* * *
Nobody seemed to be living along the water inlets among the cliffs. Campers might be there in summer. Tall trees stood gathered above the shelving rocks, and there were indications of animal life. They were pleasant, peaceful nooks. The kayak circled through each in turn, emerged, glided on along the cliffs to the next. So far, Telzey hadn’t seen one that evoked the urge to explore.
But this she thought might be it.
Cup-shaped and considerably larger than most, the bay was enclosed by great steep rock walls on both sides. Trees rose above a sandy shore ahead, their ranks stretching far back into a cleft in the mountain. It would be easy to beach the kayak here and get out.
She saw someone lying on the sand then, not far above the water. A motionless figure, face down, feet turned toward her. There was no boat in sight, but an aircar might be parked back among the trees. What seemed immediately wrong was that the man wasn’t dressed for a sprawl on the sand. He was wearing city clothes, an orange and white business suit. She had the impression he might be sick or dead—or stoned and sleeping it off.
She sent the kayak gliding closer to shore. Thirty feet away, she stopped, called out to the figure, “Hello there! Are you all right?”
He wasn’t dead, at any rate. At the sound of her voice, his body jerked; then he was up on hands and knees, staring around at the trees clustered along the bank above him.
“I’m out here!” Telzey called.
He turned his head, saw her, got to his feet. Brushing sand from his coat, he started down toward the water’s edge. Telzey saw his mouth working silently. Something certainly was wrong with that man!
“Are you sick?” she asked him. “You were lying there so quietly.”
He looked distressed. But he shook his head, tried to smile.
“No,” he said. “I’m quite all right. Thank you very much for your concern. It’s good of you. But . . . well, I’d rather be by myself.” He tried to smile again.
Telzey hesitated. His voice indicated he was neither drunk nor doped. “You’re sure you’re all right?” she said. “You don’t look well.”
“No, I’m perfectly all right. Please do go now! This isn’t . . . well, it simply isn’t a good place for a young girl to be.”
Scared, she decided suddenly. Badly scared. Of what? She glanced over toward the silent trees, said, “Why don’t you come with me then? The kayak will carry two.”
“No, I can’t. I—”
Great electric surges all about and through her—a violent burst of psi. And a rushing, grinding noise overhead. Something struck the water with a heavy splash ten feet away. Telzey jammed the acceleration button full down, swung the steering rod far over. The kayak darted forward, curving to the left. Another splash beside the boat. This time Telzey was drenched with water, momentarily blinded by it.
The bulk of the rockslide hit the surface of the bay instants later. She was clear of it by then, rushing along parallel to the shore. She shook water from her eyes, stabbed the brake button.
The kayak slammed against something just beneath the surface, spun sideways with a rending sound, over-turned, pitching her into the water.
* * *
The kayak was a total loss. Face submerged, she could see it from the shifting surface, twenty feet down in the clear dark depth of the bay where it had slid after tearing itself open almost from bow to stern along a projecting ledge of rock. Feeling weak with shock, she lifted her head, stroked through angrily tossing water toward the shore where the man stood watching her. Presently she found a sloping sand bar underfoot, waded out.
“I’m so sorry!” he said, white-faced. “You aren’t hurt, are you?”
Telzey’s legs were trembling. She said, not too steadily, “Just scared to death.”
“I would have come to your help—but I can’t swim.” He looked haggard enough but must be considerably younger than he’d seemed from the kayak, probably not much over thirty.
“Well, I can,” Telzey said. “So that was all right.” She gave him a brief reassuring smile, wondering a good deal about him now. Then she looked up at the cliff on her right, saw the fresh scar there in the overhanging wall a hundred and fifty feet up.
“That was a mess of rock that came down,” she remarked, pushing her hands back over her hair, squeezing water out of it.
“It was terrible. Terrible!” The man sighed heavily. “I . . . well, I have towels and clothing articles back there. Perhaps you could find something you could use if you’d like to dry and change.”
“No, thanks,” Telzey said. “My clothes are waterproofed. I’ll be dry again in no time. You don’t happen to have a boat around, do you? Or an aircar?”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Neither.”
She considered it, and him. “You live here?”
He said hesitantly, “No. Not exactly. But I’d planned to stay here a while.” He paused. “The truth is, I did use a boat to come across the lake from the village this morning. But after I’d unloaded my supplies and equipment, I destroyed the boat. I didn’t want to be tempted to leave too quickly again—”
He cleared his throat, looking as if he badly wanted to go on but couldn’t quite bring himself to it.
“Well,” Telzey said blandly, “it doesn’t really matter. If I’m not back with the kayak by dark, the resort people will figure I’m having a problem and start looking for me.”
The man seemed to reach a decision. “I don’t want to alarm you, Miss—”
“I’m Telzey Amberdon.”
He said his name was Dal Axwen. “There’s something I must tell you. While you’re here, we’ll have to be very careful. Or something may happen to you.”
She said cautiously, “What might happen to me?”
He grimaced. “I haven’t the faintest idea—that’s what makes it so difficult. I do know you’re in danger.” He cleared his throat again. “I’m sure this will sound as if I’m out of my mind. But the fact is—I’m being haunted.”
Something shivered over Telzey’s skin. “Haunted by what?” she asked.
Dal Axwen shook his head. “I can’t say. I don’t know who he is. Or what he is.”
Telzey said after a moment, “You don’t think that rock fall was an accident?”
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t an accident. I didn’t think he would go that far, but you can see why I wanted you to go away immediately.”
Telzey said, “He wasn’t trying to get at you with the rocks?”
Axwen shook his head. “He intends to destroy me. Everything indicates it. But not directly—not physically. If he wanted that, he’d have done it by now. There’s nothing I could have done to prevent it.”
* * *
Telzey was silent. At the instant she’d felt that eruption of energy, a tight protective screen of psi force had closed about her mind. While Axwen was talking she’d lightened it carefully, gradually. And now that she was looking for indications of that kind, she could tell there was something around on the psi level. A mentality. She had the impression it was aware of her, though it wasn’t reacting in any way to the thinning of her screen. Otherwise, she couldn’t make out much about it as yet.
She looked at Axwen. He was watching her with a kind of anxious intentness.
“You say you don’t know what he is?” she asked. “Haven’t you seen him?”
Axwen hesitated, then said wonderingly, “Why, I think you believe me.”
“Oh, I believe you, all right,” Telzey said. “Those rocks were up there, part of the mountain, a long, long time. It really seems more likely something started them down on purpose at the moment I was under them than that it just happened.”
“Perhaps it’s because you’re still almost a child,” Axwen said nodding. “But it’s a relief in itself to find someone who accepts my explanation for these occurrences.” He looked up at the cliff and shivered. “He’s never done anything so completely terrifying before. But it’s been bad enough.”
“You’ve no idea at all who’s doing it?” Telzey asked.
“He’s something that can’t be seen,” Axwen said earnestly. “An evil spirit! I don’t know what drew him to me, but he’s selected me as his victim. I’ve given up any hope of ever being free of him again.”
An electric tingling began about Telzey’s screen. The psi mentality was active again, though on a relatively minor level. Her gaze shifted past Axwen’s shoulder. Thirty feet farther along the shore, sand swirled up and about silently as if more and more of it were being flung high into the air by shifting violent blasts of wind in this wind-still bay. Then the sand cloud collapsed. Falling, it seemed to outline for a moment a squat ugly figure moving toward them. Then it was gone.