“Now”—he nodded at my guard and they crowded in upon me, though there seemed to be some barrier so they could not really lay hand on me—“we shall put you in safekeeping, girl, until we have more time for the solving of your riddle.”
They continued to crowd me along the steps until I was on the opposite side of the room from the entrance, behind the prisoner in the crystal, so he could no longer see me, though I knew he was as aware of me as I was of him. The guards then stepped away and from the floor arose four bars of crystal like the pillar, but only as thick as my wrist. They slid up above my head and then they began to glow. As they did so the force which had held me rigid vanished, but when I put out my hand I found that there was an invisible wall between one bar and the next and I was boxed.
There was room within my square of unseen walls for me to sit down and I did, looking about me now with the need to learn all I could of this place—though I could not begin to guess the reason for it, what great project it was necessary to.
I could see Ayllia now. She sprawled as one unconscious or asleep on the second step of the dais, her head turned from me. But I could see the rise and fall of her breast and knew she still lived.
I needed sleep too. As I sat there all the strain and fatigue of my hours in this world closed about me as a smothering curtain and I had to have ease and relaxation of mind and body. Thus I concentrated on setting certain safeguards to alert me against any new attempt on the part of he who stood in the pillar to take command. With that done I rested my head on my knees.
But between my palms, hidden from sight, I held that wand I had brought out of Escore. Did it belong to the man in the pillar? If so, it might have been what he had noted instantly at my coming and wanted to get, though how he might reach it through his walls I could not see. That he was of value to my new captor was certain. And it might be that I would also end so. This thought I willed away, for sleep I must have if I would be quick of wit when such was needed.
* * *
* * *
XII
While I slept, I dreamed. But this was no second assault upon my will, no harsh order to obey. Rather a hand slipped into mine to lead me to a place of safety where one could speak mind to mind without chance of being overheard; it was the prisoner of the pillar whom I faced in that place which was not of our waking world. Somehow he seemed younger, more vulnerable, not filled with white hate and the need to burst bonds and rend the world about him to satisfy the revenge his spirit craved, all of which I had read in him before.
That he was an adept I already knew, one above the Wise Women of Estcarp as I was above Ayllia in the scale of Power control. Now I learned his name, or rather the name by which he went, since that old law that the naming of true names was forbidden lest it offer some enemy a straight course into mastery held. He was Hilarion, and once he had dwelt in the citadel of the gate.
He had created the gate because his seeking mind ever pushed on and on for new learning. And, having opened it, it followed that he was constrained to explore what lay beyond. So he came, arrogant and proud in his power—too arrogant, because of the past years of his supremacy in his own sphere, to take precautions.
Thus he had been caught in a web which was not spun from such learning, learning that would not have held him for an instant. But this danger was born of a machine, or a different path of Power, and one he did not understand. Only it was a strength which could incorporate him into it, even as I had seen the half-men in the city of towers, part flesh, part machine.
Between the towers and this underground hole was a long war. It would seem that the present inhabitants of the towers made no overt attacks against the underground; but the gray men, under the orders of he who dominated this chamber, raided in the cities, bringing back the supplies which were needed to sustain this installation. And this life of raid and struggle had lasted for untold years—so many that Hilarion could not list them, for it was old before he had been entrapped, and he had dwelt here long. This I well knew, for the days of the adepts in Escore were past perhaps a thousand years ago.
The machines here had been set in place a millennium ago for the waging of a great war and had continued to function although the world on the surface had been blasted so that nothing remained there save the towers. The machines had been faltering when Hilarion had come, but at his capture they took on new life from his Power, so that now he in a measure controlled them, though in turn he was controlled by Zandur, who was master here, who had always been master. At hearing that I showed disbelief that a man could exist so long.
“But he is not truly a man!” countered Hilarion. “Perhaps he was, long ago. But he has learned to make other bodies in a growth vat and transfer to them when the one he wears grows old or ails. And the machines weave such a protection around him that he cannot be reached by any impulse I have been able to summon. Now he will soon know that you are of a like nature to me and he will imprison you to add to the power of his machines—”
“No!”
“So said I once: ‘No’ and ‘No’ and ‘No!’ Yet my ‘Nos’ could not stand against his ‘Yes.’ There is this, that together we may—I need only be free of this crystal which negates anything I send against him, and then we shall see which is stronger, a man or machine! For now I know these machines as I did not before, all their stresses and weaknesses; I know they can be attacked. Loose me, witch. Give me your Power for my backing, and we shall both win free. Deny me your aid and you shall be entrapped as I have been for all these weary reaches of time.”
“He has me entrapped now,” I pointed out warily. Hilarion’s arguments were well ordered, but I had not forgotten his first try at making me, not an ally in his struggle, but a weapon in his hand.
He read that now and said, “Such imprisonment is said to build impatience in a man. But if that same man sees before him a key to his cell, perhaps in easy reach, will he not put out his hand to seize upon it? You brought here what is mine, and which, in my hands, will be worth more than any steel, any fire-spitting rod such as these people turn upon each other in their deadly dealing.”
“The wand.”
“The wand, which is mine and which I had never hoped to see again. It will not serve you to any purpose. But me—to me it will give the power this world withholds!”
“And how do you get it? I do not think your pillar will be easily broken—”
“It looks solid but it is a field of force, force which can be seen. Put the wand to it—”
“Then so I can also loose me!”
“Not so! You know the nature of such a wand. It will obey the one who wrought it, in the hands of another it is a feeble thing. It is not your key, but mine!”
And he spoke the truth. Yet was I now a prisoner and so his wand was as far from him as if it too were encased in crystal.
“But—” What more he might have said was lost. For suddenly he was gone, out of my dream, as a candle might be blown out in a puff, and I was alone. Whether I slept then, or whether my waking thereafter was as quick as it seemed, I do not know. But when I opened my eyes all seemed just as before. I sat guarded by the pillars of light, even as Hilarion was in his casing, and I could not look upon his face, only his back.
However, there was this much of a change: those silver trails which sprouted from the top of the pillar were weaving rhythmically, and I saw the flicker and flash of lights on more than one board which, when I had fallen asleep, had been dark and untended. There were gray men at them now. And around the dais paced Zandur, pausing now and again behind one of those lighted sections, as if he read the lights as runes. There was a tenseness about him, though the gray men worked automatically, as if they were concerned by nothing but their immediate labors.