Still—Jofre was too well versed in the devious tricks played by the valley lords to completely accept that story. It was far too convenient for the present Holder— an alliance at the death of his predecessor, sworn to by men who had doubtless been completely stunned by that death—too much a whim of fortune. He had heard tell of other deaths, carefully executed to order by issha trained to complete anonymously action requiring months of tortuous intrigue. Not that it mattered now what had happened fifty years ago—unless Zurzal's time scanner could produce a copy of just what they were viewing now.
"Can it be done—that scene brought into being again?" He wriggled one finger at the screened picture.
"You can answer that perhaps as well as I can." Zurzal's good hand arose to rub across the growing stump of his maimed one, as if the renewing flesh and bone itched as might a wound in the progress of healing. "I have had some fleeting successes, it is true."
He did not continue but Jofre thought he could pick up what the other was leaving unsaid, that Zurzal was honestly wary of any success in this venture. Which meant that they could have only a fleeting value to their captors.
Frustration bit at Jofre but he could do nothing, save prepare as best he could for the first chance he would have which would promise even the remotest chance of escape.
In the days which followed he had to fight against the constant urge for action. He refused to let himself walk the floor as sometimes his body demanded, wanting to be free. All he could do was draw upon the Center—
There was one small thing to which his mind continually turned—the fact that when he had been, he was sure, very near death from the stass weapon, contact with the stone from Qaw-en-itter had somehow given him the strength to hold on. He took to studying the stone and made small discoveries, though he was cautious about it—it came from a cursed place and some of the darkness which gathered there could well cling.
He found that if he held it cupped between his palms when he did his Center seeking, he was brought much more quickly to the state of body awareness he wished. Once, when trying a memory exercise he pressed it to his forehead and then nearly dropped it when he was answered with a painful burst of jangled images which even left him partially blinded for some very frightening moments.
Something kept him from showing his find to the Zacathan. He only brought it out when Zurzal was resting or deeply occupied with the studies which had to do with the scanner. By now Jofre was convinced that what he held could only have broken off of the Lair stone whose death had signified also the abandonment of Qaw-en-itter. No one—except the Masters and the senior priests—knew the relationship between men and the Lair stones. Those were assha—of the innermost of the Shadows. Nor had Jofre ever heard of anyone possessing an artifact such as he had found.
Perhaps a prudent man would have left it where he had discovered it—any Brother would—but—it remained that he was not by birth or blood a Brother—he was an off-worlder. And when he thought of that he knew a trickle of cold within. From what world had he sprung in the beginning? How did that other breeding limit—or aid—the issha now ingrained in him?
There would be more than one trial ahead to test both his limits and his successes, and all he was must be pushed to making certain he faced all squarely and alert.
THEY DID NOT TOUCH FOOT TO TSSEKIAN SOIL ONCE they had earthed. Rather Jofre found himself squeezed in between Harse and one of his look-alikes on the second seat of a flitter which had made a precise connection with a landing platform. While Zurzal was wedged in with the Horde Commander and the pilot on the fore seat. Just as his first glimpse of Tssekian architecture via the vision screen had impressed him with stark utility and no concessions to any softening of line, so did the loom of the buildings between which their present vehicle streaked its way offer a vague threat, as if each was a sentinel on duty and those of the population about were prisoners.
They did not linger in that somber pile of a city but rather sped on into open land beyond. Jofre could not move enough in his seat to see what lay below them. But the walls were gone and, except for sight of a distant skeleton-like erection or two, they were now in the clear.
Their craft apparently had reached maximum speed and was being held so. However, they were not alone in the sky. During their flight through the city they had passed a number of similar craft and, once they had reached the outer ways beyond that stand of buildings, a second flitter hung close, a little behind, but apparently bound for the same goal.
Jofre had made no resistance to the somewhat rough handling which had steered him to his present seat. Neither of the guards broke silence, and their craggy features were set in stolid, almost stupid, patterns. However, Jofre was well aware that in no way must he underestimate these followers of the Holder. He was lucky in that he had not been placed in bonds and would continue to be most biddable while he noted all he could pick up from his surroundings. Both of these guards were trained, though not, he believed, in the more outre systems of the issha. Armed or not, and given the smallest of chances, he could take them both. But that must wait upon a time when such a move could be made profitable. At least they had not stassed him again and he was given that small freedom.
The flitter fell into a circling pattern and began to descend near a building some four stories high. It was not the stolid block of the city structure but rather was a different design altogether. There had been some ornamentation about the windows and one could catch flashes of color through those as if they were curtained. Then their craft set down on a perch extending from the side of the building just under the rise of the top story. Facing them one of those windows had been expanded into a doorway by which a man in a brilliant yellow tunic stood waiting.
At the sight of the Zacathan he bowed—apparently the subterfuge that Zurzal was a welcome guest was to be carried on. Jofre was given a sharp dig in the ribs to send him after his employer as the flitter took off, just in time to clear a landing spot for that second craft which had followed them from the city.
The yellow-tunicked man was waving Zurzal in before him and a meaty hand on Jofre's shoulder hurried him in the same direction. He gathered, by the placing of that goad and a certain tenseness of his two guards, that they did not want any passenger which the second craft might have brought to be seen.
She did not have to be seen. The strict training of years kept Jofre from any halt in his step. He did not turn his head as every atom of him wished. Here—! Who was she?What she was he knew from that faint whiff of scent which had reached him. Only in the Lairs was that distilled, to be one of the minor weapons of the Others—the Sisters, of whom he had seen exactly two in his full lifetime, and then only from a distance. Daughters were few in the Lair and those were born there, not recruited from the land at large as the Brothers mainly were in childhood. Their fabled prowess in their own field was the bed from which legend and rumor both grew mighty tales.
One of the issha—and a woman! He allowed his arm to swing loosely by his side, twice brushing the thigh of the guard who had herded him to the doorway. His forefinger and thumb moved. She might never sight that signal, nor sighting it, have any desire to reveal herself. Certainly she was here on a mission and he could not believe that that had anything to do with him or Zurzal. But the fact that she would be under the same roof—or so it would seem— was a new factor to be considered.