But only a few of them issued from their small private sections, gathering in the aisle. The line then faced in the opposite direction and marched, to file out of sight beneath the place where I stood.
The rest remained standing where they were. Nor did they show any sign of impatience as time passed and they were neither dismissed to their interrupted meal and rest, or alerted for some errand or labor.
The symbol on the board dissolved once more into running lights and I began to wonder about my own immediate future. It was plain that I was not going to break out through the door now closed so firmly behind me.
There was no sign of Ayllia in any of the cells below, though there remained the section behind the lighted screen—I did not know what was there, or beyond the exit through which the marchers had gone. Would any of those now at attention sight me if I were to go down to their level? I could not determine how unaware they were. And I was afraid to try to reach Ayllia by mind touch.
But I was not to be given time to put even my wildest half-plan into action. If it had seemed that the mind touch which had drawn me here had stopped at the door, there were other precautions in force at the command of he who ruled this underground enclave, as I speedily discovered. For, without warning, I was caught by a rigidity which would not yield to any of my attempts to break it. I could only blink my eyelids. For the rest I was frozen as if one of the legends of childhood had come true and I was turned to stone.
So imprisoned by a force new to me, I had to watch four of those standing at attention below turn and march, again under the shelf where I was. But now an opening appeared near me and through it raised a platform with the four guards. They crowded about me and one of them aimed a weapon not unlike a dart gun at my feet and legs. As he thumbed it the bonds which held that part of my body had vanished and I was free to move as they steered me to their platform, and on it we were lowered to face the aisle of the screen arch.
Seen from floor level and not from above, that screen with all its rippling lights awoke awe. It was alien, totally so to me, but there was that about it which I could recognize as well as a force influence wielded by a Wise Woman. Only this was not aimed at me, and it was not part of the current which had drawn me hither.
Shepherded by the guards, I went through the arch of the screen. Here were no cells, no divisions, just a four-step dais. Around the bottom level of the dais were small screens: only two of those facing me sparkled with light. Below each screen jutted a ledge sloping toward the floor at an angle, and those were covered with buttons and small projecting levers. More and more was I unpleasantly reminded of the tales of Kolder strongholds.
Each of these ledges had a fixed seat before it. Gray-clad men sat at the two which flashed lights, their eyes fixed upon the screens, their hands resting on the edges of the ledges as if ready at any moment to press one of the buttons, should the need arise.
On the dais itself, however, stood that which drew and held all my attention—in part the answer to the mystery which had entangled me. There was a tall, pillar-shaped box of clear crystal. And completely embedded in its heart stood a man of Escore. Not only one of the Old Race, I realized as I looked closer, but this was the man I had seen in my dream, he who had opened the gate and then sat to watch it.
Entombed, yes, but not dead! No, not mercifully dead. From the crown of that crystal coffin there fountained a series of silver wires which were never still, but quivered and spun, sparkling in the air as if they were indeed not metal but rising and falling streams of water.
The eyes of the prisoner now opened and he looked straight at me. There was a fierce brightness in his gaze, a demand which was cruel in its intensity, its force bent upon me. He tried in those few instants to beat down what was me, to take me over to do his will. And I knew that to him I represented a key to freedom, that he had brought me here for that purpose alone.
Perhaps if I yielded at once to his demand he might have achieved his purpose. But my response was almost automatic recoil. None of my breed yielded to force until we were overcome. Had he pleaded instead of tried to take—but the need in him was too great, and he could not plead when all life outside his crystal walls had become one with the enemy in his mind.
The silver strands tossed wildly, rippling as he fought to possess me as his slave thing. And I heard a startled cry. From before one of those ledges arose a man. He leaned forward and stared at the captive in the crystal. Then he swung around to look at me, astonishment speedily changing to excitement, and then satisfaction.
He was as different from the gray men as I was. But he was not of the Old Race. Nor had he any of the Power; I knew that when I looked upon him. But there was life and intelligence in his face and with that a detachment which said, though he looked human, he was not so within.
Standing a head taller than his servants, he was lean of body, though not reduced to such skeleton proportions as they. Nor did his face and hands have the gray pallor, though the rest of his body was covered by the same tight- fitting clothes as they wore, distinguished from theirs by an intricate blazon on the breast worked out in colors of yellow, red, and green.
His hair was almost as brightly yellow as that blazon, thick and long enough, though he wore it tucked behind his ears, to touch his shoulders. That was the hair of a Sulcarman. But when I studied his face I knew that here was no sea-rover trapped by the gate. For his features were very sharply angled about a large and forward thrusting nose, giving him almost the appearance of wearing one of the bird masks behind which the Falconers rose into battle.
“A—woman!”
He touched a button on his board and then he came around to face me, standing with his hands on his hips, eyeing me up and down with an insolence which made my anger rise.
“A woman,” he repeated and this time he did not speak in surprise but thoughtfully. And he glanced from me to the prisoner in the crystal and then back again.
“You are not,” he continued, “like the other—”
He gestured to the other side of the dais. I could not turn my head so I saw no more than the edge of a cloak. But I knew that to be Ayllia’s. She did not move and I thought perhaps she was caught in just the sort of web as now held me.
“So”—now he addressed the prisoner—“you thought to use her? But you did not try with the other. What makes this one different?”
The man in the crystal did not even turn his eyes to his questioner. But I felt that deep wave of hate spread from the box which held him, hate that froze instead of burned, a hate such as I had at times sensed in my brothers, but never in such a great tide.
His captor walked around me, though I could not turn my head to see him. I had learned this much, however, that he could not instantly recognize Power as his prisoner had done. Therefore he was devoid of any trace of that talent. And that thought gave me a spark of confidence, though looking upon the prisoner, I could not hope too much. . . .
For as he had known me as witch, so did I know him as more than warlock, as one of the adepts such as no longer existed in Escore and had never been known in Estcarp, where the Wise Women carefully controlled all learning lest just such a reckless seeker after forbidden learning rise.
“A woman,” the stranger repeated for the third time. “Yet you aimed a sending at her. It would seem she is far more than she looks, bedraggled and grimy as she is. And if there is any chance that she is even a little akin to you, my unfriend, then this is indeed a night when fortune has chosen to give me her full smile!”