Norgoth shook his head.
“That is not good enough! We must carry an answer back today — within the bur, for you have kept us waiting long enough as it is.”
I stared at him.
He stood his ground, whereat I was pleased, for that meant I was keeping my temper and my face must appear bland and indifferent.
“There are people — nobles and pallans — with whom the matter must be discussed.”
This was not true; but it sounded genuine enough and would be accepted as normal conduct. Again Norgoth shook his head.
“Not so. You may be a nithing, as all men believe; but I do know you would take this matter into your own hands.”
“Believe it. And reck that when I say I will think on this and tell you my answer, that is what I mean.”
The woman opened her mouth to speak, and Ralton Dwa-Erentor, that canny sleeth racer, butted in swiftly. He clearly wished to pacify the rising passions here.
“Surely, Tarek Malervo — two burs will not make all that difference?”
Ralton glanced at me as he spoke, so that I understood his genuine desire to help. But his words were wholly wrong.
“Two burs!” shouted Norgoth. ‘Two burs! We must have the answer, here and now.”
And, of course, Ralton Dwa-Erentor should have seen that I, had I been your ordinary run of emperors, would never have stood still for any kind of time limit. Two burs or instantly. But he tried to help, and that forgave him much. A fleeting thought of Thelda, Seg’s wife, the lady kovneva, crossed my mind. She was always trying to help and making a mess of things. She’d been sorcerously flung back to her home in Evir, far in the north of Vallia, and what had happened to her since then Opaz alone knew. I fancied that Seg had gone looking for her. That would explain his absence even though he had been sent off to his home in Erthyrdrin at the northern tip of Loh.
By Zair! What I wouldn’t give to have Seg and Inch and Balass and Turko and Oby and all the others with me, here and now, ready to face the perils that lay ahead!
And my family, scattered every which way, each one busy about his or her pursuits — I would really have to talk seriously to Delia and see about rounding them up. Although that would not be the way I’d phrase it, by Vox.
So I looked at Norgoth, this Tarek Malervo Norgoth, and I felt the old blood thumping and I gripped my fists together into the small of my back and ground my jaws down, tightly, so as to keep the proceedings on a halfway decent level of civilized transaction. But it was hard, by Zair, it was hard. At last I unclenched those old rat-traps of mine and managed to say in a quiet voice: “Here and now, Norgoth? Then you must expect the answer to be no, surely?”
“Aye! That we do expect. I have said so all along.”
“But I have not!” burst out Ralton Dwa-Erentor. His young face looked sullen, determined, as though he had built up a charge and now it was coming spilling out. The sullenness was very close to mutiny. “We must stand with honest Vallians against the Racters and the bastards from Hamal and their Opaz-forsaken cramphs of mercenaries.”
They tell me that friends and friendship are becoming dirty words in this wonderful new civilization we are building here on Earth. That may be, and may be for the worse. But as I stood watching Ralton as he spoke so vehemently, I felt that in other circumstances we could have been friends. The determination in him to say out what he believed in, against the feelings of the ambassador, warmed me. I bent my brows on Malervo Norgoth.
“Why does Layco Jhansi choose you to lead the deputation, if you seek only rejection as an answer?”
Ralton fired up at this; but the woman turned her battleship-old-head and he simmered down. But he glowered most handsomely.
“We knew the Racters were sending. That, alone, seemed good enough reason.” The contempt in Norgoth stung.
Everyone spied on everyone else. Of course. That was just another of the pretty little ways of life an honest old sea dog had to understand. And, in all this, just how much was the devil’s work of Phu-Si-Yantong?
“I still see no value in this mission from Jhansi.”
“Will you or will you not stand with us against the Racters?”
“I have said, I will ponder this and give you my answer presently.”
A rattle from the sorcerer drew my attention away from Norgoth.
A blank and horrifying whiteness shrouded his eyes so they looked like corpse-eyes, glaring sightlessly upon me. Foam speckled his lips and dripped in white-tinged green streamers upon the unkempt beard. He trembled. He shook as a tree shakes in the tempest. The hard bean-rattle of his morntarch clicked and clattered like the claws of rats. His right arm lifted and extended horizontally. The clenched fist uncurled and the long brown fingernails, rimmed in grime, spread and the forefinger pointed at my breast. His panting filled the anteroom with opaque beats of sound.
“Now you will see why!” shouted Norgoth. His thin legs carried that gross body sideways, away from the sorcerer, and his face betrayed a glee made manifest in his delight at my coming destruction. I felt the blast of psychic power.
I felt it. Like a wall of rushing air as one puts one’s head over the shield in a flier. Like the blow from an axe against the brim of the helmet. Like the nuzzling embrace of a graint as that great beast seeks to crush ribs and pelvis and skull. All of these sensations flared in the scything attack. I staggered. I took a step backwards.
Norgoth yelled again, urging his sorcerer, this Rovard the Murvish, to greater effort, demanding that he render me incapable and in his power.
So they did not wish to kill me. They had deeper designs. Their object was to place me in hypnosis, a saturated psychic state in which I would obey every command they chose to give me, in which I would be their puppet.
Well, I have been the puppet of the Star Lords, aye, and of the Savanti, too. I have been used by Wizards of Loh in ways that are passing strange, and have fought. And I have been the recipient of favors from Zena Iztar, that superhuman woman who from time to time had appeared to me, exhorting me to courage and to perseverance, and who had enabled the genuine formation of a devoted Order of Brothers, the Kroveres of Iztar. She it was who had extended some measure of protection over me, spreading her aegis. And even the Star Lords had descended from their aloof mistiness to afford me a defense against Phu-Si-Yantong. So I staggered back and then recovered and glared at the sorcerer with a malice that rose fiery and lurid from the depths of my spirit.
Well, poor fool, Dray Prescot. Instantly Rovard the Murvish spun his magical apparatus into wilder swings and sweeps and the reek of him puffed loathsomely into the anteroom. But I stood there, defying him. Poor fool indeed!
For, of course, I should have appeared to succumb. I should have pretended to fall under the hypnotic sway. In a deceit like that I could have carried off easily enough, I fancy, lay the way to learn much. But I did not. I do not think it was pride, pride that showed itself in my unsought ability to withstand his sorcery. For I have little truck with pride. Rather, it was a sheerly warrior’s reaction, an instinct to fight back when attacked.
So, for a space, we stood there, locked in psychic combat.
And then — by Zair! — and then the horrifying numbness began to eat at my brain and the anteroom spun dizzily about me and I staggered, brought low as a tree is brought low when floods eat away its roots.