“But I do not intend to die again.” Turan’s voice was firm. It was as if his strong will fed the talent which kept him alive. “At least not yet. Therefore I think I shall be safer—“
“We can get you to the Tower, Lord Commander. Vut’s priests will then make a defense wall of their own bodies if the need arises!” Wamage interrupted eagerly.
Turan shook his head. “Do my own armsmen of Turan-la”—a shade of confusion crossed his face. “My armsmen of Turan-la,” he repeated with a kind of wonder, Ziantha thought, as if he heard those words but did not fully understand them. Ziantha feared his confusion was visible to Wamage. But it would seem that the other was so intent upon his own message of gloom that his thoughts were for that alone. For he burst out then hotly:
“She sent them north after—after your entombing, Lord Commander. They were battle comrades of yours; they knew how you felt concerning Puvult. Me you can command under this roof, and Fomi Tarah, and of the younger men, Kar Su Pyt, Jhantan Su Ixto, and we each have armsmen sworn to us, as you know. Enough, Lord Commander, to see you safely to the Tower.”
Turan was frowning. “There is another, not of this household, so he might not be suspected or watched. He lent me his weather coat on the night I returned—“
“Yes. I have sought him out. His father is a Vut priest, one Ganthel Su Rwelt. They live on the southern coast—the boy came with the levy from Sxark a year ago.”
“From the southern coast!” Turan caught the significance of that at once. “Can you get word to him secretly?”
“I can summon him, but, Lord Commander, as you well know there are eyes and ears awake, watching, listening always amid these walls.”
Turan sighed. His gaunt face looked even less fleshy, as if his grayed skin clung tighter and tighter to his skull.
“Wamage.” He returned slowly to his bench, sat down as if he could no longer trust the effort standing erect caused him. “I would leave this palace, the Lady Vintra with me. But I do not wish to go—as yet—to Vut. There is something to be done, something of which I learned of late, which cannot be left while I tend this ailing body of mine. For time may be fatal. I must be free to move without question or interference. Now I call upon you for your aid in my service, for if battle comrades cannot ask this, then what justice lies in this world?”
“Truth spoken, Lord Commander. Can you depend upon no other for this deed which must be done?” There was a furrow of what Ziantha believed to be honest anxiety between Wamage’s bushy brows. If Turan had not managed to gain the loyalty of his High Consort, in this man, at least, he had one faithful follower.
“No other. I have spoken truth to you; now I shall add more. You know of my visit to the land that the sea gave up? Only recently you spoke of this—“
“A place you have often mentioned yourself, Lord Commander. You wished to take a ship of your own and go seeking it again, but the rebels broke out. But—what of it?”
“Just this—there I made a great find, a find which I must now uncover for my own safety.”
“Lord Commander, you are in some fever dream, or else—“ he swung to Ziantha, his face hard with suspicion—“there is some truth in the High Consort’s babble, and this rebel woman has bewitched you. What could lie on a rock in the sea that would aid you now?”
“Something very old and very powerful, and this is no bewitchment. For what lies there I saw long before Vintra came into my life.”
“The gem! The gem which you took to Vut’s tower and thereafter put from you, having it made into tombwear so that none could lay hand on it.”
“In part, yes, but only in part. How think you that the Lady Vintra, wearing it in a tomb crown, was moved to come to my aid, brought me again to this very room? There were ancients of ancients. Do not men declare that they had strange knowledge we do not possess? What of the old tales?”
“But those are for children, or the simple of mind. And we do with the aid of machines made by our own hands what they did in those tales. Who could fly save with a double-wing?”
“They, perhaps. There were things of great power on that island, Wamage, how great I did not even guess then. I thought of such treasure as delights the eye; now I know it was treasure for the mind. With what I once found there and what still awaits to be discovered, I shall be armed against the forces ready to pull me down. Has part not already brought me from the tomb?”
“And how do you reach the island?”
“By your aid and that of this youth from Sxark. You shall arrange for me and this lady—for she has learned part of the secret—“
Wamage moved with a speed Ziantha had not expected. Only the flash of mind-reading alerted her. He would have flamed her down with a small beamer he brought from his sleeve, but she had thrown herself flat.
“Wamage!” Turan was on his feet. “What do you do?”
“She is Vintra, Lord Commander. Every rebel drinks lorca-toast to her at night. If she has such command over any part of your fate she is better dead!”
“And me with her, is that what you would want, Wamage? For I tell you, it is by her I live, and without her further aid I cannot continue to do so.”
“Sorcery, Lord Commander. Have in the priests and gain their aid—“
From where she crouched, Ziantha put all her talent into a mighty effort. His voice suddenly faltered, his hand dropped limply to his side, and from his fingers the beamer thudded to the carpeted floor. She retrieved it swiftly. The operation of it she saw was simple. One aimed and pressed a button. What the results would be Vintra’s memory supplied; they were both spectacular and fatal.
“You should not have told him,” she mind-sent.
“We need him. Otherwise we can make one blunder after another and achieve nothing.”
To Ziantha’s thinking one blunder had already been made, but she would have to accept Turan’s plan. Could it be that he was making such an effort to retain control of his body that he no longer reasoned clearly, and the time would come when she must take command?
Reluctantly she released Wamage from the mind-lock. The man shook his head as if to banish some feeling of dizziness. As full consciousness returned to him Ziantha laid the beamer on the bench at Turan’s hand.
“Look you, man of Singakok.” She had from Vintra the heavily accented voice of the rebel leader. “I have now no weapon. There lies yours. At whose hand does it lie? Do you think that if I were your enemy in this hour I would disarm myself before you and your lord? I have no love for Singakok. But that which was beyond any struggle of ours faced me in the tomb of Turan, and he and I were bound together in this. Take up your weapon if you do not believe me, use it—“
If he tried that, Ziantha thought—if I have gambled too high—I hope Turan can stop him. But Wamage, though he put out his hand as if to carry out her suggestion, did not complete that move.
“She speaks the truth,” Turan said. “She stands unarmed in the midst of her enemies, and she speaks the truth.”
Wamage shook his head. “She is one of tricks, Lord Commander, as you know. How else have the rebels held us off this long? It is their tricks—“
“No trick in this. Vintra is no longer of the rebels.”
“Do you want an oath on that before the altars of Vut?” Ziantha demanded. “I was bound to another cause by those hours in the dark before the spirit door opened. Do you think any man or woman could pass through such an ordeal as that and not come forth unchanged? For the present I am pledged to the Lord Commander and will be so until his mission is accomplished.” She hoped that Wamage believed her—for in this she spoke Ziantha’s truth.
Wamage looked from one to the other. “Lord Commander, I have been a battle comrade of yours since the action at Llymur Bay. I am sworn by my own choice to your service. What you wish—that shall it be.”
Was this surrender coming too easily? Ziantha tried mental probe. The confusing in and out pattern of the alien mind could deceive her, whereas with her own kind she could easily have assessed friend or enemy.