“If we force them on now, they will panic!”
I had been trying to hold them under mental control for the past half mile, but I could do it no longer. We dropped out of our saddles, and I stood between the two mounts, one hand on each strong neck, striving with all I possessed to keep them from bolting. Then Kemoc’s mind joined with mine, giving me added assistance, and the horses, still snorting, their eyes rolling, foam in sticky strings about their jaws, trembled but stood firm.
While I was so concentrating upon that task I had not seen beyond, and now I was shocked by a sharp flash of fire across the sky. There was, in answer, an ominous grumbling unlike any natural thunder I had ever heard before. And it was not born in the sky above, but out of the ground under us, for that shuddered. The horses screamed, but they did not try to bolt. They crowded under my hold even as I clung to them, dimly feeling in that contact an anchor in a world gone mad.
Those wan lights sprinkled here and there flamed higher, sent sharp points of pallid radiance skyward. Again the crack of lightning, a reply from the earth under us. A long moment of utter silence, then fury such as no man could imagine broke over and around us.
The earth heaved in long rolls, as if under its once stable surface waves moved towards the southern highlands. Wind which had been missing all day burst into frantic life, whipping the candled trees and bushes, tearing the air from our nostrils. One could not fight this—one lost his very identity in such an alien storm. We could only endure and hope, very faintly hope, that we could outlast the raving elements of earth, fire, air, and then water. For there was rain—or could you truly name such stinging lashes of water rain?
If the force of that storm drove us nearly witless, what must it have been like in those heights where it was brought to a climax? Mountains walked that night, lost themselves in vast waves of earth which ate away their sides, changed lowlands to highlands, and reversed the process by quake, slide, every violent action that could be evoked. The barrier formed by nature between Estcarp and Karsten, which we had kept fortified for years, was wrung, squeezed, wrought by a force which was initiated by human will, and once begun there was no altering of that destructive pattern.
Mind to mind, hand to hand, Kemoc and I made one during that terror. Afterwards we could piece together but a little of the night. Truly it was the end of a world—hearing and sight were soon torn from us, touch only remained and we clung to that sense with a fierce intensity, lest, losing it, we might lose all else, including that which made us what we were.
There was an end—though we had not dared to hope there could ever be. Dark as the matted clouds were over us, still there was light, gray as the tree candles, yet it was a light of the day rather than the weird glow of the storm. We still stood on the road, Kemoc and I and the horses, as if we had been frozen so amid the wild breakage of nature. The ground was solid under our feet, and a measure of sanity had returned, so that our minds might crawl slowly out of the hiding holes we had burrowed within ourselves.
Surprisingly, there was little storm wrack about us. A few branches down, the surface of the road wet and shining. As one we looked to the south. There the clouds were still thick, no gray relieved their night black, and now and again I thought I still saw the spark of lightning.
“What—?” Kemoc began, and then shook his head.
We did not question that the Council had used the Power as never before had it been done in Estcarp. I had very little doubt that Pagar was at last stopped. To be caught in the mountains during that!
I smoothed the wet, tangled mane of my mount. He snorted, stamped, waking out of some ill dream. As I got to saddle I could only marvel at our survival, which still seemed like a miracle. Kemoc had also mounted. This is our hour!
Mind contact seemed proper, as if whatever we attempted now might awaken some of the force not yet exhausted. We gave the Torgians light rein and this time they broke into their normal, country-covering pace. The day lightened and suddenly a bird broke the cloak of silence with a questioning note. All the pressure and drain had vanished; we were freed and the road was before us, with time now our worst enemy.
From the main highway Kemoc swung off along a lesser way, and here the debris of the storm slowed our pace. But we kept going, speeding up wherever we had an open space.
Whether we went by obscure paths, or whether the whole of Estcarp lay exhausted from shock that day, we did not know. But we saw no one, not even in the fields about the isolated farms. We might have ridden through a deserted country. And thus fortune favored us.
At nightfall we reached the farmstead with signs of long neglect where we could eat. Turning the Torgians into pasture, we saddled their three fellows Kemoc had left in waiting there. Then we took turns at a quick snatch of sleep. The moon was well up, not blanketed this time, when Kemoc’s touch awakened me.
“This is the hour,” he half-whispered.
And later, as we slid from the saddles and looked down into a hollow where a grove surrounded an age darkened building, he did not have to add:
“This is the Place!”
* * *
* * *
IV
THE LONGER I studied the building in the cup and its surroundings, the more I was conscious of a strange shifting, a rippling—as if between it and us hung a nearly invisible curtain. Distortion of shadow and light, of which I could not quite be certain, blurred a tree, elongated a bush, made even stone waver and move. Yet in another instant all was clear again.
Kemoc held out his maimed hand and my fingers closed about it. Instantly I was drawn into his mind, with an intensity I had not before known. He launched a probe, straight through all that moon and night-cloaked scene, down into the heart of the Place itself.
There was resistance, a wall as defensive to our attack as might be the stronghold of Es to the prick of a single dart gun. Kemoc withdrew speedily, only to launch for a second time his invisible spear, this time with more force, enough to make me gasp as it drained energy from me in one great gulp.
This time we hit that wall, yes, but we went through it, straight on. And then—It was like throwing a very dry branch on a fire—a blaze, fierce, welcoming, rejoicing, feeding—Kaththea! If I had ever faintly believed during the hours we had been riding that she might be changed, that perhaps she would not welcome our interference—I need not have. This was recognition, welcome, a wild desire to be free, all in one. Then, after that first moment of reply, swift apprehension and warning.
She could not give us any accurate idea of which lay between us, other than what we could see for ourselves. But that there were guards, and not human warriors, she knew. Also she dared not move to meet us, and warned off any contact by mind, lest those warders be alarmed. Thus she abruptly broke our thread of communication.
“So be it,” Kemoc said softly.
I broke his hold, my hand reaching for sword hilt. Yet I knew that steel would have no part in any fight we faced this night.
“To the left, passing under the trees, then a quick run for the wall at that point—” My scouting knowledge took over, seeing each feature of that oddly fluid ground which could be put to our use.
“Yes. . . .”
Kemoc allowed me the lead, deferring to my scout craft. But he was no tyro at this game either, and we flitted down the slope with all the skill we could summon. I discovered that to glance ahead quickly and then away after a single second or so of regard cleared my sight, made that wavering less distracting.
We reached the edge of the wood and the outer defense of the Place fronted us. It was as if we had run full face into a rampart of glass. To the sight there was nothing, not even anything to touch when I struck out—but we could not stir a step ahead.
“Mind—think it away!” Kemoc said, not as if to me, but in self-encouragement.