That led me back to Hilarion. The gate he created must answer to him, my mother had said. Then we must free him in order to win back. But time—was time our friend or enemy? I fumbled in my cloak and drew out the packet of food I had taken from the gray men’s supplies. It was a square of some dark brown substance which crumbled as I pinched it. I smelled the scrap I held in my fingers: a strange odor, not pleasant, not unpleasant. But it was the only sustenance I had to hand and I was hungry. I crunched it between my teeth. It was very dry and gritty, as if made of the ashy dust which covered the surface of this world. But I drank from one of the containers and swallowed it somehow. There was now only the need to wait, and waiting can be very hard.
But I could think and speculate. Time, my mother had said, ran less swiftly in this land than it had for us. It was true that in the mind picture she seemed no older than she had when she had ridden forth on that quest for my father. But then we three had been children not yet started upon our life paths. Now I felt immeasurably older than I had at that hour.
It would seem that she and my father, having once reached this world, were imprisoned for lack of a gate. So her eagerness concerning Hilarion. But if they dared to come to this pit, could they not also be sucked into the same net? It was in me to call a warning by mind link—until I remembered that she had spoken of knowing this place in which I was captive. If she did, then surely she also knew of the perils it had to offer.
* * *
* * *
XIII
I finished the food and drank sparingly. About me the pillars still blazed, the silvery strands continued to veil the adept’s prison. Perhaps he slept.
But suddenly I caught slight movement on the dais where Ayllia lay. They had apparently put no bonds on her, no visible ones. Now she was rousing from whatever state of consciousness had held her for so long. She sat up slowly, turning her head, her eyes open. As I watched her closely I thought she did not seem wholly aware of her surroundings, but was still gripped in a daze, as she had been during our journey to the tower city.
She did not get to her feet, but rather began to crawl along the step on which she had lain. I watched the gray man on duty. He sat inert before his board, as if he could see nothing but the lights on the screen.
Ayllia reached the corner of the step, rounded that, began to crawl at a sluggish pace down the far side. In a moment or two she would be out of my sight. And perhaps out of reach when I needed her. I sent a thought command to halt. But if it touched her mind there was no answer. Now she was out of my sight on the far side of the dais.
Then I noted that one of the silver tendrils about the pillar stirred, enough to touch the one next to it to the right, and that to the next, and the next, before those, too, were hidden from my observation. That movement carried with it a suggestion of surreptitiousness, as if it must be hidden from any watcher. I could not remember whether there had been any movement of the tendrils before Ayllia’s apparent waking, or if it had begun only when she moved. Was Hilarion putting into practice what I had earlier attempted, contacting the barbarian girl’s mind and setting her under his orders to try a rescue attempt?
Two sides of the dais were hidden from me. The third I faced, where Ayllia had lain, and the fourth I could also see. But any advance along that would be in plain sight of the gray man. And he could hardly fail to notice if she passed directly before him.
I waited tensely to see her come into view. But she did not. The arch in the big screen was in my view; if she tried to leave through that I could see her. Then—then I must contact Jaelithe in spite of the danger lest my one possible aid be taken from me.
But Ayllia did not creep to that door. Instead there was another bright ripple of lights along the screen, followed by that sound which had earlier alerted the gray men to march. I saw the tendrils on the pillar stir and rise slowly, so slowly that watching them one had a feeling of a great weight of fatigue burdening each and every one of them.
Through the arch in the screen now marched a squad of the gray men, while from some point behind me came Zandur. I did not have time to play asleep, it was too sudden. And I was frightened when I saw that the gray men marched straight for me, making a square about the lighted rods of my small prison.
Zandur approached more slowly, but he came to a stop directly before me, and stood as he had earlier before Hilarion, his hands on his hips, staring at me intently. Instinctively I had risen to my feet as the guards closed in.
Now I met his gaze as steadily as I could.
It was not a duel of wills as it might have been with one of my own kind, as it had been with the adept, for we had no common meeting of Powers. But I was determined that he would not find me easy taking for his purposes. Yet I also waited before beaming a call to my mother, since I would not do that unless I had no other course.
Zandur appeared to come to a decision. He snapped the fingers of his right hand and one of the gray men crossed to the other side of the dais, to return, pushing before him what looked like a chest set upon one end. Down one side was a narrow panel of opaque substance, not unlike the screens, and this was put to face me.
Behind it Zandur stood and his fingers played across its surface, first hesitatingly, and then with an air of impatience, as if he had expected an easy answer and had not received it. He said nothing, nor did the gray men even show interest in their master’s action. Rather they simply stood around me as a guard fence.
Three times Zandur touched his panel. Then, the fourth time he did so, that opaque length came to life. Not with the rippling patterns of the screens but with a weak blue glow.
That color! It was—it was that of the rocks which spelled safety in Escore! To look upon it now was almost reassuring. I had a strange feeling that could I but lay my hand to the screen over which it crawled, I would be far more refreshed than from the food I had just eaten.
But Zandur jerked his fingertips away from the block with a sharp exclamation. He might have been burnt where he expected no fire.
He hastened to press a new place. As the blue spread it also became darker. And I thought he must be focusing upon me some test of Power. For long moments he held fast until the color reached the top of the panel. There it remained steady, neither darkening or lightening again. Zandur gave a nod of satisfaction and took away his finger.
Straightaway the color disappeared.
“The same, and yet not the same.” For the first time he spoke. He could have been addressing me, or only speaking his thoughts aloud, but in either case I saw no need to answer. “You,”—he gave another wave of hand which sent one of his followers moving off the box—“what manner of thing are you?”
Manner of thing! It seemed that he now equated me with his machines. To him I was a thing, not a person. And I felt some of the rage which ignited Hilarion. Did Zandur only recognize force as coming from machines, and therefore see us, because of what we held in us, as machines?
“I am Kaththea of the House of Tregarth,” I made answer with those words I could best summon to underline the fact that perhaps I was even more human than himself.
He laughed. There was that in his scornful mirth which fed my anger. But a warning alerted me within: Do not let him play upon your emotions, for in that way lies danger. You must guard each step you take. So I fell back upon the discipline of the Wise Women and ordered myself to look upon him objectively as they would have done. Perhaps it was their old feeling that the male was the lesser creature which now came to my aid. I had not accepted such a belief—I could not when I knew my brothers and my father, all of whom had a portion of my talents—but when such an idea is held constantly before one, it is easy enough to accept it as a pattern of life.