“That’s all we need,” he said bitterly. “But if they can nullify the Power, then how can the witches go up against them?”
“The Wyverns seem very sure of themselves.” Charis had her own first doubts. With the assembly arrayed against her back at the Citadel, she had accepted their warning; her respect for their Power had not been shaken until this moment. But Lantee was right. If the invaders were able to nullify the Power to the extent of releasing the males who had always been under domination, then could the witches hope to battle the strangers themselves?
“No,” Lantee continued, “they’re very sure of themselves because they’ve never before come up against anything which threatened their hold on their people and their way of life. Perhaps they can’t even conceive of the Power’s being broken. We had hoped to make them understand eventually that there were other kinds of power, but we have not had time. To them this is a threat, right enough, but not the supreme threat I believe it is.”
“Their power has been broken,” Charis said quietly.
“With a nullifier, yes. How soon do you suppose the truth of that will get through to them?”
“But we did not need this machine or whatever the Jacks have. We broke it—the four of us!”
Lantee stared at her. Then he threw back his head and laughed, not loudly but with the ring of real amusement.
“You are right. And what will our witches say to this, I wonder? Or do they already know? Yes, you freed me from whatever prison they consigned me to. And it was a prison!” His smile vanished, the drawn lines in his face sharpened. “So—their power can be broken or circumvented in more ways than one. But I do not think that even that information will deter them from making the first move. And they must be stopped.” He hesitated and then added in a rush of words, “I am not arguing that they should take the interference of the Jacks and not fight back. By their way of thinking their way of life is threatened. But if these witches go ahead as they plan and try to wipe us all off Warlock, supposing they are able to fight the Jack weapon or weapons, then they will have written the end to their own story themselves.
“For if this band of Jacks has come up with a nullifier to defeat the Power, others can, too. It will just be a matter of time until the Wyverns are under off-world control. And that mustn’t happen!”
“You say that?” Charis asked curiously. “You?”
“Does that surprise you? Yes, they have worked on me and this was not the first time. But I, too, have shared their dreaming. And because I did and Thorvald did, we were that much closer to bridging the gap between us. We must be changed in part when we are touched by the Power. But though they may have to bend to weather a new wind—which will be very hard for them—they must not be swept away. Now—” he looked about him as if he could summon a copter out of the air “—we have to be on the move.”
“I don’t think they will allow us to return to the Citadel,” Charis demurred.
“No, if they are working up to some stroke against off-worlders, they will have all the screens up about their prime base. Our own headquarters is the only place. From there we can signal for help. And if time is good to us, we can handle the Jacks before they do. But where we are now and how far from the base—” Lantee shook his head.
“Do you have your disk?” he added a moment later.
“No. But I don’t need it.” Just how true that was, Charis could not be sure. She had won off the rock island and out of the place of green mist without it, however. “But I’ve never seen your base.”
“If I described it, as you did this rock hole for me, would that serve?”
“I don’t know. The cavern was a dream, I think.”
“And our bodies remained here as anchors to draw us back? That could well be. But there’s no harm in trying.”
The hour must have been close to midday; the sun was burning hot on the baked section of rock. And, as Lantee had pointed out, they were lost as far as landmarks were concerned. His suggestion was as good as any. Charis looked about for a patch of earth and a stone or stick to scratch with. But there was neither.
“I must have something which will make a mark.”
“A mark?” Lantee echoed as he, too, surveyed their general surroundings. Then he gave an exclamation and snapped open a belt pocket to bring out the small aid kit. From its contents he selected a slender pencil which Charis recognized as sterile paint, made to cleanse and heal small wounds. It was of a greasy consistency. She tried it on the rock. The mark was faint but she could see it.
“Now,” Lantee sat on his heels beside her, “we’ll aim for a place I know about a half mile from the base.”
“Why not the base itself?”
“Because there may be a reception waiting there that we wouldn’t care to meet. I want to do some scouting before I walk into what might be real trouble.”
He was right, of course. Either the Wyverns might already have made their move—for how could Charis guess how much time had actually passed since she had been wafted from the assembly to the island—or the Jacks, learning the undermanned status of the only legal hold on Warlock, had taken it over to save themselves from off-world interference.
“Right here—there’s a lake shaped so.” Lantee had taken the sterile stick from her and was drawing. “Then trees, a line of them standing this way. The rest is meadow land. We should be at this end of the lake.”
It was hard to translate those marks into a real picture and Charis began to shake her head. Suddenly her companion leaned forward and laid his palms flat against her forehead just above her eyes.
XII
What Charis saw was indistinct and fuzzy, not as clean-cut as a picture she recalled from her own memory, but perhaps enough for concentration. Only, with that fogged picture came other things; that corridor with the doors was beginning to take form behind the wood and lake. Charis struck Lantee’s hand away and stared at him, breathing hard, trying to read an answering awareness in his eyes.
“We’ll have to remember the dangers of that.” Lantee spoke first.
“Not again! Never again!” Charis heard her voice grow shrill.
But already he was nodding in reply. “No, not again. But did you see enough of the other?”
“I hope so.” She took the stick from him and chose a flat rock surface on which to sketch the Power design. It was when she was putting in the ovals Tsstu had remembered for her that Charis paused.
“Tsstu! I cannot leave her behind. And Taggi—”
She closed her eyes and sent out that silent call. “Tsstu, come! Come now!”
Touch! There came an overlapping of thought waves as fuzzy as the picture Lantee had beamed to her. And—refusal! Decided refusal—an abrupt breaking of contact. Why?
“There is no use,” she heard Lantee say as she opened her eyes again.
“You reached Taggi.” It was not a question.
“I reached him in a different way than I ever have before. He would not listen. He was occupied—”
“Occupied?” Charis wondered at his word choice. “Hunting?”
“I don’t think so. He was exploring, trying something new which interested him so greatly he would not come.”
“But they are here, back with us, not in Otherwhere?” Her relief was threatened by that recurring fear.
“I don’t know where they are. But Taggi has no fear; he is only curious, very curious. And Tsstu?”
“She broke contact. But—yes—I think she had no fear either.”
“We shall have to leave now!” Lantee continued.
If they could, Charis amended silently. She took his hand once more. “Think of your lake,” she ordered and concentrated on the faint pattern on the rock.
Cool breeze—the murmur of it through leaves. The direct baking of the sun had been modified by a weaving of branches, and just before her was the shimmer of lake surface.
“We made it!” The tight grasp on her hand was gone. Lantee surveyed the site with a wary measuring, his nostrils slightly dilated as if, like Taggi, he could pick up and classify some alien scent.
There was a path along the lake shore, defined well enough to be clearly visible. Otherwise the place was as deserted as if no off-worlder had ever been there before.
“This way!” Lantee motioned her south, away from the thread of path. His voice was close to a whisper, as if he suspected they were scouting enemy-held territory.