Was that why the city gates were guarded? Did they expect attack?
He glanced up, and caught his breath as he saw that the vast, impending thundercloud which was the under-side of Khom’ad glowed crimson and flickered with glancing white flashes and gleams. It looked like the end of the world. Then he realized that what he saw was nothing more sinister than the burning cloak, which must have become quite a respectable holocaust by now, sending down strong reflections from the overhang of the world above.
He saw something else, too, when he looked back. Two twinkling points of light were moving rapidly toward him up the ravine. Nethe had found her quarry. Sawyer clasped the tree and urged Providence to remember him. For he was quite literally between the devil and the deep. Nethe cut off retreat, and the abyss was a long way down.
Nethe saw him, silhouetted against the silver sky. She laughed in triumph, a clear, strong, musical laugh.
“One last chance,” she called to him as she came. “If you tell me where the Firebird is before I get to you, I’ll let you live.”
Sawyer looked down. He dangled a tentative foot over the void.
“All right,” he told her clearly. “That’s close enough. Stop right there. If you’ve got anything to say, I can hear you. But say it from where you are, because I’d rather jump than let you kill me.”
Nethe laughed, but a little hesitantly. She slowed, and then came on. Sawyer leaned far out. Rocks crumbled underfoot and rattled across the edge.
Nethe paused uncertainly.
“Be sensible, Khom,” she urged. “You can’t stand there forever. I’ll get you when you give out. You have to sleep. You—”
“I’m not a Khom,” Sawyer said in a patient voice. “You can’t order me around and you may as well get used to it. I know where the Firebird fell. And not on this island, incidentally.” He glanced down and wondered if he really did see the motion of crowding figures on the next lower land below.
“Tell me and I’ll spare your life,” Nethe offered, taking a tentative forward step. Casually Sawyer kicked another stone over the edge. She stopped.
“I might tell you,” he said, “if you made it worth my while. Otherwise I’ll just wait until the island grounds against the mainland. I can see they float. I can imagine what the gates of Khom’ad are guarded against. They must be expecting an attack. What made you drop us both on this island, anyhow? Didn’t you know it was crawling with these savages?”
“I didn’t mean to drop either of us on this one,” Nethe told him with some asperity. “If you hadn’t made such a fuss about falling we’d have struck a smaller island. It was right under you when you first dropped. But you had to hang on to that root and argue. So—”
“So that was the plan,” Sawyer murmured. “Drop Alper far enough to kill him and then loot the corpse. Well, now you’ve caught a Tartar. What do you offer me if I give up the Firebird?”
“Death if you don’t!” Nethe cried, and surged forward three eager steps. “So you have it? On you?”
Sawyer kicked another stone over the edge.
“Imagine that’s me,” he said. “With the Firebird.” She paused reluctantly. “No, I haven’t got it on me,” he went on. “You know that, you searched me, didn’t you? Besides, if I had it do you think I’d stay here? I’d use it. I’d—I’d open up the Gateway and go right back where I came from.”
“You fool, you couldn’t open the Gateway,” Nethe said contemptuously.
“Alper did,” Sawyer reminded her.
“There’s more to opening a door than waving a key around,” she told him aloofly. “If I hadn’t already unlocked the Gateway to send Klai through, the Firebird wouldn’t have had any effect at all except to call the real Firebirds down the tunnel.”
“What are real Firebirds?” Sawyer inquired with interest.
Before she could answer, a new sound began to shake the air and both looked up quickly. The deep, heavy clangor of a great bell from somewhere above began to beat wildly through the abyss. Some resonance in its pitch made the island shiver slightly at every peal.
“They’ve seen the islands rising,” Nethe said, her face turned upward and away and her mask seeming to regard Sawyer with a disinterested stare. “It’s the Khom alarm-bell.”
While the echoes still rang, a second bell, farther off, took up the signal, and far away, at the very verge of hearing, a third began heavily to toll. Sawyer imagined the mobilization at the city gates, and he hoped the tuba-shaped weapons were better fit to deal with the savages than a knife through the chest had been.
“Are they really invulnerable?” he asked Nethe. “The savages, I mean?”
“The Sselli? To most things, yes. Like us.”
“Then you are vulnerable too?”
“Not to you, Khom.” She laughed and turned back to him, her eyes baleful. “All living things are vulnerable—to something. Only the Goddess can unleash the weapon that could destroy an Isier. Don’t worry. The Sselli won’t get far. Do you think a little band that size could stand against the Isier?”
Sawyer looked down at the circling swarm of islands upon which he had thought he saw the motion of living things. Perhaps a small band could be driven back, then, but not a large one? He strained his eyes through the dimness, which was beginning now to brighten with reflections from the upper world, long shafts of red and crimson streaming downward past this island and touching with a sort of false sunrise color the rising lands below.
The rock shivered under him in answer to the wild timbre of alarm-bells in the city. He thought of Jericho and the shivering walls. It might have been coincidence, or it might have been a faint premonitory tremor that made him think “Jericho!” for in the next instant a still, small, far-off quiver, terribly familiar, moved between his brain and his skull…
“Alper!” he thought. “Awake. The bells—did they rouse him? Now he’s sitting up, looking around the cell, trying to remember.” He could picture it very clearly. “Now he’s thought of me. Now he has his hand in his pocket, feeling for the transceiver control. Now he’s found the note…”
He could imagine Alper struggling up in the glass cell, his face dark with anger, hand in pocket, finding there the unexpected crackle of paper. In a moment Sawyer would know if his note was going to save him. His life was in Alper’s pocket. Alper could kill him with the motion of one finger as dead as if they stood in the same room with a loaded gun between them. If anger made Alper’s hand clench before he fully took in the import of the note—
“Alper!” Sawyer said sharply. “Do you hear me? Listen!”
The tremor shivered in his brain for an endless moment. Then very softly it ceased to be. Alper was listening.
“What is the Firebird?” Sawyer asked distinctly. And he could almost imagine that at the crown of his skull the transceiver quivered with listening intentness. That question of all questions Alper would most want to hear answered. To make the situation perfectly clear, he added, “What is it, Nethe?”
“The key,” Nethe said impatiently. “The key between worlds. Also, it’s the lens of the Well. Lens? Shutter? I don’t know your language well enough. There may be no equivalent. What does it matter to you, anyhow? You can’t use it. Let me warn you—don’t try. You could unlock powers even the Isier can’t control. Tell me where it is and I—I promise you safety.”
“Ha,” Sawyer said, and swung his foot over the abyss. “That’s the hollowest promise I ever heard.” He laughed. He felt a little light-headed. For the moment at least both Alper and Nethe were in his hands. While the moment lasted he meant to make the most of it.
Nethe’s eyes blazed. “Listen, Khom! My life depends on getting the Firebird back. The Goddess hates me. In three more days she must give up her place to me. It was my plan to wait in your world until the three days were over and she automatically lost the Double Mask to me.
“But you and your friend Alper spoiled that plan. Through your clumsiness I was drawn through into Khom’ad without the Firebird. For that I’ll kill Alper when I get to him. It was dangerous enough here in Khom’ad for me with the Firebird. But at least, while I held it, I could escape whenever I chose. There are gates to a long, strange pathway we Isier travel, through many worlds and forms. With the Firebird, I can pass them. Without it, I’m helpless.