But, dying, the creature held on.
Dumarest lifted his legs and kicked as the edge of the battlements came close. He felt them brush past beneath him as the winged creature bore him from the castle. To carry him far to one side where rocks studded the ground like a nest of broken teeth.
To drop him where they waited.
"His eyes!" Gustav's voice was sharp. "Look at his eyes!"
They were moving beneath the closed lids in the rapid eye movements which told of dreams. A technician stared then turned to check a bank of dials. Another engaged the waiting machine and the banked pens began tracing their patterns on the rolling paper.
"Well?" Kathryn was impatient. "What does all this mean?"
"He's waking up!" Gustav fought to control his voice. "Don't you see? Dumarest is waking up!"
He was triumphant but he had reason for his emotion. It had been a long, tense hour with the technicians urging Kathryn to let them begin and she wavering between her decision and natural impatience. Twice he'd had to remind her of the value of a Matriarch's word, each time busying himself with make-work, acting with assumed confidence as he'd played with the waiting instruments, giving her a reason for delay until a new "setting" had been tested. A pretense the technicians had noticed but had thought better to ignore.
"Waking?" Kathryn glanced at a technician. "Is that so?"
"There is no evidence to support the contention." The woman was thin-faced and with a manner radiating hostility to all who dared to question her professional capability. "True, there are signs of REM but-" She saw Kathryn's expression and hastily explained. "REM, my lady, rapid eye movements, are a sure sign of a dreaming person. However it does not follow that a dreaming person is one about to wake."
Gustav said acidly, "Did the others display similar symptoms?"
"I'm not sure. I could check. My own work lay in calibrating blood-sugar levels."
"Don't bother to check," said Gustav. "I can tell you the answer. No REM were noted in any other volunteer. When and if they woke it was without that preliminary symptom. Kathryn! Don't you understand what this could mean?"
Success!
It could be all summed up in that one word. A man had entered the Tau and was returning and-she hardly dared to hope, Iduna could be returning with him. But why didn't he waken? What was keeping him so long?
Gustav caught her arm as she extended it to touch Dumarest's cheek.
"No."
"Why not?"
"There is a better way." His own arm reached to rest, the palm over the lips, the thumb and forefinger nipped to close the nostrils. "A trick a mercenary taught me years ago. It wakes a man up and keeps him silent as it does so. There you see?"
Dumarest had opened his eyes.
For a long moment Katbryn stared into them, wondering if again she would see the horrible vacuity she had seen so often before. The telltale sign of an empty brain. Of an idiot returned to once again blast her hopes.
"Earl!" Gustav was at her side, his tone urgent. "Come back, Earl! Come back!"
Back from a dream in which he had tumbled through air to crash on waiting rocks. But it had been no dream and the rocks and the impact had been real. As real as any rocks could ever be-and the death had been as genuine.
"Earl?" Gustav was staring at him, the Matriarch at his side. She looked paler than Dumarest remembered, older, her eyes containing a bruised hurt. She said quickly before Gustav could speak again, "Did you see her? Iduna, did you meet?"
He saw the smile irradiate her face as he nodded.
"And?"
"She sends you her regards, my lady." Then, adding to the lie, "Her regards and her fondest love and affection for you both."
Chapter Twelve
"You met," said Kathryn. "You actually saw her and talked to her and played with her?" Her voice held an aching envy. "Tamiras, you hear that?"
"I hear it." The man selected a fruit from the bowl before him and carefully removed the rind. "I hear it but that isn't to say I believe it."
"Tamiras!"
"I am a scientist and, as such, tend to be skeptical. If that is a fault then I am guilty." Juice ran from the sections he parted with deft fingers. Lifting one to his mouth he added, "And Dumarest has reason to please you."
"And reason to lie?"
She glanced at Dumarest where he sat at the table. He, the scientist, Gustav and herself were alone. The meal had been a good one, meats and wines and fine breads to put energy into his body and flesh on his bones. A celebration, Gustav had called it, a time for them to learn all he had discovered. But if Dumarest had lied… ?
He saw the tension of her hand where it rested beside her plate, the reflected light flash from gems as her fingers closed in an unconscious betrayal of her doubt and anger.
To Tamiras he said, flatly, "Are you calling me a liar?"
"A liar?" The man shrugged and ate another segment of fruit. "No, my friend, I do not, but false impressions can often seem real. Let us review the situation. You were forced to enter the Tau. Subconsciously you feared the penalty of failure because in all sentient life forms the need to survive is paramount. So you carried out your mission with complete success. Or you are convinced you did-you appreciate the difference?"
That and more. Dumarest glanced at the hand lying beside the plate, thin, blotched, but it held his life. If the Matriach doubted his sincerity a word would send him to execution. But how to erase the doubts Tamiras had sown?
He said, "I saw Iduna lying on her bed and that is all. You agree?"
"I don't understand what point you are trying to make."
"Is it so hard? I never saw her as a child. I wasn't even on this world., My only contact with her was when I was taken to see her."
"So?"
"So let us talk of her childhood. She had friends; a bear, a toad, a doll fashioned in the likeness of a clown. She had a room with papered walls and the paper bore a design of fish and shells. She held parties for her friends and used a service adorned with small flowers with blue petals and scarlet leaves." He heard the sharp inhalation of indrawn breath from where Kathryn sat. Without looking at her he added, "And she was fond of small, iced cakes."
"What child isn't?" Tamiras shrugged. "What you say proves nothing."
"All of it? The dolls? The room?"
"You could have picked that up from gossip. The guards-"
"Have never seen Iduna's old room." Kathryn was sharp in her interruption. Looking at Dumarest she said, "How do you know?"
"I saw it." Dumarest gestured at the table, the articles on its polished surface. "The room, the paper, the service, the dolls-all were as real as the things before us."
"And Iduna? You saw her? You saw her!"
"Yes, my lady."
"But could not pursuade her to return," said Tamiras dryly. "May I dare to ask why you failed?"
"She didn't want to."
"Didn't want to return? To her home? Her loving parents?"
"No."
"And you couldn't make her? A child?"
"A god!" Dumarest glanced at Gustav, spoke to the Matriarch. "That is what Iduna is now-the supreme ruler of her universe. A goddess, if you want to be precise, and who can force a goddess to do anything against her will? What she wants-is. Can you even begin to understand what that means? To have the world in which you live exactly to your liking. To have it populated by those who care for you. Who exist only because of you. To want for nothing. To have no fear. To have no pain, no tears, no sadness. To be free of regret. To be innocent of guilt."
"Heaven," whispered Gustav. "A place in which all that is supposed to be. Could she have found it?"