He trudged along in the dust. The soldiers guarding them carried long pikes with metal tips and walked lightly, joking among themselves, calling the prisoners foul names.
Raul gasped with pain as the pike point stabbed his upper arm. “Scrawny old one,” the soldier said. “You’ll be lion meat tomorrow, if you live that long.”
Ahead the dusty road wound back and forth up the flank of a hill. Beyond the hill he could see the white towers of the city where Arrud the Elder ruled his kingdom with traditional ferocity. It appeared to be a march of many hours. What had Jord Orlan said about change and mobility? A knack to be acquired. This helplessness and the pain of walking did not seem to promise much.
He let the captive mind flow back up through secret channels, once again taking over will and volition. Senses faded, and as the nothingness once again enfolded him, he tried to thrust out toward the side, toward the soldiers. Again the feeling of grappling with a strange thing that resisted. The moment of control, of pushing the other entity down into a corner of his mind passed and vision returned.
He lay on his belly in a patch of brush, staring down at a distant dusty road far below, at a clot of figures walking slowly along the road. He let the captive mind expand until he could feel its thoughts and emotions. Once again — hate and fear. This one had escaped from the city. He was huge and strong. He carried a stout club and he had killed three men in making his escape. Contempt and pity for the captives. Hate for their captors. Fear of discovery. This was a simpler, more brutal mind than the first one. Easier to control. He watched for a time, then slid out of the mind and thrust his way toward the remembered direction of the road.
The new entity was more elusive and control more difficult. He found that he had taken over the body of a young soldier. He walked apart from the others. The captives were at his right, laboring under the weight of the poles that kept them joined, like one large many-legged insect. Raul fingered the spirit of this young soldier and found there revulsion for the task, contempt for the calloused sensibilities of his comrades in arms, pity for the dirty prisoners. He regretted the choice of occupation he had made and wished with all his heart that this duty was over. It would be better in the city at dusk when he could wander among the bazaars, a soldier returned from the wars, stopping at the booths to buy the spiced foods he loved.
Raul forced a turn of the head and looked back at the line. After several moments he found the thin man with the pike wound in his upper arm. He had been in that man’s mind. Inside his own mind he felt the flutter of panic of the young soldier who had made a motion without apparent purpose. “Why do I turn and stare at the thin old one? Why is he of more importance than the others? Is the sun too hot on this helmet?”
Raul turned and looked up into the hills, trying to locate the brush where the fugitive hid. This seemed to alarm the captive mind even more.
“Why am I acting so strangely?”
The haft of the pike was comforting in Raul’s hand. He lifted it a trifle, realizing that the habit action patterns of the young soldier would serve him well should he wish to use the pike. For a time he contented himself with looking about at the landscape, picking out of the soldier’s mind the names of the objects he saw. A bird, a quick blue flash against the sky. An ox cart loaded with husks of corn. They passed stone ruins of an unguessed antiquity.
He turned when he heard a harsh scream. The thin one, whose mind he had inhabited, had fallen. A heavyset soldier, his face angry and shiny with sweat, jabbed again and again with the pike, making the red blood flow.
Raul thrust with the ease of long practice, the tip of his pike tearing through the profiled throat of the heavyset soldier, who turned, eyes bulging. He clawed at his throat with both hands, dropped to his knees, then toppled face down into the yellow dust of the road.
In his mind he felt the panicky thoughts of the young soldier. “I killed him! I must be mad! Now I’ll be killed!”
The soldier in charge swaggered over, scowling. He took in the situation at a glance and drew the short broadsword that only he wore. The others, grinning in anticipation, kept the young soldier from fleeing by making a half-circle of leveled pikes.
Raul, infected by the panic in his mind, thrust again with the pike. The broadsword flickered and lopped off a two-foot section of the end of the pike, stinging his hands. He looked down and saw the thrust as the broadsword went deep into his belly. The leader twisted the blade and withdrew it. The spasm and cramp dropped Raul to his hands and knees. He gagged as his arms weakened and his face sank slowly toward the dust. From the corner of his eye he saw the broadsword flash up again. The bright pain across the back of his neck drove him out into the nothingness where there was neither sight, nor sound, nor sense of touch.
At dusk he was in the city, with life and motion brawling and clashing around him. He lead a heavily laden burro and at intervals he cried out that he had water, cool water for dry throats. In the mind of the water vendor he found the location of the palace itself. More and more he was gaining control of the directional thrusts, gaining confidence in gauging the distance from mind to mind. He was a guard at the castle gates, then a man who carried a heavy load up endless stone steps.
At last he became Arrud the Elder, the man of power. To his astonishment, as he gained control of the king’s mind, he found it as simple and brutal as the mind of the fugitive. He found hate and fear there. Hate of the distant kings who drained his manpower and wealth in unending wars. Fear of treachery within the palace walls. Fear of assassination.
Raul relaxed to Arrud’s action patterns. Arrud buckled the heavy belt around his thick waist. It was of soft leather, studded with bits of precious metal. He flung the cape over his wide shoulders, tucked his thumbs under the belt and swaggered down the stone hallway, thrusting open the door at the end of the corridor. The woman had long hair, the color of flame. She lay back on the divan and looked at Raul-Arrud coldly. She had a harsh, cruel mouth.
“I await your pleasure,” she said bitterly.
“Tonight we look at the prisoners. The first ones have arrived.”
“This time, Arrud, pick some strong ones for the beasts, strong ones who will fight and make the game last.”
“We need the strong ones for work on the walls,” he said sulkily.
Her tone grew wheedling. “Please. For me, Arrud. For Nara.”
Raul relinquished his hold and faded into grayness. Only the gentlest of motions was necessary. He seeped slowly and relentlessly into the mind of the woman and found that there was an elusive subtlety about it that defied his initial attempts at control. At last he had her mind trapped. Her thoughts were hard to filter through his own mind. They were fragmentary, full of flashes of brilliance and color. Only her contempt and hate for Arrud was constant, unvarying. He found that maintaining a delicate balance of control was far more difficult when handling the woman-mind. He would possess her mind so utterly that he would lose her language, her female identity, to become, foolishly, Raul in a woman-body. Then she would surge back until he clung to the last edge of control.
In a short time he knew her. Knew Nara, daughter of a foot soldier, dancer, mistress of a captain, and then a general, and at last mistress of Arrud. He knew her contemptuous acknowledgment of the power of hair like flame, body that was cat-sleek, vibrant, clever.