The man staggered. Sander felt a searing heat lick his own upper arm. Then Kai made a final leap, carrying Maxim down, the rod whirling out of his grasp. Maxim screamed, a sound that was cut off with shocking suddenness as Sander clawed his way once more erect, drawing himself up by pulling on the base of a shattered installation.
16
Sander groped for words to make clear to himself the nature of what filled the air and weighed so heavily upon him he could hardly move. It throbbed in waves of raging hate as if the very walls were the living tissue of some vast creature. The fisher drew back, his muzzle foully stained. He reared, snarling, hissing, striking out in the air with extended claws, though there was nothing visible to threaten him.
Sander swayed back and forth. Only his grip upon the base of the shattered installation kept him upright, for that mighty rage sent impulses of force through the chamber to beat at him like physical blows. The wire around his head was hot agony, but Sander fought back. His teeth were bared like the animals’. He voiced, hoarsely and defiantly, the smith’s chant.
He was not a thing, he was a man! And a man he would remain. Step by wavering step, he clawed his way along the base that was his support. His attention was fixed on the hammer, which lay a little distance from the body he willed himself not to look at. Kai might have brought Maxim down, but his own blow had opened the way for the fisher.
Sander stooped, his hand closed upon the haft of the heavy tool. And once his fingers were around that familiar grip, he felt a small sense of victory.
He was a man!
With care he turned around to see the fishers drawn close to Fanyi and Rhin. Their fangs were visible. The koyot snapped at the air, white bits of froth gathering at the corners of his lips. The fishers were battle-ready, yet saw no foe to attack.
Fanyi sat erect on the riding pad. Her face was drawn, haggard with strain and pain. With head thrown back, she too mouthed words, words he could not understand. As he tottered toward them, seeming to breast some hostile current as he moved, she met his gaze.
“It will not let us go,” she said simply.
“I know the doors—”
“There will be no doors now, not unless it wishes.”
He did not want to accept her certainty. But before he could speak again, she grasped the pendant.
“It will let me come to it—with this I can reach it—”
It seemed that when she spoke there was a lessening of the pressure about them, that the rage, which was almost a tangible cloud to wall them in, ebbed a fraction.
“No!” Sander raised the hammer.
“If I go, I can perhaps make terms—”
He could read the truth in her eyes. She knew that if she went she would be lost—as lost as that husk of a man Kai had killed to save them all.
“I am half of the blood of those who have always been its servants. It will listen—”
“To no one,” Sander returned. “The thing is mad, you have read that for yourself in its thoughts. You will save nothing, you will accomplish nothing.”
“To get me it will bargain.” She refused to accept his refusal. “I can get it to let you go forth, you and these—” With a gesture she indicated the animals. “If you are free, you can carry a warning. The White Ones must not be allowed to reach here, the Traders must be prepared.”
“If this thing is all-seeing, all-knowing,” Sander replied stubbornly, “then it will never let anyone free to carry such a warning. Why should it?”
“There is a difference,” Fanyi said slowly. “If I go to it willingly and without any barriers raised, it will gain more of what it wishes than if it must wrest my strength from me. It wants me whole, not maimed. To it you are of no value, save that you have disturbed it by violence. It would be willing to let you go—thinking that would be only for a short space of time until it can muster into its forces those others whom it has summoned. Do you not see—I can buy you time!”
Sander shook his head. “There is no way you can trust any bargain. Listen—” His mind was working faster now, like a runner who has gained his second wind. “Can you find where this thing is?”
She must have had an instant flash of his intentions. “You cannot! Its defenses are complete, there is no way to reach it save by its will.”
“But you can go—”
“Yes, if I surrender my will. It will have gained a victory—and you can profit by that.”
“Yes, in my way.” Sander swung the hammer a fraction. “Can it overhear us?” He glanced from one line of the shattered machines to the other.
“I do not think so. Or else it does not care what we say. It can strive to control us through its own will, and it deems itself invulnerable.” A little color had returned to her wan cheeks.
Sander once more swung the hammer. With it in hand he felt himself, somehow apart from the fear of things he could not touch. This “thing” thought itself invulnerable, yet it had not been able to defend the outer part of its own domain without Maxim. And Maxim had died as perhaps none of his kind had done for generations, by the fighting fury of an animal.
The smith had no plans, only a determination. Fanyi’s offer to surrender to the thing—that could even be dictated by a residue of its attack upon her when she was imprisoned in the box. Sander was sure of one thing—no trust could be put in any bargain with this enemy. To even try to bargain was a defeat, for the Presence that ruled this complex would consider that to be an admission of weakness. It could promise anything and break the oath as it pleased.
But he did believe that Fanyi might be the key to reach it. He raised a hand, ran a thumb along the band on his forehead. There was no “reason” in the working of the old superstition, yet work it did. If he could take the force of the pain that had struck at him before, they would have a bare chance—a small one, but still it was there.
“You have a plan.” Fanyi did not ask a question, she made a statement. Leaning forward on the riding pad, she gazed at him intently.
“No plan,” Sander shook his head. “We do not know enough to plan. We can only go—and hope to find a chance—”
“We? But you cannot! It will not let you!”
Once more Sander touched that band. “We cannot be sure of that until we try. You say it cannot deal with the animals?”
“It could not with the fishers. They tried to keep me from it before. Though what it can send against us when aroused—that I do not know.”
He remembered the many-armed metal creature. But he now knew how to handle one of them. And he would have two rods, the one he had taken earlier from Maxim and the new one the man had wielded here. Sander went to the crumpled body to reclaim it.
When he returned, he pushed the first of his trophies into Fanyi’s hands. With a few words he made plain how it was used.
“You will do this, you are determined?” the girl asked, when he had done.
“Is there any other way? A man holds to life while he can. I believe that we are dead unless we can best this Power.”
“I tell you—I think it would let you go if I went to it willingly.”
“You will go to it willing, if you agree,” he told her. “But I shall go with you. Perhaps it will know that I am with you—but this we shall do—if you go ahead it may believe that you have eluded me, that I once more am hunting. Not too far apart—we must be close enough so that it cannot take you and perhaps shut me out.”
Fanyi sat silent for a moment. Then she slipped from Rhin’s back.
“This is an action that will bring you to your death, smith. But be sure of one thing. Though I seem willing, it shall not use me for its purposes. I have this.” She weighed the rod in her hand. “It can be turned one way as well as the other. And that cannot use a body blasted beyond repair. What of our companions?”
“They, too, can play a part,” Sander said. He pulled the gear from Rhin’s back. “This we shall leave.” He did not add that they might well never need any of those supplies again. On top of the pile he placed his dart thrower, though he kept his long knife, principally because he had worn it so long he was hardly aware that it still hung at his belt.