't flee you too might have been slain, Hammeth."
"Yet you remained behind."
"He still lived. Someone had to tend him."
Hammeth's breath came in shallow gasps. He once had been a strong, big man, but the life and the strength had fled his frame when Retoc destroyed Ofrid, a hundred years before. As a wayfarer on the Plains of Ofrid, he had aged in those hundred years. And he had shrunk and shriveled with approaching senility. "Tell me, Ylia," he asked, panting, "is this Bram Forest you speak of indeed the—the god of the legend? The God of the Tower come to right the ancient wrongs?"
A frown marred the beauty of Ylia's matchless face. "At first," she said with a far-away look in her lovely eyes, "at first I thought he was. Hadn't he come, suddenly, from nowhere, at the ordained moment? But then when he did not slay Retoc, when instead he allowed Retoc the use of his whip-sword and was almost slain by Retoc, when he bled like any mortal, when he—" All at once Ylia was blushing.
"What is it, child?" Hammeth asked.
"Nothing. It is nothing."
"Ylia. You were the infant daughter of a lady in waiting of the royal court of Ofrid. I was a captain of the Queen's Guards. When Retoc's legions brought their death and destruction, I fled to the wilderness with you. I raised you from infancy. I—" the old man's eyes clouded over with emotion—"you have no secrets from me, child."
Ylia was still blushing. But a serene smile replaced the frown on her face. "Very well, Father Hammeth, I will tell you. There in the cave as I nursed the stranger back to health, as he grew stronger and could move about, as we conversed and came to know each other, I—I desired him."
Hammeth said nothing. His face was stern.
"Please," said Ylia, laughing now that her secret was out. "It wasn't the kind of desire that could make me a candidate for the Golden Ape, but—I desired him. It was a pure, sweet emotion, such as I have never felt before. I wanted him. I wanted to serve him. I wanted to spend my life helping him and ... Hammeth ... Father Hammeth ... loving him. There, I have said it."
Hammeth only muttered. They plodded on through the snow, which here was deep and powdery so they floundered sometimes to their knees.
"But a girl shouldn't feel such desire for a god, so I told myself he was mortal." Abruptly and for no reason that Hammeth could fathom, Ylia began to cry.
"What is it, child? What is it?"
"He—he fled. He had lost much blood and he was weak, yes, but he didn't even stay to protect me. He fled from Retoc. Is that a god? Is that even a man who can bring retribution to Retoc? Is it, Hammeth? Is it?"
"Yet you're taking the road to Nadia even as legend says the White God will take the road to Nadia."
"Nonsense," said Ylia, wiping away her tears. "Someone has to tell the Nadians what really happened to poor Jlomec, that's all. Retoc, Retoc will have them eating off his hand. He'll have them believing whatever he says. They'll never know that he killed a prince of their royal blood."
"But what can Bontarc of Nadia—or anyone—do against the power of Retoc's Abarians?"
"The White God could—"
"Ah, you see? Then perhaps you do believe, after all."
"The White God or whoever he was," said Ylia coldly, "fled a coward from Retoc." She pouted. "And yet, and yet he seemed so confused."
"Perhaps he fled so that the Ofridians might live again in the pride of their greatness," Hammeth declared with vehemence.
"You believe, don't you, Father Hammeth?" Ylia asked simply.
"I want to believe, child."
"You're panting so. You're tired. We'll have to stop and rest."
They were traversing the deepest part of the valley where the Nadian wind, funneling through between the hills flanking the depression, had piled the snow into drifts twice the height of a man. They hunkered down in the lee of one of the snow-drifts, where the wind could not reach them. With stiff fingers Ylia withdrew strips of jerked stadmeat from the inside pocket of her snow cloak, sharing them with Hammeth. They munched the tough cold meat, Ylia looking at the old man with tenderness and affection. Her foster father, he had been the only parent she had ever known. She closed her eyes and for a moment thought back over the years they had spent as wayfarers on the Ofridian Plain, the years dreaming of revenge and succor which would never come, the years....
"Ylia! Ylia!"
Father Hammeth was calling her name, urgently. She shook herself from her reverie. They were seated with their backs to one of the great snow-drifts, where it fell off suddenly like a suspended, frozen sea wave. With a trembling hand Hammeth was pointing before him, out across the ice fields.
There in the soft snow which mantled the ice of Nadia to a depth of only a few inches, were footprints. They were not old prints, deposited there when some wayfarer had passed. Incredibly, they were being made even as Hammeth and Ylia watched, as if by some creature with no palpable existence. The icy wind seemed intensified.
"It—it's coming toward us," Hammeth said, his voice a croaking whisper. Ylia knew that he was afraid again. Somehow with the advancing years, the steel and fire had gone from Hammeth's heart. Or perhaps, she thought in sympathy, the terrible defeat and destruction of Ofrid a hundred years ago had done this to him, had turned one of the Queen's proven champions into an aging craven wayfarer.
"We'll have to flee," Hammeth said breathlessly.
Behind them was the frozen wave of snow. To the right, far away across the snows, Abaria and the Plains of Ofrid. To the left, not half a day's journey, Nadia City. Ahead of them, the advancing footprints.
"Your whip-sword!" Ylia cried. "Quickly."
"I carry it, but I can't use it now," Hammeth protested. "I'm an old man, Ylia. An old man."
"Then let me have it."
"You? But you're just a girl. You couldn't—"
"Don't you see, Father Hammeth? It's only a man. An Utalian. It can't be anything else. If he comes in peace, well enough. Otherwise ... here, give me that sword."
But Hammeth shook his head with unexpected pride and pulled the weapon from its scabbard.
Just then the footprints became wider spaced and appeared more quickly in the snow. The invisible Utalian was running toward them. Awkward, cursing at his own impotence, Hammeth fumbled with his weapon.
You who call yourself Bram Forest, Ylia thought,White God or whatever you are—help us, help us! Then she hated herself for the unbidden thought. Bram Forest had deserted her once, hadn't he, after she had saved his life? What help could she expect from a man like Bram Forest? Or was Father Hammeth right? Perhaps Bram Forest had fled so that Ofrid might one day live again to see the wrath of the gods fall on Retoc and his Abarians.
Or, Ylia thought with an abrupt flash of insight, perhaps Bram Forest's flight had been out of his control. Perhaps he was as yet a pawn in a game he barely understood....
Bram Forest, we need you!
The running footprints were almost upon them.
B
ram Forest had been day-dreaming.
Ylia? Hadn't Ylia been calling his name? But how could that be? Ylia was almost two hundred million miles away. Clearly, as long as they kept the magic disc away from him, he could never see Ylia again. And besides, now that he had been vouchsafed a vision of his dead mother, the former queen of Ofrid, and now that that vision had conjured up the entire tragic past for him, why was it that when he shut his eyes and allowed the bright sun to beat down on the lids through the cell window he saw an image of the sun-browned maid, Ylia?
Could it be, he asked himself, wondering if somehow he were profaning the memory of the mother he had never known, that Ylia stood not for the past but for the present and the future, and that it was in the present and the unknown future that Bram Forest must live and do his life's work and perhaps perish, although he was motivated from the past?
A guard brought food on a tray. The cell door clanged open, the tray was delivered, the cell door clanged shut. The guard did not pay particular attention to Bram Forest: he had been a docile enough prisoner.
Ylia, he thought.
He knew he must escape next time the guard brought food.
Dr. Slonamn held up the bracelet with the metal disc on it and stared curiously at the contraption. He was a psychologist, he could hardly consider himself an expert on metallurgy. Still, he had never seen a metal like that from which the disc had been fashioned. It seemed too opaque for steel, too hard for silver. A steel and silver alloy, then? But he had never heard of a steel and silver alloy.
He held it up to the light. Like a fly's many-faceted eye it threw back manifold images of—himself. Somehow, it made him dizzy to gaze at the images. He drew his eyes away and had an impulse to fling the strange disc away across the room.
The sun was going down. He heard a clattering from the prison kitchen as the evening meal was prepared. Tomorrow, he thought, should see the completion of his work here. Another interview with the paranoid giant who had brought the disc, perhaps. The disc fascinated him.
He looked at it again. He didn't want to, and recognized the strange compulsion within himself. Then, before he quite realized it, he was staring at his multiple image again. His senses swam. There was a far-away rustling sound like—the words came unbidden to his mind from a poem by Kipling—like the wind that blows between the worlds. He gazed again at the disc. It seemed to draw him, as a magnet draws iron filings. Now he wanted to fight it, wanted to fight with every ounce of his strength. A wave of giddiness swept over him, leaving nausea in its wake. He clutched at the prison-office desk for support. The rustling grew louder.
He saw—or thought he saw—a girl, a lovely, sun-bronzed girl. There was a look of fear on her face. She seemed to be crying out for help.
An abyss yawned before his feet, before his very soul. He longed despite himself to plunge into the abyss, whatever the fearful consequences might be. He lurched back, fighting the longing. Yet he knew he wouldn't win. He took a step forward....
"Give it to me!"
The voice, urgent, distant, beckoned him back to reality. It seemed a great distance off, but it was something to which he could hold.
"Give me that disc!"
He felt himself dragged roughly back, saw the abyss retreating. The rustling of the wind between the worlds became distant, a sound imagined rather than heard.
"Give it to me!"
He blinked. The nausea had washed over him. He felt weak, drained, exhausted. But the substantial reality of the prison office surrounded him.
The young giant stood before him, strapping the bracelet which held the disc on his powerful arm. A look of intense concentration was on his face. His skin was bathed with sweat although it was cool in the room.
"What did you do to the guard?" Dr. Slonamn asked, wondering if the prisoner would slay him.
"He'll be all right. I only hit him. I'm sorry. It was necessary." The giant spoke in haste. His eyes were clouded, dreamy, as if he had taken an overdose of barbituates.
"What are you going to do?"
"You saw? In the disc?"
"Yes," said Dr. Slonamn.
"I'm going. It's my home."
The giant took a step forward, then began to stagger.
"Your home?" Dr. Slonamn gasped. "Yourhome?"
The giant, who had given his name to the prison authorities as Bram Forest, did not answer. Dr. Slonamn reached out, as if to grab him. Bram Forest stood there, a smile and the acceptance of pain fighting for mastery of his face.
Dr. Slonamn staggered back as if struck.His hand had passed through Bram Forest's body.
Staggering, trembling, Dr. Slonamn leaned for support on the desk. He could see through Bram Forest now. See through him entirely.
A cold fierce wind, like no wind ever felt on Earth, touched him. He shuddered.
When he looked again, Bram Forest was gone....
"Retoc the Abarian!" the seneschal's voice proclaimed.
An uneasy stir passed through the crowd of mourning courtiers in the palace chamber. Retoc, ruler of Abaria, did not often visit Nadia. A state of armed tension existed between Abaria and Nadia of the ice fields. Nadia alone of the many disunited nations of Tarth had strength in some ways comparable to that of black forested Abaria, but even then, if a war came between the two nations, the issue would never seriously be in doubt.
As a matter of diplomacy, Retoc had been invited to the funeral of Prince Jlomec, although neither Bontarc, ruler of Nadia, nor his sister, Volna the Beautiful, had ever dreamed he would come.
While the crowd milled about in their white mourning garments, Retoc told the seneschal: "I wish an audience with the Princess Volna."
The crowd was suddenly quiet. Volna the Beautiful, haughty, imperious, princess of the royal blood, would certainly refuse to see the Abarian ruler. Nevertheless, the seneschal bowed low, said, "Your request will be carried to the staff of the royal household, lord," and disappeared behind a hanging.
Some time later, in another part of the palace, Bontarc was saying: "Volna, Volna, listen to me. You can't see that man now."
"I'm going to see him," Volna the Beautiful told her brother. "So it may not be said that a princess of the royal blood hid in fear behind a wall of tragedy."
"But sister! With dear Prince Jlomec still not on the burning barge which will carry him down the River of Ice on the final journey from which—"
"Please, brother," Volna said a little coldly. "I'm going to grant Retoc his audience. Don't you understand? He thinks me weakened by Jlomec's death. Oh, I loved the Prince, yes. He was always so—so quiet and aloof from affairs of state. But I can be strong if strong I have to be."
"Then you won't change your mind?" Bontarc asked. He was a fighting man by nature. The devious paths of diplomacy he set foot on only with reluctance.
For answer Volna said: "Let me prepare to greet the royal visitor." And she watched Bontarc leave her quarters.
At once she clapped her hands. Six serving maids skipped through the hangings into her huge bower and while they clustered jabbering about her like so many excited birds, she undid the fastening at her left shoulder and allowed her gown of mourning white to fall in a crumpled heap at her feet. She stood naked and perfectly still while the serving maids administered to her, each girl a master in one of the cosmetic arts. And Volna, she of the haughty face and glorious body, she who already had been beautiful to look upon, was soon transformed by the cosmetic arts into the loveliest woman the planet Tarth had seen since the Queen Evalla.
Her thoughts went to the dead queen of Ofrid as the maids dressed her again in the mourning garment. Evalla, a woman with beauty to match Volna's, had ruled the most powerful nation Tarth had ever known. Then, Volna smiled, why not another such woman, with hands strong enough, and vision clear enough, to grasp the chalice of power and drink deeply of its heady brew?
"Retoc," she was saying a few moments later.
She clapped her hands. The maids in waiting withdrew, giggling.
"Volna, Volna," said the big Abarian ruler. "You are glorious. Every jek of the journey from the Plains of Ofrid across the ice fields of Nadia, I burned for you." He came very close to her. His face swam before her vision, a hard, strong, handsome face with the cruel eyes of a sadist. Fitting consort for a woman who would rule the world? His lips parted....
Volna, smiling, placed her cool hand over his mouth.
"Then let me put out the fire," she said coolly, "for we have much to discuss."
"But Princess, I—"
"Hush. And what, exactly, were you doing on the Plains of Ofrid?"
Retoc's big face flushed red. Then, when he saw Volna was still smiling, he said: "When we met last, you mentioned that two men stood between you and the throne of Nadia."
"Yes?" said Volna, mocking him, turning swiftly with the light behind her sending its bright beams through the white mourning garment and outlining the seductive curves of her body.
"Jlomec is dead," Retoc said simply.
Still smiling, Volna slapped the big man's face ringingly. Retoc stepped back, startled.
"Fool!" Volna hissed. "I can call the guards. I can have you slain."
"But I—"
"I did not say I was not pleased. But don't lie to me. That isn't why you slew my brother. Well, man, is it?"
Retoc bowed his head. Only in his eyes there was fury. "We'll make a strange pair, Volna, you and I," he said passionately.
"Is it?"
Retoc shook his head slowly.
"You see? I knew it. I knew it was you when they told us Jlomec had been slain, and yet because I know you and know too how you are quick to passion, I told myself you had not done it consciously because I had suggested it to you. Fool. Can I trust such as you?"
"Only Bontarc stands between you and empire. And Bontarc is a simple man."
"As you are a passionate man."
"Yet you need me, Volna. You need the strength of my arm—and my army. What a pair we'll make!"
Volna stepped into the embrace of his big arms and allowed herself to be kissed. Retoc burned for her. He had said so. All men burned for her, she knew that. And, before she was finished, every man of Tarth would kneel at her feet and call her Queen.
Retoc drew back finally, breathing hard. Volna had for him only a cool, mocking smile.
At last he said, "There are some who might say Retoc of Abaria killed the royal prince."
"Dolt! Were you seen?"
Retoc shrugged as if it were not important. "A band of wayfarers on the Ofridian Plain. They were so frightened, they fled at once. After I had wounded the white giant."
Volna's eyes flashed suddenly. "There was someone else? You did not kill him?"
"I tried to. He escaped, Princess."
"Then you are more a fool than I thought."
"But I—"
"Begone! We can't be seen together too much. Take quarters in Nadia City, and let me know where you are. You understand?"
"Yes, Princess."
She allowed him to kiss her hand, then he withdrew. A few moments later, at her summons, the seneschal appeared. Subtly her face had changed. No longer was she the desiring and desirous princess. Instead, she was a grieving sister, whose brother's body still lay in state in the royal palace.
The seneschal, whose name was Prokliam, bowed obsequiously. He knew that by custom the body of a royal Nadian floated down the River of Ice in the company of two living servants—one man and one woman—who would perish with him in the Place of the Dead. He knew also that he had been Jlomec's favorite and now lived in constant fear that the Princess Volna would decree that he, Prokliam, must accompany his dead master on the Journey of No Return, to serve him in death as he had served him in life.
"Yes, lady?" the frightened Prokliam asked.
"Bontarc, our king, grieves mightily for the dead prince," Volna said.
"All Nadia grieves for Jlomec, lady," Prokliam said, and added hastily: "Although I must admit I do not grieve more than the next man. No, no, it is a mistake to think I was Jlomec's favorite."
"Be that as it may Bontarc grieves so that for a while at least some of the affairs of state will be in my hands."
"I hear and understand lady."
"Good. If anyone comes—anyone at all, whether wayfarers from Ofrid or others—with news of how Jlomec died, they are to be brought at once to me. Is that understood?"
"Yes, my princess." Prokliam the seneschal bowed low once more.
"Serve me well in this, Prokliam, and you will be rewarded in measure."
Prokliam smiled. "I will be the personification of discretion," he said boldly, baring his toothless old gums.
"Then perhaps I will still the rumors that you were the dead Jlomec's favorite."
Prokliam dropped at the royal feet and touched his lips to the royal toes. Then he bowed out of the room.
Volna stared for many moments at her beautiful face in the mirror. Queen, she thought. She said it aloud:
"Queen Volna."
E
arlier that day, on the ice fields half a dozen jeks from Nadia City, B'ronth the Utalian had sprinted boldly across the snow toward the girl and her elderly male companion. This had taken considerable effort, because B'ronth the Utalian had not been endowed with an abundance of courage. But B'ronth was a poor man, as Utalia was a poor country; a bag of gold would be a veritable fortune to him. Like most cowards, B'ronth had one passion which could over-ride his timidity: that passion in B'ronth's case was wealth.
The old man was fumbling clumsily for his whip-sword when B'ronth hurtled at them. The girl screamed:
"Look out, Father Hammeth! Look out!"
B'ronth smiled. They would not see the smile, of course. B'ronth, a chameleon man, was invisible. They would see his footprints in the snow, true. They would know him for a Utalian and understand his invisibility. But still the advantage of invisibility would be his. It had always been so when a Utalian fought. It would always be so.
B'ronth leaped upon the old man even as he prepared to strike out with the whip-sword. B'ronth was both naked and unarmed. The sword lashed whining at air a foot from his face. B'ronth wrenched its haft from the old man's hand. Hammeth stumbled back.
B'ronth swung the whip-sword. He was no duelist. A duelist would lunge and thrust with the whip-sword, allowing its mobile point some degree of freedom by controlling it deftly. A non-duelist like B'ronth would hack and slash, the deadly sword-point whipping about, curling, slashing, striking.
Hammeth held up his hands to defend himself. The whip-sword whined in the cold air. The girl screamed. Hammeth's right hand flew from his arm and blood jetted from the stump. Hammeth sank to the ground and lay there in a spreading pool of crimson. His eyes remained open. He was staring with hatred at B'ronth. In a matter of minutes, B'ronth knew, he would bleed to death. B'ronth turned on the girl.
She stood before him swaying. She had almost swooned, but as B'ronth approached her, she flung herself at him, crying Hammeth's name, and they both fell down in the snow. B'ronth let the whip-sword fall from his fingers. Half a bag of gold for a dead girl, but the whole bag if she lived. She fought like a wild cat and for a few moments B'ronth regretted dropping the weapon and actually feared for his life. But soon, his courage returning and his whole being contemplating the bag of gold, he subdued the girl.
She lay back exhausted in the snow. "Please," she said. "Please bind his arm. He'll bleed to death. Please."
B'ronth said nothing. Ylia staggered to her feet, then collapsed and crawled on her knees to Hammeth. The blood jetted from the stump of his arm. He was watching her. A little smile touched the corners of his mouth but pain made his eyes wild.
B'ronth licked his lips. He had earned his bag of gold and, earning it, thought of more wealth. He thought:why should I accept one bag of gold from a common Abarian soldier when there are millions of bags of gold in Nadia City? He could deliver the girl, who obviously knew something the Abarians did not wish the Nadians to know, to Nadia City. He could sell her to the Nadians. Or, if the Abarians outbid them, then the Abarians....
Bruised, her cloak in tatters, Ylia reached Hammeth. His eyes blinked. He smiled at her again, smiling this time with his whole face. Then he turned his head away and his eyes remained open and staring.
"You ... killed ... him," Ylia said, sobbing.
B'ronth dragged her to her feet. "Lulukee!" he called. "Lulukee!" Where was the boy?
Lulukee did not answer. Cursing, B'ronth stripped the corpse and dressed in its warm clothing. The blood on the right sleeve was already stiff with cold. Where could Lulukee have gone off to? wondered B'ronth. Well, no matter. They were only a few jeks from Nadia City, where wealth awaited him....
"Come," he said. He dragged the girl along. She looked back at the dead old man until a snow drift hid him from sight.
After the Utalian had dragged the beautiful girl beyond the ridges of snow, Lulukee the Nadian came down into the valley. He was a small boy of some sixty winters who, like many of the Nadians who did not come from their country's single large city, had lived a hard life as an ice-field nomad. He had seen an opportunity to profit in the service of B'ronth the Utalian, but had not expected this service to include murder. Thus when the Utalian had called him, expecting the boy to drag his supply sled down into the snow-valley, Lulukee had remained hidden. Now, though, he made his way to the body of the dead man and, scavengerlike, went over it with the hope of turning a profit by B'ronth's deed.
In that he was disappointed. B'ronth had taken the dead man's snow cloak and his whip-sword: there was nothing left for Lulukee's gleaning. He was about to turn and trudge back the way he had come, when he realized that if he did so, if he exposed himself on the higher wind-ridges, B'ronth might see him. Therefore he remained a long time with the frozen body of Father Hammeth, actually falling into a light slumber while he waited.
He awoke with a start. He blinked, then cowered away from the apparition which confronted him. It was a man, but such a man as Lulukee the Nadian had never seen before, a superbly muscled man a head taller than the tall Abarians themselves.
"Where's the girl?" the man demanded.
"I—I don't know, lord."
"How did this happen?" The man looked down with compassion at Father Hammeth's corpse.
"I only just arrived, l-lord."
"You lie," the big man said. "You were sleeping here. You'll tell me, or—"
Lulukee blanched. He owed no loyalty to B'ronth the Utalian. If indeed he remained loyal he might be implicated in the murder of the old man. He said: "It was B'ronth the Utalian."
"Where is he?"
"G-going to Nadia City, I think."
"Alone?"
"No, lord. With his prisoner. A—a lovely woman."
"Ylia!" the giant cried. "You! How are you called?"
"I am Lulukee of Nadia, lord."
"Lead me to the city. Lead me after them."
"But lord—"
"Lead me." The giant did not shout. He did not menace of glower or threaten. Yet there was something in his bearing which made it impossible for the frightened Lulukee to do anything but obey. "Yes, lord," he said.
"Tell me—" as they started out, the boy's sled reluctantly left behind—"is this B'ronth the Utalian in Retoc's pay?"
"No, I don't think so. He works alone, lord. Reaping profit wherever he can."
"And he took the girl unwillingly?"
"Yes, lord."
"He won't profit in this venture," Bram vowed.
The wind howled behind them. Six jeks ahead of them was Nadia City.
"Can't you see I'm busy? Can't you see I have no time for the likes of you?" Prokliam the seneschal whined in self-pity.
"Then make time," B'ronth said boldly, his cowardice obscured by dreams of avarice. "What I have brought through the Ice Gates is important to your ruler."
"Bontarc of Nadia," said the seneschal haughtily, "does not waste his time on every Utalian vagabond who reaches his court."
"True. But I assume Bontarc of Nadia wishes to know exactly how his brother, the Prince Jlomec, died?"
Prokliam fought to keep his puckered old face impassive. But his mind was racing and his heart throbbed painfully. Could the Utalian know anything about that? If so, and if he, Prokliam, brought this B'ronth before the Princess Volna as she had ordered....
"Wait here," Prokliam snapped arrogantly. "And keep your cloak on. We don't want invisible Utalians floating about the palace."
B'ronth offered a mock bow. Prokliam turned to go, then whirled about again. "If you're lying, wasting my time—"
B'ronth smiled unctuously. "In the ante-room, being amused by your palace guards, is one who has been on the Plains of Ofrid quite recently."
"So?"
"When the Prince Jlomec was there. She saw him slain."
"Wait here," said Prokliam a little breathlessly. He pushed the hanging aside and stalked down a corridor, and around a bend, and up a flight of stone stairs. He was busy, all right. That had been no lie. Preparations must be made for the funeral games of the Prince Jlomec, to which all the nobility of Tarth had been invited. But this, obviously, was more important. On this Prokliam's life might depend....
"Are they checking way-passes, lord?" Lulukee asked the big, silent man at his side. Ahead of them, filing slowly through the Ice Gates, were hundreds of visitors entering Nadia City for the funeral games. A flat-bottomed air-car hovered overhead, peltasts leaning over its sides, ready. Guards flanked the Ice Gates with drawn whip-swords, as if admitting the superiority of Abarian weapons of war.
"We'll get through," Bram Forest vowed. "Tell me, Lulukee, if you brought a prisoner to the city who might be worth much to the Abarians but also to the Nadians, and if you were intent on getting the biggest profit, where would you take her?"
"If I had great courage, lord?"
"If you dreamed of reward."
"I would take her to the royal palace, lord, to Bontarc the King or to his sister, Princess Volna the Beautiful, who, some say, is the real power behind the Nadian throne although Bontarc is a great soldier."
They had reached the gate. "Way passes," a bored guard said.
Lulukee mumbled something uncertainly. His heart beat painfully against his ribs. His brain refused to function. There was intrigue here, he could sense that. More intrigue than he cared to have a hand in. As a Nadian citizen, he owned a way pass, of course. But the giant? Obviously the giant did not. Lulukee was sorry he had ever agreed to go along with B'ronth the Utalian. Now he only wanted to get out of the entire situation as quickly—and safely—as possible.
He pointed an accusing finger at Bram Forest. "Hehas no way pass!" Lulukee cried.
The guards stiffened, their whip-swords ready. They looked at Bram Forest. Overhead, the air-car hovered, its peltasts stationed there in the event of trouble, their slings poised.
Ylia was in there somewhere, a prisoner. Bram Forest spurned violence for its own sake, but Ylia might need him. Ylia, who had nursed him back to health when Retoc had left him for dead on the parched Plains of Ofrid. Ylia, the lovely.
"I'm going through," Bram Forest said softly. "Don't try to stop me."
For answer, the nearest guard let his left hand drop.
It had been a signal. Overhead, the peltasts drew back their slings. "Will you go in peace?" the guard asked, his eyes narrow slits now, his right arm tensed to bring the whip-sword around.
Bram Forest waited. Every muscle in his superbly-conditioned body cried for action, but he would not initiate it.
The guard pointed back along the path across the ice fields, where hundreds of visitors to the city were waiting impatiently. "Then go," he said harshly, "before your flesh feeds the stilt-birds on the banks of the River of Ice."
The guard raised his sword menacingly. Standing rigidly still and giving no warning, Bram Forest lashed out with his left fist, hitting the guard in the mouth. Lips split, teeth flew, blood covered the guard's face. Someone screamed. The guard fell, but his companion lashed out with his own whip-sword. Bram Forest lunged to one side and grabbed the sword-arm, twisting it. The guard howled, dropping his weapon. Lulukee made a dive for it. But the guard, his legs still free, kicked Lulukee in the face. As he fell, his senses blurring, Lulukee wondered why he had made that desperate, foolish attempt to help the big, silent man. He could not answer the question in mere words. But there was something about him, something about Bram Forest, which drew loyalty from you even as the sun drew dew from the ground....
Bram Forest lifted the second guard by sword-girdle and scruff of neck and held him aloft. The guard's arms and legs flailed frantically. "No!" he screamed up at the peltasts. "No...."
But they had already unleashed their first volley of stones, pelting the helpless guard until he lost consciousness. Bram Forest flung him aside, leaped over the first fallen guard's supine body, and plunged recklessly into the crowds milling just inside the Ice Gates.
"He went that way!" a voice screamed.
"That way!"
"Over there!"
"There he is!"
It was an ancient city, with narrow, tortuous alleyways and overhanging buildings and little-used passageways. The wide streets—the few there were—mobbed with people.
For all his size, the giant had disappeared.
Lulukee picked himself up, dusted himself off, and showed his way pass to the guard. The guard said nothing. He had lost three teeth and his mouth was swollen, painful. Lulukee sensed that somehow the little he had done to help Bram Forest was all he would ever do for him. Yet he felt with a strange pride he did not fathom that although his role in the saga of the mysterious giant had come to an end, it was the most important event in his life and would remain so if he lived to be six-hundred. He felt somehow—and could not explain why he felt this—as if in his small way he had done something to make the world Tarth a better place in which to live.
Whistling, he pushed his way through the crowds and was lost to sight just as the giant who went before him.
"B'ronth of Utalia!" Prokliam the seneschal proclaimed. Volna the Beautiful nodded. The doddering old seneschal had already told her about the Utalian. She was prepared to receive him now. If he knew what he claimed to know, if he knew the true details of the death of Prince Jlomec, then he must be silenced. Naturally, he wanted gold. They always wanted gold. But gold was not the way to silence them. Gold never worked. It only made them greedy for more.
With Volna were, instead of her usual ladies in waiting, two discreet palace guards. Grinning, she looked at their whip-swords. That was the way to silence one such as B'ronth the Utalian.
"He may enter," Volna told the seneschal. Prokliam bowed out, saying:
"And Princess, you will not forget—"
"No, Prokliam, I won't forget. You hardly knew the Prince Jlomec at all, did you? You certainly couldn't have been his favorite."
"Princess," breathed the seneschal tremulously as he withdrew.
A moment later, B'ronth the Utalian entered the royal chamber. He wore a snow-cloak. He was all but invisible except for the snow-cloak. He was, eerily, a disembodied cloak floating through air. Although, noticed Volna, if you looked closely you could see the faintest suggestion of a man's head above the cloak, as if you saw the rich wall tapestries of the room through a transparent, head-shaped glass. Likewise, the suggestion of arms and legs....
"You are B'ronth?" An unnecessary question, but Volna had not yet made up her mind what must be done.
"Yes, majesty," the cloak said in a different but somehow unctuous voice.
"You are alone?"
"No, majesty," said the cloak.
"Then—?"
"A girl. A wayfarer of the Plains of Ofrid. I accompany her."
"And the story you have to tell?"
"I realize, majesty, how the royal Princess must grieve at the loss of her royal brother, the Prince. I realize...."
"To the point, man. Get to the point. Are you trying to say you know how Prince Jlomec was slain? You know who killed him?"
"Yes," said the cloak boldly, eagerly.
Princess Volna smiled. Perhaps something in that smile warned B'ronth the Utalian. But of course, the warning came too late. In a quick jerky motion, the cloak retreated toward the doorway. "Princess...." B'ronth said.
Princess Volna told her guards: "Kill him."
B'ronth the Utalian had time for one brief scream which, if a sound could, seemed to embody all his frustrated dreams of wealth. Then one of the guards moved swiftly, his arm streaking out. The whip-sword in his hand lashed, blurring, toward the cloak. Bright red blood welled, jetted.
B'ronth the Utalian's head, no longer invisible, rolled on the floor at Volna's lovely feet. "Clean that up," she told one of the guards. To the other she said: "Now fetch the girl."
"Mind, lord, I don't question you," Hultax the Abarian said. "But it's just—"
"Did you send the message?" Retoc cut him off.
"As you ordered, sire. Yes."
"Good."
"Sire, I hate inactivity. I loathe it. I am a soldier."
"As I am," said Retoc slowly, his hard cruel eyes staring at something Hultax could not—and would never be able to—see.
"So we just sit here in this rented house in Nadia City, cooling our heels. It doesn't make sense, sire."
"Sense?" mused Retoc. "What is sense? Is it victory and power for the strongest? Well, is it?"
"Yes, lord," Hultax responded. "But—"
"And you sent the message? Our legions will come?"
"Yes, lord. Two days hence they'll be encamped on the ice fields three jeks march from the city gates. But I don't see—"
"You obey, Hultax. I see. I do the seeing."
"But I thought you ... the Princess Volna ... together...."
"The Princess can serve me, now. If she can deliver Nadia without a fight, then Tarth is mine, Hultax, don't you see? In two days all the royal blood of all the royal families of Tarth will be assembled here in Nadia for the funeral games. If Bontarc's army doesn't interfere, then I will be master of Tarth."
"But if Bontarc finds out—"
"That, Hultax," said Retoc with a smile, "is why you sent the message."
"My sire," said the proud soldier Hultax humbly.
Soon, thought Retoc, all Tarth would call him that.My sire....
Ahead of Bram Forest loomed the ramparts of the palace. He must hurry. He knew he had to hurry. He pushed impatiently through the crowd. Several times men looked up angrily, and would have said something. But when they saw his face, they turned away.
What they saw in Bram Forest's face made them afraid.
"Majesty?" Prokliam the seneschal said.
"Well?" Volna demanded. "Didn't the guards send you for the girl?"
"Majesty, I was thinking...."
"Well, Prokliam, what is it? Didn't you go for the girl?"
"Not yet, majesty, begging your pardon...."
"If you have something to say, then say it. And get the girl."
"Majesty, a seneschal knows the palace. It is his job...."
"I warn you, Prokliam, I have little patience today." Her anxiety was evident.
"No one wishes to be chosen," Prokliam blurted quickly, boldly, "even as I did not wish to be chosen to accompany the body of Prince Jlomec on the Journey of No Return. Now that you have spared me, in your royal benevolence, I thought I might in turn advise you...."
"Yes, what is it, man?"
"You should not have killed the Utalian, majesty. If it is ordained that a living man and a living woman accompany the Prince's body to the Place of the Dead, to die there with him, their spirits serving him in death, why choose from among the palace staff? We all have family, we all have friends, we all stand something to lose. But majesty, if you were to break with tradition, if you were to send instead two strangers whose loss meant nothing to the palace, the palace staff would love and revere you even more than they already do."
Volna's beautiful face smiled at him. He did not know what she was thinking. He never knew. No one did. She might reward him or have him slain on the spot. "Why do you tell me this, Prokliam?" she asked.
"For saving me when it was thought I would accompany—"
"No. There must be another reason."
"If you do this deed and if the palace and the people love you for it, and if the scepter of power should slip from Bontarc's hand to yours, and if, when it came time to select your prime minister...."
"Ha! Ha! Ha! We have an ambitious palace butler."
"But surely you—"
"Yes, Prokliam. I understand. I won't deny it. Perhaps I had the Utalian slain impetuously. But there's still the girl."
"I'll fetch her at once, majesty."
"And if," mused Volna, no longer aware of the seneschal's presence, "we could find another stranger, a man, to accompany the body of Prince Jlomec on the Journey of No Return, not only the palace, but the people as well would love me. A stranger...."
"Take me to your King," Bram Forest told the palace guard.
The guard smirked. "Do you think any stranger in the realm is granted an audience with King Bontarc, fool?"
"It is a matter of life and death."
"But whose life and death?" demanded the guard, roaring with laughter. "Yours, idiot?"
"It is about Ylia the Wayfarer."
"I know of no Ylia the Wayfarer. Begone, dolt!"
"It is about Prince Jlomec."
The guard's eyes narrowed. The word had been passed by no less a person than Prokliam the seneschal that anyone with information concerning the death of the royal Prince should be brought at once not to Bontarc but to Princess Volna. Could the guard, could he, Porfis, do less?
"Very well," he said. "Come with me."
Unarmed, but aware of his giant's strength and the mission which had seen him spend the first hundred years of his life in a crypt on Earth, Bram Forest went with the guard.
The way was long, through chambers in which priceless tapestries hung, through narrow, musty corridors into which the light of day barely penetrated, through rooms in which ladies in waiting and courtiers talked and joked, up bare stone stairs and through heavy wooden doors which Porfis the guard opened with a key which hung at his belt. The doors opened slowly.
Bram Forest entered a large room. It was, he could see at a glance, a woman's bower. Someone was standing at the far end of the room, in shadow. He squinted. He took two slow steps into the room. He began to run.
"Ylia! Ylia!" he cried.
Too late he saw the fetters binding her arms. Too late he saw her bite savagely at something and twist her neck and spit the gag from her mouth. Too late he heard her cry:
"Bram! Bram Forest! Behind you!"
He turned barely in time to see Porfis the guard, his whip-sword raised overhead hilt-first. He lifted his arm, but it was swept aside in the downward rush of the sword. Something exploded behind his eyes and all eternity seemed to open beneath his feet. He plunged into blackness with Ylia's name on his lips.
Unconscious, he was taken with Ylia through subterranean passages to the Royal Dock on the River of Ice. The barge with Jlomec's embalmed body waited. It was very cold on the river. The Place of the Dead beckoned from the unseen end of the Journey of No Return.