“Being who you are,” Hilarion continued deliberately, “you understand the nature of the gates.”
“Yes—and I also know that you created the one we seek. Indeed, we have long been hunting you, having some small hint you were where you were. But they kept you wrapped in something hostile to our seeking so we could not speak with you—until Kaththea reached you and so opened a channel of mind seeking between us. Having created the gate you can control it.”
“Can I? That I shall not know until I try. Once I would have said yes, but I have been warped by that which is alien to my own learning. Perhaps it has twisted me so askew that I cannot again summon the true Power to answer me.”
“That rests on one side of the scales,” agreed Jaelithe. “But we do not know what lies upon the other until we set to the weighing. You were truly adept or you would not have made the gate. That you have been a prisoner to other purposes is your bane; it need not be your end. Can you take us to your gate?”
His eyes dropped from hers to the wand, and he turned it about with the fingers of both hands, looking upon it as if he now held some new and totally strange thing he did not recognize.
“Even that,” he said in a low voice, “I cannot be sure of now. But I know this much, that I cannot have a guide to follow if I remain in this machine: the taint of the other is too strong and able to warp what I would try.”
“Yet if we leave it”—my father for the first time took part in that exchange—“we go out as men naked to a storm. This has defenses enough to provide us with a moving fortress.”
“You asked me,” Hilarion returned in sharp impatience, “and I have told you the truth. If you want your gate we must be away from this box and all it stands for!”
“Can you go forth a little,” I began, “and do what must be done to find the direction, then return?”
Both my father and mother looked at Hilarion. He continued to slip the wand back and forth for a long moment of silence but at length he answered.
“There can be but a trial to see . . .” There was such hesitation in his voice, such weariness there, that I thought that any seeking of that nature would be a task he must force himself to. Yet a moment later he asked, this time speaking directly to my father, “If you name this country safe as you can see it, there is no better time for my efforts. We cannot wait and hope and let Zandur loose his might on our tail. Also, those of the tower have their own brand of terror when dealing with aught walking the surface here. And since you travel in this thing which is of Zandur’s people, their air scouts will be ready to use lightning against us if they sight it.”
So it was that we came forth from the crawler into the darkening night and stood looking about us at the desolation which was the countryside here.
XV
The bare bones of this land, which was all that was left, were stark under a night sky. And the moon, so bright and full when I had come into the basin, was now on the wane. Yet it gave enough light for us to see what was immediately about us. My father waved an order to stay where we were for the time being while he flitted—I can find no words to really describe his swift movements—blended with the landscape, spiraling away from the halted vehicle. And I realized that he now put into use the training of a border scout. He had disappeared when my mother spoke.
“There is no danger close by. Which way?” This she asked of Hilarion.
He lifted his head; I thought I almost saw his nostrils expand as might a hound’s testing scent. Then he raised the wand, setting its tip to his forehead midpoint between his eyes, which were closed, as if he must see the better inwardly instead of outwardly.
The wand swung, pointing to the right from where we stood. When he opened his eyes again there was a spark of new life in them.
“That way!” So certain was his pronouncement that we did not doubt he had managed to find us a guide through this ash-strewn wilderness.
When my father returned, which he did shortly (I think in answer to some mind search call from my mother, not within my range), he studied the direction Hilarion’s wand had indicated and then, within the crawler, made adjustments to the board of controls.
But we did not set out at once, taking rather a rest period, with one of us, turn about, on guard. I slept dreamlessly. When I awoke the moon had vanished, but so clouded was the sky that the light was that of dusk. Once more we ate and drank sparingly from our scanty stores. And my father said that he was sure that we had not been seen in any way, especially as the mechanical sentries of the crawler machine also registered naught.
We crept on, now following the path Hilarion had set us. But within the hour my father turned the nose of the machine abruptly and, at a rocking pace we had not used since we left the basin, sent it under a ledge, or at least most of it into that protection. There came a loud buzzing from the controls until he swept his hand down, hastily thumbing buttons and levers. The throb of life stilled, we sat in silence unable even to see much, for the screen now displayed only the bare rock of the crevice into which we were jammed.
My father’s back was rigid and he did not turn to offer any explanation, only stared at the controls. I feared some danger he thought beyond his ability to counter. And I found myself listening, though for what I had no idea.
It was Hilarion who moved as if to ease his long body, cramped in the inadequate space beyond the still sleeping Ayllia.
“The tower people.” He did not ask that as a question but made it a statement of fact.
“One of their flyers,” agreed my father.
“This machine,” Hilarion continued, “it answers you easily, yet she”—he pointed with his chin to my mother, not loosing his grip on the wand—“is of the Old Race and those love not machines . . . .”
“I am not of Estcarp,” my father answered. “Gates upon gates seem to tie worlds together. I entered through such a one into Estcarp. And in my own time and place I was a fighting man who used such machines—though not exactly like this one. We found this on the shore of the sea when first we came here through a gate which would not open to us again. And since then it has been our fortress.”
“Only if you keep away from the towers,” Hilarion commented. “For how long have you roamed so, hunting a gate to take you back?”
Simon shrugged. “The days we had numbered, but it would seem that time here does not march at the same pace as it does in Estcarp.”
“How so?” Hilarion was surprised. How much more stunned would he be when he discovered just how many years had passed in Escore if or when we returned?
“I left a daughter who was a child,” my father said, and he turned to smile directly at me, shyly, ill at ease, but somehow as a plea, “and now I face a grown woman who has gone her own way to some purpose.”
Hilarion looked to me, more surprise in that glance, before he stared again at Simon and my mother.
Jaelithe nodded as if she were answering some unvoiced question.
“Kaththea is our daughter. Though we have long been apart. And”—now she spoke to me—“it would seem much has happened.”
I must pick and choose my words well, I thought. To tell them of what had chanced in Estcarp and perhaps somewhat in Escore, that I could do. But while I distrusted Hilarion, and there was no chance to talk apart with my parents, I must speak with care.
Now I told them of what had chanced with the three of us after Jaelithe had gone seeking my father—of my own taking by the Wise Women and the years spent in the Place of Silence. Then of that last blow which the witches of Estcarp aimed at Karsten, and of how Kyllan and Kemoc had come to free me and of our escape into Escore.