There was a loud crack of sound, and Zandur spun about to face the large screen which walled this division from the cells of the gray men. A rippling of light ran across its surface, glowing in portions that had been dead and dull moments earlier.
Zandur studied that display and then ran to an empty seat before one of the small boards. His fingers sped across the buttons there. Instantly, in response, I felt such a blow as if someone had laid a lash across my bared body. We were not in the dream now. What demand or disciplining torment was given Hilarion, I also felt, though, I thought, in lesser extent.
So this was how Zandur used controls to make his captive do as he desired. And yet Hilarion had not told me of that. I marveled at the spirit of a man who had been kept so long captive by such pressures.
There are measures one may take in one’s mind to elude the pains and needs of the body, a discipline my kind learns early, for if one would use Power one must learn rigid self-control. Hilarion had these to call upon for his protection, unless the machine, being wholly alien, could negate them. And I thought that perhaps that was at least partly so.
Not only for pity, though that was awakened in me, must I do what I could to aid Hilarion, since there was an excellent chance of my being set with him, to be played upon by the same demands and stresses. I had the wand; now I turned it over in my hands. Hilarion had warned that it would not serve me, only him. But I had little chance of getting it to him now. And I was sure that when Zandur released me, he would be well prepared to counter any bid for freedom I might make.
There remained Ayllia. I glanced at where she still lay. How much of mind sending could Zandur detect? I had respect for the machines here, the more so because I did not understand them in the least.
Were there among them some to pick up mind sending, alert our captor to any efforts in that direction? And mind send itself was the part of my own talent which I had not regained to any extent. I was a cripple forced to rely on my maimed talent for support.
There was this, that unless Ayllia was also locked in some invisible cover, then she was teachable. That she was unconscious might perhaps be in my favor. The Wise Women’s hallucinations and dreams were principal ways of moving others to their purposes. Now—if I could work on Ayllia, and if my mind send was not detected . . .
As far as I could see Zandur was completely absorbed in what was happening on the screens. The Vupsall girl still lay where I had seen her last, but now she bad turned upon her side, her head pillowed on her crooked arm, much as one in a natural sleep. If that were so it was even better for my purpose.
I began to blank out, bit by bit, the room about me. This was the traditional method of thought control, and I went at it as cautiously as I had walked in the dark of the outer passage leading here, now testing the strength of my forces, as I had then tested for pitfalls ahead.
This was an exercise known to me for years, but never before had I to hold to it with such uncertainty. Good results depended upon the receptiveness of the person to be influenced. And in Estcarp there had been no such distractions as surrounded me here. I did not want to touch the band Hilarion operated upon, lest such interference be instantly apparent in some way to Zandur,
I closed my eyes, not in truth, but as I had been taught, upon all but Ayllia’s body. There was no need for the mental picture; she was there before me. I began to reach, questing for the right line to her brain. Seemingly they kept no watch on her, but that, too, might be deceptive.
The strain was very great; I was forcing my mutilated power. “Ayllia!” I beamed my call at her as if I shouted that aloud.
“Ayllia! Ayllia!”
I have seen many tunes a patient fisherman casting out a line, letting it drift, bringing it back, to cast again, and yet with no result. And so it was with me. I fiercely fought the rising despair, the feeling that it was no longer in me to succeed in this thing which had once been such a small exercise.
“Ayllia!” No use—I could not touch her. Either I was lacking in force, or else something blanked my questing.
But if that was so how had Hilarion been able to make me dream true? Or had I? Was that all a hallucination spun by Zandur?
Some of the adepts had not walked in the Shadow, but more of them had. Could I believe that he was one of the Dark Ones? I wavered, lost, drew in upon myself, and knew bitterness from my failure.
For a space did I so retreat, and then once more I began to think, with more clarity. My fellow captive was a part of whatever Zandur did with these machines. To be such a part it was necessary for mental contact, since his body was imprisoned. And it was plain to my eyes that the gray men who pressed buttons below the dais did that by rote and not because they thought. Therefore there was an energy here, enough akin to our Power to be able to link to it. Suppose I could so link in part, build thus a backing for my crippled mind sending.
Such a course was tempting, but there was danger in it, too. For such a touch might well draw in the whole of me, as a magnet draws steel. And it was plain that what chanced here now was demanding from Hilarion a high amount of force. Did Zandur have a need for sleep, or was his synthetic body without fatigue known to the human kind? Did there ever come a time when the energy here was at a low ebb? And if so, how far were we from such a period now? Too long for me, that Zandur might be reminded he had a second captive and turn to my humbling?
I set myself to watch what was going on—and discovered that in the time I had been concentrating on Ayllia there had come a change: the extra boards which had been alight and tended by the gray men were once more dark, the seats before them empty.
Zandur—I caught sight of him on the other side of the dais, where he must be facing Hilarion. He looked up at the adept and there was a satisfied smile on his face. He spoke then and his words, though low-pitched, reached me.
“Well done, my unfriend. Even if not by your will, yet you have added to our accomplishment. I do not believe those in the towers will try that again: they have no liking for losses.” He turned his head slowly from side to side as if he surveyed all within that huge chamber with pride. “We wrought better than we first guessed when we set these here. Machines they were then, extensions only of our own hands, eyes, brains. Now they are more. But still”—his face was suddenly convulsed; he grimaced as if some inner pain gnawed at him—“but still they are ruled, they do not rule! And that is how it must be as long as one tower stands! They wrought worse than they thought, those builders of towers, giving themselves to the machines. We knew better! Man”—he beat one fist into the palm of his other hand—“man exists, man abides!”
Man, I wondered. Did he speak thus of himself, who Hilarion had said was certainly not human as we judged human, or the gray men who were but things operating under orders with no will or minds of their own? He spoke as one waging a battle in a rightful cause, as we spoke in Escore against the Shadow, as they spoke in Estcarp when they mentioned Karsten and Alizon.
In such bitter struggles there is a pitfall which few seldom avoid. The time comes when to the fighters the end justifies the means. So it had been when the Wise Women had churned the mountains and put an end to Karsten’s invasion; but they had been willing to pay a price in turn, giving up their lives to that end. It was a very narrow path on which they had set their feet and they had not overstepped—they had summoned the Power to that blow, but they had not trafficked with the Shadow.
Here it might have gone otherwise. Perhaps in the beginning Zandur had been one such as my father, my brothers, and then he had taken Dinzil’s road, seduced by the thought of the victory so badly needed, or by the smell of power, which, as he handled it, became more and more sweet and needful. He could also still deceive himself that what he did was for a high purpose, thus making him the more to be feared.