My voice echoed for a long time in the vast chamber, but I received no response to my challenge.
I called out again and again there was no response.
I decided to return to Vika's chamber.
On another night I might explore further, for there were other passageways, other portals visible from where I stood. It might take days to pursue them all.
I set out on my way back to Vika's chamber.
I had walked perhaps an Ahn and was deep inside one of the long, dimly lit passageways which led in the direction of her chamber when I seemed somehow to sense a presence behind me.
I spun quickly about drawing my sword in the same motion.
The corridor behind me was empty.
I slammed the blade back in the sheath and continued on.
I had not walked far when I again became uneasy.This time I did not turn, but walked slowly ahead, listening behind me with every fibre I could bend to the effort.When I came to a bend in the passageway I rounded it, and then pressed myself against the wall and waited.
Slowly, very slowly, I drew the sword, taking care that it made no sound as it left its sheath.
I waited but nothing occurred.
I have the patience of a warrior and I waited for a long time.When men stalk one another with weapons it is well to have patience, great patience.
It of course occurred to me a hundred times that I was follish for actually I was conscious of having heard nothing. Yet my awareness or sense that something followed me in the corridor might well have been occasioned by some tiny sound which my conscious mind had not even registered, but yet which had impinged on my senses, leaving as its only conscious trace a vague wind of suspicion.At last I decided to force the game.My decision was motivated in part by the fact that the hall allowed few concealments for ambush and I would presumably see my pursuer almost as soon as he saw me. If he were not carrying a missile weapon it would make little difference.And if he had been carrying a missile weapon why had he not slain me before?I smiled grimly.If it were a matter of waiting I acknowledged that the Priest-King, if such it were, who followed me had had the best of things. For all I knew a Priest-King could wait like a stone or tree, nerveless until necessary.I had waited perhaps better than an Ahn and I was covered with sweat.My muscles ached for motion.It occurred to me that whatever followed might have heard the cessation of my footsteps.That it knew that I was waiting.How acute would be the senses of Priest-Kings? Perhaps they would be relatively feeble, gaving grown accustomed to reliance on instrumentation; perhaps they would be other than the senses of men, sharper if only from a differing genetic heritage, capable of discriminating and interpreting sensory cues that would not even be available to the primitive five senses of men.Never before had I been so aware of the thin margin of reality admitted into the human nervous system, little more than a razor's width of apprehension given the multiple and complex physical processes which formed our environment.The safest thing for me would be to continue on as I had been doing, a pattern of action which would give me the benefit of the shield formed by the turn in the passage.But I had no wish to continue on.I tensed myself for the leap and cry that would fling me into the open, the sudden interruption in the stillness of the passageway that might be sufficient to impair the steadiness of a spear arm, the calm setting of a crossbow's iron quarrel on its guide.
And so I uttered the war cry of Ko-ro-ba and leaped, sword ready, to face what might follow me.
A howl of bitter rage escaped my lips as I saw that the passageway was empty.
Maddened beyond understanding I began to race down the passageway, retracing my steps to confront what might be in the passage.I had run for perhaps half a pasang when I stopped, panting and furious with myself.
'Come out!' I cried.'Come out!'
The stillness of the passageway taunted me.
I remembered Vika's words, When the Priest-Kings wish you, they will come for you.
Angrily I stood alone in the passageway in the dimmed light of its energy bulbs, my unused sword grasped futilely in my hand.
Then I sensed something.
My nostrils flared slightly and then as carefully as one might examine an object by eye I smelled the air of the passageway.
I had never much relied on this sense.
Surely I had enjoyed the scent of flowers and women, of hot, fresh bread, roasted meat, Paga and wines, harness leather, the oil with which I protected the blade of my sword from rust, of green fields and storm winds, but seldom had I considered the sense of smell in the way one would consider that of vision or touch, and yet it too had its often neglected store of information ready for the man who was ready to make use of it.
And so I smelled the passageway and to my nostrils, vague but undeniable, there came an odour that I had never before encountered.It was, as far as I could tell at that time, a simple odour, though later I would learn that it was the complex product of odours yet more simple than itself.I find it impossible to describe this odour, much as one miught find it difficult to describe the taste of a citrus fruit to one who had never tasted it or anything much akin to it.It was however slightly acrid, irritating to my nostrils.It reminded me vaguely of the odour of an expended cartridge.
Although there was nothing now with me in the passage it had left its trace.
I knew now that I had not been alone.
I had caught the scent of a Priest-King.
I resheathed my sword and returned to Vika's chamber.I hummed a warrior's tune, for somehow I was happy.
Chapter Eight: VIKA LEAVES THE CHAMBER
'Wake up, wench!' I cried, striding into Vika's chamber, clapping my hands sharply twice.
The startled girl cried out and leaped to her feet.She had been lying on the straw mat at the foot of the stone couch. So suddenly had she arisen that she had struck her knee against the couch and this had not much pleased her.I had meant to scare her half to death and I was pleased to see that I had.
She looked at me angrily.'I was not asleep,' she said.
I strode to her and held her head in my hands, looking at her eyes.She had spoken the truth.
'You see!' she said.
I laughed.
She lowered her head, and then looked up shyly.'I am happy,' she said, 'that you have returned.'
I looked at her and sensed that she was.
'I suppose,' I said, 'that in my absence you have been in the pantry.'
'No,' she said, 'I have not,' adding as an acrimonious afterthought, '- Master.'
I had offended her pride.
'Vika,' I said, 'I think it is time that some changes were made around here.'
'Nothing ever changes here,' she said.
I looked around the room.The sensors in the room interested me.I examined them again.I was elated.Then, methodically, I began to search the room.Although the sensors and the mode of their application were fiendish and beyonf my immediate competence to fully understand, they suggested nothing ultimately mysterious, nothing which might not eventually be explained.There was nothing about them to encourage me to believe that the Priest-Kings, or King as it might be, were ultimately unfathomable or incomprehensible beings.
Moreover in the corridor beyond I had sensed the traces, tangible traces, of a Priest-King.I laughed.Yes, I had smelled a Priest-King, or its effects.The thought amused me.
More fully than ever I now understood how much the forces of superstition have depressed and injured men.No wonder the Priest-Kings hid behind their palisade in the Sardar and let the myths of the Initiates build a wall of human terror about them, no wonder they let their nature and ends be secret, no wonder they took such pains to conceal and obscure their plans and purposes, their devices, their instrumentation, their limitations!I laughed aloud.