“There is no air, we shall die.” She added her urgent warning.
“Go to the sunder plane, quickly!”
His command brought her mind back into the protective pattern, which she should also have done for herself. She took the steps of out-of-body, something she had always been reluctant to try. And so, safe for a time, looked about her.
There lay the body from which she had just freed herself, tangled in chains. To her left was a two-step dais on which rested Turan, his High Commander’s cloak spread over him, the lilies massed, brown-petaled, dying. Even as she saw him, candles at the head and foot of his resting place flared high.
“The spirit door!” that other’s voice in her head. “There!”
She had not remembered, not until he spoke, for that was of Vintra’s knowledge not her own. But there was the spirit door set in the rock above Turan.
“Draw back the bar there—“
Their only hope. For if that faintly twitching body she had just left died, then she was also lost. Ziantha made reentry, knew the life force was fast fading. With the last spurt of energy she could summon, she joined her power to the other’s, fastened thought to the bar. Together they wrought; fear rose in her—they could not—
She heard a stir, for it was dark again, since all their talent was focused on that one act.
“My arm—my right arm—“ wheezed the voice.
She fed him her power. And then she fell into darkness again without learning whether death came with it.
“Vintra!” Her body ached, she cried out in pain as hands pressed her ribs again and again, forcing air in and out.
“I live—let—be!”
There was light again. The candles flamed steadily to show the spirit door hanging open. From it came air, chill but blessedly fresh. Turan knelt beside her, now inspecting the fastenings of the chains.
“A pretty custom,” he commented. “Human sacrifice to honor a war hero.”
“You—Turan—“ She tried to edge away from him. Turan was dead. Even now his body showed those wounds the priests of Vut had repaired that he might go to Nether World intact of person. Yet they looked fully healed, as if they had been ordinary hurts nature mended.
“Not Turan,” he shook his head, “though I appear to share some identity with him from time to time. Not any more than you are Vintra. But it would seem we must play parts until we find a way back.”
“You, you were the one with Harath!” Ziantha guessed. “The one who was coming when Iuban made me use the focus-stone.”
“I was.” But he did not identify himself further. “Now what is this about the focus-stone? Apparently some trick of psychometry hurled us back into this and the more I know how and why the better. Tell me!” It was a sharp order, but she was only too willing to obey it.
He had found the trick of the chain fastenings, and now they fell from her, and he kicked them away into a corner. Ziantha began her tale with the first sight of the artifact, and all that had happened to her since she had fallen under the peculiar spell that ugly lump with its hidden and perhaps fatal heart had exerted on her.
“A gem such as that now on your forehead?”
Startled, Ziantha raised her hands to her head. There was an elaborate headdress confining hair much longer than her own. And from those bands a drop set with a gem rested just above her eyes. She wrested the band from her so she could see the stone.
It was the focus-stone! Or enough like it to be. Ziantha thought she could tell with a touch, yet she dared not. Who knew what might happen if she tried again?
“Is it?” he who was now Turan demanded a second time.
Ziantha looked miserably at the crown. She had firmly exiled Vintra, but as she stared down at the stone that other identity stirred, gathered strength. Perhaps she might learn the power of the stone, but in doing so she could also lose that other who had been meant to die here in Turan’s tomb.
“Vintra—Vintra might know—“ she said with vast reluctance, but she could not suppress the truth.
“If the stone had power enough to hurl you into Vintra and me into Turan, then perhaps its results can be reversed. We must know. Look, you are not alone; my will backs yours. And I promise you I shall not let you be imprisoned in Vintra!”
He was Turan, the enemy, who could not be trusted (that was Vintra growing stronger, bolder). No—he was all the help she could have to win back to Ziantha and reality.
“I will try,” she said simply, though she shrank from such exposure to whatever lay within the focus of this deadly bit of colored stone.
The ornament of the crown could be detached from the rest, Ziantha discovered. She unhooked the pendant, raised it to her forehead, and—
Turan’s hands were on her shoulders; he was calling her, not in words, but in the powerful waves of mind-send.
“I was not able to learn—“ she said in distress.
“Nornoch-Above-the-Waves, Nornoch of the Three Green Walls — The Lurla to be commanded—“ He recited the strange names and words slowly, making almost a pattern of song.
“She who is D’Eyree of the Eyes—“ Ziantha found herself answering. “Turan—what does that mean? I do not remember—I am saying words I do not understand.”
She rubbed her hand wearily across her forehead. Her hair, loosened from the confinement of the crown, fell thickly about her shoulders like a smothering veil.
“You have returned to Vintra.” He still kept that hold upon her, and his touch was comforting, for it seemed to anchor her to this body, controlled that feeling that she was about to whirl out and away from all ties with rational life.
“But before Vintra,” he was continuing, “there was another—this D’Eyree, who had the talent, was trained in its use.”
“Then I just ‘saw’ again—in a trance!”
“Yes. And this you have learned for us, though you may not presently remember. This focus-stone has its counterpart, which is tied to it by strong bonds, draws it ever, so that she using it is swept farther back in time. The one stone struggles to be united with the other, and that which lies in the past acts as an anchor.”
“Vintra—“
“Vintra did not use the talent,” Turan said. “To her the stone was only a beautiful gem, a possession of Turan’s clan. But it is a thing unique in my knowledge, an insensate thing which has been so worked upon as a focus that it has come to have a kind of half-life. Awakened, that half-life draws it, and those who focus upon it, so that it may be reunited with its twin. And unless that is done I believe that we are held to it.”
“But if its origin lies beyond Vintra’s time—how far beyond Vintra?” she interrupted herself to ask that, fearing the answer.
“I do not know—long, I think.”
Ziantha clasped her hands tightly to keep them from shaking. The crown clanged to the floor.
“And if we cannot find . . . “ She was afraid to complete that question. If his fears were now as great as hers—she did not want to know. What were they going to do? If they could not return—
“At least,” he said, “we shall not remain here. The spirit door is open. We’d best make what use of that we can.”
He went to stand on the bier, looking up to the dark hole.
“You”—Ziantha moistened her lips and began again—“you—in his body—can you control it?”
To her knowledge, and through Ogan that was not too limited, this experience was totally unknown. Of course the legends of necromancy—the raising of the dead to answer the questions and commands of those using the talent in a forbidden way—were known to more than one galactic race. But this type of transfer was new. Would it last? Could he continue to command a body from which life had ebbed before he entered it? She had come into Vintra while the other lived, merged in a way so that her stronger personality was able to push Vintra aside. But in his case—
He looked at her, the wavering candle flames making his face an unreal mask. “I do not know. For the present I can. This has not been done before, to my knowledge. But there is no reason to dwell on what might be; we must concern ourselves with what is, namely, that to linger here is of no use. Now—“ He crouched below that opening and made a leap that she watched with horror, fearing that the body he called upon to make that effort would not obey. However, his hands caught the frame of the spirit door and held for a moment, and then he dropped back.