"One of the Empire's more remote allies, Lady, who out of courtesy keeps himself veiled. He occupies with me much the same position as does your minister, Korkhann, with you."
He acknowledged introduction to Gordon and sat down. The feasting went on. Gordon noticed that Korkhann seemed tense and distracted, his fingers opening and closing spasmodically around his wine-cup. The air grew hotter and noisier. In the cleared space two young Gerrn, without knives, began to circle and prance, batting at each other only half playfully. At the far end of the hall a fight broke out between two members of different species and was promptly smothered. The pipers and drummers were at it again, and a ragged-looking creature with leathery wings flapped up on to the carved balustrade of the great stair and began a rhythmic screaming that might have been song. Yet underneath all this Gordon seemed to sense an uneasiness, as though a shadow had crept across the festivities. Sserk and some of the other mature Gerrn appeared to have lost their desire for drink and jollity. One by one they began to withdraw, melting away unobtrusively through the unruly crowd.
Gordon wondered if they, like himself, felt the presence of the cowled stranger as a breath of cold wind along the spine. The corner where the creature squatted was now otherwise deserted, and the area seemed to be widening. Gordon shivered, unable to rid himself of the feeling that the damned thing was staring straight at him from behind its blank gray draperies.
Out in the circle one of the young Gerrn clipped his opponent too enthusiastically, bringing blood, and in a moment the claws and fur were flying in earnest. Lianna rose.
"I will leave you to your pleasures, cousin," she said icily. "Tomorrow we will talk."
Grabbing at the chance to escape, Gordon was at her elbow before she had finished speaking. But Narath Teyn insisted on escorting her, so that Gordon had no choice but to trail them up the great staircase, with Korkhann stalking beside him. The noise from the hall below diminished as they walked down the vaulted corridor.
"I'm sorry if my friends offended you, cousin Lianna. I forget, having lived with them all my life, that others may not. . ."
"Your friends don't offend me at all," said Lianna, "if you mean the nonhumans. You offend me. Cyn Cryver offends me."
"But, cousin. . .!"
"You're a fool, Narath Teyn. And you're playing for stakes far beyond your capacity. You should have stayed content here in your forests with your Gerrn."
Gordon saw Narath Teyn's face tighten. The fey eyes shot lightning. But his composure never wavered. "It is well known that a crown conveys all wisdom to its wearer. I shall not argue."
"Your mockery seems ill-placed, cousin, since you are willing to do murder for that crown."
Narath Teyn stared at her, startled. He did not deny, nor did she give him a chance to. She pointed to the other half of her twelve guardsmen, who were posted outside her door.
"I would advise you to explain to Cyn Cryver, in case he does not understand, that I am well guarded by loyal men who cannot be drugged, bribed, or frightened from their posts. They can be killed, but in that case you must also kill their comrades below, who keep in constant touch with my cruiser. If that contact is broken, Fomalhaut will be instantly notified, and a force will come at once from the cruiser. Cyn Cryver might use his forces to stop it, but neither you nor he could gain anything by that but ultimate destruction-"
Narath Teyn said, in a queer husky voice, "Have no fear, Lady."
"I have none," she said. "I bid you good night." She swept into her apartment and the guard closed the door behind her. Narath Teyn gave Gordon and Korkhann a blank glare and then turned and strode away down the corridor.
Korkhann took Gordon's arm and they walked on toward their own quarters. Gordon started to speak and Korkhann stopped him. He seemed to be listening. His urgency communicated itself to Gordon and he made no protest when Korkhann urged him on past their own doors, on faster and faster toward the far end of the corridor where it was deserted and quiet and almost dark, and there was a back stairway, winding down.
Korkhann pushed him to it with a strange desperation.
"For the moment we're not being watched. I must get down to the car, get word to Harn Horva..."
Gordon hesitated, his heart thundering now with alarm. "What... ?"
"I understand now," Korkhann said. "They don't plan to kill Lianna." His yellow eyes were full of horror. "They plan something far worse!"
6
Gordon started back. "I'm going to get her out of here."
"No!" Korkhann held him. "She's being watched, Gordon. There are Gerrn hidden in the room next to hers. They'd give the alarm at once. We'd never get out of the building."
"But the guards...!"
"Gordon, listen. There is a force here that the guards can't fight. The gray stranger who came with the count... I tried to touch its mind and was thrown back by a shock that half stunned me. But the Gerrn are stronger. Some of them got through, a little way at least. I know, because they were so shaken that they dropped their own guard. Did you see how Sserk and the others left? They're afraid, sick-afraid of that creature, and the Gerrn are not a timid folk." He was speaking so rapidly and in such desperation that Gordon had difficulty understanding him. "Sserk looked at Lianna. As I say, his own mind was unguarded, for the moment. He was seeing her as a mindless, blasted doll, and feeling horrified, and wishing she had not come."
Now Gordon felt a cold sickness in himself. "You mean that thing has the power to..."
"It's like nothing I've ever felt before. I don't know what that being is or where it comes from, but its mind is more deadly than all our weapons." He started down the stairs. "Their plan still depends on secrecy. If Harn Horva knows, and sends word to Fomalhaut, they wouldn't dare go through with it."
Probably not, Gordon thought. But Harn Horva could do more than send word to Fomalhaut. He could send men and guns, too many for even the gray stranger to handle all at once. There was a 'copter in the cruiser's hold. Help could be here in no more than thirty minutes, perhaps less. He flung himself after Korkhann.
The stairway led them winding down to a stone passage and a small door. They went through it with the sounds of revelry dim in their ears, into the warm night behind Teyn Hall, and then they ran, keeping close in the shadows. When they reached the front corner they stopped and looked cautiously around it.
The front of Teyn Hall still blazed with light, and merrymakers still swarmed in and out of the open door, though they seemed fewer now. The ground-car stood exactly as before, with six guards around it and the driver and radioman visible inside.
Gordon started forward.
Korkhann pulled him back. "It's too late. Their minds..."
In the instant Gordon lingered he saw what might have been the flicker of a gray robe gliding past a group of Gerrn and back into the hall. Then inside the car the radioman leaned forward and spoke into the mike.
"Look there," said Gordon, "they're all right, he's keeping the contact." He pulled free and ran toward the car.
He had taken perhaps five full steps when one of the guards saw him, and turned, and raised his weapon, and Gordon saw his face clearly in the window-light. He saw the others turning one by one. He set his heels in the grass and fled, back to the shelter of the corner. The guards lowered their weapons and resumed their posts, watching with glassy and uncaring eyes the shapes that leaped and scurried across the lawns and through the groves of trees.
"Next time," Korkhann said, "listen to me."
"But the radioman . . !"
"Contact will be carried on as before. Do you suppose the Gray One can't manage so simple a thing as that?" They retreated along the dark back wall. Korkhann beat his hands together softly, in anguish. "There's no hope now of getting word through. But we must do something, and quickly."