Warlock by Andre Norton

She was Vintra, war-captive from Turan’s last battle, the one in which he had taken his deathblow.

Vintra? Who was Vintra? Where was this dark place? Ziantha tried to move, heard a harsh clink of metal through the oppressive dark. She was—chained! Chained to a wall, and no frantic fight against those bonds left her with more than cut and bruised wrists and the knowledge that she had used up precious air by her struggles.

She was Vintra—no, Ziantha! Crouching against the wall she tried to sort out her whirling thoughts, decide which were true and which hallucinations. She must be caught in some trance nightmare. Ogan had warned her of such a danger. That was why she must never enter the deep trance alone. Nearby there must be one skilled enough to break the trance if she were caught in a killing hallucination.

Ogan—Harath— The thought of them steadied her.

In the tomb of Turan, Iuban had forced her to focus on the gem. This was the result. But it was real! She felt the chains, gasped in the lack of air. She was—

Vintra! It was like the turning of a wheel in her head, making her first one person and then the other. Vintra was to die here, part of a funeral gift to Turan, because she was the only prisoner of note taken during the last skirmish at the mountain pass. In her a great rage surged against Turan and his kind. She would die here, gasping out her life like a korb drawn from its water home, but she would be avenged! And that avenging—

The pictures in her mind— What, who was she?

Ziantha! Once more the wheel had turned. She was Ziantha, and she must get back, out of the trance. Ogan—Harath—! Frantically the girl sent out mind-calls, begging for help to save her from this dream that was worse than any she had ever faced before on the out-plane, though it was true that when one was trained to enter a sensitive’s calling one had to face all one’s fears, meannesses of spirit. Ill acts were given form and substance in trances. Only when one conquered those did one win to psychic control. In the past such terrors had been real also, but now, as she forced herself to employ one familiar safeguard after another, there was no change. She had known this was different, that she had no defense here. No, she must be awakened, anchored to her own time and plane by more strength than she herself could summon.

Harath—Ogan! She made mind pictures, cast for them.

A faint stirring! Surely she had caught that! By all the power of That Which Was Beyond Reckoning, she had felt that answer! Ziantha turned all her talent force into one plea: draw me forth—draw me forth—or I die!

Yes! A stir—there was an answer. But it did not come straight, as she expected. It rather flowed, like water finding its way around great rocks half damming a river course, as if it fought.

“Harath! I am here! Come for me! Do not leave me to die in the dark, choking out life, imprisoned in what I cannot understand. Come!”

Not Harath!

There was a personality here. But not Harath—not Ogan. From the other plane then? She touched thought.

Shock, horror—a horror so great that that other personality was reeling as a man might under a deathblow.

“Help me,” it cried. She could not understand. This had come at her call—why then—?

“Dead! Dead!”

An answer out of the dark fraught with terror.

“I am not dead!” Ziantha denied. She would not accept that, for if she did there would never be any escape. She would be caught in Vintra.

“Dead”—the repetition was fainter. Going—the other was going—to leave her here! No!

She might have screamed that aloud. The sound seemed to ring around and around in her head.

“No!”

There was silence through which she could hear the gasping from her laboring lungs. Then—from the other:

“Where is this place?”

Words—not mind-send, but words to her.

“The tomb of Turan,” she answered with the truth that Vintra knew.

“And I—I am Turan—” the voice grated. “But I am not Turan!” The denial followed the recognition swiftly, as if the same fear she had known when Vintra had taken over gripped him.

Sounds of movement. Then a mind command, quick and urgent: “Light!”

A glow, growing stronger. Why had she not thought of that? Straightway she sent out her own energy to feed his, to strengthen the glow.

“There is no air, we shall die.” She added her urgent warning.

“Go to the sunder plane, quickly!”

His command brought her mind back into the protective pattern, which she should also have done for herself. She took the steps of out-of-body, something she had always been reluctant to try. And so, safe for a time, looked about her.

There lay the body from which she had just freed herself, tangled in chains. To her left was a two-step dais on which rested Turan, his High Commander’s cloak spread over him, the lilies massed, brown-petaled, dying. Even as she saw him, candles at the head and foot of his resting place flared high.

“The spirit door!” that other’s voice in her head. “There!”

She had not remembered, not until he spoke, for that was of Vintra’s knowledge not her own. But there was the spirit door set in the rock above Turan.

“Draw back the bar there—”

Their only hope. For if that faintly twitching body she had just left died, then she was also lost. Ziantha made reentry, knew the life force was fast fading. With the last spurt of energy she could summon, she joined her power to the other’s, fastened thought to the bar. Together they wrought; fear rose in her—they could not—

She heard a stir, for it was dark again, since all their talent was focused on that one act.

“My arm—my right arm—” wheezed the voice.

She fed him her power. And then she fell into darkness again without learning whether death came with it.

“Vintra!” Her body ached, she cried out in pain as hands pressed her ribs again and again, forcing air in and out.

“I live—let—be!”

There was light again. The candles flamed steadily to show the spirit door hanging open. From it came air, chill but blessedly fresh. Turan knelt beside her, now inspecting the fastenings of the chains.

“A pretty custom,” he commented. “Human sacrifice to honor a war hero.”

“You—Turan—” She tried to edge away from him. Turan was dead. Even now his body showed those wounds the priests of Vut had repaired that he might go to Nether World intact of person. Yet they looked fully healed, as if they had been ordinary hurts nature mended.

“Not Turan,” he shook his head, “though I appear to share some identity with him from time to time. Not any more than you are Vintra. But it would seem we must play parts until we find a way back.”

“You, you were the one with Harath!” Ziantha guessed. “The one who was coming when Iuban made me use the focus-stone.”

“I was.” But he did not identify himself further. “Now what is this about the focus-stone? Apparently some trick of psychometry hurled us back into this and the more I know how and why the better. Tell me!” It was a sharp order, but she was only too willing to obey it.

He had found the trick of the chain fastening, and now they fell from her, and he kicked them away into a corner. Ziantha began her tale with the first sight of the artifact, and all that had happened to her since she had fallen under the peculiar spell that ugly lump with its hidden and perhaps fatal heart had exerted on her.

“A gem such as that now on your forehead?”

Startled, Ziantha raised her hands to her head. There was an elaborate headdress confining hair much longer than her own. And from those bands a drop set with a gem rested just above her eyes. She wrested the band from her so she could see the stone.

It was the focus-stone! Or enough like it to be. Ziantha thought she could tell with a touch, yet she dared not. Who knew what might happen if she tried again?

“Is it?” he who was now Turan demanded a second time.

Ziantha looked miserably at the crown. She had firmly exiled Vintra, but as she stared down at the stone that other identity stirred, gathered strength. Perhaps she might learn the power of the stone, but in doing so she could also lose that other who had been meant to die here in Turan’s tomb.

“Vintra—Vintra might know—” she said with vast reluctance, but she could not suppress the truth.

“If the stone had power enough to hurl you into Vintra and me into Turan, then perhaps its results can be reversed. We must know. Look, you are not alone; my will backs yours. And I promise you I shall not let you be imprisoned in Vintra!”