Chapter 18

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 awakened 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 lifeboat 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 the 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 corse 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 here 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 to him far from his court. Then would the ancient wrong be redressed.

“There are those men born to rule, 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 in his place. 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 them, 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 to 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. But I had more important things to think about than dreams. For just a moment I couldn’t remember what it was I had to do; then with a start I remembered where I was. I had lain down on the couch and pulled the headpiece 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? It was better to lie here and tell myself it was all a mistake. Maybe I should go back to sleep and wake up later and try it 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 pitchblack cotton wool.

Then, abruptly, I was aware of myself--not the gross mechanism of bone and muscle, but the neuro-electric field generated within 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 and 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, out 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. It loomed alien, inscrutable: the invader who had stolen my brain.

I withdrew. To dissipate my force was senseless. I must select a point of attack, hurl against it all the power of my surviving identity ... before it too dwindled away and the abstraction that was Legion vanished forevermore.

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 outré 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 Building, 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 of 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 blinding emotions; and all lay now under my overt control.

Without further hesitation I tapped the stored Vallonian knowledge, encompassed it, made it mine. Then 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 shield, laid firm hold on an 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. Instantly my eye coordinated 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, striding 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 ring-board 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 darkly. He 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,” I heard my voice say. 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.