“What now?” said Chagal.
“We get through it.”
Dumarest set aside the flagon and bundle, the knife whispering from his boot as he knelt to examine the edges of the door.
“Did you come through this?”
“I can’t remember, but I must have done. How else would I have got to the room back there?”
A different way, a different portal. Chagal should have recognized that but Dumarest didn’t bother to explain. Instead he thrust the blade of his knife into the gap he had discovered, gripped the hilt and, with a surge of power from back and shoulders, lifted the steel to halt at an obstruction, to fight it, to feel it yield. The door swung open to the impact of his boot.
Chagal sucked in his breath as he saw what lay beyond.
Nothing. A void of darkness that was more than an absence of light. A region in which all illumination was sucked and extinguished as all matter was destroyed in a black hole.
One that radiated a vibrant warning. A place not to be touched, entered into, examined, investigated. The ultimate taboo.
“Earl!” Dumarest felt the tug at his belt. “Earl, step back! Step back!”
Away from the insidious temptation of the unknown. The subtle and sometimes lethal attraction felt when looking down from the edge of a cliff, the rim of a waterfall.
A danger he recognized and he yielded to the tug at his belt. As he moved back the door swung shut to be as it had been before.
“God!” The doctor looked ill. “What the hell was that?”
“A dead end.”
Dumarest turned and began to retrace his steps down the passage. Before him the door leading to the conservatory grew nearer, larger. Beyond the chamber seemed unchanged.
Chagal, shaken by what had happened, reached for an open flagon and gulped directly from the bottle.
“That was close,” he said. “Too damned close.”
Dumarest ignored the doctor. He walked to the far end of the conservatory and narrowed his eyes hoping to penetrate the nacreous glow that illuminated whatever lay beyond the crystal. His skin prickled with familiar warnings of danger. Did the darkness they had seen extend to beyond the conservatory? Had he stepped into it what would have happened? Chagal had prevented that. He had also claimed the narrow door was the only way into the chamber but was that what he had been led to believe? Had Delise merely joined him to play a game? Had she known what was to come? Arranged for it to happen?
How to escape the trap?
A whirl of thoughts and speculation that spun at his mind and corroded his normal objectivity. Indecision was a danger as was strong emotion and now he was being affected by both. Shandaha’s work?
“No! Earl, for God’s sake! No!”
Dumarest heard Chagal’s cry as he stepped back from the shimmering crystal, the heavy weight of the flagon rising in his hand. It left his grip in a flowing arc, bursting as it met the pane, shards flying, wine spattering, the glowing barrier shattering, revealing darkness.
An ebon cloud that engulfed him and sent him whirling through space and time.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was as if he had been instantly transported to a place of stygian darkness assailed by forces beyond his experience and understanding. A place so alien that his mind and body could sense nothing which could be interpreted as familiar. He seemed to be floating, drifting-wild speculation but he could sense no point of material contact on his body and the only association he could make was when he had drifted in the void.
But then he could see; now he was blind. Blind and deaf and helpless as a new-born child thrust from the comfort of the womb into a realm of fear and terror, needing to learn the basics of living, to breath, to move, to communicate. Touching, tasting, feeling, learning to avoid pain, to gain mobility, to master the mysteries of a new environment.
As he needed to master the mounting terror of being trapped in an alien space.
Dumarest moved, spreading his arms, his legs, twisting his head so as to gain control of his body. As his limbs responded to his direction he concentrated on his senses. His skin prickled as if covered with minute insects, his muscles bunching as he fought the irritation. His ears felt as if blocked by wax. His eyes as if coated with an opaque film. His thoughts vague, distracted, floundering without discipline in the unknown.
He concentrated, focusing his thoughts, isolating doubt and negative images. The fact that he was less than a mote of pollen swept by hurricanes over endless jungles. A scrap of plankton immersed in an infinite ocean. He was a man, a human, a sentient being. A creature capable of logic and extrapolation. One whose ancestors had crawled from the mud to conquer the stars.
The stars!
He concentrated on the stars.
The sun was a star and illuminated the Earth. If it was day he should be able to see it. If night then other stars would illuminate the darkness. Why couldn’t he see them?
Dumarest lifted his hands, fumbling at his face, carefully touching his eyes. They seemed undamaged, uncovered, the lids responding as they should, but the darkness remained unbroken. His ears also seemed not to have received any form of injury. Anger and fear strengthened his resolve. If there was light he should be able to see it. If noise to hear it. He was mobile, free to move, yet when he tried he made no progress. His anger increased, died as he forced himself to be calm. Action without direction was wasted effort. It was better to rest than to struggle. To let his mind take command, his brain which seemed, like his skin, to be affected by an insect-like irritation.
Then, slowly, as his senses responded, things changed.
Light came into being, the glow of distant stars, flashes of colour in jewelled brilliance winking and changing in endless confusion. He could see and, together with the light came sound. It came with the touch of air against his cheek, the gentle impact of a soft breeze which carried a susurration of voices, soft whispers and a medley of noises all dim and muted as if a crowd demanded his attention from all sides.
But the interpretations were at fault. His cortex was striving to gain familiarity but could only relay what it knew. There were no stars-stars did not flash and burn and sparkle. The lights he saw must come from another source. Something electrical, perhaps, such as lightning from a storm. But that was a guess, as was the interpretation of the sounds. There could be no whispers, no music, no noise from an invisible crowd. There had to be another explanation. He was given no time to find it.
Abruptly, within his skull, pain seared his brain with numbing impact. A series of small explosions of agony as if cells were bursting in wild progression. Pain echoed by the twitching of his muscles, the jerking of his nerves. A sea of torment which threatened to last too long.
Dumarest fought against it, striving to remain rational, conscious of the mistakes he had made about the lights and the sounds. All were the result of his desperate mental need to find some kind of familiarity with the situation.
Familiarity with what?
A place. A void. A nothingness. A contradiction in itself. Why build such a thing? For what purpose? Or did it exist at all? What if it was an invention of his own mind? A defence against an unacceptable reality?
Too many questions. Too few answers. Too much pain which exploded within his skull to send him into oblivion.
The words were shimmering birds drifting through an azure sky. Tiny motes of communication which held the impact of drills.
“Darling! Please, Earl. Please, my dearest! Wake up! Wake up. Talk to me!”
Nada’s voice, husky with strain, tense with desperation.
Dumarest listened to it, not responding, struggling to recall vague memories, fragments of oddity which could have been nothing but the fruit of dreams but which could also be the clue to what had happened. The fragments dispersed, driven away by Nada’s pleading, the irritation born of the touch of her arms.