Long Live Lord Kor!
Andre Norton

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When in 3450 (old Terran reckoning) El Zim made the momentous breakthrough that allowed time travel, the long-discussed threat of fatal meddling in the past became real. Strong measures were quickly taken to ensure no indiscriminate exploration, though Zim and his assistants had already promised great caution.

By 3465 the controls had hardened into a bureaucratic system of monitorial services with trained and screened operatives. Meddling was allowed, even authorized, if done "by the book" and not on planets included in the home systems of the existing in-power groups.

For example, on some planets discovered by the ever-widening space search of Survey, history had taken grim turns. Such worlds were declared open "for the good of all" to the newly organized Bureau of Time Exploration and Manipulation.

Several dazzling successes in bringing, as it were, the dead back to life were enough to entrench the Bureau. And the benefits, so widely advertised, could not be denied by even the most cautious and conservative. Of course, there were failures, too. But most of those were mentioned only in obscure reports carefully, swallowed by the headquarters computer under a do-not-divulge code.

By 3500 the whole operation had been refined sufficiently to run more or less smoothly under data supplied by ZAT, a master computer whose limitations had yet to be discovered. But men are not machines. Occasionally crises arose. The answer was a second elite corps trained to snatch victory from defeat if such were possible.

I







Creed Trapnell snorted, "What's the alibi this time—computer error? Of course, anyone with a grain of imagination might think that's been a little bit overworked. Let's see—that leaves that other bit of blame-shuffling, the one about insufficient native data obtained by survey crew."

Controller Goddard, Field Force Five, had never been known to display emotion. There was a legend sometimes accepted by cadets as truth, that he was only a humanoid body housing an extension of ZATs computer brain. Now he did not raise his eyes from the TV screen implanted in his desk.

Goddard had no easirests in his office. He carefully cultivated the art of making visitors uncomfortable so that they would not linger and use up his valuable time. But Trapnell sprawled as much as his stiff chair allowed, his booted feet leaving faint smudges on the neutral green of the carpet.

Creed Trapnell was far from being in uniform. The boots were scuffed, the breeches above them bagged and stained. His shirt, tucked into a wide belt studded with metal bosses, had once had sleeves as a ragged fringe about the arm-holes testified. Now his deeply tanned arms were bare. He looked the ragged wanderer, which gave him pleasure. He had no reason to want to please Goddard.

"Insufficient native data," he repeated lazily. "That must be it. They haven't used it for—" He held out his hands, reckoning time by turning down fingers, "For at least four calls now: And," he added, "I am on certified leave." Such a reminder might do him no good but at least it would register on the tape Goddard kept running.

Goddard looked up, eyes blank. When he spoke his voice held enough metallic twang to carry out the robot illusion.

"The excuse is falsified work reports."

Trapnell sat up as if jerked.

"I don't believe it!" He slapped his knee and dust flew from the breeches. "It isn't possible they would ever admit that."

"They had no choice." Had there, or had there not been a flicker of feeling in Goddard's eyes? This he should relish that the arrogant Fore Office, which always expected Goddard's men to pick up the pieces without open recognition of their services and only grudging acceptance of their existence, had to admit an error of its own.

Trapnell was excited, a little. This was more than he had expected when Goddard had recalled him from a well-earned leave. It must be N hot, if the front office admitted a mistake.

Goddard flashed on the wall screen and said twangily, "Vallek." The word meant nothing to Trapnell, but the screen filled with a picture. They could be looking out of a window at a brilliantly hued landscape. In the foreground stretched a city: walled, towered, enveloped by fields of vegetation not a true green, having a golden sheen. And the architecture of the city was alien.

Swiftly Trapnell's trained mind evaluated and filed the scene.

Then the city disappeared into a new panorama. Desert country. The sky was a golden sheet deepening into orange, the ground underneath was umber. No vegetation at all—yet the soil was broken here and there by ridges of rock, buttes. And against the horizon loomed a chain of mountains.

Now the desert picture gave way to a close-up of one of the mountains. One slope was broken by a cliff carved and embellished, the patterns inlaid with metal and gems, so that it glittered under the yellow sky.

"Orm Temple," Goddard identified.

There were other scenes, some within that cleft where rock-walled ways bore murals. As they scanned this spot or that, Goddard supplied brief explanation.

Finally the Controller snapped off the viewer. "The position is this. Vallek lies today in Point Six Sector—but it is a radioactive cinder."

"N War? I don't get it. That view was of a feudal level civilization."

"You saw a time of split," Goddard returned. "From there the future is in doubt. Shortly thereafter a Holy War was proclaimed by the priests of the Worm—their oracle made a prophecy which helped defeat the Kor-King of the city—Lanascol. Then their theocracy fell apart ten years later, making way for a conqueror from the south. He established a line, which some two hundred years later, developed a technology that within five hundred years more blew Vallek into a cinder. The priests of the worm must not start that war—if we can help it."

"How do we work—through the oracle?"

"Just so. You'll have briefing—but the situation is this—their oracle is always an imbecile. And he never lives very long. When he dies the priests set out on a quest which reaches out all over Vallek. They must find an idiot baby, male, born at the very moment of the previous oracle's passing. The child is always completely empty-minded."

"Then he must mouth what some priest tells him—"

"You would think so," Goddard agreed. "Only, as far as the spy rays have discovered, that isn't true. When they want a prophecy he is taken to a seat overlooking a so-called 'worm walk' and left there for the night. When they bring him out he repeats, in perfectly intelligible language—though normally he only mouths sounds—an answer. The entrance to the Walk is guarded closely. So far we cannot detect any manner of fraud. But ZAT says it is more than meddling by some priest. And this time he must not give any war prophecy."

"How can you be so sure that your southern conqueror won't eventually take over anyway?"

"ZAT says no. If Lanascol continues to exist as a strong power the development of a higher civilization will follow another road altogether. Now—you perceive the advantage of the idiot oracle?"

"You mean he is the one to be occupied? Sounds simple enough. What went wrong?"

"That is what you must find out. ZAT says wrong data was fed in and our man never arrived."

"But—" Trapnell was startled.

"Yes—but! This was not discovered until the official weekly summary was supplied by ZAT. There was an alarm—we found the falsified tapes."

"It should be easy to discover who had access—"

"The falsification was done in the spy records—on the other side. So ZAT reports."

"Wow! We have a resident agent there?"

"Naturally. ZAT gives clearance in that direction. It's plain someone else meddled."

"But that's impossible!" Trapnell felt as if the green carpet under his dusty boots had opened a mouth. Facts he had accepted as solid all his life…

"We have pushed ZAT for an answer. The reply was insufficient data. But no denial. So we are faced with two possibilities. One, we have a traitor in our service. Two, we are not the only ones operating along this line. After all the galaxy is too large for any one empire, confederation or species to know. There may well be another Service in business. That we have not come across it before is a perfectly reasonable chance."

"But why a falsified report?"

"One can think of several reasons. We may be under observation. We wish to save Vallek—the others might not want that. Or they may be throwing up an obstacle to test us."

"A nice dish you've put on my table," Trapnell commented sourly. "So I play the oracle and, at the same time, try to discover who doesn't want me there. By the way, does the front office have any trace of what happened to their man?"

"Not as yet. The resident agent has been alerted. Look, this is a rush job. They are waiting for you in briefing. You've only a few planet days before you're supposed to prophesy. And this must go through—it's AA priority."

Trapnell stood up. "Aren't they always when we get them?"

"We don't get them until they hit the hot line. Remember, this time the job's double."

"As if I can forget," Trapnell said as he went out.

Lying in the send-sling, a briefing helm clamped on his head, watching the techs make ready, Trapnell wondered why he stayed in the Service. He was tired. Gone was the bounce he had once known. He had lived how many other lives? He couldn't even reckon them. And most had been dangerous ones. Twice he had even been killed and the techs had had to pull him back in a hurry to save him in time. To say nothing of the occasions he had lived through torture, maiming and other ills in his borrowed bodies. There was always the one fact, too, he could be planted only in a mindless, near-zero-idiot body, which meant complications from the start. That was why the resident agents went through in another technique to receive and sustain the action man. They never had any hope of return. At least he did not have to face permanent exile in that manner.

He suffered through that last moment of rebellion, as usual—the desire to throw off the helm and shout out a refusal to go. Then the tech threw the switch.

 

Wakening from the send was always to be dreaded. There was a period of disorientation miserable for the victim. And Trapnell always hated to open his eyes to the new surroundings, to inspect his new body. But delay offered nothing and he nerved himself to open his eyes.

He stared straight up into the folds of a tent or canopy. It was not of the vivid colors he associated with this world but of a pearl shade with a shimmering rainbow overcast. Turning his head gave him sight of a window with the yellow sky beyond. Over that opening stretched a finely barred netting. And on either side hung drapes of the same pearl luster as the canopy.

His hands slid over a silky surface. It was apparent he lay in a richly provided bed. Now he dared to brace himself up on his elbows. He saw that set in the footposts of the bed were rings of metal from which ran chains disappearing under the coverings. He threw those aside. His ankles were fitted with silver bands to which the chains were fastened. A prisoner!

Perhaps this oracle was not so much of an idiot as to lead a vegetable existence. Perhaps this oracle, rather, was mobile, apt to wander off if not restrained. The grill at the window could be a further barrier. He had a role to play which would automatically be triggered as soon as he sighted his keepers. The briefing would have seen to that.

Now he tried to judge the length of the chains and when he moved they clashed with a faintly musical ring. For the first time he examined his body. Somehow he had thought to find it small and puny or else of a bloated, unhealthy aspect. But his legs, the rest of him, were lean, well muscled, the skin a tan-red in color. There was a puckered scar down the outside of one thigh, long healed yet still the reminder of a wound.

He ran his fingertips over his face, found a second scar-pucker above his left eye and running up into the line of his hair. And that was tender. Odd—if he were the idiot oracle kept by the priests since childhood, how had his body, in such fit condition, acquired those scars?

His movements again set the chains to ringing. A man came around the canopy curtains. He was not wearing the red robes the briefing had said were a priest's. Nor did the sight of him trigger the response Trapnell expected.

Though it was hard to judge age in another race, the newcomer might be on the verge of middle years. He wore high boots, above them skin-tight leggings, and a high-collared, long-sleeved, wide-skirted tunic without visible fastenings. That was of a dull blue shade and on the breast was embroidered an elaborate symbol in silver, parts of the design glinting with tiny gems.

He had a belt of silver links which supported the holster of a rodlike weapon. And he gave the appearance of a competent fighting man. His skin was red-brown, his hair seemingly black until he walked into the full window light to prove it a dark red.

Staring at the newcomer, Trapnell was disturbed by his lack of other reaction. This was the first time a send-briefing had ever failed to fit him at once into his assumed role. He simply had no background to fit here. Unless this were another case of a send gone wrong and he was in a place not meant… He would have to be careful until either his briefing knowledge would be triggered to life or he could discover what had happened.

The man voiced an exclamation as he studied Trapnell.

"My Lord Kor!" His voice was sharp, excited. "Your mind—it is back from the dark!"

My Lord Kor—the Kor-King? But that was in Lanascol, not in Orm Temple! It was clear he was neither where he was supposed to be nor whom. He put his band to his head without realizing he made that gesture.

"Your wound, Lord Kor—does it still pain you? It was indeed a grievous slash, dealing a hard blow—"

A head wound. And an exchange of bodies could never be made with a sentient subject. So had he arrived in a body where a head wound had made the victim an imbecile? If so—well, he perhaps had a chance. Certainly it was a logical explanation, though if he had not reached the oracle—why?

"It pains—a little—" he mumbled. "I—I cannot remember—" Give them that explanation and use it for the only cloak he had.

"It like to split your skull, Lord Kor," the other men assured him. "You have wandered in the dark for many days, not knowing the Kor-King, your father, nor the Lady Yarakoma, those nearest to you. Food had to be put in your mouth, and you tended like a babe of tender years. And then—when the ravings came upon you—" He shook his head. "You would have harmed yourself had we not—"

"Had we not what, Girant?" A second man moved out to stand beside the first. He bore no symbol on the front of his green tunic. And he had a sleeveless cloak, his arms thrust through the open slits. The garment was of white with strange red symbols bordering its hem.

For the first time Trapnell's briefing worked. The newcomer was a medico, or the closest to one of that training Vallek knew. The man shouldered Girant aside, proceeded to grip Trapnell's wrist, peer searchingly into his eyes.

"Well enough," he said after a long moment. Then he felt gently along the seal of the healing scar.

"Better than we hoped, Lord Kor," was his brisk opinion. "Tell me—what do you remember?"

Trapnell shook his head. "Nothing—I do not even know your name—or his." He pointed to the man in blue.

The latter started to talk but the medico waved his hand for quiet.

"Some difficulty is to be expected. Praise be that you have at least come to your senses. For the rest, it may be that your memory shall return, if raggedly. And there are enough here to tell you of the past—some who will enjoy it." He looked sober, as if he had some subtle meaning for that last remark.

"You are," he pointed to Trapnell, "the Lord Kor Kenric, second son to Kor-King Hernaut. Until three months ago you were Warden of the South, in command of the Border Guard. There was an attack by the Kawyn, after which you were found nigh to dead. Girant here managed to keep you breathing until he could get you back to Lanascol. You had a hole in your skull wide enough for your brains to leak through, and for a goodly while your actions have been such that we thought they had."

His words held little deference. If the Lord Kor was his superior in rank, this medico was no subservient courtier. And Trapnell-Kenric, he must begin to think of himself as Kenric—found the fellow's brusqueness bracing.

"And you are?"

"Atticus, Body Healer. You'll see much of me—as you have not before, having had a body which served you well, Lord Kor." He turned to Girant. "Best inform the Kor-King of this recovery."

"Of course." The other hurried away. Atticus seemed to be listening until there came the sound of a closing door. Then he looked to his patient once again.

"It is perhaps not meet to trouble a man with a broken head over possible danger," he said quickly. "But it is well you be warned. There are those who will take it ill that you have your wits clear again."

Now what have I gotten into, thought Trapnell. It sounded like a tangle here also. But any help he could get from Atticus he needed.

"Those being?" he prompted.

"Namely the Lady Yarakoma."

"Atticus paused, watching closely. Seeing no sign that his patient recognized the name, he frowned. "If you cannot remember her, you are indeed set adrift, Lord Kor."

"But I cannot. So tell me."

"She is bedfellow-in-chief to your brother Folkward, eldest son to your father. She desired to follow the old custom to secure the lineage by entering your bed also, but you would have none of her. Thus she fears lest you take a concubine and so imperil the heritage of her lord. Were you lack-witted, she need no longer hold that fear. And there are those who would stand high if she were the sole mate to the princes. So she is chief within these walls to wish you ill—"

"And outside the walls?"

The medico shrugged. "As Border Warden, one who has turned his face against any alliance with Kawyn, you have many who wish you anything but the blessing of health."

"So there are troubles to conquer," Trapnell said.

"That is so, Lord Kor. We live in troubled times. Though it is also true that all times are troubled for some who live through them. Kawyn moves in the south, her eyes ever upon Lanascol which she wishes to sweep from her path. And they say that the worm priests blat much of some dire prophecy. They expect it from that drooling voice they cherish to pronounce weighty dooms on men and nations."

Trapnell seized on that, "A new prophecy? When do they say it will be delivered?"

"Within five days. They have sent a messenger to the Kor-King, bidding him come to listen. Though he is in two minds about answering their invitation. Invitation—I would say their order. They grow more and more puffed up with their own importance since the Rovers of Dupt have winged in to pay them homage and tribute. Though were I a worm priest I would look well at any largesse offered by a Rover lest blood drip from it to stain my hands. Also I would ask myself why such would suddenly want to make one with the Worms. The Rovers have no piety in their crooked bodies. Just another worry for the Kor-King."

Trapnell nodded, not knowing what else to do.

"It is well, Lord Kor," said the medico, "that the son upon whom he can depend the most is able once more to stand at his back. You could not have regained your senses more opportunely. The Kor-King must not be allowed to enter the worm burrows.''

"You are very plain of speech, Atticus."

The medico smiled grimly. "Be you glad I am, Lord Kor. I have proved my right to plain speaking, and I shall continue to exercise it."

The sound of a door, then, and Girant stepped into sight.

"The Kor-King," he announced. "And the Lady Yarakoma."

II
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The night was lighted by three moons; Lord Kor Kenric gripped the balcony rail and stared down into the city. At least this much he had retained of his failed briefing: in that maze was help. The permanent agent had headquarters there. The problem was to reach him. Being the Lord Kor, newly recovered from a hurt all had believed unhealable, Trapnell did not believe he would be suffered to go about alone.

He feared such as Atticus would be on watch—for Lord Kor's good. Yet he could not waste time. He knew that within five days the oracle would signal the uprising that would finish all lying below him now.

So he had to make a move now, tonight. And he was ignorant of the passages of this keep. It would be only too easy to lose his way and alert some guard. Which meant that for egress he had to use the outside of the building rather than the inside, and now he was studying that way.

The balcony on which he stood was one of three on the same level. The one to his left overhung an arch two stories high, one story carved deeply and offering hand-holes.

He had already plundered the Lord Kor's wardrobe, donning the most inconspicuous garments he had found there. The boots he carried slung on a cord around his neck.

The tricky bit was reaching the next balcony. Setting his teeth hard upon his lower lip, he took the leap, his hands reaching for the other rail. He caught it, scrambled to firm footing. Not only his past training served him now, but the fact that he wore the body of a man who had kept in good condition.

The rest was easy. The carvings on the arch served excellently as a ladder. Once on the cobbled pavement he looked up and back. There was a dim glow in the third balconied window, but his own and that immediately above the arch were dark.

He did not have to fear sentries here. He vaulted over a bolted ceremony gate protected by solemn curses, not men. And he slipped along a blind-walled road—since it was lese majeste to have a window looking out upon that way.

Reaching a main avenue, Trapnell—now thinking completely of himself as Kenric, calling himself Kenric—suited his pace to those around him. Again local custom favored him in the hooded cloaks of night wear. His impatience was good enough to have sent him running had he not held tight rein upon it. So little time! He must discover what had gone wrong. And there was a thin chance that if he could reach the oracle, he might complete the sending after all. There had been one or two cases in the past when the subject to be possessed had been in such circumstances that an intermediary had had to be used to reach him. Of course, on those occasions the action had been programmed by ZAT. He put aside speculation and hurried toward his immediate goal,

At this hour there were few abroad. Twice he dodged into dark doorways and stood waiting for the night watch to pass. Then he reached a side alley and a part of his briefing went into action. Two doors down—under a shadowed overhang.

He reached the place quickly, ran fingertips over the surface. There were no street torches near and he was in the dark. His forefinger found a promising groove, followed it to a stud that he pressed three times. Then his head jerked around. That faint sound! He flattened himself against the door.

Someone was coming down the lane as noiselessly as possible. Another agent? Someone hunting him?

As if he saw her now standing in a small slash of moonlight across the alley, Kernic suddenly recalled the woman who had come with the Kor-King to his chamber earlier. She had been soft of voice, perilously sweet of countenance—and as deadly as a falcon in swoop. He had known her type on many worlds. The women who used their bodies as weapons. Atticus had been right—the Lady Yarakoma was to be feared. Yet she had played her part well, probably hoping to win the newly recovered and memory-less Lord Kor to her wishes. If she had set a watch on him—and that could well be…

His hand was on the rod in his belt holster. He did not know the nature of that weapon yet, but he did know the button that released whatever form of attack it delivered.

The faint sound which had alerted him was not repeated. He could see nothing other than a few more arched doors along the lane. The signal—why had no one answered? He felt behind him with his left hand, his right now holding the weapon. Perhaps he must press again—

The door at that instant opened soundlessly.

"Seven-nine-two."

"Eight-ten-three," came at him out of the darkness. Fingers closed about his wrist and he was drawn in. The door closed.

The hand on him tugged and he followed, not yet holstering his weapon. He felt fabric flap about. Soon they were in a dim light and he saw a small room. Its walls were hung with lengths of cloth masking any entrance, cloth night-black in color but worked with silver runes. The light came from a ball mounted on a stand in the exact center of the chamber. Two stools of a black wood faced each other across the light.

All this matched his briefing, and he instantly recognized the woman who had led him here. She was tall and rather spare, young, her face oval with well-marked features. Her skin was the red-brown of Lanascol's people, just as her hair, which she wore loose, was of a darker red.

Her robe of black bore the same silver stitching of occult designs as did the curtains. Her hands were covered by black gloves, to the fingertips of which were sewn talonlike silver nails.

He spoke first. "Niccolae."

True." Her voice was a quiet contralto. "But who are you, wearing the guise of Lord Kor Kenric? Were you not one I should harbor you could not have passed the door warn. But of your coming I have not been advised."

He unbuckled the throat latch of his cloak.

"Something happened. I was sent to replace the oracle at Orm Temple. I awoke in this body instead."

Her eyes were long, slanting upward a little toward her temples. She studied him.

"I must believe you, since there is that here which checks your story and it has not denied you. But never before has a sending ended so."

"There was another agent—from the First Service. We have had no further word from him."

"True. Nor can I tell you aught either. I could not trace him within the temple. It is closed to all women and the priests have safeguards more formidable than this primitive world suggests. I must work in devious ways—mainly through that—" She gestured at the globe. "I have learned only this much. There are many strangers gathering at the temple now. Even the Rovers of Dupt. He whom I contacted by mind-see—though he thought he dreamed only—no longer answers. The wife of the steward for Orm Temple here in Lanascol comes to me for foreseeing. She is a good subject for sleep search but knows little. I know, however, that the priests have friends at court ready for an overturn in rule. Their first target is the man whose body you wear, their second is the Kor-King himself. I have sifted rumor and used sleep search where I could. And I believe that Lord Kor Kenric was not the victim of any Kawyn sword but of a traitor stroke."

"I have been warned by the medico Atticus of the Lady Yarakoma. But this tangle of intrigue has nothing to do with my reaching the oracle—"

She had moved to rest her strangely gloved hands on the globe, half veiling it. "You think that if you face him you may transfer?"

"Such has been known to happen. But I have an idea that if I go openly to Orm Temple, I'll have little chance of seeing the oracle—though they have sent for the Kor-King. If I am too late, that plan will no longer be of use."

She nodded. "And Orm Temple has its safeguards. Your task will be hard."

"There are only a few days left, Niccolae."

"We—"

What she would say Kenric was never to hear. He reeled back, clutching at the wall hangings for support. The material tore loose and he fell. And he saw her also crumple where she stood. His last meaningful thought was that they had been attacked by some mind thrust, and then the darkness closed in.

 

Consciousness returned slowly. It was like being shaken out of a deep sleep and required to solve, while still dazed, an obtuse problem. Stirring deep within him was an alarm. He felt pain then, his bruised body shifting back and forth on an unsteady surface which rose and fell. While in his ears there was a creaking.

When he tried to move, he discovered his wrists were bound together, as were his ankles, the two bonds linked by yet another cord to fetter him securely. There was a bag over his head acting as both blindfold and gag.

Kenric forced himself to think back. He had been with the agent Niccolae—then they had both been struck down. Almost as if a stunner turned on mind beam had… A stunner! But such a weapon was unknown here, existing far ahead in the future.

A personality could be sent back; the Service had been doing that for many years now. But such a transfer was an intricate operation. Spy rays were relatively simple compared to it. And to send weapons—impossible! Unless Goddard's suggestion of some parallel force of men could be true… a competing Service.

But if such were able to transport arms they must be far in advance of ZAT. Kenric chewed on that and found the thought more than a little daunting.

Niccolae had mentioned an in-gathering of strangers at Orm Temple. Among them were there other time and space travelers? Perhaps they had in some manner detected Kenric's arrival. It was never wise to underrate the enemy. Was Yarakoma a part of some intrigue they fostered? She could even be a plant for them, as Niccolae was for the Service. The possibilities were endless and unpleasant.

But speculation was of no help now. He straggled, trying to gauge the efficiency of his ties. They were tight and strong. No trick he remembered could free him.

The bag over his head was to a degree translucent. By the light filtering through he judged this to be day. He felt, too, that they were in the open. He was hot, as if he lay under the full rays of a sun. He longed for water.

Now the surface under him tilted. He slid forward, winding up against a hard wall. He could hear muffled cries. From the jolting that followed he gathered the vehicle carrying him was out of control.

His struggles suddenly brought him against something softer than the bruising surfaces, something that wriggled frantically as if trying to escape the weight of his body. Then, with a crash which slammed them together, the carrier came to an abrupt halt.

A low moan sounded close to his ear. There was a feeble pushing against him. Niccolae? He tried to roll away and did lift some of his weight from that close contact. Then a punishing grip closed on his shoulders. He was jerked across an uneven surface that left splinters in his hands, then thrown to the ground. Only the bag saved his face from grinding into rough gravel. And the fall knocked the breath out of him.

He lay gasping until hands hooked in his armpits, drew him along on his back bumping over rocks, and slammed him finally against a stone that supported him in a half-sitting position, his legs drawn into a cramping curve by the bonds. The stone behind him was hot. Fingers fumbled about his throat and in a moment the bag was off, he was near blinded by sun glare.

Squinting as his sight adjusted, he observed three men in rough clothing. And this must be the desert with its rusty sands. Though there was the shimmer of heat resembling those Goddard had shown him on the viewing screen.

One of the three put fingers to his lips and whistled shrilly. He was answered in a like manner from not too far away. In the meantime Kenric worked his head around to see Niccolae's black robe, now creased and torn, making a dark blot at a neighboring rock. She rested also in a cramped position, her head fallen forward so her hair screened her face. He could not tell whether she were conscious or not.

"We have delivered—" So the whistler spoke.

He stood with his hand out in demand, but there was an air of uneasiness about him. His two companions closed in as if all three were ready to take to their heels as soon as their transaction were completed.

"We have delivered," the man repeated. "Now you pay!" Even if he were uneasy, he appeared determined to get his full due. A rock stood as a screen so that Kenric could not see whom he addressed.

Then a purse was tossed and a man grabbed it, weighed it for a moment in his hand as if he could reckon its contents by heft alone. He stowed it in his tunic, turned on his heel and departed, his followers with him. But he who had paid made no move into the captives' sight.

Kenric half closed his eyes against the sun. Lying here was like being trussed in an oven. He wondered if this were the end, to be left tied in this sere wilderness.

Then—he was touched. He nearly cried out, for being what it was, that touch surely shocked him. Someone was using a mind probe! As that weapon which had led to their capture, such was totally foreign. This was not esper probing, he knew. No, this had a mechanical origin. And alien—so alien that it nicked his own mental band only at intervals like a kind of remote pecking.

He was mind-shielded, of course. No agent was sent without that protection. And Niccolae must be also. Any invasion of their thoughts could read only their assumed identities. But this probe worked so unevenly, surely it was not working at all. And whoever used it apparently could not adjust to the proper band.

Though he continued to try. Kenric could imagine the unseen wrestling with exasperation to center his probe. Then at last the pecking stopped. Confrontation should follow. Kenric tensed, waiting for the appearance of whoever had paid off the kidnappers. But the stifling hot minutes dragged by and nothing showed. Nor could he hear the least sound.

Niccolae stirred, and he could see a thin cheek.

"He is gone." Her words were hoarse, as if her mouth were dry and had difficulty uttering them.

She seemed so sure, Kenric relaxed a little. But if they had been deserted in this condition…

"Yes." She might be reading his mind as the probe had tried to do. "They could well have left us. If so, we shall be dead before night—the sun slays speedily here."

"How—" he began.

"Wait! There may be an answer—yonder—"She pointed with her chin.

Closer to him than to her was a break in the ground, the shadow of a standing rock giving it shade. It was a circular opening about the size of his thumb, and around it mounded loose bits of gravel and sand. As he looked a reddish ball appeared from the hole. It was the head of a segmented creature that now crawled out, arose on jointed, plated legs. The head had three eyes set well to the fore, and not far below those a fringe of tentacles straggled, not unlike a stiff beard. Down its back extended a rough growth of black hairlike fibers.

"Fire worm," Niccolae identified. Her voice came weaker, more slowly. "It craves salt above all else. Look to your bonds."

His bonds? Kenric looked down. Those ties were of fabric. And they were wet with his sweat. Sweat. Salt…

Fire worms had not been included in his briefing. But Niccolae seemed to know. He pushed then with his feet and, wriggling away from his support, thudded to the ground. He wriggled his way to the holes down which the fire worm had whipped at his first movement.

Finally he could move no more, his one cheek rasping against gravel, the sun strong enough to fry him. He fought against panic, hoping against hope that Niccolae's suggestion would work.

III
« ^ »




Though his hands were numb a prick of pain hit. And he guessed a fire worm was finding salt on more than his bonds. He steeled himself not to jerk away. The pain grew worse, and his imagination pictured a feeding on his tormented flesh.

It was hard to lie still, the more so when he was not sure but that he was providing a useless feast. But he endured, and the end came as a sharper pain did make him jerk. His hands fell apart. The strain on the cord between them and his ankles was gone. He could straighten out.

He rolled out of the shadow of the rock, scrabbling in the gravel with his numb and bleeding hands to pull himself away. Somehow he reached one of the taller boulders, rested against it.

There was a milling around the fire-worm hole he had left. Several of the creatures scuttled back and forth, their heads erect as if they sought by sight or scent their vanished prey.

Kenric tore at his ankle ties. Now for the first time he could see Niccolae clearly. She had slumped so that only the rock at her back kept her from the ground. He crawled to her side, pulled her around to get at the strips which held her. She did not stir as he worried them, life returning painfully to his numb fingers as he worked.

Somehow he loosed her, steadied her body against his shoulder while he swept back her hair. Her eyes were closed, her cracked lips open. Shallow breath whistled between them.

"Niccolae!" He shook her gently. He patted her cheek, his gnawed hand leaving a smear of blood.

She gasped. Her eyes came half-open. Encouraged, he began to pull her with him back into what poor shade the standing stones offered, away from the fire-worm nest from which more and more inhabitants were issuing. No longer aids, they were now a menace.

"What—!" The girl in his arms turned her head.

"It's all right. We are free."

She opened her eyes fully with a visible effort, raised her arms to look at her puffed and swollen hands.

"Did the fire worms—?"

"Yes. But they liked the taste they had too well. They want more."

"We—" Her voice was the faintest of whispers as she ran her tongue over seared lips. "We had better move—"

He put out new effort, managed to attain his feet. The stones around him stood like tree boles in a wood, but the leaves and branches which would have been sun shelter were missing. He could not see far in any direction. He began to fear that although they were no longer captives they might still die in this furnace.

Niccolae struggled to pull herself up. He stooped to help her. She leaned against him, lifted her hands clumsily to sweep back her hair.

"Come on!" His arm supporting her, they sidled around one of the stones and then the next!

Suddenly she cried out, pointing with a puffed finger.

He had not thought the stones around them were any more than a freak of nature. But here was a find that argued differently. Protruding from the hard, sun-cracked soil was an unmistakable arch, though its supporting pillars were so buried that the shadowed space it enclosed was no higher than what they could crawl into. Yet even that was a promise for survival. Kenric lurched toward it, bearing the girl with him.

At the edge of that much eroded stone he went to his knees, carrying her along. Together they crept into the hollow. If they might so last out the day, they would have a chance after the coming of night.

He crawled in blindly, for the transition from the glare to this dark was more than his eyes could immediately adjust to. But without warning the surface under them gave way. They slid down, engulfed in clay dust, gravel, debris enough to set them coughing and choking, until they lay half buried in the stuff.

"Niccolae?" Kenric felt about, trying to find her. Then his fingers tangled in the mass of her hair. "Niccolae!" he cried again, only to hear his rumble of voice answered by a rattle as more of the loose stuff slid down. He set about frantically to dig out, afraid a second slide might completely bury them.

Having broken free, he used the hair as a guide to uncover the girl. His questing hand found a reassuring heartbeat. He pulled her well away from the debris before he set out to explore the pit into which they had fallen.

Only it was not a pit. The opening above gave some light and by that and his sweeping hands he discovered they had landed in a passage. The arch must have been a doorway, plugged with earth and stone at some remote date.

At least it was much cooler here. He remembered that natural caves lowered in temperature as one drew farther from their entrances. Perhaps a similar principle operated here. His next discovery was more serious. For when he tried to reclimb the slope, it continued to give way under him. The whole surface was so fluid that the least touch sent it slipping.

"Where—?" Her whisper heartened him and he closed his arms about her in thankful relief.

"We've fallen into a passage of some kind."

"Dark—cool—" she said wonderingly. "But how do we get out?"

"We can't climb back," he told her frankly. "We can only go the other way."

But would air last? And the dark—dared they face that?

He could feel her moving against him. Suddenly there was a subdued glow coming from a small sphere she held, and she gave a small and shaky laugh.

"As a sorceress, consulted by the good people of Lanascol—" her voice was stronger and steadier—"I have my own tricks, friend. What served me in mind-sleep, can do even more good here. Now let us see truly where we stand."

Though the light from the sphere was limited, there seemed to be an answer to it—coming from points on the walls. Kenric heard her exclaim, and she lurched forward, he quickly supporting her, to one of those gleaming patches. She advanced her sphere closer to it.

As the lights drew together, so did both grow sharper and brighter.

She answered his questioning glance. "Like works upon like. This sphere, one of the secrets of those who follow my calling, is radiant at my touch. But it would seem that those who fashioned this place had unlimited supplies of orm ore to place in their walls. I do not believe we shall have to fear the dark much."

They advanced at a pace suiting their battered bodies. Those patches on the walls did ignite, letting them see more.

While at first the studding of orm ore followed no pattern, that altered as the corridor continued, sloping a little down. Now there were carvings, and the patches of radiance formed eyes, coated fangs, swords and spears of warriors struggling in titanic battle. Here are shown fire worms, too, but these were no two-inch wrigglers. Rather the lost artist had pictured them as formidable monsters, on the hairy backs of which rode men—or humanoid creatures resembling men. And this weird cavalry fought not only other men, but was harassed by large flying reptiles.

Niccolae pointed to one such "leather-winged, snake-necked thing.

"A Dupt fanger! Those might be the Rovers of Dupt! They live and ride today—"

"And these fire worms—look at their size. Did they, or a species like them, ever exist to your knowledge?"

"No. But as I have said, the Orm priests guard secrets. They take their oracle down into what they call the worm ways—so it might be that once the fire worms did have larger kin. This place must be very old. And if the Dupt fangers are still known in our day—"

"Perhaps the monster fire worms exist also? Let us trust not here…"

The air had continued breathable—to his surprise—but he thought it must have been ages since anyone had come this way. The battle scenes continued to cover the walls until they became monotonous viewing. The slight coolness gradually became a definite chill.

How far they had come, there was no way of telling. Their best pace was slow and they had to stop and rest now and then to favor their aching bodies. And their torment of thirst grew ever stronger.

It was during one of the rest pauses that Kenric made his first hopeful finding. He had put his hand to the wall; now he snatched it back. In one of the hollows of a fire worm's leg his fingers had found damp. Swiftly he ran his hands over the pitted mass of carving, calling to Niccolae to hold the light closer.

So they discovered moisture, enough to be licked from the gritty stone. Then Kenric hurried them ahead; perhaps the deeper they went the more chance there was for water. They came to a stairs dropping into a dark well unlit by any orm ore.

That descent seemed endless. But they hurried, for the air was dank. When they did reach the end of the stairway the sphere awoke a glitter from the surface of a pool.

This was no freak of nature but a round artificial basin holding water into which they avidly plunged their hands to drink from cupped palms. The water flowed in from the mouth of a grotesque head. Niccolae sighed, sat back, water dripping from her chin until she scrubbed it away with the edge of her torn, earth-encrusted robe.

"Having given us water, do you think that the Over Fates might also give food?" She asked as one who might expect any miracle from this time, forth.

Her question triggered Kenric's own hunger. It was a long time since he had shared that meal with the Kor-King in the palace of Lanascol. He got to his feet, then stooped to pick up the sphere from where Niccolae had left it on the floor. The dark here was so thick that this small gleam hardily battled it. He could see the bottom steps of the stairs and a part of a wall—the rest was hidden. But now that his raging thirst was satisfied, he was aware of something else. An acrid odor. Not born from damp, but separate, coming in strong whiffs as if blown by some breeze.

He hated to leave the water. They could not be sure they would find more in this burrow. And they must now be far under the surface of the desert—but whether headed north, east, south or west, he could not say.

When he spoke his thoughts aloud, the girl nodded. She had been ripping at the torn hem of her robe, balling up the tattered strips into a coil. She knotted it around her waist, pulling her skirts up through it to shorten them.

"We have no choice," she commented. "These ways must have been made for some purpose. Therefore ahead must lie another door or arch or exit or something."

Her composure was that of their first meeting, as if she once more had full confidence in herself and their future. Kenric wished he could feel as she did. She held out her hand and he gave her the sphere. With the left wall for a guide they went on.

There was no slope here. The floor ran straight. Nor were the walls carved, though they bore marks as if something passing here many times had rubbed the stone, leaving well-smoothed ribbons halfway between floor and roof.

No grit or dust drifted on the floor. Then, as another wall loomed to their right and they seemed to be entering another passage, Kenric was heartened by something more. Along the base of that wall, cut into the rock, was a runnel in which water ran, perhaps the overflow of the pool from which they had drunk.

Niccolae flashed her light at the ditch and he heard her laugh. "The Over Fates favor us. We have water—at least for now."

But they had something else, too. A strong gust of that acrid air in their faces. Kenric caught her hand, bringing her to a stop as he listened intently. On his wrists and across the backs of his hands the wounds left by the fire worms smarted. He thought of the carvings in the upper passage—of fire worms large enough to carry riders.

No sound—only that scent ever heavier. They went on warily. There was an opening in the wall to their left from which came another stench he knew of old—death and decay waited there. He drew Niccolae closer, as far as he could from that sinister doorway. Then the girl gave an exclamation and broke his grip, reaching for something lying on the floor.

It was a trail of vine, as thick as his forearm, bearing fruit of a paler green, two of which had been crushed to show white pulp. But the other four were intact, if bruised.

Niccolae had the vine. "Salas!" Her voice was as jubilant as if she had stumbled across the fabled treasure of Xotal. "These are food!"

They plucked the fruit, each as big as Kenric's fist. As he bit into a globe, he was wondering how vines came to be here. Niccolae, having thrust a second fruit into the front of her robe, was chewing on the other. She slipped from his side to stand in the doorway of that stinking place.

Kenric charged after her, only to halt in astonishment as her light revealed what lay beyond. For what little he could see of the area was crammed with wilting and decaying vegetation. More fruited vines were entangled with other material, looking as if they had been continually pressed down by new additions. He could not guess the purpose of such a noisome collection.

"Come!" Niccolae sat the sphere on the floor, plucked at the buckles fastening her outer robe on her shoulders, twitching loose the belt of tatters she had adjusted only a short time before. In a moment the folds of her robe fell about her feet, leaving her standing in a white undergarment.

Hastily she smoothed out the discarded robe and began to plunder the edge of the pile nearest the door, picking out fruit and also what looked like a type of grain, choosing and discarding any too ripe, too bruised. Kenric followed her lead. In the end they had a pack of foodstuffs to be bundled and fastened by her rag cord. Thankfully they withdrew to the clearer air of the passage.

"How do you suppose that got there?" Kenric made the bundle into a carrying pack with a rag sling for his shoulder.

"It's the storage place of a fire worm," she told him. "Their nature is to fill a place underground with vegetation, leaving it to decay and ferment before they eat it. But—"

"The size of this—yes!" He had already noted the significance of that.

None of the small desert worms could have hauled such large vines underground or raised that vast dump. He nursed his hands and knew that they must accept it as almost certain that the worms in these burrows were giant ones. Men had ridden the ones in the carvings, but the carvings were very old. The partnership of man and worm must have ended long ago, since Niccolae had never heard of it. Unless—

"Could we possible be close to Orm Temple?" he demanded.

"I have been wondering that also. Yet I do not believe we were kidnapped by worm priests. The mind probe—that does not belong to them. They have their own magic."

"They plan to launch a war, according to ZAT. Suppose they produce an army mounted on fire worms—what could Lanascol's men then do? And if the Rovers join with them—"

"Such could overset any force the Kor-King might put in the field," she said, "But with all that at their command, why do they need the prophecy?"

"Perhaps because they believe in it themselves. Tell me, what do you know of the Orm priests?"

"Only what I learned through a planted spy ray feeding data to ZAT. Anything else I have heard reached me second hand. I understand that for generations their hierarchy has not stirred from the temple, only the lowest class of the order venturing abroad. Even those hold themselves aloof from the common people, dealing solely with the Kor-King and his high officers. From time to time the priests send messages summoning some noble—or the king—to the temple to be informed of a new prophecy. The Kor-Kings have usually gone. There are tales of two who refused and were thereafter maltreated by fortune. But any connection between the priests themselves and the subsequent disasters could not be proven. They have never before summoned the present king. I have heard that even what ZAT has learned is little more—"

"You said they have secrets and protections—"

"Yes. One of the Kor-Kings who defied them disappeared after he took a force to storm the temple. Only a few stragglers of his rear guard returned, all in a state of shock. That story is two hundred planet years old—but there are elements in it which suggest that perhaps the priests did have the giant fire worms then."

"So after that, strict response was made to any summons from the priests," Kenric commented. "Yes, such an object lesson would have an effect. However, here we have proof of one thing. A lot of this vegetation is fresh. So the one who stored it here has access to the outer world, and not a desert one either."

"The sooner we find that access the better." She was kilting up the skirt of her underdress. "Let us go."

The promise of a way out, plus food, heartened them so that they kept to a faster pace. They passed a second door in the wall, this one with a worse stench than the first, suggesting greater rot within. Then the tunnel split in two. Since both ways looked alike and appeared to run in the same general direction, there was little choice between them.

They took the left way, counting paces as went, planning to return if, at the end of two hundred, they saw no suggestion of an exit. Kenric was ridden by the need for haste. He kept remembering that trail or vine and thought that the harvester might return with another burden. To meet one of the giant worms here might mean quick disaster.

The walls ran smooth. There was no encouraging upward curve. But in the light of the sphere, another doorway loomed. And no stench emerged from it.

With caution they crept through into a dim glow of light from far above their heads. Above them towered a ledge, and on it sat a high-backed armed chair cut from a solid block of stone. On the arms, light glinted. There were metal bands and another band on the back.

Before them, below the ledge, stretched an open space. Equidistant around it were openings of tunnels like the one through which they had come. But they heard no sound, saw no sign that anything moved in those ways.

Seeing that chair ready and waiting for an enforced occupant, Kenric's briefing awoke. This was the place where the oracle was left, manacled to the chair above, while he received the prophecy.

IV
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"Kenric!"

Hands trying to hold him prisoner. This was like waking from a dream. He was at the wall, trying to climb to the waiting chair, while the girl clung stubbornly to anchor him below. He kicked out to break her hold. Then the power of the briefing broke. He loosed his clutch on the projecting hand holds and fell, taking her with him.

"I should be up there!" He was afraid to look up again lest the chair once more pull him.

"No." Her clutch was fierce. "You are not the oracle. You are Lord Kor Kenric—that you must remember!"

"But the briefing—"

"Yes." Her whisper had the power of a shout. "I know. You are conditioned to sit above. However, the sending failed. You must play out the game as another piece altogether. But this much is true—we are no longer lost under the desert. We're in Orm Temple. Maybe we can find a way of escape."

She was right, and she had pulled him out of the mental haze now. He was not the oracle. Also it was true that they seemed to have reached a defined point of compass.

He heard a cracked laugh from the girl.

"Escape—yes—if fire worms can fly! This is the most secret part of Orm Temple, best guarded of all. Suppose we do go aloft into ways known to your briefing, and come upon the oracle himself. What chances then?"

"Transfer for me, maybe." By some amazing stroke of fortune he had come within a handsbreadth of where he should have been at the beginning of this send. And if he could transfer, then the mission was not an abort. The thought of that gave him new energy and once more he studied the wall.

"Very well." Her voice was as low and harsh as it had been in the desert. "But until you do find him, you must take care to remain fully Kenric. Otherwise you will be easy meat for any guard."

His arm caught about her waist and he drew her with him to one of the tunnel mouths. He had heard something moving toward them. They flattened back to wait.

She had put away the sphere, leaving them in the dark. But the faint gray light of the place was enough to make visible the creature padding out into the open.

Fire worm indeed, but a giant—just as they had speculated! The small desert worms had been merely grotesque; this was a monster. Yet according to the wall carvings, men had ridden such.

Niccolae's nails cut into his flesh in her excitement but she was silent, caution curbing her. On the back of the thing was strapped a wide seat or saddle, too roomy for a single rider, Kenric judged. Fastened to one of the peaked fore-ends of that seat were reins, the other ends of which disappeared into the creature's beard of tentacles, those working as if trying to rid themselves of the reins' restraint.

The worm came entirely out of the tunnel, halted in the open space. Its three eyes glowed dully. If it sighted the two fugitives it gave no sign of interest. Rather it stood as if in meditation, only the working tentacles, from which spun threads of slime, showing that it was alive.

As it remained so quiescent, Kenric moved out, trying to see its accouterments the better. There was a scabbard fastened to the fore of the saddle where it would swing close to hand for a rider. A scabbard that carried a burden.

Kenric drew a sharp breath. For what he saw could not possibly exist in this time and place. Identities could be exchanged via sendings. Back at HQ now his body—or rather Creed Trapnell's—was encased in a protective device to keep it living against his return. But here he was the man who wore—if one could term it that—another's covering of flesh and bone.

Yet in that scabbard was a weapon known in his own time—a blazer. Objects could not be transported. But neither could a blazer be made here. To manufacture such required a series of highly technical operations. They could not have set up such a factory, which would require transportation of a whole crew of techs.

The mind probe had been alien—at least on an unknown band. Suppose another Service were operating here—one that had developed parallel to his own but had made the breakthrough for transporting without the need for substitution? The test might be whether that blazer were exactly like the weapon he knew. He wanted to get his hands on it to make sure.

This fire worm had been ridden—but dare he approach it? He had hesitated too long. In his head a pain, he clapped his hands over his ears instinctively though he had heard no sound.

The fire worm raised its head, turned to face the tunnel from which it had come. Then it padded back into that opening.

"Did you see what was in that scabbard?" Niccolae demanded.

"It looked like a blazer—"

"Except none could be sent. And neither can such be made by any smith of Vallek. Perhaps we are wrong in thinking only of sending—what if that was brought by an off-world ship? Four thousand-five thousand years—" He was going to add "ago," except that he was in the past now himself.

"Our kind did not pioneer deep space," Niccolae reminded him. "There are many traces of those before us. We are very young as species are reckoned among the stars."

That was true—but a blazer! He must find out if it had come from parallel technology. A breakthrough for a direct send—that information would be worth more to the Service than anything else he could learn on Vallek. He had to get his hands on that weapon. Niccolae's thoughts must have run with his as she said:

"The beast was summoned by an ultra-sonic call—one we could feel if not hear. We can follow—"

He nodded. "I felt it."

Again she laughed. "Do you know what the worm priests do to any female found in their domain? If not, bring your worst imaginings to the fore of your mind and study them. I would far rather die by my own choice than live for the priests, I assure you. And we may already have triggered a protective device leading their guards here."

"I thought they dared not come to the oracle's seat."

"That's only legend. The worm priests put about what they wish outsiders to know. Who is it teaches the oracle here what he must intone as prophecy? A fire worm? No, the priests know these ways well."

So they went together after the fire worm. The part of Creed Trapnell that was Kenric walked softly, his hands opening and closing, longing for the feel of a weapon. As a trained fighting man he felt naked lacking that. And his nose told him that trouble lay ahead, for the acrid odor of the worms was thick.

Under their feet the floor began to climb on easy grades and far ahead showed what could only be daylight. So they were again approaching the surface of the ground. They walked slowly, close to the wall, listening—

The chill of the underways receded also. At last they came to the end of the tunnel to look out.

Into empty space. And they had to stare down before they saw the trap that way ended in—for truly it was a trap. Projecting from the walls, both on their side of the narrow valley and the opposite one, were stakes supporting a metal mesh. This ran completely around an earth-walled pocket into which opened a number of the tunnels—and it was plainly intended to keep fire worms from climbing out.

At the far end of the pocket was a platform on which lay a tangled mass of vegetation that might have been tossed from the top of the cliff. Several of the fire worms were busied there, collecting loads with their mouth tentacles, carrying the stuff back into tunnels.

Apart from these were other worms, larger, wearing a thicker growth of black hair. And each wore a saddle; so Kenric could not be sure which one they had trailed here.

"Below—" Niccolae whispered in his ear.

She was right. Immediately below them was one of the riding monsters. It had squatted low, its plated belly resting on the ground. Whether it was the right one, Kenric could not be sure. But it did carry a weapon at saddle bow.

He slipped the sling of the food bag from his shoulder. The creature's head was low, its tentacles curled in a tight knot. Even as he watched, the big head slipped lower. Maybe the thing slept.

The stone was rough here, deeply pitted with holes which perhaps the worms used—deep enough to make a rude stairway for human feet and hands. Kenric had to face the cliff during that descent and for all he knew the sleeping worm had roused, could be reaching up for him. He was sweating from more than the exertion of his descent when his boots met the gravel at the cliff foot.

Now he edged around, half expecting to face the worm, wondering if he would have time to catch up a handful of sand to hurl into its three eyes. But the creature lay still. He could see the slow reaction and expansion of its sides as it breathed. With it lying flat like that, he ought to be able to reach the scabbard and ease the blazer out.

But he could hardly believe his good fortune when he did have it free. It was strangely light of weight, unlike familiar weapons. He thrust it in the back of his belt to leave his hands free for the return climb. He joined Niccolae aloft with all the speed he could summon.

In general shape the weapon was indeed like a blazer. It had a barrel, a stock, two hand grips with one well to the fore, a sighting mechanism. When he tested that he found it to be telescopic to an extent inherent in no arm with which he was familiar.

The material, he decided, must be some lightweight alloy. And very hard. He could not scratch it with the edge of his belt buckle or dent it with a stone. Could it have come from a starship—one roving the galaxy long before his own race had raised eyes speculatively to the moon companying their own world?

"It was made for humanoid use," Niccolae commented.

True. The grip and balance had been designed for one of his own body structure. But that was only a small discovery. He dared not try to fire it, lest he give an alarm. However, with it he now had an answer to one part of his problem.

"Have you ever handled a blazer?"

"Before my sending?" She smiled. "No. I was drilled in some weapons, such as a stunner. But I had no need for the heavier arms. Since I was to be a permanent agent my studies were to fit me as a sorceress. In that calling I do not resort to material weapons. I am supposed to rely on other methods."

"Why," he asked, "did you choose a permanent assignment?—not many women do."

"Didn't they ever warn you that is a question never asked? I have chosen, and until this particular action things have gone well for me." She shrugged. "There are compensations for life on less sophisticated levels. Surely you have had at least one sending where you would have opted to remain when your recall came. That is why they now have a built-in compel-to-end. Before they took that precaution there were exiles by choice. The life of a sorceress in Lanascol is quite enough to satisfy me. Our master, ZAT—though a machine—is careful as to waste. Now—this is no time for such a discussion. You have something in mind?"

"Whether you have had training or not," he returned, a little chilled, "this is a simple weapon. The one button apparently controls the firing of whatever ray is loaded. And the sighting is foolproof sighting. Armed with this you can be safe—"

"While you go hunting the oracle?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Perhaps not, in your own form. But you are dwelling in the form of a man noted for good sense and leadership, and especially for the winning of battles."

"He didn't seem to have much luck in his last one."

"Luck and treachery do not march hand in hand. The Lady Yarakoma knows more about that than is fit—and one could learn a lot if words could be shaken out of her crooked mouth."

Niccolae's vehemence surprised Kenric. She must have read that in his face for she continued:

"I have heard many things of the Lady Yarakoma. And of those I cannot count one good. She is an evil, rotting out the heart of Lanascol—as much a source of trouble for Vallek as the Orm priests, and not so open a one. But now—so you give me this," she gripped the weapon butt, "while you go exploring. Well, this time I shall not deny you. I shall hide near the chair chamber and wait."

They ate again before he left her to climb the wall. "Do you have an idea as to how to go?" she asked as he made ready for the assent.

"I know the chair. Perhaps the briefing will lead me farther. The spy ray they planted was exact enough—before it faded."

"What if the overlay of briefing clouds your wits when you need them?"

"I don't know. But it is all the guide I have. I must try to find the oracle. And if the Kor-King is enticed here, there may be some treachery also—"

"Against which one man can serve as guard? Do not forget that earlier King and his vanished army." She seemed occupied by her own gloomy prophecy. There was that in her voice—perhaps because her work was reading the future for clients—which did impress. But Kenric refused to be influenced. With the blazer she could defend herself, and his duty urged him on.

He climbed to the chair ledge. Nor did he look back from that point, for he must put her out of his mind, be single-thoughted from now on. His assignment came first.

The chair was just as his briefing had told him it must be, those metal hoops on arms and back ready to hold a witless creature in place after the priests left him to spend the night here. But the prey did receive a message from somewhere, so potent a one that it could remain in a brain unable to command a body, could make that body drool understandable words. How was it done? Surely the most careful drilling could not bring a connected phrase, let alone rhetorical prophesies, out of an idiot. What was the trick or secret? Suppose he could find out and be able to defeat it from that direction—if he could not play the oracle?

Cautiously Kenric seated himself in the chair. It was chill wherever it touched his skin. He could not lean back against it nor lay his arms along the arms since the metal hoops were in the way. Were those fastened, the occupant would be caught in a vice, unable to move or turn.

But when he put his head back against the rise of stone Kenric felt a sensation not far removed from that which had struck with the mind probe. He squirmed around, ran his fingertips over the seat back. Thus he was able to trace a square of some substance not visible to the eye. And from it arose a tingling warmth to run up his fingers, his arms, as if he had touched a source of energy. He jerked away—there was something disquieting about that flow.

A man secured as the oracle was must remain, until once more freed, with the back of his head resting firmly against that plate. Was that how it was done? Some form of briefing, potent enough to be imprinted on an idiot's mind. Unless—that was the very point—only the blank mind of an idiot could receive it at all. Just as a sending had to use such to imprint the identity of an agent.

But this oracle had operated for centuries—it was no new arrangement. It could not be the result of a Service traitor's meddling or something from off-world. For if Vallek had been visited by starmen over any length of time some hint of that would exist if only as a rumor. The Service briefing experts had fed all data into ZAT and the computer would speedily have isolated such a momentous bit of information.

Yet there was some form of energy in the chair. Kenric walked around to the back, which was so tall it formed a wall of sorts. Once more he explored the stone. But on this side there was nothing to be felt at all except its natural cold.

At any rate, he had discovered how the prophecies might be set up—but not by whom. And that was the important question. Beyond him now was a doorway, and he knew from his briefing that this was where they entered with the oracle. There was no road now but this. He took it.

The passage beyond was unlit and narrow, the walls smooth. He felt his way through a thickening dusk. Soon he would come to a stair—he slipped each foot ahead a step at a time to feel for the riser. His boot toe rapped and he began to climb, counting as he went—such knowledge was a help in the dark.

He had counted off twenty when the hand he held out before him struck solid surface. He explored it, finding heavy metal bands across a door. Finally his fingers tightened on a kind of latch common enough on Vallek.

Quietly Kenric bore down on the bar. If the door were locked, he was defeated. But the bar moved. He might be the greatest fool in the world, but he had no choice. He pushed open the door and walked into danger.

V
« ^ »




The light came from small insets of the orm ore but they were not parts of pictures. And the plain passage was like any of the lower tunnels.

He had expected a guard. None was visible. Kenric closed his eyes. He had known the oracle's seat at once; could he trace the path from here? But if his briefing had once laid out a path it had not survived his imperfect sending. He would have to depend upon any hunch or faint suggestion. So he padded down that dusty way, alert to any sound.

The light was so dim that when he glanced back he could see only the outline of the door. And just before him the corridor angled right to give upon a stairway. Climbing was promising for he knew that the main portion of the temple still lay well overhead.

Soon the ore patches were gone and again he had to depend more on touch than sight. Another door, this one banded also with metal—as if both this and the other had been intended for defensive measures. But for all his fumbling he could find here no latch.

Baffled, Kenric leaned one shoulder to the wall. It would seem this portal opened only from the other side, bottling him in. But he was not ready for defeat. Once more he felt across its surface, beginning systematically at the top. The metal bands were close set and the edges of some serrated, deeply gashed in places—as if torn by fangs. The worms!

Niccolae down there—but she had the blazer…

No hint of any latch or handhold—not until he reached studs on the fourth bar. One of those moved a fraction. For want of any other encouragement, he caught it with his nails and turned. There was a distinct click. There was answering movement.

What he had so unlatched was not the whole of the door but only a narrow panel. So narrow that he had difficulty wriggling through. On the other side, as it thudded back into place, he found indications that in the past the whole door had been sealed.

Ahead was the foot of another staircase. Orm ore lights appeared again, small and far apart, as the stairs narrowed. His shoulders brushed the walls on either side. Now he heard a murmur as of voices, which seemed to come out of the stone on his right. There was a dark patch there and he stopped to examine it more closely, finding it to be a circle of metal that slipped to one side to reveal a peephole.

Kenric looked through. Some distance below was the pavement of a long hall, its roof supported by a series of pillars carven and painted to resemble rearing fire worms. They were not entirely lifelike, having certain horrific embellishments to make them even more vicious looking.

But they were much worn, legs broken off here and there, missing tentacles, cracks across their painted armor plates—giving them the seeming of great age. Among them men moved—priests. Kenric's briefing named the red robes with their wide collars of clawlike ornaments that resembled either dried worm tentacles or excellent representations of such. Most of the men wore their cowls up about their heads so he could not see their faces. But two almost directly below the peephole did not. Their shaven heads glistened in the light and they had the countenances of young men.

Kawyn? There could be no mistaking the tribal tattoos on their cheeks. The part of Kenric in this borrowed body responded to that marking. He heard his breath hiss, realized his hand fumbled at his belt for a weapon he did not wear.

Talking with the Kawyn was another man, much shorter, almost dwarfish. He wore no robe. Instead, his squat body was only half-clothed in a lower garment which was boots and breeches in one. It was made of a leathery stuff which gave off prismatic gleams as he moved, as if that leather or skin was overlaid with opaline scales. His wide shoulders and barrel chest carried a shag of coarse black hair, and another long tuft of it hung in a single strand from the point of his chin though the rest of his face was clean. The growth on his head had been trained and hardened with some substance into the semblance of a comb, beginning above his forehead and extending to the nape of his neck. Half buried in his furry body hair was a wealth of jewel-set metal.

A Rover? Then it was true—the men of Dupt came into Orm. If one needed any further proof of the dire disaster for Lanascol brewed here, the sight of that party of three supplied it amply.

Their voices reached Kenric only as a murmur, strain as he did to hear. And there was no use lingering at this peephole with the goal of his quest still ahead. He started on, but he was thinking of the significance of what he had seen.

To find Rovers in any kind of alliance was startling. From what he knew of Vallek, the Rovers lived enemies to all others. The reason for their exile from the human race was lost in the mists of unremembered time. But by now they were so alien to others that they might be considered of another species. Their very territory was a secret, for all their raids were carried out by air and no tracker on the ground had ever been able to follow them. Since technology on Vallek had not yet advanced to the invention of sky travel, the raiders were invulnerable.

Their form of travel was to ride giant flying reptiles, not too unlike very ancient creatures of Kenric's home world, predating the evolution of mankind. The things in themselves were terrifying opponents in any battle. Ridden by rapacious men, they were doubly fearsome.

It was thought that the numbers of both Rovers and their mounts were small, since never more than ten or so made up a raid squad. But few as they might number, they were formidable. So far they had harried only farming communities, fishing villages along the coast, caravans of traders stupid enough to venture far into the wastes for a quicker journey.

Kenric judged he must now be well above the hall. His hand rested on a second spy-hole, this time to the left. And he made use of it.

He saw not a hall but a small chamber. It held a massive table with a top of lustrous kiffa stone mounted on thick pillar legs. At its head, almost directly below, was a chair with a tall carved back. Along the sides of the table ran benches. At the far end stood a second chair. The walls were hung, save about the peephole, with strips of dark red cloth, giving the unpleasant impression of drawing about the table to entrap and stifle those sitting there. Yet the four men who did so appeared at their ease.

No one occupied the chair, but on the benches, facing each other across the smooth surface in pairs, sat the four. And they were very different. One was a red-robed priest, his garments so much the color of the wall draperies behind him that at times he seemed to disappear. The more so because he wore his cowl up and only the movements of his hands were noticeable.

At his side sat another of the Rovers, as much like the one Kenric had sighted before as to be his twin. He played with something as he listened—a band of metal, which, fitting over his hand below the knuckles, provided him with a set of vicious claws into which he slipped his fingers as he might wear a glove.

To Kenric's right were the other two. One wore the clothing of a courtier of Lanascol and the device worked on the breast of his tunic. Kenric's hand rose mechanically to touch his own, grimed as it was. The royal arms! But—was the Kor-King already here! Though that any of his men would sit companionably with a Rover was not believable.

There was only one answer—the Lady Yarakoma. In her burning ambition she might have taken the final step to ally herself with the Kor-King's enemies, sent some spokesman here. He wished at that moment he had Kenric's own memory to draw upon.

The fourth man wore clothing which might be that of any lower class citizen of Lanascol. Yet he sat at ease with the noble, and both the priest and the Rover were listening to what he said in a voice so low that only the rise and fall of tone reached Kenric.

That fourth man now brought out a writing stick and began to draw swift lines on the table top. But he was never to finish what he was trying to picture. The drapes on the left wall were twitched aside and looped back for the coming of another priest, who then stood deferentially aside to allow the passage of a smaller figure, much muffled in a robe which appeared too large for his meager body.

The robe was banded at shoulder level with a crossing of rust-orange, and the necklace or collar was more elaborate than those of the others. The men at the table looked up and the courtier, the priest, and the stranger, who had been drawing, all arose. However the Rover only grinned, remaining seated. He made it plain that he would make no polite gesture.

Then the priest who had entered first offered his small companion the support of his arm—only to have that shoved away petulantly. But the progress of his superior toward the chair at the head of the table was a wavering one and the priest pressed close, ready to steady the other if need be.

Once seated in the chair, the small man raised two hands as claw-like as the metal glove with which the Rover still played. These shook with a constant tremor as he swept back his cowl.

"You have asked for speech—" The ancient priest's voice was shrill and high-pitched. "You have your chance—speak! This is a time wherein there is much to be done, much to be done. If you trouble the Ceremonies for a thing of little import, then there shall be a reckoning."

It was the man with the writing stick who answered, this time raising his voice so Kenric could hear him.

"The Mightiness of Orm would certainly not be troubled during his preparations for the great day without need. It is thus—our brother-in-heart-and-hope, the Swordmaster Suward, has brought news. It seems that the thrice-cursed Kenric and the seeing woman are not where they were left. Yet they were well bound. When his men passed by the Place of Ancient Stones—they were gone! Even the Rovers have taken to the sky to spy them out, but without result."

"Fools," sputtered the mummy in the chair. Suward shrank back as if the ancient priest had spewed forth poison instead of a word. "The Place of Ancient Stones is accursed, as all know," the old one continued. "If Orm has seen fit to take them to himself, of course you would find no sign of them. Is this your great news?"

"O High Priest of Orm, suppose Orm in his infinite wisdom is not responsible for their disappearance? Suppose they have managed to escape? Should they reach Lanascol with their tale—"

The Rover laughed with harsh contempt. He spoke sourly, his words so accented and twisted Kenric could hardly understand him. "They will not. Our riders will make sure. The desert is easy to search from aloft."

"True." The writer nodded. "But if the Kor-King comes—and Suward has brought us assurance that he will—there is a chance, is there not, that our fugitives might meet with some scout of his?"

The High Priest screwed around to look directly at the courtier.

"Why would the Kor-King march with scouts? What know you of this? He was sent the High Word of Orm. One does not bring an army against Orm." He paused to emit a high tittering sound, sickening to hear. "Does he not remember that once a Kor-King came to Orm weapons in hand, though he did hot go hence again? No, no." His tittering grew stronger, shaking his whole shrunken body. And his attendant pressed closer, put out one hand hesitatingly. But his master controlled that evil shadow of mirth. He leaned back in the chair, smeared his sleeve of his robe across his pale, wrinkled lips. "Now," his voice became firmer. "Answer me—does the Kor-King march with scouts—and why?"

"Because of the Lord Kor Kenric," Suward answered. "Somehow the King's Eyes were able to trace him to the witch-hag's house. The Eyes are many and the King has some not even his heir can put name to. What they found there suggested struggle. Also the roll keeper of the gate mentioned a late-moving cart, outward bound. Before it reached my Lady's ears it was a story already past her changing. She did hasten to muddy it where she could with suggestions concerning Kenric and the witch, and the unnatural longings of evil men. But that slime does not stick well on Kenric. He has walked too warily and many remember why she hates him—may the Thousand Teeth of Namur gnaw the flesh from his bones!"

For the first time the priest sitting at the table spoke.

"Mightiness, remember what you yourself have said. To have a female mixed with such high matters is not only an abomination to Orm, but also great folly—"

Perhaps it was his taunting tone rather than the words uttered that aroused the courier.

"Speak so of the Lady, and—"

"Silence to this yapping!" The High Priest's voice again held the ghostly timbre of what once must have been a resonant tone. "The female has served us in her own fashion. She has given us an ear to many secret matters, though this taking of the Lord Kor was a badly done affair. It is of prime importance that the Kor-King obey the Word. But he seems to be doing it more as an enemy than a servant. And servant he is, as he shall learn! Orm has long hinted of a new day when he shall make plain his words—and those shall be the law not only of Orm Temple but of all Vallek! Long, long has been the waiting in the night. Now comes the dawn. For even Kor-King," when he hears the true words of Orm from the oracle, cannot nay-say them. And if he does play the fool and tries, there are enough true believers among his people to make his end. So—a few days more and we shall be the fingers and the hands of Orm reaching forth to hold the world!"

There were small flecks of spittle on his lips and he scrubbed at them with his sleeve. The two other priests had bowed their heads, Suward likewise, and even the lay stranger nodded. Only the Rover sat grinning, giving no more respect to Orm than he did to Orm's followers.

"Much to be done." The firmer note was gone from the High Priest's voice. He was querulous again. "Do not disturb us again—too much to be done. The oracle must be prepared—"

He struggled to get to his feet and the two priests had to move in to raise him. This time he did not push them away but shuffled out between them. The other men watched them go in silence.

When the door latch clicked, the Rover laughed. "Strange—he still has wits enough, that old one. Much has he planned and planned well, that I will say for him." He paused, his eyes narrowed. He looked first to Suward, then to the stranger. "Or is he the planner? Not that it means much at this time. But that one, he also believes in his own god tales—that this Orm will come riding on a giant fire worm to conquer the world. Such a tale is for the thick-headed. Now this is what the All-Mother of Dupt would have me learn—" He tapped his claws on the table directly before the stranger. "What gain you from this? The Kawyns—all know what they want. And this Yarakoma would see her husband Kor-King with no rival such as Kenric, who is a good fighter and well liked by your maggot city-dwellers. And the priests yell of Orm and prophecy spouted out of the mouth of a drooling madman that Orm comes to rule the world. Three reasons for swearing partnership—at least for the span of putting down the Kor-King. But you—you have given no reason your suggested help. This I will say of you, stranger, you speak well when you talk of war and manners of outwitting the enemy." He spat, and the splatter of moisture lay in a drop on the board. He put a claw to it and drew a small wet line that crossed the one made with the writing stick. "We have been promised loot—which is well enough—and a chance to try our wings south. Now, what is your portion? I have heard strange tales of you—that you are not of this world, that you brought the unusual weapons given to some of our men. To what end do you this? The All-Mother would like to know!"

"Fair enough. You have seen some of the weapons and what they can do. There are to be more and greater ones in the future. As for my gain—it is a simple thing, Rover, one meaning little to the rest of you. I want orm ore. You are right—I am not of this world, and orm ore is of Vallek only. We cannot buy it from the temple for they deem it Orm's sweat. But if we help the High Priest achieve his purposes, then Orm will smile on us and we shall be granted favors;"

"Or take them—when this fire-worm hill is in such ferment none can be spared to say you nay."

Suward started, shot a quick glance at the stranger. But the latter did not seem disturbed.

"Or take it," he agreed. "Does that disgust you, or would it trouble your All-Mother?"

"Not so. It is such a play as we could relish. As for Orm ore—what matters it? City man—" he stared at Suward now— "get your wench her throne if you can. Though whether she will thereafter sit steady on it, is another matter. It is enough we understand each other—for this time."

He slid off the bench, turning his back on the two without farewell to tramp out of the chamber. Suward ran his hands nervously back and forth on the edge of the table. "I distrust all Rovers."

The other man shrugged. "As who does not? It is a pity that they must be used. But they have what we need most at the moment—a path through the sky. Also they are potent in battle. Have you not had proof of that in the past?"

"Yes. But they hold to no oaths—"

"You forget. This one does speak boldly as do his fellows. But we have that which will finish them in the end."

"Not we—you," Suward returned. "You have shown us that picture of your fashioning which makes it seem that you have found their foul nest. You have assured us that certain of your men with their flame weapons have it under control but that these here know nothing of it."

"Do doubt the truth of that. The Rovers will serve us just as long as they are needed. When the moment is passed, they will be treated—so—"

He snapped the writing stick in two.

"Now, as His Mightiness says, the hour grows late—"

"Will his oracle perform as he thinks, I wonder?" Suward made no move to rise. He appeared wanting assurance, or so it seemed to Kenric.

"Has it not always been so in the past? Yes, I think that idiot will mouth a proper prophecy. And, if the Kor-King is not impressed thereby, there will be means to make it clear to him that a new day dawns on Vallek."

"If he comes—"

The stranger swung around to face Suward. "Is there any doubt of that?" he asked sharply.

"He might not come at Orm's summons. But if he thinks he marches to free Kenric… Maltus has the cloak we took from Kenric and other things, as well as a good tale. And the Lady Yarakoma will do all she can. If he will not move to Orm's call, he will to the other—" he repeated.

"If we still had Kenric we would be on safer ground."

Suward laughed. "If his body is not huddled somewhere in the Place of Ancient Stones, it is certainly sundried out in the waste. There is no way any man can cover the desert on foot without water. Even if he walks shoulder to shoulder with a sorceress. There being a limit to her power also."

"But it will be your business, my friend, to make sure, very sure, that the King does march."

Suward replied sullenly. "Do I not know it? Be sure—be will come."

"I trust so," said the other and left as abruptly as the Rover.

Kenric let fall the peephole shutter. He had heard plenty. If the worm priests, Yarakoma, the Kawyn, the Rovers and the enigmatic stranger had made so uneasy an alliance, then there was still hope. Already the stranger and Suward had agreed to the blotting out of the Rovers when their usefulness was over. And he did not doubt the Rovers nursed private plans against their allies, too.

But as uneasy as that alliance was, if it held long enough to break the Kor-King it would in turn break Vallek. Was the oracle really important now? The Orm priests needed the oracle to fire them, true enough. But the others already privately discounted that goad—their schemes depended upon the lure of Kenric himself.

Therefore the priorities had now shifted. It was no longer the oracle that mattered but a warning to the King. Were his enemies unable to trap him in the wastes, they might turn on one another. The resulting chaos could only favor the Kor-King.

Perhaps it had not been so misdirected after all, his awakening in this body. The Kor-King might not have been influenced by any prophecy but he would listen to his son. And, though the compulsion of the briefing ran deep, Kenric could break it. Now he must reach the Kor-King with news of what brewed here, must ready Lanascol before the pot boiled over.

As he descended the stairs at the best pace the steep fall allowed him, Kenric was already planning. The conspirators were right. A journey over the desert could not be made afoot—not with Rovers scouting in the heavens for anything moving. Besides, there had to be means to carry water and supplies.

Which left—the fire worms! Some were saddled; ergo, they had been ridden. And what other men could ride, so could—so must—Kenric now.

Arriving back at the chair ledge he paused, another thought coming to mind. He was as certain as if he had been told it during briefing that the plate of energy material, against which the head of the oracle must rest, had something to do with the prophecy. Could that material be damaged, slowing so the march of events?

There was, he decided, only one way of dealing with it and that would mean the devastation would be visible to the priests at once. Still—if the trouble pointed in turn to one of their allies—

He grinned. A good trick. The means perhaps of accomplishing double result—defeating the oracle and sowing discord among the enemy.

His descent to the floor below was quick and then he ran for the mouth of the tunnel where Niccolae should be waiting. Then he saw her moving out to meet him.

"Give me—" He snatched the weapon out of her hands, turned back.

"Are they after you?" She ran behind him. He sighted on the tall back of the chair. He pressed the button. A ray of brilliant white crisped through the air, centering on the target.

Only an instant did he hold it so, astounded by the resulting violence. The chair exploded with a roar, erupting fragments of stone riven and blackened as if the plate had covered some cache of high explosive.. Kenric was momentarily deafened, then alarmed. He tried to protect the girl with his body, snatching her back to the tunnel mouth as by a miracle they escaped the rain of stones.

"That noise will bring guards on us. We must take action fast!" Quickly he explained his reason for blasting the chair and his contemplated course. "I wonder what is the method of controlling the riding worms," he finished.

Once more she brought out her orm ore sphere. "This gives one a measure of control over the human mind, facilitating hypnotic suggestion. Whether it will work with a worm, I cannot tell. But I can try it."

"If they have borne riders in their saddles, there must be some way of reaching the beast. Let us find one."

"Suppose we do," she said. "Where then do we ride it?"

"To find the Kor-King." Swiftly he outlined what he had overheard. "If he is warned—"

"Then those plotters will ask who is responsible for their betrayal—each suspecting the other. A new way to win a war!" She laughed.

"Only if it works." He throttled down the excitement that might threaten a clear head. "There are many chances for failure. We must find a worm, must take it out of here, must cross the desert safely in spite of the Rover scouts, must locate the Kor-King in time—"

"There is your first requirement," Niccolae said, pointing to the tunnel leading to the open-air worm pen.

Kenric lifted his gaze. A huge three-eyed head had appeared in the archway. The jaw tentacles were working in spasmodic jerks as if the creature were dangerous. Probably the explosion had alarmed it. Seen from ground level, the worm as it emerged from the tunnel mouth looked formidable enough to tense Kenric's grip on the blazer. In its fear and rage, would it attack the two who proposed to ride it?

Niccolae raised the sphere to her lips, breathed upon it three times. After staring into it intently, she tossed it aloft. It flew through the air and landed as a feeble spark of light on the pavement before the worm.

The creature stopped short, ugly head swinging from side to side. Then it lowered its head as if to sniff at the sphere. It froze so. The writhing tentacles at its mouth relaxed.

Niccolae touched Kenric's arm with pressure. He remained where he stood as she walked forward. But he held his weapon aligned on the middle eye of the worm in the event that skill f ailed.

Now she stood facing the worm, the sphere between them. Her hands moved into the faint light, weaving a pattern in the air as if they manipulated threads of a netting. He guessed she so endeavored to imprison whatever mind the creature possessed.

Finally she stopped, surveying the worm closely. Then she clapped her hands. The limp tentacles curled up under the worm's chin. Ponderously it squatted, folding its jointed legs until it was belly flat on the pavement. Niccolae beckoned as she restored the sphere to its hiding place. Kenric boosted her into the wide saddle, took his seat before her and lifted the reins. As if that were a signal the worm recognized, it grunted and arose.

Kenric used the reins as he would control any mount, turning the giant worm toward the corridor down which they had originally come.

The worm bore them swiftly and truly. Occasionally its sides brushed the tunnel walls, adding another touch of smoothness to surfaces thus smoothed by generations of worms. When they reached the dark pool below the stairway, they dismounted to drink deeply. The worm drank also. Unfortunately they had no way to take water with them.

To negotiate the stairs, they were obliged to remain dismounted. Niccolae walked first with the sphere as a beacon. Kenric followed, the reins of the worm looped about his arm. Last went the creature, grunting dolefully as if it found the climb taxing. Taxing? A great weight of fatigue lay on Kenric also. What must it be, he thought, for the girl? Since they had awakened in the desert after their kidnapping, they had had no sleep. In fact, here below, time had not been divided into night and day, hour and minute. Even thinking of rest weighed his feet, made him feel as if he were wading ankle deep through shifting sand.

When he caught up to her, she forced herself to lurch forward. Though she kept one hand to the wall for support, she fell. As she tried to struggle up. Kenric moved to her, managed to get her back in the saddle. But he could not raise himself after her. Instead he caught at the edge of one of the worm's armor plates and allowed the creature to both support and lead him. It was as if that last climb up the stairs had drained all but the dregs of strength from him.

The wall-carvings moved past as if they walked through a dream. And Kenric was never sure afterward that he did not doze on his feet, as he had heard it said the wearied soldiers were able to do. But he roused into full consciousness when the huge worm came to a halt.

He looked about him. There were no carved and lighted walls now, only a dim, grayish light high up. And before them a barrier of rocky debris.

They were back at the crumbled pit in the desert through which they first entered the passage.

Kenric fought for a clear mind. He pulled at the girl who had fallen forward in the saddle so that she lolled against the double horn—carrying the pack made up of her robe. He croaked her name. "Niccolae!"

She stirred, whimpered, tried to resist his tugging. With a grunt, the worm squatted, as if expecting its inert rider to now dismount.

She rolled off the worm, lay still but with her eyes half opened. Probably she was as parched as he. Water. Where would they get water? In despair he beat his hands against the plated side of the worm. Where had his mind been? They would have to go back, down into the burrows, try to find another way…

Kenric slipped, fell to the drifted sand. The girl's eyes fully closed. The great worm grunted and went limp.

Man, maid and monster slept.

 

He roused groggily. His head was thumping against rock as someone shook his shoulders, called out to awaken him. He blinked, tried to raise his hand to shield his eyes.

A glare of light was thrusting in through a gaping hole not too far away.

He saw Niccolae leaning over him. She sighed with relief and let go her hold on his shoulders.

She turned to pick up something, held it out to him. It was half of one of those ball fruits from which juice trickled to splash on his face.

He came fully awake at the sight of that. Burying his face in the soft pulp, he chewed to allay both hunger and thirst.

As he scooped the tough rind with his teeth, he looked about for a second piece. She shook her head.

"But little remains now. For the worm must eat also. Food was the inducement for it to clear our way." She pointed to the ragged hole in the debris of the landslide.

"Food? Not the sphere?"

Her grim face sketched a caricature of a smile. "One of these too ripe for our eating." She was stowing their remaining fruits back into the bag of her robe, save for a side sorting which already showed a sprouting of mold or gave forth a putrid smell. This she shoveled onto a tattered square rug, and got up to hurl the stinking mess through the opening. "I climbed up and poked the bait into a deep crevice. The worm crashed the barrier to get it." She peered through the hole. Now it eats the rest of its dinner."

So simple a solution. Kenric drew a deep breath. In his fatigue and male preoccupation he had even forgotten that Niccolae still possessed that pack of food.

"We need not fear its leaving us," she told him. "It feeds upon that too rotten for our eating. And I think that these worms have a long history of dependence upon men for sustenance."

"How long did I sleep?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I slept also. But it was night when I awoke, and now it is late day. Since night would cloak us while we travel, it might be well we start now—" He nodded.

They emerged through the jagged exit into the desert outside. There the worm still chomped at the stuff she had thrown to it. But at the sight of them it kneeled. Once more they settled in its saddle. Niccolae pointed to a distant blue rock spur making a leaning point against the sky.

"That I remember. The men who left us turned their backs upon it when they went. The question is—were they returning to Lanascol or going to Orm Temple? We do not want to take the wrong direction."

"Let the stars rise," she told him, "and I shall have guides in plenty. Reading the stars is part of my sorcery and I know those that hang above Lanascol well. But for now—I cannot say this is the right way, or that—"

The worm stirred uneasily, as if it wanted to be on the move. Kenric hesitated. There were landmarks in plenty—fantastic outcroppings all about them—to keep them from wandering in circles. But which way to start out?

"Fortune has been fair to us so far," he said. "I see no better way than to start by chance. Let us believe that those who took us were to return to Lanascol." He set the worm going with a twitch of rein. Their mount was plainly a desert creature. While this particular one might not have run the sands since it was hatched, its body was designed to travel here, the broad padded feet at the ends of those segmented legs finding a good surface even on sand.

They left the ruins behind them, threading in and out among standing rocks until they came to a section that was mainly shifting sand dunes. Only a rocky outcrop here and there showed, like broken teeth in the jaw of a sun-bleached skull. The sun, which had been a torment at their start, faded in force. The gathering of dusk began.

Kenric steered for a set of rocks he thought on a direct line with their progress so far. Beyond those he picked another goal ahead. He hoped it would not be long before the stars appeared.

Soon the dark was too deep to see a guide ahead. However, the baking heat was gone with the light. There was a cold wind blowing, making Kenric long for a cloak. He knew that Niccolae, having sacrificed her outer robe, must feel the chill even more.

"Cling close to me," he ordered. "At least we can warm each other."

She clung. But her eyes were searching the heavens, in which the first glimmers were appearing.

"Mark that star! Ah, we were right to trust fortune. Angle a little to the left—do you not see that bright gleam? It is the apex of a triangle with two lesser lights at its foot—"

The constellation was easy enough to distinguish.

"The Arrow of Attu," said Niccolae. "It will bring us to Lanascol."

Eventually the wind died. No longer did they have to breathe the gritty particles.

Still the worm padded on tirelessly. At times the creature detoured right or left to avoid some rocky ridge, but always it obeyed Kenric's rein signal to correct course. Clinging to Kenric, Niccolae slept. He was glad for her.

He was not aware of dawn until the sky was pale lemon, slowly darkening to the bright orange-yellow of full day, bringing back the heat. Now at last the worm was slowing. Against Kenric's back, Niccolae moved. Her hands gave up their tight hold on him.

"Let the beast eat." Her voice was a husky whisper.

She was right. If they did not satisfy the worm, it might refuse to serve them.

He loosened rein and immediately the worm squatted. It began to grunt in what to Kenric seemed a demanding fashion. Its riders promptly dismounted. Niccolae tottered a little away and kneeled to open the bundle of food.

The smell of it was rank. The worm's head swung around, its tentacles uncoiled and working, plainly avid for the rotten stuff. The girl picked over what lay there, chose one of the balls. This she split with a pointed rock, showing too-soft inner pulp. Kenric nevertheless was ready to share it. Niccolae threw to the worm most of the mass, retaining only a small portion.

"The rest in the pack has all gone bad," she told him bleakly. "We shall keep a little for the worm to feed again. But for us—"

"Wait!" He threw out a hand to silence her staring about him. There was nothing here for shelter, not even a sizable rocky spire. And those dots he saw in the sky, growing larger every second—were they Rovers?

There was a ridge ahead. Could they reach it in time?

"Mount up!" He caught her and shoved her toward the worm.

VI
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The creature protested in coughing grunts. But it got to its feet and obeyed the signal to move out. There was no way to spur it to a faster pace. Not until, out of the sky, sounded a ripping screech.

The scaled body jumped in a convulsive indraw for a moment. Then it lengthened out again as the creature went into a rocking gallop while its riders fought to keep in the saddle.

That screech sounded again—louder and nearer. A Rover patrol right enough. Kenric could easily see now the reptilian forms of the flyers with the smaller figures of men mounted between their leather wings. The leader of the flight was planing down.

"Take the reins!" Kenric thrust them at Niccolae as he lifted his weapon.

He fired. A blinding beam of radiance speared. The flyer disappeared in the burst of flame.

A second flyer was too close on the leader to pull up and Kenric fired again. This time a sudden movement of the worm threw him off aim. Screeching, the flyer veered. But the edge of the blast must have singed its wing for it flapped away heavily not soaring as its flock mates did.

Kenric had no idea of the weapon's range. He fired again at a more distant flyer. It remained untouched. Then to the left and ahead geysered a blast of sand and gravel. The dust and grit billowed to fill his eyes. He could not see to aim again.

The bombardment from above continued, ringing them with flying sand and earth. Thus blinded, they had no chance to find the doubtful protection of the ridge. The worm twisted its body, flung up its head. Suddenly it halted, went flat with a jolt that shook them out of the saddle into the storm of sand.

Kenric leaped back in the direction of the worm, now only a shadow in the cloud of grit. He clung to its bulk, one hand anchored to a plate trying to see. The three-eyed head was sinking into the sand, and he could feel the legs moving—the worm was digging in!

Reins—but he did not have the reins! Niccolae had been holding those. Was the creature to dig in and leave them here half-buried, easy prey for the Rovers?

"Niccolae!" His mouth filled with sand as he called but he was answered.

"Here!"

He glimpsed Niccolae crouched on the other side of the worm, her body taut as she pulled with all her strength on the reins. He joined her, setting the blazer between his knees, pulling on the reins with her to check the worm. Twice he stopped to raise the weapon and blast Rovers out of the sky.

That taught them caution. The attack ceased and with it the sandstorm raised by the bombardment. He could see them still, but they circled too high to reach now.

Heat came with the rising sun. Their worm-mount with its self-burial might well have the best idea for more than one kind of escape. Should they remain where they now were, they would be dead by day's end. The enemy need only pin them in place to win a one-sided battle.

Since the worm appeared quiet, half in the ground, half out, Kenric relaxed somewhat. "Can you hold?" he asked the girl.

"If it continues to lie thus, yes. What do you do?"

"I want to see what they dropped to churn the sand." 

With the blazer under his arm, he zigzagged to the core of tumbled earth and sand from which one of those miniature whirlwinds had risen. There was a pit scooped out, a space bare of even the finest shifting of sand, and sun glinted on metal. Kenric edged closed, used the butt of his weapon to turn the thing over that he might see it more clearly.

He would swear that this was not made on Vallek. It was a slim disk which had a bulbous end, a more slender portion pointing up. On that was a flexible round of small blades that whirled as the thing moved under his prodding. He had heard rumors of such a weapon somewhere in the galaxy—called, if he remembered rightly, an ovid.

Those slight blades must be incredibly strong to have sent soaring such volumes of sand and earth. Kenric frowned. So the Rovers were armed with what would bring the most confusion to desert travelers, allowing the attackers to stay at a safe distance.

What had been used to harry the two worm-riders into a kind of captivity could easily be turned against an army in this waste. Suppose such were hurled about the Kor-King's force until those comprising it were so separated and storm-blinded that a land-based enemy, waiting in reserve, could overrun them?

The ovid fell on its side. Instantly those blades began to spin, cutting into a small drift of sand, sending the dust up so Kenric jumped back, his arm raised to shield his face and eyes.

"What is it?" he heard Niccolae cry out.

Kenric backed away, wreathed in dust clouds. Then he bumped against the worm and crouched low as the sand continued to fountain up as if the ovid had rolled to where it had new earth to cut into. Screening his eyes he looked around. The one fountain was matched by a second now—but they were both dying down now. And he did not know how many more there were.

He crawled to where Niccolae lay in the lee of the half-buried worm. Quickly he explained his find.

"So the Rovers are armed with an off-world device."

"If they are really off-worlders." Though he no longer doubted that. There was a high and alien level of technology behind what he had seen.

The spouting of sand thinned, ceased. But nothing would shut off the sun. Above the Rovers continued to circle, though there were fewer of them now. He counted only three.

But they need only play the waiting game up there and the desert would do the rest for them. He could see no way out of the trap. He heard an exclamation from Niccolae.

"Look here!" She had scooped sand away from the body of the worm. A strong odor violated the air. About the lower plates of the creature's body oozed a sticky substance that trickled down to the sand. Where it moistened the loose particles they hardened into a shell, making a small wall.

Quickly Kenric did some digging of his own, to discover a wall along the length of his side of the worm's body. It was evidently able to build a secure tunnel as it went. If there were some way of controlling its direction underground—

"The sphere!" Niccolae brought out that most precious of her possessions. "But even if it digs a way—how can we be sure that it heads in the right direction?"

"We can't," he said. "But we can gain protection from the sun and from those over us. We can buy a little time." The thought revived his spirit.

Sphere in hand, the girl crept to the head of the monster. When they had checked its dig-in it had already sunk close to the level of its eyes. But those three unblinking globes were still above the sand surface, enough to see what she held. Now she placed the sphere there. Could she again impress her will?

Perhaps she was unsure of her form of communication. For at first she only huddled there, looking more to the sphere than the worm. Then she reached out both hands, not to pick up the globe but rather to use her hooked fingers to dig into the sand, achieving so a shallow depression. Obviously she was attempting hypnotic suggestion.

Finally she picked up the sphere, returned to Kenric's side. "I do not know—" she was saying when, with almost the same force as one of the digging ovids, the worm went into action.

Kenric pulled her away from a whirlwind of debris. The worm was digging in all right, at a far greater speed than earlier. As if all the energy gained during its enforced rest was being called upon to get it underground as speedily as possible.

Debris was shooting out now in another direction. The worm was out of sight. Only the stream of earth spiraling up to mound about a hole marked its going. Could the Rovers see what was happening? If it brought them in to make sure—Kenric fingered the stock of the blazer. A thin hope, but he clung to it.

Kenric wriggled up the mound to look down into a pit. Below the outer ring of loose earth and sand were the slick walls glued by the excretion of the worm's body. On one side was the entrance to a tunnel.

So—here was a hiding hole, screened from sun and overhead observation. He called to Niccolae, then slipped cautiously over the treacherous rim of the pit. He held up his arms to steady her as the girl followed. The entrance to the worm's tunnel was not much larger than the bulk of its body but it afforded them room to crawl in. And the mere fact they had shade was an instant relief.

Kenric pushed on, only to sight the hunched, drawn-in form of the creature. He backed away carefully, not wanting to incite it to digging again and run the danger of being smothered by a backfire of earth and sand.

They were buying time, but how much? They had no water, none of the fruit which had been their stay before. He tried to think.

"It no longer digs?" Niccolae asked.

"No. Try to sleep," he suggested. "At nightfall we can—"

"If still we live," she interrupted tonelessly. "We have this chance. Having lost sight of us, the Rovers may come nearer. If we can meet them closer to ground level—"

Her eyes closed. She breathed shallowly, as if not to hurt her laboring lungs. And he thought that she might not have heard, or chosen to hear, his words.

Then she answered without opening her eyes. "Men have lived on dreams before, Lord Kor Kenric. And sometimes even proven them true. So let us dream—"

But if she took refuge in sleep, he must play sentry. Not that he dared expect the coming of anyone: foe—or remotely, friend. Yet he would be ready.

It was hard to fight the stupor creeping over him. It was hard to think coherently. He tried to recall all that had happened to him since his arrival on Vallek. Those at HQ must have learned long ago that he was not the oracle. But would they know who he was? And if so—could a return fix ever be set up? To his own knowledge, not since the early experimental days had a sending misplaced an agent. He would be at least a footnote now in the confidential history tapes stored in ZAT.

Having failed with him were they trying to send another agent? If so, would that fail because of the blasted chair now in the worm walk? How had the priests used that plate in the seat back, anyway? How had—?

Kenric roused. He saw, out in the pit, what had snapped him out of his dreamy state. A cascade of sand hissed down its wall. Someone stood on the top of the mound of excavated sand. Kenric shouldered closer to Niccolae. One hand covered her lips lest she make some sound, the other shook her awake. When he saw her eyes open and focus intelligently, Kenric motioned to the pit. The sand had ceased trickling; perhaps who moved above was listening, too.

Suddenly one of the ovids was lobbed into the pit, its fan beating up a storm in such earth as the worm secretion had not glued.

The flying cloud was thin and it did not reach into the tunnel. But it might be cover for another form of attack. Weapon ready, Kenric waited grimly.

The wait ended as a dark figure leaped down, kicking the still revolving disrupter out of the way. There was a spurt of flame, but Kenric had fired at the same time—with better aim. The attacker exploded into shredded flesh. Niccolae cried out, beating against Kenric's shoulder, tearing loose smoldering strips of tunic where the other's ray had ignited fabric and seared skin. But Kenric was alive and the other dead.

They would try again. Kenric sped into the open, swept the top of the mound without taking direct ray, spraying the blazer's fire in a wide sweep as he pivoted.

The very fury of that move won. There was a scream of anguish. He saw a man who had stood directly above the tunnel entrance stagger back, his hands flung up to hide his face.

Kenric identified him as a Rover. But the other who lay in a singed heap in the pit was not. Kenric went to the dead man. His face had escaped the blast, and he was not a Kawyn, nor of Lanascol either. His skin was faintly greenish and the hair, still remaining was of a mottled gray—humanoid, but alien. The remains of his clothing suggested a space uniform. Kenric forced himself to search the body.

He found little, mainly the charred remnants of a belt to which various tools or instruments had been slung, most of which were now melted into unidentifiable blobs. Of his origin there was no clue. However, his death, in addition to saving their lives, provided them with a second weapon. It was a hand arm, short barreled, lacking the telescopic sights of the first. He picked it up to bring back to Niccolae.

What interested him now was how those men had reached them. It could only be that the Rover must have landed his mount somewhere near. And perhaps that flying thing could signal trouble to any of the flock still aloft.

The only answer was to turn defense into offense again. The force of that spray he had used on the mound top had fused some of the sand into a slick surface which might be hard to climb. He spoke to Niccolae, who was examining the hand blazer.

"Try a quick blast here—and here—" She obeyed. The flash hollowed hand and foot holds. Then the girl stationed herself below, watching the rim while Kenric swung up.

He sprawled belly down on the top, his blazer ready. And he was just in time to see a Rover mount waddling awkwardly for a takeoff—a man in the saddle between its wings, clinging to the straps there while his body swayed weakly to and fro.

Kenric fired, but his burst was short though he kept his finger on the button. He pressed again. This time there was no flash at all. At the worst possible time the weapon needed recharging.

He had missed the darting head, had only frightened or irritated the flying creature into a frenzy. It somersaulted violently, throwing off its rider, then pecked him to death with two or three strokes of its great beak. Then it swept around and, with more speed than Kenric thought its clumsy gait on the ground would allow, it headed straight for him. He threw himself backward, slid down into the pit. The monstrous flying reptile scrabbled on the mound, and the fanning of its huge wingspread raised almost as much dust as might an ovid. With the girl, Kenric crouched in the tunnel. The walls of the pit were cracking, giving away under the thump of legs and body as the thing balanced, shooting out its long neck, trying to reach the two below.

Kenric was feeling for the smaller weapon when Niccolae fired it. The lance of flame brought a deafening screech from the flyer. It flopped forward, falling into the pit and filling most of it.

At the same time came a tremor in the earth. The worm, quiet so long they had all but forgotten it, began to move. It was digging again. Earth and sand flew all over them. They plastered themselves to the wall. Outside the flyer screamed and heaved, blocking any escape. They were fast being buried.

A mighty shaking followed, as if an earthquake moved. The ground around the mouth of the tunnel was being kicked in by the flyer. A beaklike mouth stabbed at them. They could only push back into the newly turned soil behind. Again that beak thrust, this time grazing Niccolae's shoulder, leaving an ooze of blood.

Somehow Kenric pushed the girl behind him, tried to get ready to meet a third attack by the beak. But he was tossed by another tremor of earth. And the attack he awaited with no hope of escaping did not come.

Instead a wild squawking sounded. The body of the flyer heaved and fought as if it tried to find standing room beyond the pit entrapping it.

Kenric used the precious moment of respite to crowd yet farther back into the fresh debris. Then Niccolae pulled at him until he turned his head a little.

"Look!"

VII
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A burst of sunlight there showed the worm gone. As it had buried itself, so it now must have attained the surface again. On hands and knees, through the choking earth, Kenric and the girl followed.

They emerged into a haze of sand as thick as that thrown up by the ovids. But through it they caught glimpses of massive bodies in battle. The huge fire worm was now seeking to bury the flyer in the pit. Kenric and Niccolae scrambled away from the sandstorm. By all the evidence they had seen, the worms were not carnivorous. But perhaps the flying reptiles were, and this was a defense against an old enemy delivered into the worm's reach.

Finally the swirl of high-flung sand subsided. Now they saw the worm clearly, crouched, its head bent, tentacles working feverishly as it watched a feeble movement under a thick mound of sand.

For the first time Kenric looked aloft. There were no Rovers in the sky. It might have been that the one who had landed had been left on guard while the others went elsewhere. Elsewere! To try their bombing tactics against the Kor-King's force?

When he said as much, Niccolae brought out the sphere. "The worm—if we can ride—"

"We must!" Though he was not sure they could control the worm after its battle with the flyer. The heaving had subsided and the mound was now quiet. But the worm still crouched as if over an enemy.

The reins in his hand shook as the worm's head came up. The tentacles again hung loose to form a limp beard. Then the creature folded its legs under it so they could mount.

Kenric used the reins to point it once more toward the ridge he had selected just before they had been attacked. The flat pad-pad of the worm's jolting walk began again.

In this heat, Kenric could almost believe both eye and brain were cooked to the point of imagining things. But, squinting against the glare of the sun, suddenly he saw something he thought no trick of light could produce. A flashing came from their right, sparking from near the top of one of the rocky pinnacles. Around its base arose sand swirls he knew only too well—though there were no flyers visible aloft.

"A signal!" Niccolae's fingers dug into his shoulder.

"So I thought," he rasped.

"But you do not understand—it is a signal of Lanascol!"

"Where there are traitors—" He spoke so, though he wanted to believe.

He longed for the security of the blazer, now swinging empty in the saddle scabbard, as he weighed the hand beamer. But wanting and having were poles apart. He brought the worm's head around and bore toward the wink of light.

The sandstorm about the base of that rock was dying. It was plain the ovids could run only for a limited time. And, when they reached the peak, none were discharging grit into the air. So the haze was thin and the men who leaped from the stone to face them were easy to recognize.

"Lord Kor!" The one in the lead was ploughing through the sand toward the worm. He stared at Kenric and the giant worm as if he could hardly believe his eyes.

"They say men sight illusions in the desert," he began. "But I do not believe you are one."

"Nor am I." Kenric twitched the reins and the worm folded its legs. "Tell me, Girant, does the Kor-King ride this way?"

"Yes. He is behind—we are scouting. But there are Rovers aloft and they have the power to raise the sands to fight for them. They trapped us here but a short time ago—then flew on. We can only hope our talking mirror relayed the warning to the Kor-King's men. But Lord Kor, where have you been? What is this monster you ride? The Kor-King's Eyes in the city discovered you had been tricked by a sorceress—" For the first time he turned his stare on the girl.

"Not tricked by the Lady Niccolae," Kenric corrected him. "She was taken captive with me. There are traitors in Lanascol, right enough. But they are of a different calling than sorceress. Have you mounts?"

"We had. When the sand wind arose they stampeded."

"I must reach the Kor-King. Yet to leave you here—"

"We have a goodly fort in these rocks, such as can hold off even the snake necks of the Rovers should they attack. And anyone coming on foot will meet a warm welcome."

"There are those with the Rovers with new and deadlier arms," Kenric warned. "They blast afar with fire. If you see any which look so," he slapped the scabbarded weapon, "take good cover behind the rocks."

Girant nodded. "Perhaps some will also come riding monsters such as you have?"

"True. Ours came from their stable. But I shall send aid as soon as I can."

"There is no need for such a promise, Lord Kor. We know of old the manner of man we serve." Girant touched two fingers to his forehead. "May fortune ride with you!"

"In what direction? I am hasty to be gone, but where?"

"See the rock wall to the south there—the double gap with the projection in the middle? Bear on that, Lord Kor, for our camp last night lay beneath it."

The worm began its tireless trot. Kenric looked often to the sky and felt an odd shrinking between his shoulder blades, as if he were presenting his back to some fatal attack. Yet there was still no sign of Rovers.

Nor did there appear to be any disturbance of sand ahead. If they were bombing the Kor-King's men, that battle was yet out of sight. Heat bore down. Kenric thought of water, food. Should he have begged both from Girant?

Niccolae pressed to him tightly. Her head rested on his shoulder. He thought how she too must be suffering for water.

Kenric had early discovered that distances in the waste were deceptive. Now it seemed that the longer they traveled, the farther off stood the hills Girant had pointed out. Did a haze now lie between?

He heard a gasp from Niccolae. Suddenly the surface of the open ground before them was heaving, turning up, coming alive—with the emerging heads and bodies of worms. Just as their own mount had earlier dug free, so were others breaking from the burrows in which they must have traveled.

And each was carrying double—a rider controlling the worm, an armed fighter with him. Kenric tried to rein in, found he could do nothing. The worm they rode was intent upon joining its fellows.

They need only be sighted by one of those other riders to be flamed to a crisp, Kenric thought. Then, eyeing the squad carefully, he realized that none carried blazers. Theirs were only the conventional weapons of Vallek: black tubes that directed small paralyzing darts, long lances, battle swords. Where were the blazers? Were there too few of them to arm such a company? Or did the suppliers of such weapons not trust these allies? Perhaps the sight of the worms alone was intended to demoralize the Lanascol forces.

The worm they bestrode showed no sign of weariness. Instead it forged ahead through the rear guard of the squad, pushing for the van. The attackers rode in loose formation, one worm well apart from his fellows. No one took notice of the newcomers.

"Lean low as you can," Kenric ordered Niccolae. He bent himself nearly double across the bar of the saddle. The coarse hair of the worm whipped him, its odor stinging his eyes and nostrils. It was all Kenric and the girl could do to hold on. For the pace of the worm, plainly excited by its company, became a rocking gallop, threatening their grasp, bruising them back and front, whipping them with the steel-harsh strands of hair.

Kenric did not dare to raise his head to look at the riders around them. He could only cling and hope that the impetus of their charge would carry them through.

The worm rocked on. Kenric heard shouting, and then about them was the fury of driven sand. They were in the attack area. He shut his eyes and clung the tighter to his insecure seat. The worm skidded to a halt, dropped so that they sprawled out of the saddle, Niccolae still clinging to him, while sand arose about them. Kenric loosened hold on the reins, squirmed away, dimly aware that once more the worm was digging in and that they must not be engulfed by debris. He pulled Niccolae around. Then, with his arm upflung to shield his sand-rasped face, he staggered away.

Only to come up against a rock, a firm anchorage in this world of swirling grit. There he clung, the girl pressed against him, both with eyes closed, trying to breathe.

How long that lasted he did not know. But he could hear shouting. And some of those shouts were battle cries of Lanascol. Someone caught at his shoulder, strove to loosen him from the rock. He tried to free himself without surrendering either the girl or his hold. But it was no use. He was hauled away.

Then he no longer felt the pelting sand. He opened his eyes.

He recognized the breast badges. The Kor-King's guard. Kenric tried to speak and produced only a dull croak. Someone lifted a water bottle to his lips. He sucked avidly.

His hands hung limp. Where was the girl? Realization that she was gone brought back his mind. He managed to straighten, supported on either side by guardsmen.

"Niccolae?"

"She is here, Lord Kor. See you—" They turned him a little and he did see. She lay on the ground as one of the guard dribbled water cautiously into her mouth. The man nodded to him.

"She lives, Lord Kor. This is only a swoon."

"The Kor-King?" Kenric said, "I have news of import—"

"He comes now, Lord Kor—" Again they aided him to turn, this time to face the tall man wearing half armor, the helm set with a jeweled device.

 

The last swirl of sand had subsided. It was close to sunset. There were many ledges on the rise of the rock cliff which might have been chiseled on purpose to provide seats for the waiting men. Kenric leaned back and looked to the right where the Kor-King was similarly enthroned. They could still see, on the floor of the waste, those humps which marked the dug-in worms, apparently quiescent underground. Of their late riders, those who had not died during the attack or been entrapped when their mounts began to tunnel, there were a score under guard and already being questioned by the Kor-King's officers.

"It would seem," the King observed, "that they entered battle woefully ignorant if they did not know their mounts' proclivity for seeking safety underground during sandstorms. That is ill planning. A natural result of what you have told me of their jealousies. And this defeat will not make for good feeling among them, either."

"Since I blasted the oracle throne with a weapon belonging to the strangers, they may be suspect. And as these other new weapons—these ovids—have brought defeat instead of victory, I should think any faith they have in strangers is sorely shaken. Still, it is those weapons we have most to fear."

"That and the treachery at our own core." The Kor-King took off his helm and rubbed his temples as if the weight of that headgear were too much. He was of the same general breed of all the Lanascol men, red-brown of skin, dark red of hair. Save above each ear was a patch of silver two fingers in breadth. But for that he showed no sign of age, his regular features bearing only those marks set by a vigorous life of much responsibility.

Kenric studied him as the King continued to look out over the desert. He wore well, did this Kor-King whose rule should remain intact if Vallek was not going to end a charred cinder in a future so far ahead of this twilight that the reckoning of it must be left to the machines of men of another world and age. He had accepted Kenric's wild tale with sober attention. Yet he might well have had doubts—seeing that a son who had long lain witless blurted it out while in a semi-daze. Here was evidence that the real Kenric had been one in whom men could root confidence and not have it wither.

"These off-worlders wish to deal with the priests for the ore. We have long known it has certain unique properties. Sorceresses can make use of it. Just as the superstitious Kawyn grind it into useless powder, lest it be turned against them. And speaking of sorceresses, Kenric, it would seem this Niccolae has wrought well for our line. Let her ask of us what she would—if it be within our power to grant—" He made a gesture with his hands.

"I do not think she will claim any reward."

The Kor-King laughed softly. "That may be. But rewards come at the end. And there is another woman who had also wrought some twists and turns in this matter. You have said nothing of the Lady Yarakoma save that her man, or one purporting to be her man, was in the council of priests. Your forbearance is strange. She has said much of you these past days—"

"I do not wonder at that."

"No, I suppose you do not. She has said among other things that you are still brainsick from your wound. And that while so weakened you have fallen under the spell of a sorceress who uses you for her own foul purposes."

"And these words were believed?" Kenric could read nothing in the Kor-King's level voice. Could it be that Yarakoma still had some measure of influence?

"They had logic. My eyes reported some facts apparently bearing them out. Only, I have other, still more secret eyes. And one of them I had set on certain path of prying when word first came to me that you had suffered so badly in that border clash. It is meet that sometimes I be thought more blind than the Overgods decreed I be. The Lady Yarakoma has been scant friend to you in the past—why was it that she wished to watch so closely by your bedside when you lay without much more than breath left in you? Though she never did so alone."

Kenric smiled. "For which fact perhaps I should be devoutly thankful."

He heard the Kor-King chuckle, the dusk now veiling the other's face. "Your brother has never been noted for seeing beyond a pretty face when we would go courting. Therefore I speak no ill of him. In his way he is a valiant and worthy son. But should he come to wear this—" The King held out his helm, only a dark shadow now—"then I have fears for what might follow in Lanascol. The Lady Yarakoma cannot be denounced openly, lest she rive the kingdom top to bottom. She has many who listen while she spills well-chosen words. But it is meet that your brother be sent to hold the western marches and deal with the sea peoples. I have good reason to believe the worm priests have been meddling there. Since he will be gone for at least two years, and into a rough and dangerous country, he cannot take his loving lady with him. She will express an earnest desire to retire to the Tower of Seven Silences during that time, to find among the Wise Women there consolation and support."

Kenric lacked any knowledge of the place. But the Kor-King had taken the best precautions to control a treacherous daughter-in-law, Kenric did not doubt.

"So much for the Lady. What of the priests, these strangers, the alliance with the Rovers and the Kawyn?"

"We shall hope your initial sowing of discord will root. I have my eyes on duty and they have their orders to muddy waters, throw fuel on fires, generally make themselves useful. The Rovers may try to assault Lanascol, though I doubt it. The worm priests, without their oracle are deeply wounded for the time. And your detailed account will be widely repeated—mainly it will state that the oracle cannot any longer be inspired in the burrows. In fact, your tale will make a saga that will enhance our house and its rule. As for the strangers—we must learn more of them. Some of our eyes will move in that direction. And we have learned that the worm-animals have their uses. We have never been free of the desert because of its nature and ours. But if we can now mount our scouts on worms, that lack will be remedied."

Kenric nodded. The Kor-King spoke on.

"I do not say that all will be easy and one small battle wins a war. You are border-seasoned enough to know that is not so. But I do think their dark alliance will not hold now. And enemies who come to us singly we can handle. I think for Lanascol we have done well this day. Thanks to Girant who blinked us warning—and your message. There is always a way for brave men, or so I have found. We shall return now to Lanascol, leaving only a screen of scouts, perhaps mounted on these worms. There we shall await the return of our Eyes, preparing against Rover raids or trouble from the strangers. When has it not always been so? Man thinks of what lies ahead—the prudent try to foresee. Which makes me think once more of this sorceress of yours, I find her of note. Such we would do well to bind to us."

Kenric felt the Kor-King was looking at him now with meaning. But he was suddenly too tired to care what thought might lie behind the words. He might not have completed his mission in the manner the Service had intended, but at least Lanascol still was sturdily defended and he was sure the Kor-King would rule on.

 

Kenric stood just within the hangings. This room was somewhat larger than that in which Niccolae received her clients, but not by much. The scent of herbs clung to the fabric.

"We're only getting in deeper," he said without turning to look at her. "The Kor-King deserves better. He looks upon me as a partner in his plans. If I am recalled and he has left but a senseless clod—or a dead body!—that will cause someone as keen-witted as he to be suspicious. You might report that. It should shake up even ZAT."

"It has," she answered.

"Oh, has it?" he swung around. But she was standing in the dimmest corner of the room and he could not see her expression. Or was she presenting him with the same smooth mask she assumed for her clients?

"ZAT has confessed—if you can call it that."

"Confessed? To what?"

"That the last-minute switch in the sending was its responsibility."

Kenric stepped away from the drape. "Do you know what you are saying?" he demanded. He did not want to believe her—it approached too near to an old fear of his, once long existing on the fringe of his thoughts. The fear that some day the computer would not be following the orders of men to achieve a solution but would begin working on its own.

"ZAT came to the conclusion that the oracle was not the key. ZAT reports that the Kor-King needs the backing our operative could give. Knowing that, ZAT prepared a different sending—"

"So I was elected. Did Goddard know?"

"No one knew—until after you were sent. They then learned ZAT had arranged no recall."

"What!"

"The shift came by some circuit they can't trace—yet. And so you can't return safely. To try it might end in an abort. I presume you don't want to risk that."

"Of course not," he answered almost absently, trying to think out what ZAT had done to him. It was well in the realm of possibility that they would be a long time finding that circuit. ZAT could conceal it.

"Another thing," she said. "ZAT broke connections with me today when I was asking progress. Contact now will have to come from the other side if ZAT continues the break."

He was over the first shock, able to think steadily. "It's as if I volunteered for Permanent Agent. I think I'll have to see it that way."

"You take it well." She moved into the window light to stand watching him closely. The ravages of their days in the desert were largely gone from her face.

"No use calling down the wrath of any gods of Vallek on ZAT." He tried to laugh and found the sound he produced passable. "All right—I forget Creed Trapnell, and am truly Lord Kor Kenric. Well, there is plenty to do under that name."

"That being?"

"The Kor-King wants you in the family. Last night he gave me one of those straight talks of his. I can understand his concern. Yarakoma is hardly to be listed as a credit to the clan. He would like a hand in picking the next woman to be marriage-linked with the Kor blood."

Kenric grinned at her. Her face remained placid, but not her eyes. They glowed like orm ore. He moved toward her, and on the way he said:

"He's shrewd and he's right. I think I would set him up even against ZAT!"

Then he stopped talking, for a good reason.