It had. He was there, standing in the shadow of several horses, in the deserted street.
“Lew, take me with you? Leave the women here.”
“We need Kathie. And someone has to stay here, Regis. This is our only chance. If we don’t make it, you’ll have to make what terms you can. I think, as a last resort, you might be able to trust Lawton.” I stopped, then shrugged, without finishing what I had started to say. There was no point in farewells and we made none.
Out through the streets of Thendara; into the open country. We passed a few houses and deserted farmsteads; they grew wider apart and finally ceased. No one rode this path now; on the Forbidden Road, radioactivity was still virulent, in spots, from the Years of Desolation. The road itself was safe now, but the fear lingered; too many men, in past days, had died. Hairless, toothless, their blood turned to water, because they had taken this path. The Comyn had fostered that fear, with tricks and traps; and now it was useful, because we could ride unseen. Only Dyan knew those tricks and traps as well as I.
We skirted the site of the ancient spaceships, their huge bulk still glowing feebly with the poisonous radiance. Then we were on the Forbidden Road itself; — the canyon, nature’s own roadway, which stretches from the highest point in the Hellers down to the Sea of Dalereuth a thousand miles away. Just wide enough for six horses to ride abreast, thirty feet below the surface of the plain, and nearly a thousand miles long, the Forbidden Road runs all across the continent as if some giant or some God, in the lost years, had reached out and scratched the molten land with a titan fingernail, cutting across mountains, foothills, plains.
Legend had it the Forbidden Road was the track where the Gods walked, ages ago, when they spread their terror on the land and the children of the Comyn were born with their minds awry with the strange Comyn Gifts. A barren land, seared of growth, the track of something that had marred the land to freakishness, creating the Comyn. Mutation? The children of Gods? I did not know or care.
Two of the moons had set, leaving a single pallid face on the horizon, when we turned aside from the Road and saw the rhu fead, a white, dim, gleaming pile, rising above the thinly gleaming shore of the lake of Hali. We reined in our horses near the brink. Mist curled up whitely along the shore, where the sparse pink grass thinned out on the rocks. I kicked a pebble loose and it dropped into the glimmering cloud-waves, sinking without a splash, slowly, visible for a long time. Kathie stared at the strangely-surfaced lake. “That isn’t water, is it?”
I shook my head. No living being, save those of Comyn blood, had ever set foot on the shores of Hali.
She said confusedly, “But I’ve been here before—”
“No. You have some of my memories, that’s all.” I patted her wrist clumsily, as if she were Linnell. “Don’t be afraid.” Twin pillars rose white, a rainbow mist sparkling like a veil between them. I frowned at the trembling rainbow. “Even blocked, it would strip your mind. I’ll have to do what I did before; hold your mind completely under mine.” She shuddered, and I warned tonelessly, “I must. The veil is a force-field attuned to the Comyn brain. It won’t hurt us but it would kill you.”
She glanced at Callina. “Why not you?”
Callina shook her head. “It has something to do with polarity. I’m a Keeper. If I tried to submerge your mind for more than a second or two, it would destroy you — permanently.” A curious horror showed in her mind. “Ashara showed me — once.”
I picked Kathie up bodily. When she protested, I scowled. “You fainted once, and went into hysterics the second time I touched you,” I reminded her grimly. “If you do that again, inside the Veil, I want to make sure you’ll get out the other side.”
This time, however, she was barriered against me, by my own bypass circuit. It was easy to damp out the alien brainwaves. We got through the shimmering, bunding rainbow, with blurred eyes; I set her down and withdrew as gently as I could.
The rhu fead stretched bare before us, dim and cool. There were doors and long passages, filled with chilly curls of mist. Kathie made a sudden turn into one passage and began to walk forward into the dimness.
“Lew, I know! How do I know where to go?”
The passage angled into an open space of white stone and curtained crimson. A dais, set back into the wall and paneled in iridescent webs, held a blue crystal coffer. I set my foot on the first step—
I could not pass. This was the inner barrier; the barrier no Comyn could penetrate. I leaned on an invisible wall; Callina, curious, put out her hands and saw them jerk back of themselves. Kathie asked, “Are you still blocking my mind?”
“A little.”
“Then don’t. That bit of you is what holds me back.”
I nodded and withdrew the blocking circuit. Kathie smiled at me, less like Linnell than she had ever looked; then walked through the invisible barrier.
She disappeared into a blue of darkening cloud. A blaze of fire seared up; I wanted to shout at her not to be afraid, it was only an illusion — but even my voice would not pass the barrier reared against the Comyn. A dim silhouette, she vanished; the flames swallowed her. Then a wild glare swept up to the roof and a burst of thunder rolled and rocked the floor.
Kathie darted back to us; and in her hand she held a sheathed sword.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
So the Sword of Aldones was a real sword, after all; long and gleaming and deadly, and of so fine a temper that it made my own look like a child’s leaden toy. In the hilt, through a thin layer of insulating silk, winking jewels gleamed blue.
It might have been a duplicate of the Sharra sword, but that now seemed an inferior forgery of the glorious thing I held.
This was not a concealment for a hidden matrix; rather it was a matrix. It seemed to have a life of its own. A tingle of power, not unpleasant, flowed up my arm. I gripped the hilt and drew it a little way—
“No,” Callina said warningly, and gripped my hand. A moment, stubborn, I resisted; then slid it back into the sheath.
“That’s that,” I said harshly. “Let’s get out of here.”
Dawn was breaking over the lake when we came out, and the wet sunlight glinted, ominously, on steel. Kathie cried out, in terror, as three men stepped toward us.
Three men? No; two — and a woman. Kadarin, Dyan — and between them, slim and vital as a dark flame, Thyra Scott smiled up at me, her mocking mouth daring me to speak or strike. I caught the dagger from my belt. Thyra stood steady, her naked throat upturned to the steel.
My hand tilted and the knife fell from it.
“Get out of my way, witch!”
Her low, fey laughter raised a million ghosts, but her voice was steel. “What have you done with my daughter?”
“My daughter,” I said. “She’s safe. But you can’t have her.”
Dyan took a step, but Kadarin took his elbow and hauled him back. “Wait, you.”
Thyra said, “We will bargain. Give me what the Keeper holds, and you go free.”
“We will anyhow,” I said.
Kadarin drew his sword. I should have known; it was the one bearing the Sharra matrix. “Will you?” he asked softly. “Better hand it over. I intend to kill you, but you couldn’t give me a fair fight, not now.” His eyes swept, with gentle contempt, from my bandaged head to my feet. “Don’t try.”
“I suppose you have Trailmen in hiding with your usual odds of twenty to one?”
Kadarin nodded. “They won’t touch you. You’re for me. But the women—”
“Go to hell,” I snarled, and, flashing the sword from the sheath, I flung myself at Kadarin. The touch of the hilt poured that stream of overflowing life through me; the blood beat so hard in my temples that I was faint with it. Kadarin whipped up the Sharra sword. The swords-touched—