Warlock by Andre Norton

“This—is—was a city,” the girl answered.

Iuban had come to face them. “Well enough, but one we cannot search now—unless we can turn back time. Where do we go to look for anything that remains? Can you tell us that, dreamer?” He made a scoffing challenge of his demand.

There had been no selectivity to that impression of the city. Ziantha’s hold on the artifact tightened. Suppose she were to open the crude outer casing, release the jewel inside, would that lead them to what they sought? But she shrank from that act. Let her try as long as she could to use it as it was.

“Let me try—” she said in a low voice, twisting loose from Yasa’s hold. There was a ledge of rock nearby, and she reached that, to sit down, hunched over the lump. Wetting her lips, she forced herself to touch it to her forehead.

It was like being whirled through a vast flow of faces, voices. They shouted, they whispered, they grew large, dwindled, they spoke in tongues she had never heard, they laughed, wept, howled, screamed— She made herself try to steady upon one among the many, concentrate on learning what she could.

Singakok—Turan! The second name she held to, using it as an anchor that she might not be carried away in the sea of faces, deafened by the voices, the clamor of the long-vanished city.

“Turan!” she used the name to demand an answer.

The faces withdrew, formed two lines melting into one another, their cries stilled. Between the lines moved a shadow procession. That was Turan, and behind him was her place, her own place. She must follow—for there was no escape—

“What is she doing?” Very faint, that question.

“Be still! She seeks—” came in answer.

But that exchange had nothing to do with Turan. She must follow him. The shadows grew no denser, but they remained, a little ahead. No longer were there faces on either side—only Turan and her tie to him.

Now and then that scene shimmered, tore, as if it were fashioned of the thinnest gauze, shredded by a breeze. Then she saw only distorted rocks and a barren land that was not Singakok. When that happened she had to stop, call upon Turan, rebuild the vision.

Very dimly she heard chanting, sweet and high, like the caroling of birds released from captivity, or the thud of drums which were of the earth, the earth reluctant to lose Turan. Turan—

The shadows were gone, whipped away. Ziantha could not again summon them. She stood with the artifact before a great rise of bare red rock, a wall of cliff. But she knew that what she had sought lay behind it, that the artifact had led her to a place from which it had once come.

The girl looked back over her shoulder. Yasa, Iuban, his men, all were watching her.

“What you seek—” she said, the energy fast draining from her as it always did when she had made such an effort, “lies there.” She pointed ahead at the rock, staggering then to an outcrop where she might sit, for she feared her trembling legs would no longer support her.

Yasa came to her quickly. “You are sure, cubling?”

“I am sure.” Ziantha’s voice was close to a whisper. She was so spent in her struggle to hold the vision that she longed only for rest and quiet, for no more urging to push her talent.

The Salarika held out two revive capsules, and Ziantha took them with a shaking hand, put them in her mouth to dissolve slowly. Iuban had gone to the face of the cliff, was examining it intently, and at a signal his men split to search left and right.

“I can see nothing—” he was beginning when the crewman to his right gave a hail. The Jack captain hurried toward him.

Yasa bent over Ziantha. “I told you—be slow—do not reveal anything before Ogan comes—”

“He is here, or near.” Ziantha felt the aid of the revive. “In the early morning I had a message—”

“Ahhhh—” A purr of satisfaction. “It goes well, very well, then. And you play no game with Iuban; this is the place?”

Ziantha regarded the wall. “Turan lies there,” she said flatly.

But who was Turan—or what? Why should this artifact bind her to him? She looked at the cliff, and now her fatigue was tinged with fear. Behind that—behind that lay— She wanted to scream, to run. But there was no escape, never any escape from Turan; she might have known that.

Only who was Turan? There seemed to be two identities within her now. One she knew; it was the Ziantha she had always been. But another was struggling for life—the one—the thing that knew Turan—Singakok—the one to whom she must never yield!

Iuban had been conferring with his crewmen, and one now headed back toward the ship while the Jack captain came to them.

“There are marks of a sealed way there. We shall have to laser our way in.”

“With care,” Yasa warned swiftly. “Or do you have a depth detect for such purposes?”

“With care, and a detect,” he replied. Now he glanced past the Salarika to Ziantha. “What more can she tell us? Is this a tomb?”

“Turan lies there,” the girl answered.

“And who is Turan?” he prodded her. “A king, an emperor, a stellar lord? Is this a Forerunner of a star empire, or only an ancient of some earthbound planet? What can you tell us?”

Yasa swept in between them fiercely. “She is tired—such reading weakens a sensitive. Get that storehouse open and let her psychometrize some artifact from within and she can tell you. But she must rest now.”

“At least she brought us here,” he conceded. And with that he tramped back to the walled-in door. But Yasa sat down beside Ziantha, putting her arm about the girl’s shoulders, drawing her close, as she asked in a very low voice:

“Have you contact now with Ogan? It is now he must come.”

Ogan? Summoning up what strength she had Ziantha formed a mind picture of the parapsychologist, sent forth mind-search. Harath had cut communication so summarily earlier she did not try him. The alien could be capricious on occasion, better aim directly for Ogan. Only she had no—

Answer? A flash of contact, as instantly gone. Ogan? It was not Harath, because even so light a touch would have revealed the alien. This had been wholly human. Ogan, then—but for some reason unwilling to accept a message. She said as much.

“Do not seek then. There may be a detect he has reason to fear. But as he did make contact, he will know where we are and the urgency of the matter. You have done well in this matter, cubling. Be sure I shall not forget what I owe you.”

The crewman returned, another with him. Between them they carried a box and a portable laser—of the type used for asteroid mining. But it was the detect which Iuban first put into action.

Yasa and Ziantha joined him as he crouched over the box, studying the small visa-tape on its top.

“An open space, three cycles within,” he reported. “The tomb chamber perhaps. Low frequency setting to bore us a door without any side flare.”

He set the laser with care, aiming it twice at nearby rocks to mark the results before he tried it on the wall. Then he moved the finger of the beam up and down within the faint lines of the ancient opening, cutting out a space no wider than a man. The brilliant beam of a belt torch thrust into the space beyond.

“Let us go to Turan!” Iuban laughed.

Ziantha raised one hand to her throat, the other still cradled the artifact against her breast. She was choking, she could not breathe. For a second or two the sensation was so severe she felt that death itself was a single flicker of an eyelid away. Then the sensation faded, and she could not fight as Yasa pushed her along hard on Iuban’s heels through the break in the wall.

The Jack captain’s lamp flooded the space into which they had come. But it showed dire destruction. This had been a tomb once, yes, and a richly furnished one. But other grave robbers had preceded them. There was a wreckage of plundered chests, now crumbling into dust, objects which had lost their meaning and value when they had been mishandled by those in search of precious and portable loot.

“An abort!” Iuban swung the torch back and forth. “A thrice-damned abort!”

“Be careful!” Yasa cried and caught his arm as he would have moved forward. “We will not know that until after a careful, and I mean a very careful, search is made of what is still here. Tomb robbers often leave what seems of little value to them, but is worth much to others. So do not disturb anything—but widen the passage in that we may shift and hunt—”