The girl concentrated on holding that barrier within her so much that she was no longer entirely aware of what went on about her. Somehow she had got back to the ship, was lying on a bunk, shivering with reaction while Yasa gave her reassurance.
“Ogan—“ Ziantha whispered. “Ogan must know—it is very dangerous.”
Yasa nodded. “That I can believe. A stone of power—able to work through such a disguise. Perhaps only a linkage dares use it. Now rest, cubling, rest well. I shall keep these Jacks busy until Ogan comes and we are able to do as we would about the whole matter.”
That Yasa had given her a sedating drug she knew and was thankful for. That would push her so deeply into sleep that dreams would not trouble her. And she carried with her that last reassurance. A linkage, yes—she, Ogan and Harath working together might be able to use the focus-stone. But not alone, she must not do it alone!
She was cold—so cold — She was lost in the dark. This was a dream—
“—another shot, Captain?”
“Try it. She’s no use to us this way. And when that she-cat comes out of the one we used on her she’ll be after us. Give it to this one now.”
Pain and cold. Ziantha opened her eyes. There was a bright light showing broken things covered with dust, a wall beyond. She was held upright facing that wall in a grip she could not resist.
Iuban reached out, caught at her hair in a painful hold, for it was so short his nails scraped her scalp as his fingers tightened. So he held her to face him.
“Wake up, you witch!” He shook her head viciously. “Wake up!”
A dream—it must be a dream. This was Turan’s place; they had no right here. The guards would come and then what would happen to them would be very painful, prolonged, while they cried aloud for the death which was not allowed them. To disturb the rest of Turan was to bring full vengeance.
“She’s awake,” Iuban, still holding her hair with that painful pull, looked straight into her eyes. “You will do this,” he spoke slowly, spacing his words as if he feared she might not understand. “You will take this thing, and you will look into it and tell us what is hidden here. Do you understand?”
Ziantha could not find the words to answer him. This was a dream, it must be. If it was not — No, she could not! She could not use the stone where Turan lay! There was the gate to something—
“Ogan,” cried her mind in rising terror. “Ogan, Harath!”
She met—Harath—and through him, with him, not Ogan—a new mind, one which greeted her search with a surge of power. Hold for us, it ordered.
“She has to handle the thing, I think,” someone behind her said.
“Take it then!” Iuban set the weight of his will against hers.
She would not! But those behind her, those who held her upright here were forcing her arm up though she fought. Her strength was nothing compared to theirs.
“Harath—I cannot—they are making me use the stone! Harath—they make me—“
Iuban had caught one of her hands, was crushing her fingers, straightening them from the fist she tried to keep clenched. In his other hand she could see the blaze of the gem, afire with a life she knew was evil, though she tried to keep from looking at it.
“Harath!” desperately she pleaded.
“Hold—“ came the answer. Harath’s, together with that other’s—the stranger’s. “We are almost—“
Iuban ground the gem into the hollow of her palm. With his grip on her hair he pulled her head forward.
“Look!” he ordered.
His compulsion was such that she was forced to his will. The glowing stone was warm against her shrinking flesh. Its color deepened. It had life, power, reaching out, pulling her, drawing her through—
She screamed and heard shouting far off, the crackle of weapon fire. But it was too late. She was falling forward into the heart of the stone, which was now a lake of blazing energy ready to engulf her utterly.
7
The sickly sweetness of bruised camphor-lilies was drugging her; she could not breathe. No, she could not breathe because she was locked in here with Turan! Turan who was dead, as she would be when the air failed and she would enter the last sleep of all.
She was Vintra, war-captive from Turan’s last battle, the one in which he had taken his deathblow.
Vintra? Who was Vintra? Where was this dark place? Ziantha tried to move, heard a harsh clink of metal through the oppressive dark. She was—chained! Chained to a wall, and no frantic fight against those bonds left her with more than cut and bruised wrists and the knowledge that she had used up precious air by her struggles.
She was Vintra—no, Ziantha! Crouching against the wall she tried to sort out her whirling thoughts, decide which were true and which hallucinations. She must be caught in some trance nightmare. Ogan had warned her of such a danger. That was why she must never enter the deep trance alone. Nearby there must be one skilled enough to break the trance if she were caught in a killing hallucination.
Ogan—Harath — The thought of them steadied her.
In the tomb of Turan, Iuban had forced her to focus on the gem. This was the result. But it was real! She felt the chains, gasped in the lack of air. She was—
Vintra! It was like the turning of a wheel in her head, making her first one person and then the other. Vintra was to die here, part of a funeral gift to Turan, because she was the only prisoner of note taken during the last skirmish at the mountain pass. In her a great rage surged against Turan and his kind. She would die here, gasping out her life like a korb drawn from its water home, but she would be avenged! And that avenging—
The pictures in her mind — What, who was she?
Ziantha! Once more the wheel had turned. She was Ziantha, and she must get back, out of the trance. Ogan—Harath — ! Frantically the girl sent out mind-calls, begging for help to save her from this dream that was worse than any she had ever faced before on the out-plane, though it was true that when one was trained to enter a sensitive’s calling one had to face all one’s fears, meannesses of spirit. Ill acts were given form and substance in trances. Only when one conquered those did one win to psychic control. In the past such terrors had been real also, but now, as she forced herself to employ one familiar safeguard after another, there was no change. She had known this was different, that she had no defense here. No, she must be awakened, anchored to her own time and plane by more strength than she herself could summon.
Harath—Ogan! She made mind pictures, cast for them.
A faint stirring! Surely she had caught that! By all the power of That Which Was Beyond Reckoning, she had felt that answer! Ziantha turned all her talent force into one plea: draw me forth—draw me forth—or I die!
Yes! A stir—there was an answer. But it did not come straight, as she expected. It rather flowed, like water finding its way around great rocks half damming a river course, as if it fought.
“Harath! I am here! Come for me! Do not leave me to die in the dark, choking out life, imprisoned in what I cannot understand. Come!”
Not Harath!
There was a personality here. But not Harath—not Ogan. From the other plane then? She touched thought.
Shock, horror—a horror so great that that other personality was reeling as a man might under a deathblow.
“Help me,” it cried. She could not understand. This had come at her call—why then — ?
“Dead! Dead!”
An answer out of the dark fraught with terror.
“I am not dead!” Ziantha denied. She would not accept that, for if she did there would never be any escape. She would be caught in Vintra.
“Dead”—the repetition was fainter. Going—the other was going—to leave her here! No!
She might have screamed that aloud. The sound seemed to ring around and around in her head.
“No!”
There was silence through which she could hear the gasping from her laboring lungs. Then—from the other:
“Where is this place?”
Words—not mind-send, but words to her.
“The tomb of Turan,” she answered with the truth that Vintra knew.
“And I—I am Turan—“ the voice grated. “But I am not Turan!” The denial followed the recognition swiftly, as if the same fear she had known when Vintra had taken over gripped him.
Sounds of movement. Then a mind command, quick and urgent: “Light!”
A glow, growing stronger. Why had she not thought of that? Straightway she sent out her own energy to feed his, to strengthen the glow.