Ray glanced at the lowering clouds. “Those mean bad weather?”
“Perhaps. We can only hope the Sun will not forsake us. Come-let us see to the foredeck again.”
Planking had been laid across the rowing benches in the waist, making a new deck, which seemed firm enough. This space was filled with an orderly complement of men, quiet now for the most part. On the bow deck three of the tube and box machines were now in place, their crews beside them. And there was a soft light
“No sight as yet, Sunborn,” reported a lookout.
Once more Ray was puzzled by his ability to understand. But this was no time for questions.
“Nothing-” Cho repeated as if to himself. “Fog at daybreak, think you?”
Han held his head high, seeming to sniff the wind, studying the clouds across the sky, then glancing at the waters.
“Mist for sure, Sunborn, rain perhaps. I fear we must sail by director alone.”
Cho struck the rail with his fist. “A cover under which that raider can creep unseen!”
“Yes, Sunborn. But for us also a cover-if fortune favors us.”
Cho turned briskly. “Just so it must be. They may draw their net to find it empty. But never must we underrate them, nor think that fortune smiles wholly upon us. And I believe that none of us will breathe easier until the shores of the Inner Sea close about us.”
“Truth in your words, Sunborn. The Atlanteans know all the tricks of the father of all Shadows, and evils are thought-spawned from him.”
“Be it so.” Cho’s tone was stark and cold. “Even if fortune chooses to fail us and we be taken, the last and mightiest trick lies still in our hands, to be used at our bidding alone. The Sunborn Ayna pointed the way for us this very night.”
“You mean-blow up the ship?” asked Ray.
“So would we go Sunward in all honor, taking many of the enemy with us to a final judgment. No ship of the motherland must fall into their hands while one of the true blood lives. And such an end would give us cleaner, swifter passage from this world than any Atlantis would grant a prisoner, as well we know.”
The Lady Ayna came to join them. “You stand to arms, Lord Cho?”
“To await the raider. It will come.” He nodded to the sea, certainty in his voice. “You have made your report?”
“I have told of the loss of the Fire Snake, and the Great One was approving of what I have done. The Re Mu sends greetings and bids you haste, for no aid can be sent if we are attacked.” She hesitated. “But something then happened, Lord Cho, and this gave me fear-”
Her voice was lower, and Ray saw she clutched here cloak about her with hands on which the knuckles had .’ whitened with the fury of her grasp.
“I-I was cut off!”
Cho swung around, his expression one of amazement. “What do you mean?”
“My contact with the motherland was broken-and not by the Re Mu. Never before has such a thing happened.”
“How broken?”
She shivered as if the warmth of the cloak was gone and the wind chilled her to the bone. “It was as if a, black curtain was drawn. When I thought a question-._ there was no answer. I waited for twice around the silver rim of the timekeeper and tried again. There was no response, not even from a shore watcher in one of the Mayax temples!”
When Cho remained silent, she added, almost pleadingly, “What can it mean?”
The Murian’s face was closed still, as if he were thinking so deeply that he did not see her or any of his… surroundings. She put out a hand to touch his arm, and he started under that contact, light as it was.
“What—what is it?” she asked again.
“It may mean that those of Atlantis have tampered.’ with the Sacred Mysteries to discover the secret of the Sunborn-” he said.
She shrank away from him as if he had spoken some monstrous thing. Han exclaimed aloud. But Cho’s eyes were blazing.
“Those soon-to-be-dwellers-in-the-outer-dark-and-cold! That they should so dare! But the Re Mu will have been warned when it happened. This means that the door of the inner power is closed to us. If we must fight, we will not dare to call on anything save the might of our own arms and weapons, lest we open to them what we would die to protect.”
The Lady Ayna regained a measure of her former serenity, or perhaps it was control. “What man may argue with fortunes But we can be worthy of that entrusted to us. And one does not speak of defeat before the battle is joined.” Now she smiled at Cho as if she did not wish him to take her words as a rebuke. “Let me try once again-but if the raider comes, I ask you to summon me.” She left them.
Cho looked to Ray. “It seems that you have truly been drawn into a net. This quarrel means nothing to you. And safer by far would be the empty plains of the Barren Lands than these waters when the Red wolves are out!”
He was very right-this was no quarrel of his, Ray thought. It was settled, it must have been, eons before his birth. Yet, there was something else-At the time it had been only words, a ritual of another race. Now it was a thing Ray remembered and held to.
“You said to me, when our blood was mingled on the sword hilt, that we were brothers-”
“That is so!”
“Then does it not follow that we share battles also? It seems that though I come not here of my own will, yet now I do have a choice-and I make it thus-Having no country any longer, I stand by friends. I think I have those-
“
“There is no need to ask that!” Cho returned.
“And I have also enemies-out there-” Ray gestured to the sea. “So I choose-”
Cho nodded. “May you never regret it, brother.”
“Amen,” Ray thought, but he did not say that aloud.
5
“SO they have blacked out your radio,” Ray hazarded, putting his own interpretation on what he had just heard from the Lady Ayna.
“Blackout-radio?” Cho returned.
“Yes, your communication system.”
“You think of a machine to do this?” Cho smiled. “I had forgotten how little you know of us. We need no machine to communicate with the Re Mu, we of the Sunborn. In times of stress even certain of his higher officers are trained by the Naacals to accept thoughts, just as my mind can now touch yours. This was the manner in which the Lady Ayna reported the loss of the Fire Snake. Only those born with such powers, or those trained in them, can do this.”
“Then how can the Atlanteans interfere with telepathy?” Ray asked. He could believe part of this after his own experiences.
“That we must discover. None but those .trained in the thought-send could do so, and of that number all were known. Or so we believed until tonight. We knew that the Red Robes had something like unto it, but we thought they could not interfere with the true sendings. But now-they can! The Re Mu and the motherland will never know our fate here in the north unless we win through to Mayax. In all our history such a thing has never happened, nor did we believe that it could!”
Slowly the sky was lightening in the east, but only to a leaden gray, and a cold drizzle came, piercing the warmth of their cloaks, to make them shiver.
“Mist and rain as Han foresaw,” Cho observed. “Let us hope the sons of Ba-A1 find it as difficult to sight us as we shall to see them. Come, let us break our fast.”
Below deck they found the Lady Ayna huddled in the seat at the end of the table. Her face under the rosy light was haggard. She forced a wan smile and then shook her head in answer to Cho’s unvoiced question. “Their wall remains, my lords. If we fight, it will be alone.” Cho dropped heavily on the nearest bench. “So be it. But perhaps it wilt not come to that. The Flame willing. Let us have food-” He clapped his hands for the serving man, and the Lady Ayna sat up straighter. “The ships of the motherland are famed for their provisions. Uighur cannot serve forth the dainties of Mu. Or so I have been told by our officers who have returned from tours of duty there,” she commented. “Where is Uighur?” Ray asked. She turned her head to stare wide-eyed at him. Cho went to the map set in the cabin wall. He pressed his fingers to a spot in its frame, and part of it moved to the right, hiding a portion of Atlantis. This revealed at the left the rest of Mu in the Pacific and, beyond, the coastline of the Asian mainland, but one very different from that Ray had known. Again the sea swept far into what would be China, and a portion of the Gobi Desert, and the highlands of future Tibet formed a new shore. This Cho indicated. “Uighur.” But the Lady Ayna continued to stare at Ray. “How is it that you know not Uighur?” “For the same reason that two days ago I did not know Mu either. I am from another time, remember? We had no memories of Uighur there.” “But of Atlantis-” Cho said slowly. “Why should the Red Land carry as a legend into the far future when all the rest is gone? What did they do, those followers of the Shadow, which set so great a fire blazing in their time that its warmth and smoke went on down untold centuries?” The Lady Ayna’s eyes were bleak. “I can think of one kind of disaster. What did your people know of the Red Land, Lord Ray?” “That it lay in the ocean as a continent, an ocean in our time unbroken save for a scattering of small islands