“Hear anything?” Iimmi asked.
Geo listened.
“Yes, of course,” the Priestess was saying.
“She is set upon staying in the harbor for three more days, to wait out the week,” reported Jordde. “I am sure she will not stay any longer. She is still bewildered by me, and the men have become uneasy and may well mutiny if she stays longer.”
“We will dispose of the prisoners this evening. There is no chance of their returning,” stated the Priestess.
“Detain them for three days, and I do not care what you do with them,” said Jordde. “She does not have the jewels; she does not know my…our power; she will be sure to leave at the end of the week.”
“It’s a pity we have no jewels for all our trouble,” said the Priestess. “But at least all three are back in Aptor and potentially within our grasp.”
Jordde laughed. “And Hama never seems to be able to keep hold of them for more than ten minutes before they slip from him again.”
“Yours is not to judge either Hama or Argo,” stated the Priestess. “You are kept on by us only to do your job. Do it, report, and do not trouble either us or yourself with opinions. They are not appreciated.”
“Yes, Mistress,” returned Jordde.
“Then farewell until next report.” She flipped a switch and the picture on the little screen went gray.
Geo turned from the big screen and was just about to remove the hearing apparatus when he heard the Priestess say, “Go; prepare the prisoners for the sacrifice of the rising moon. They have seen too much.” The woman left the room, Geo removed the phones, and Iimmi looked at him.
“What’s the matter?”
Geo turned the switch that darkened the screen.
“When are they coming to get us?” Iimmi asked excitedly.
“Right now, probably,” Geo said. Then, as best he could, he repeated the conversation he had overheard to Iimmi, whose expression grew more and more bewildered as Geo went on.
At the end the bewilderment suddenly flared into frayed indignation. “Why?” demanded Iimmi. “Why should we be sacrificed? What is it we’ve seen, what is it we know? This is the second time it’s come close to getting me killed, and I wish to hell I knew what I was supposed to know!”
“We’ve got to find Urson and get out of here!”
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
Indignation had turned into something else. Geo stood with his eyes shut tight and his face screwed up. Suddenly he relaxed. “I just thought out a message as loud as I could for Snake to get up here and to bring Urson if he’s anywhere around.”
“But Snake’s a spy for — ”
“—for Hama,” said Geo. “And you know something? I don’t care.” He closed his eyes again. After a few moments, he opened them. “Well, if he’s coming, he’s coming. Let’s get going.”
“But why?” began Iimmi, following Geo out the door.
“Because I have a poet’s feeling his mind reading may come in handy.”
They hurried down the hall, found the stairs, ducked down, and ran along the lower hall. Rounding a second corner, they emerged into the little chapel simultaneously with Urson and Snake.
“I guess I got through,” said Geo. “Which way do we go?”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” came a voice behind them.
Snake took off down one of the passages; they followed, Urson looking particularly bewildered.
The Priestess glided behind, calling softly, “Please, my friends, come back. Return with me.”
“Find out from her how the hell to get out of this place!” Geo bawled to Snake. The four-armed boy darted up a sudden flight of stairs, turned, and ran up another. They came out in a hall, behind Snake.
The boy’s four hands flew at the door handle, turning it carefully this way and back.
Two, three seconds.
Geo glanced back and saw the Priestess mount the head of the stairs and start toward them. Her white robes floated from her, brushing the walls.
The door came open; they broke through leaves and were momentarily in a huge field surrounded by woods. The sky was pale with moonlight.
A hundred fifty yards across the field was a white statue of Argo. As they ran through the silver grass, doors opened in the base and a group of priestesses emerged and began to hurry toward them. Geo turned to look behind him. The blind Priestess had slowed, her face turned to the moon. Her hands went to her throat, she unclasped her robe, and the first layer fell behind her. As she continued forward, the second layer began to unfold, wet, leprously white, spreading from her arms, articulating along the white spines; then, with a horribly familiar shriek, she leaped from the ground and soared upward, white wings hammering the air.
They fled.
Dark forms shadowed the moon. The priestesses across the field joined her aloft in the moon-bleached night. She overtook the running figures, turned above them, and swooped down. The moon lanced white on bared teeth. The breeze touched pale furry breasts, filled the bellying wings. Only the tiny, darting, blind eyes were red, rubies in a whirl of white.
Snake changed direction and fled toward the trees.
With only one arm, Geo found himself off balance. He nearly fell twice before he crashed into the bushes where the winged things could not follow. Branches raked his face as he followed the sound the others made. Once he thought he had lost them, but a second later he bumped against Iimmi, who had stopped behind Snake and Urson. Above the trees was a sound like beaten cloth, diminishing, growing, but constant as once more they began to tread through the tangled darkness.
“Damn…” sighed Iimmi after a minute of walking.
“It’s beginning to make sense,” Geo said, his hand on Iimmi’s shoulder. “Remember that man-wolf we met, and that thing in the city? The only thing we’ve met on this place that hasn’t changed shape is the ghouls. I think most creatures on this Island undergo some sort of metamorphosis.”
“What about those first flying things we met?” whispered Urson. “They don’t change into anything.”
“Probably we have just been guests of the female of the species,” said Geo. “I think that’s what Snake was warning us about when he took us to see them in the barracks. He was trying to tell us that we might meet them again.”
“You mean those others could have changed into men too, if they wanted?” Urson asked.
“If they’d wanted,” answered Geo. “But it was more convenient to stay outside the convent. They come together only for mating, more than likely.”
“Which just might be what this ceremony of the rising moon is about,” Iimmi observed. “The ones flying against the moon were the other kind, the men. You know there are sections over in Leptar where the female worshipers of Argo completely avoid the male members.”
“That’s what I was thinking of,” said Geo. “It first dawned on me when they wouldn’t let us eat with the women.”
In front of them now appeared shiftings of silver light. Five minutes later, they were crouching at the edge of the trees, looking down over the rocks at the shimmering river.
“Into the water?” Geo asked.
Snake shook his head. Wait…inside their heads.
A hand rose from the water. Wet and green, a foot or so from the shore, it turned, the chain and the leather thong dangling down the wrist: swinging there were two bright beads.
Iimmi and Geo froze. Urson said: “The jewels…”
Suddenly the big sailor sprang onto the rocks and ran toward the river’s edge.
Three shadows, one white, two dark, converged above him, cutting the moonlight away. If Urson saw them, he did not stop.