Go, he sent, to the east. Find a cove where a small boat can come in secretly. Wait there in concealment. The Unclean know nothing of this channel of the mind we use now. He told them to send him a mind picture through Gorm, once they had found such a location, and estimate how far it lay from the site of the battle. He would surely be able to direct himself to it with that help. He added a prayer, a message of comfort for Luchare, and broke communication. A plan had been growing steadily in his mind, and he felt he could no longer avoid trying it. Who knew how much more time he would be allowed?
Once again he mentally sought the nameless adept, the same who, by the help of the curious apparatus, was maintaining the combined watch and pressure upon him. Once again he had the weird experience of invading the Unclean wizard’s mind and senses and seeing them focused on himself!
He began to insert a thought in the normal mental pattern of the adept, a thought which would simply appear as a subconscious command! The thought was simple: The prisoner is too quiet. Turn off the machine and go and check on him. Too quiet; go and check. Over and over the thought was built, Hiero increasing its strength by degrees, his concentration never faltering as he tried not to let the pressure mount too rapidly so that the adept, himself a master of mental science, would suspect he was being tampered with. On and on, up and up, went the pressure. All the while Hiero watched the instrument board before him through the eyes of the man he was trying to mislead.
Suddenly there was a click. The priest felt his enemy’s worry plainly as the light in the peculiar hanging tube dimmed and went out. The board’s lights, too, were now shut off. The pressure on the other part of Hiero’s brain vanished. And at the same time, before the Unclean adept could even rise from his seat, Hiero struck. The mental barrier he had erected to defend himself was swept down, and he lashed out at the dark mind of the adept before the other could even think of guarding himself. Using both channels now open to him, Hiero captured the enemy’s brain before any warning even could be formulated. Now Hiero paused, keeping a tight vise on the other, arid waited to see if anyone else had been aroused. There was nothing, no thrilling of the ether, no alarm, no sign of awareness of what had happened.
After a moment, Hiero ordered his captive, bound no less strongly than if he had been loaded with chains, to come to his cell and release him. It was a risk, for the adept might have no key, but Hiero was gambling that anyone of that rank must have the ability to set him free.
He watched through the other’s eyes as the adept left the chamber from which he had kept watch and headed for Hiero’s distant place of imprisonment. Nor were the adept’s eyes the priest’s only aid. With the man’s ears, Hiero heard footsteps coming at a cross corridor and made the other stand in an alcove until they had passed.
All this time he could feel the enemy’s own mind raging against its restraints. It was a strong mind and it battled desperately to free itself and the body it was attached to from the strangling embrace of the priest’s brain. But in vain: so quick had Hiero been that the entire forebrain was completely under his power, all senses, all locomotor ability, everything. The Unclean could only rage futilely in the dark recesses of his mind, helpless to intervene actively.
Through a maze of dark corridors they went, passing closed doors at intervals and using the occasional dim bulb of a fluor set in the ceiling for light. Once, as they passed a door, Hiero caught the sound of a faint moan. But he dared not tarry to see what foulness of the enemy lay behind it. It would be all he could do to escape alone, and it would serve no one to have him die here in the course of a hopeless attempt at rescue of some other of Manoon’s captives. Presently they were before his own door. He could feel himself inside and themself outside at one and the same time. Under Hiero’s mental orders, the adept was forced to release a tiny, hidden catch in the stone corridor wall just outside the door. The door lock clicked, and the adept opened it and entered. As he entered, Hiero forced him to his knees. The door closed by itself behind the Unclean. At the same time, Hiero clamped down on every neural synapse he could reach in the adept’s body. With a muffled exhalation of breath, the enemy passed out cold, completely unconscious, even as the Metz left his mind completely and reoccupied his own in full.
He rose from the bed and crouched by the body. Hastily he stripped the other, finding a nasty-looking dagger belted on under the robe. This he took and drew on the gray robe and hood over his own supple leather clothes. He listened for a moment and heard nothing. He built again his “ordinary” mind shield, simply as a precaution, lest a snooper try a chance probe at him. A sudden stillness made him glance down. There would be no need to tie the Unclean master up now, for he had ceased to breathe. The ferocious nerve shock must have stopped the evil heart, Hiero realized and promptly forgot the matter. The sooner such creatures as this were exterminated, the better, was his only feeling.
Before he had “led” the adept to his own cell, the enemy’s memories had been extensively looted. Hiero knew now where his cell lay, where the various entrances were, and the whole maze of Manoon’s underworld down to the last broom closet. He shut the cell door behind him, locked it, and went on his way down the corridor, his hood over his bent head, to all appearances a master of the Dark Brotherhood intent on some problem as he paced along at a steady rate.
He was not heading for the surface by the way he had entered. It was not the closest way out, for one thing, nor the most private. Also, there was something he wanted to get before he left. He kept his mind always on the warning pulse of the mental wavelength he had found the Unclean to favor. Any human being within range would be detected before he ever saw him and either avoided, the best method, or taken over mentally if necessary.
He had crossed several hundred yards of dusty corridor, listening intently, his new knife held firmly up a sleeve, when he thought he caught a faint sound. He paused, his ears straining. The noise, if it were a noise and not the blood beating in his temples, was a soft scuffing, and it had seemed to come from behind him somewhere. He heard nothing now. The buried world of Manoon was utterly silent. Far behind him, a dusty blue fluor glowed in the corridor roof, and equally far ahead, another.
Once more he went upon his way. Soon he slowed his pace even further. He heard footsteps ahead and saw the glow of a stronger light. He was approaching, as he had meant to, a more used part of the dungeon-fortress complex. The footsteps died away again and he moved on. It had only been an underling, whose mind radiated nothing but vicious stupidity.
Hiero saw that the light came from a strong fluor set at the junction of his corridor with a much broader one. This was also as it should be, and no Unclean minds were in close proximity. Hood drawn down, he stepped into the new hallway and turned left. In a short time he was before another door, and finding it unlocked, he quickly entered. The small storeroom was empty. Having mind-probed first, he would have been greatly surprised had it been otherwise. On a shelf, shoulder belt, scabbard, and all, lay his beloved sword-knife, flung there carelessly by hands disdainful of mere physical weaponry. In a second, he had his robe off and was belting the beloved weapon on. Only moments later, he was out again and moving off up the corridor outside, back the way he had come, storeroom door shut behind him. It had been luck that the dead man back in his own cell had known where his sword was stored, but it had been forethought which had led the Metz to probe for the information. He wasted no time looking for the thrower. It already had been taken apart for examination, he had learned, and besides, he had no shells.