Kathryn was more direct. "Is she happy?"
"Yes, my lady."
"A child, alone-"
"With everything to live for," emphasized Dumarest. "With all the toys she could ever want. All the companions she could ever need. A girl as happy as anyone could ever be." He saw the glint of reflected light as the curved fingers relaxed and knew the immediate danger was past. "She is content, my lady-that I swear. There is no need for you to torment yourself with imagined terrors. No need for further tears."
But they were there just the same, dimming her eyes, pearls of relief which dampened her cheeks.
Gustav, watching, poured and passed fresh goblets of wine. An act designed to attract attention to himself, the new subject he broached; one of lesser emotional content. To Dumarest he said, "Tamiras has explained how the Tau must hold the mental energy-pattern of the ego but why did the others die or go insane?"
"Fear."
"Just that?"
"It was enough." Dumarest stared into his goblet and saw dim shapes reflected in the ruby surface. "We all contain the terrors we fear the most. The others entered the Tau expecting danger and found it. They anticipated horror and it waited for them; things of nightmare created by their own minds, spawned by their own imaginations. The battles they fought were with themselves and were impossible to win. So they were defeated. Their minds," he explained. "They lost their minds. Their egos, trapped in the Tau, lost all sense of direction or purpose."
"But not Iduna." Tamiras helped himself to another fruit. Like the juice it contained his tone held acid. "She, naturally, was immune."
"She was young."
"And?"
"Young," repeated Dumarest. "A child accustomed to illusion and make-believe. One to whom fantasy was a normal part of life as it is with every child. She could accept what drove others insane."
"As you could?" Juice dribbled from his fingers and Tamiras dabbled them in a bowl of scented water before drying them on a napkin. "I find it hard to accept you as a child."
"I became one. I thought as one and felt as one and so entered the Tau."
And became a god with his own universe and his own incredible power.
Candles had been set for decoration and Dumarest stared into a dancing flame seeing in the lambent glow the woman he had left, the love she had given him, the spite she had displayed. Had he really existed in her world or had she occupied his? Had the game of war sprung from his mind or hers? Was she even now ruling from her throne in her castle with the facsimile of himself she had created at her side? Had she ever really accepted him as being more than a figment of her imagination?
"Earl?" Gustav was looking at him from where he sat and Dumarest glanced away from the dancing flame. "The Tau," said Gustav when sure he had gained attention. "What is it, Earl? Did you discover that?"
"For certain, no, but I think it must be a toy."
"What?"
"A toy-and a trap." Dumarest looked at Tamiras. "One used by a so-called friend to gain revenge. An expert in his field who knew exactly what he was doing."
"A trap?" Tamiras shook his head, outwardly calm, indifferent, as again he dipped his fingers into the scented water. "You talk like a fool. The thing is alien, that is obvious, but a trap? For whom?"
"For a child," said Dumarest, flatly. "The daughter of the woman you hate."
"Hate?" Tamiras's eyes darted to the woman, back to Dumarest. "Are you insane?"
"Earl-"
Gustav fell silent at Kathryn's gesture. "Iduna," she said.
"You're talking about Iduna. My daughter. My child. Tamiras-"
"The man lies! He is deranged. Crazed by his experiences. A man who claims to have talked with a ghost can hardly be given credence." He rose with an abrupt gesture, water streaming from his hands. "I refuse to listen to this nonsense! If I may be excused?"
"Remain in your place!" She looked at Dumarest as Tamiras, reluctantly, obeyed. As he settled in his chair she said, "Earl, he could be right when he says your brains have been addled but you have said too much not to say more. Explain!"
Cutlery rested on the table: sharp-edged steel used for cutting meat, fruit, vegetables; forks, thin knives, spoons with reflective bowls. Dumarest glanced at them, noting their position, the placement of hands, moving his own as he took nuts and held them one against the other in his palm.
"The background," he said. "Gustav is known as a collector of old things so what more simple than to bribe a captain to take him the Tau with an elaborate story of how it was found? But who would hold such a thing in secret for any length of time? Someone not resident on Esslin, perhaps, but who came to live here later. He would have studied it, learned something of its workings. Then, with it safely delivered, a word in a receptive ear and the rest was inevitable. Who was close enough to Iduna to have given her that word?"
Tamiras said, harshly, "This is ridiculous! Accusations without proof!"
"Have I accused you?"
"Who else?" Tamiras appealed to the Matriarch. "Can't you see what he's doing? The man has lied and needs to create a diversion. By accusing me he hopes to gain your trust. But where is his proof?"
"Earl?"
Dumarest looked at the hard face, the hard eyes. The face and eyes of a woman who had sent men to be impaled, who would watch him die if he failed to convince her.
"Proof?" He didn't look at the scientist who sat glowering at him. "Iduna supplied that. She told me how friendly Tamiras was with her. How he used to bring her toys and small surprises. And think of the time it happened. It was late, remember? The sun was setting and the study would have been filled with gloom. It was summer and the days long so it would have been late. Iduna, a child, would not have been permitted too much liberty. It must have been close to her normal bedtime. Why should she have broken routine to run into the study? What better motive than to see the new toy? Who told her it would be there? Who explained how to hold it so as to feel the exciting tingle against the skin? How to look into it so as to see all the pretty pictures?"
"Tamiras?" Gustav glanced at the man, frowning. "But why, Earl? Why?"
"Iduna didn't know that."
Kathryn could guess. The mother who had rebelled, her banishment and later death, the return of her son to a world which offered neither land nor status. God, why had she been so blind!
Gustav was slow to understand. "But Iduna? Why would he want to hurt a child?"
The nuts crushed in Dumarest's hand. "Think of the years of hell you and your wife have lived through and you have your answer."
Revenge, what else, and he could have sown the seeds of hnaudifida to compound his hatred. A realization Tamiras saw mirrored on her face and he rose as she shouted, one hand diving beneath his blouse.
"Guards! Shamarre!"
She came as he jerked free the weapon, too late to prevent or protect her mistress from the killing beam of the laser, seeing a sudden glitter of steel, the blood, hearing his curse as the weapon fell from his limp hand. The meat knife Dumarest had snatched up and thrown had penetrated the wrist and severed the tendons.
Tamiras looked at the wound, at the man who had given it. "Why?" he demanded. "In God's name, why? What are these people to you?"
"Nothing." Dumarest was blunt, his face hard as he remembered what he had seen in the Tau, the horrors which had ruined adult minds. "But you sent a child into hell!"
Soon it would change; walls of carved and fretted stone forming an area which enclosed a shrine, a place made holy by what it contained but, as yet, the place had not changed.