fuge in his universe. Only the Black Bellers could have made a Lord forget his perpetual war against every other Lord. Judubra was resetting his defenses when the enemy burst through. All three Lords had been forced to gate through to WolfFs palace in this universe.
They had chosen his palace because they had heard that he was now soft and weak; he would not try to kill them if they were friendly. But the palace seemed to be vacant except for the taloses, the half-metal, half-protein machines that were servants and guards for Wolff and Chryseis.
“Wolff gone?” Kickaha said. “Chryseis, too? Where?”
“I do not know,” Anana said. “We had little time to investigate. We were forced to gate out of the control room without knowing where we were going. We came out in the Temple of Ollimaml, from which we fled into the city of Talanac. We were fortunate to run into Clatatol and her gang. Not four days later, the Drachelanders invaded Talanac. I don’t know how the Black Bellers managed to possess von liirbat, von Swindebarn, and the others.”
“They gated through to Dracheland,” he said, “and they took over the two kings without the kings’ subjects knowing it, of course. They probably didn’t know that I was in Talanac, but they must have known about me, I suppose, from films and recordings in the palace. They came here after you Lords, but heard that I was here also and so came after me.”
“Why would they want you?”
“Because I know a lot about the secret gates and traps in the palace. For one thing, they won’t
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be able to get into the armory unless they know the pattern of code-breaking. That’s why they wanted me alive. For the information I had.”
She asked, “Are there any aircraft in the palace?”
“Wolff never had any.”
“I think the Bellers will be bringing in some from my world. But they’ll have to dismantle them to get them through the narrow gates in the palace. Then they’ll have to put them together again. But when the humans see the aircraft, the Bellers will have to do some explaining.”
“They can tell the people they’re magical vessels,” Kickaha said.
Kickaha wished he had the Horn of Shambari-men, or of Ilmarwolkin, as it was sometimes called. When the proper sequence of notes was blown from it at a resonant point in any universe, that point became a gate between two universes. The Horn could also be used to gate between various points on this planet. All that business of matching crescents of gates could be bypassed. But she had not seen the Horn. Probably Wolff had taken it with him, wherever he had gone.
The days and nights that followed were uncomfortable. They paced back and forth to exercise and also let Petotoc stretch his muscles while Kickaha held a rope tied around Petotoc’s neck. They slept jerkily. Though they had agreed not to burn the lamp much, because they wanted to save fuel, they kept it lit a good part of the time.
The third day, many men came aboard. The anchor was hauled and the boat was, apparently, rowed into dock. Sounds of cargo being loaded filtered through the wooden bulkheads and decks.
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These lasted for forty-eight hours without ceasing. Then the boat left the dock, and the oarsmen went to work. The hammer of the pacer, the creak of locks, the dip and whish of oars went on for a long time.
VIII
THE JOURNEY took about six days. Then the boat stopped, the anchor was run out, and sounds of unloading beat at the walls of the chamber. Kick-aha was sure that they had traveled westward to the edge of the Great Plains.
When all seemed quiet, he swam out. Coming up on the landward side, he saw docks, other boats, a fire in front of a large log building, and a low, heavily wooded hill to the east.
It was the terminus frontier town for the river boats. Here the trade goods were transferred to the giant wagons, which would then set out in caravans toward the Great Trade Path.