Warlock by Andre Norton

The girl closed her eyes for a second. This was fear, this sick chill. Yes, she knew what it meant to face hostility; before, she had to run from it. Now she must walk defenseless straight into the worst her imagination could picture for her. But there was a chance. She had known that from the argument she had had with Gidaya. Perhaps the continued use of the Power did implant in one a confidence. Only, once at the base, she would not have the Power to pull on; the nullifier would see to that. She would have only her wits and luck to back her. Or—could she have more? The wolverines, Togi and her cubs, lurked about the base, apparently free of control and able to prey upon the alien guards. Charis had had no contact with Togi, but with Taggi, who had been so strangely one with her in that search for Lantee, and with Tsstu, it might be different. Where were the animals now?

“You have something more in mind?” A change in her expression must have brought that question from him.

“Tsstu and Taggi—” she began and then explained more fully.

“But I don’t understand. You say that they weren’t with you in the Cavern of the Veil or afterward.”

“No, but they answered when we called. I don’t think they were captive in any dream place. Perhaps they had to be free to go their own way for a space after that. It—it was a frightening experience.” Charis had a flash thought of the corridor, the opening doors in which Lantee’s thoughts had attacked her, and again she shivered. “They may have run from what they remembered.”

“Then—will they return?”

“I think they will have to,” Charis said simply. “We wove a bond then and still it holds us. Maybe we can never loose it. But if I could find them, they would be allies those at the base would not suspect.”

“Suppose the nullifier dampened contact between you?” Thorvald persisted.

“If I reached them before I went in, they would know what they could do in aid.”

“You seem to have all the answers!” He did not appear to relish that admission. “So you’re to walk alone into a trap and spring it—just like that!”

“Maybe I can’t. But I believe there’s no other solution.”

“Again you read the pattern right, Sharer of Dreams!”

They looked around, startled. Gidaya stood there and with her, Gysmay.

Thorvald opened his mouth, then closed it again. There was a set to his jaw that suggested that, while he knew silence was proper, he resented it.

“You are persuaded it must be thus?” Charis asked of the Wyverns.

Gysmay made a movement of the shoulders approximating a human shrug.

“I, who am a Holder of the Upper Disk, will go with the desires of my Sharers of Dreams in this matter. You believe, one who is not quite a stranger, that this is what must be done. And you are willing to take that doing into your own hands. So let it be. Though we cannot give you any aid, since the evil which has been brought to trouble our world holds about its heart a wall we cannot pierce.”

“No, you cannot aid me once I am within that place. But there is that you can do for me before I enter—”

“Such being?” Gidaya asked.

“That Tsstu and Taggi be found and summoned from where they have gone.”

“Tsstu at least has power of a sort, but whether that may be harnessed to your purpose—” the older Wyvern hesitated. “However, no power, no aid, is to be despised when one walks into a fork-tail’s den without a disk between one’s fingers. Yes, we shall search out the small one and also the other who serves these men. Perchance we can do more, using like tools—”

Gysmay nodded eagerly. “That is a good thought, Reader of the Rods! One can build on it. Perchance we can provide some action for these invaders to think upon so that their minds will be in two ways occupied and not fastened alone upon you and what you would do among them. We cannot walk through their rooms, but we shall see.” She did not elaborate.

Turning to Charis, Thorvald cut in: “I’m going with you—in the copter.”

“You can’t!” Charis protested. “I won’t take the flyer back. I must wander in as if I have been lost—”

“I didn’t say land at the base. But I must be back near the base, near enough to be able to move in when we can.” He said that defiantly, glaring at the Wyverns as if he would compel them to his will.

When we can, Charis thought, more likely—if we can.

“It is well,” Gidaya answered, though there was a small movement from Gysmay as if she were protesting. “Take your machine and fly—to this place—”

Into Charis’s mind came instantly a clear picture of a flat rock expanse squared off to make a natural landing strip.

“About a mile from the base!” Thorvald burst out; he must also have had that mind picture and recognized it. “We shall come in from the south—at night—without landing lights. I can set us down there without trouble.”

“And Tsstu—Taggi?” demanded Charis of the Wyverns.

“They shall join you there for whatever purpose you think they may serve. Now you may go.”

Charis was back in the landing well where the two copters were waiting, but this time Thorvald was with her. As the girl started for the machine which had brought her to the Citadel, the Survey officer caught at her arm.

“Mine—not that one.” He drew her with him toward the other copter. “If it’s sighted after we land, they’ll believe I returned and am hiding out. They won’t connect it with you.”

Charis agreed to the sense of that and watched him settle behind the controls as she took her place on the second seat. They lifted with a leap which signaled his impatience more than his words had done. Then, under the night sky, they drove on, the ocean below them.

“They may have a search beam on,” he said as his fingers played a dot-dash over course buttons. “We’ll take the long way around to make sure we have the best cover we can. North—then west—then up from the south—”

It was a long way around. Charis watched with eyes over which the lids were growing very heavy. The smooth sheen of the night-darkened sea underneath them spread on and on in spite of their speed. To be flying away from their goal instead of toward it was hard to be reconciled to now.

“Settle back,” Thorvald’s voice was low and even; he now had his own impatience under iron control. “Sleep if you can.”

Sleep? How could anyone sleep with such a task before her. Sleep—that . . . was . . . impossible . . .

Dark—thick, negative dark. Negative? What did that mean? Dark, and then, deep in the heart of that blackness, a small fire struggling to beat back the dark. A fire threatened, a fire she must reach and feed. Bring it back to bright blaze again! But when Charis strove to speed to the fire, she could move only with agonizing slowness, so that the weight which dragged at her limbs was a pain in itself. And the fire flickered, reblazed, and then flickered. Charis knew that when it died wholly it might not be relit. But she needed more than herself to feed that fire, and she sent out a frantic, soundless call for aid. There was no answer.

“Wake up!”

Charis’s body swayed in a rough grip, her head jerked back and forth on her shoulders. She looked up, blinking and half-dazed, into eyes which blazed with some of the intensity of the fire of the dark.

“You were dreaming!” It was an accusation. “They have a hold on you. They never meant—”

“No!” Enough understanding had returned to make her shake off Thorvald’s hands. “Not one of their dreams.”

“But you were dreaming!”

“Yes.” She huddled in the copter seat as the machine flew on under auto-pilot. “Shann—”

“What about him?” Thorvald caught her up quickly.

“He’s still alive.” Charis had brought that one small crumb of assurance out of the black with her. “But—”

“But what?”

“He’s just holding on.” That, too, had come to her although it was not so reassuring. What had strained Lantee to the depths she had witnessed? Physical hurt? A scanner attack? He was alive and he was still fighting. That she knew with certainty and now she said so.

“No real contact? He told you nothing?”

“Nothing. But I almost reached him. If I could try again—”

“No!” Thorvald shouted at her. “If he is under a scanner, you don’t know how much they could pick up because of such a contact. You—you’ll have to put him out of your mind.”