Wizard

"It is necessary that I speak to you," she went on firmly. "For that to happen, you must lower the level of acid. I tell you that the Wizard will be displeased, and through her, Gaea, if you do not do as I say. As you love and respect Gaea, let me approach. As you fear Gaea, let me approach!"

It sounded so hollow, it rang so falsely in her ears. Surely Thea would hear it as plainly as she did, the fear lurking behind her words, ready to betray her.

Yet the level of acid was receding. She approached it cautiously and saw that where there had been a few centimeters of liquid there was now just a slippery, fuming film.

She sat down quickly and opened her pack. Into her boots she stuffed rags from a shirt ruined many hectorevs ago. Her toes were cramped when she put them back on. She tied the rest of the shirt and a corner of her blanket around the outsides of her boots. Then she stepped forward onto the wet floor. She examined the blanket after taking a few steps. It looked as if the acid was not strong enough in that concentration to eat away the material quickly. She would have to chance it.

Thea was being cautious, too. The acid withdrew with painful slowness while Robin danced with impatience. The corridor sloped downward. Soon the walls were dripping acid. Drops began to fall from the ceiling. She drew her blanket over her head and walked on.

At last she came to stand on a ledge identical to the ones she had seen in the lairs of Crius and Tethys.

"Speak," came the voice, and she had never been closer to turning and running than at that moment because the voice was the same, the same as Tethys's. She had to remind herself that Crius had sounded like that, too: flat, emotionless, without human inflection, like a voice constructed on an oscilloscope screen.

"Do not move," the voice continued, "on peril of your life. I can act much faster than you suspect, so do not rely on past experience. I am within my rights to slay you because this is my holy chamber, given to me by Gaea herself, inviolate to all but the Wizard. It is only my long friendship with the Wizard and my love for Gaea that have brought you this far alive. Speak, and tell me why you should continue to live."

She's not one to mince words, Robin thought. As to the words themselves... if they had come from a human she would have thought the speaker insane. And perhaps Thea was insane, but it hardly mattered. "Insanity" was a word the connotations of which were not broad enough to cover an alien intelligence.

"If you mean to turn and run," Thea went on, apparently getting suspicious, "you should know that I am aware of what occurred when you visited Tethys. You should know that she was unprepared, whereas I have known of your approach for many kilorevs. I do not need to flood my chamber; beneath the surface of the moat is an organ capable of propelling a jet of acid powerful enough to cut you in half. So speak, or die."

It occurred to Robin that Thea's threats were a hopeful sign, in the same way that her willingness to speak at all was unexpectedly meek for a second-string God.

"I have spoken," she said, as firmly as she was able. "If you were listening, you know the importance of my mission. Since you apparently were not, I will repeat it. I come on an errand of great importance to Cirocco Jones, the Wizard of Gaea. I bear information she must hear. If I do not reach her to give it to her, she will be greatly displeased."

As soon as she said it, she wished she could bite her tongue out. This was Thea, an ally of Gaea, and the information she was bringing to Cirocco was that Gaea had murdered Gaby. That would not have mattered but for the possibility that Tethys, who must have been involved, had bragged to Thea. Since Thea seemed to know a lot of what had happened in Tethys's chamber, it was clear there was some communication.

"What is the information?"

"That is between me and the Wizard. If Gaea wishes you to know it, she will tell you."

There was a silence that could not have been more than a few seconds. It was enough time for Robin to age twenty years. But when the jet of acid did not come, she could have shouted for joy. She had her! If she could say a thing like that to Thea and still live, it had to be because Thea's respect for Cirocco was a pretty powerful thing.

Now if she could only keep it up for a few more minutes.

She began to move slowly, not wishing to startle Thea. She had gone three steps toward the stairs she could see on the south side of the chamber when Thea spoke again.

"I said you should not move. We have things still to speak of."

"I don't know what they could be. Will you impede one who carries a message to the Wizard?"

"The question may not be relevant. If I destroyed you-as is my right; indeed, my obligation under the laws of Gaea-there would be nobody to tell tales. The Wizard need never know you passed this way."

"It is not your obligation," Robin said, once more muttering prayers under her breath. "I myself have visited Crius. I have been to his inner chambers and lived to talk about it. It requires only the Wizard's permission. This I know, and you must know it, too."

"My chambers have always been inviolate," Thea said. "This is how it must be. No creature but the Wizard has ever been where you stand."

"And I say to you that I have seen Crius. There is no one more loyal to Gaea than Crius."

"I bow to none in my loyalty to Gaea," Thea said virtuously.

"Then you can do no less than Crius did and let me leave unharmed."

Possibly this was a difficult moral dilemma for Thea; for whatever reason, there was another long pause. Robin was bathed in sweat, and her nose burned from the acid fumes.

"If you are so loyal to Gaea," Robin prompted, "why have you been speaking to Tethys?" Once again she wondered if she had said the right thing. But she was possessed by a maniacal urge to play the charade out to its end, come what may. It would not do now to grovel or plead. She sensed that what chance she had lay in putting on a strong front.

Thea was no fool. She realized she had committed an indiscretion in revealing what she knew of Robin's experience in Tethys. She did not attempt to deny it but instead replied in much the same vein Crius had when confronted by Cirocco.

"One cannot help listening. It is how I am built. Tethys is a traitor. He persists in whispering heresy. All is promptly reported to Gaea, of course. From time to time it is of some use."

Robin concluded that Tethys either did not know what Gaby had told them or had not told Thea. With all the talk of Gaea's eyes and ears, Robin had not been sure just how far Tethys's own senses might reach. She suspected that the threshold to his chambers, five kilometers above him, was too far for direct spying on his part. But Thea did not know, for it was certain that if she did, she would have passed it on to Gaea, who would not be eager for Cirocco to learn the circumstances of Gaby's death. And in that case Robin would already be dead.

"You still have not answered my question," Thea said. "What is to prevent me from killing you now and destroying your body?"

"I'm surprised to hear you speak so disloyally," Robin said.

"I said nothing disloyal."

"Yet the Wizard is an agent of Gaea, and you propose deceiving her. We can leave that question for a moment and consider only the practical side. The Wizard, if she lives, knows-" She coughed, trying to make it look like the effects of the fumes. Robin, she said to herself, you have a very large mouth.

"You do not even know if she lives?" Thea asked, and Robin thought she detected a menacingly sweet overtone to the question.