They had welcomed him earlier with open relief, in which he could detect no sign of consternation. Yet with Shara’s warning he was alert. That was why Yolyos sat now at the end of that council table facing Andas. He did not know how much the alien’s strange warning sense could do to unmask a traitor, but it was a safeguard of a sort.
It was Ishan who spoke first, eagerly. “It must be the truth, my lord. This fellow was well-nigh dead when my scouts, found him after his skimmer had crashed. They heard his story and went to the Drak Mount. There are no signs of life to be seen.”
“Tricks!” Makenagen returned as forcibly, favoring his colleague with a glare. “Bait to get us into a trap.”
“The Arch Priest reports”—it was the Lady Banokue who spoke, in a low, calm voice—“that this prisoner is speaking the truth. He has tested him under hypnosis. The plague has spread widely through the Drak Mount. And what has fought us for the past months have been robots set on auto controls. Now those are going inert for want of tending.”
“Inert!” Makenagen snorted. “They were in working order enough to blow a hole through our last land crawler. And that but ten days ago while we were hunting you, my lord.” He directed his words to Andas. “I tell you, to venture into the land around the mount is fatal. No, this is a trap. Let the Arch Priest talk of the truth—we all know that in the old days a man could have his memory tampered with, be implanted with a false past. It was against the law, but it was done. They could have implanted this wretch—they still have machines while we are reduced to crossbows and the riding of elklands!”
Andas inclined his head to acknowledge the bitter logic of his captain’s reasoning. What he had seen of this barren headquarters did not encourage a man. The spirit of those who held it was far higher than their ability to carry on war against those they admitted still held weapons of so-called civilization. It was as if they expected some of the old hero legends to work in their behalf, letting the “right” win by the favor of some supernatural force. But to depend upon a supernatural force—Suddenly his thoughts turned to what had lain at the back of his mind since their ordeal in the forest.
“Most dead or dying, said this prisoner?” he asked Ishan.
“Many so. There are some among them who appear immune. But those form only a skeleton force, unable now to defend the mount to any purpose. We can move in—”
“And among these dead was Kidaya?” Andas interrupted.
He saw the eager look fade on Ishan’s face. “Now. This man was but a squad leader—he had no contact with the superior officers. But he said that a month ago, perhaps a little more—he was so dazed by the trials he had been through that he was vague on time—the lords who had declared for Kidaya and she herself took the last of the cruisers and departed.”
“I suppose he did not know where?”
“There could be only one place she would seek,” Shara said in her usual toneless voice. “She would go to the Valley of Bones where there is a power to help her.”
They were silent. Ishan stared at the girl, and the Lady Banokue looked down at her folded hands on the table top, hands a little plump, with the rings of her rank cutting into her flesh as if she had worn them so long that they were a part of her. Makenagen plucked at his lower lip. As Yolyos relaxed in his seat, Andas thought he saw the Salariki’s nostrils expand as if he tested some scent in the air.
“If the off-world mercenaries are alone and those who hired them have, in a manner of speaking, deserted them”—Andas spoke first—“then perhaps we can persuade them that they are contract broke. And if we offer terms, they may surrender in honor.”
“It is a trap!”
“That we have a means of testing. We have the skimmer. Suppose we return this prisoner to the mount by it and then await results? Mercenaries do not take kindly to contract breaking on alien worlds. It will depend upon what promises have been made them.”
“Shara nodded. “And do not think that such have not been made. There is good reason to believe that oaths have been taken to hold these men even as they died. The heart of the rebellion is not Drak Mount now—it is the Valley of Bones.”
“But to get to the valley, I must have something I am sure lies within the mount.”
“You have a plan, my lord?” asked Makenagen.
“I have this.” Andas showed his hand on the table top. Across the flat of his palm lay the key.
“But you cannot—the temple is under deadly radiation!” Ishan cried.
“Not deadly if one has a radiation suit. I know what I would seek. I can find it wearing such protection.”
“No!” Makenagen brought his fist down on the table with force enough to make the blow audible. “You would die. This is too great a risk, and if we have not you, then Kidaya has won and we might as well all put knives to our own throats and have done with it!”
“What do we then?” Andas asked. “Do we wait here until Kidaya and that demon crew think up another evil to send against us? Have we not slipped down far enough into the dark of barbarism? We need what is in the mount, and we need it now! You all know what this means, what force it is said to unlock.” He held the key now between thumb and forefinger as a pointer aiming it down the length of the table.
“The temple is impossible,” Makenagen repeated. His eyes were on the key, but his head shook stubbornly back and forth, denying any promise it might have.
Andas wished he could accept that as firmly as did this noble. What he held to as the only plan he could formulate was nothing he wanted to do. He was no hero willing to die to accomplish some task that might or might not save the situation. But it was part of the burden laid on him. Only the rightful emperor or his proclaimed heir could hold the key and set it in the place it was meant to go. And he was not even sure what he would unlock if he could accomplish that much, save that he did believe to the full that it would give him the ultimate answer to the life of the empire. And it would seem that the hour had come when they must have that answer or go down to defeat.
If Drak Mount was the well-equipped fortress they claimed, there must be radiation suits there. Wearing one of those, he could enter the temple or its ruins and then—“Take one step at a time,” Andas cautioned himself—these were formidable steps.
“Let the prisoner be brought,” he ordered Ishan, knowing the longer they sat in council, the less they would decide, and to act was important.
In appearance the man proved to be like those from whom they had captured the skimmer, save that he had lost all self-confidence. But his training held, and he came to attention before Andas.
“You have told us a tale of your troubles,” the prince began. To him the prisoner seemed broken in spirit. He could well believe that they had pumped out of him all that was to be learned. But perhaps Yolyos could learn more.
“The plague, Your Mightiness—”
“Just so. And I have also heard that your employer or employers broke faith—is this not so?”
The man looked startled, as if that question had penetrated through his own misery.
“Broke faith, Mightiness?”
“Did not the false rebel Kidaya and her lords withdraw, leaving you, whom she had brought hither to fight for her, to die alone? To the mind of an honest man, soldier, that is breaking contract. Have you not thought of it so?”
“Nothing has been said, Mightiness. We hold to duty.”
“Needlessly. Now, soldier, there is that you can do, not only in your own behalf, but also for your whole company—what is left of them by now. You can take our terms to whomever remains of your leaders with authority enough to agree to surrender. We shall grant mercenaries’ terms with full honors, oath pledge for that. This is now no battle of yours, for you shall see no pay from those who fled.”
“Mightiness, no one can return overland to the mount. I came forth on a skimmer, which failed me. The heavy arms are all on auto and locked there, by the Lady Kidaya’s orders. There can be no way for me to get in.”
r /> “You came by skimmer—you can return by skimmer. Or have the air defenses also been locked on auto?”
The soldier licked his lips, but his eyes did not shift under Andas’s level regard.
“No, Mightiness. It was thought that—that those of your command no longer had any air power. And it was also said, Mightiness, that you yourself were dead, or soon to be so!”
“Yet I am not, nor are we lacking in air power. You will be taken to the top of Dark Mount and there dropped with your grav belt—” Andas turned to Ishan. “He was wearing a grav belt?”
At the captain’s nod, the prince continued. “You will carry to your commander our terms. We shall give him the space of a day to consider them. If he accepts, he and at least two of the highest ranking officers under him shall signal from the top of the mount. A skimmer will be sent to bring them to me to give truce oath. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mightiness.”
“Have him ready to go,” Andas told Ishan.
“They will not yield.” But Makenagen did not sound as emphatic as he had earlier.
“I think that they will. The mercenaries sell loyalty, but it must work both ways. If they believe that contract is broken, they will surrender on mercenary terms. Since we cannot ship them off-world, we shall take their paroles until we can.”
“You put faith in their oaths?” Makenagen still fought a rear-guard action.
“You know the breed, do you not?”
“Yes. If they will take trust oath.”
“One thing waits upon another.” Andas fell into the more formal court speech. “The day grows near, my captains—the audience is ended.” For the first time he stepped from battle commander to emperor with that dismissal. They went, save for Yolyos, to whom he made a gesture, and Shara.
“What did you learn?” Andas hardly waited before they had gone to ask.
“First, your traitor is not here. Second, you read that prisoner aright. I think he will do exactly as you wish. Let us hope his superiors do likewise. But what you intend to do, Prince—or should it be ‘Emperor’?”
“I believe that which this opens”—Andas stowed the key once more within his clothing (he had shed at last the grimed and badly worn coverall and been fitted with tunic, breeches, and boots)—“will give us the answer to Kidaya at long last. It is the mightiest weapon our race ever knew. We are pledged never to call upon it until the last extremity. And to my judging, we have reached that point. We can wait out the fall of the Drak Mount, and that may take centuries with their defenses on auto—those will run until the energy is exhausted.
“But it is not the Drak Mount that matters so much as the Valley of Bones. For as long as the empire has existed, the Old Woman has menaced it. How does the warning go?” He looked to Shara, who replied.
“Dark spawns dark, evil gives root to evil.
What man has wrought, man can destroy.
But that is the way of man.
For the other, it is waiting, watching—
And in the end triumph over all.
Night will fall, day comes not again.
Winter’s cold knows no spring.
And the dried bones will lie in rows,
But none shall weep,
For there will be no eyes to hold the tears.”
“A mournful enough saying,” the Salariki commented. “This has some meaning beyond its gloomy surface words?”
“The Old Woman negates all we believe is life. She wears many faces. Sometimes she has sunk to become a bogey with which to frighten children; other times we see her followers walk proudly with power. But there was always the warning of an ultimate confrontation between the power invested in him who can use the key and the Old Woman. I think the time has come—here and now.”
“And Kidaya was sent into the world to induce that coming?” Shara mused. “Then all the evil she has wrought here falls into a pattern that one can understand, for if it had been the Empress’s crown she wanted, she could have gained her ends without wreaking such destruction on friend and foe alike. She has had choices, and always her choice has fallen in a way to bring more chaos. So you take the weapon of the key. And where do you bear it—to the Valley of Bones?”
Andas suddenly felt very weary, like a man pushed to the edge of endurance who must yet stoop and add another burden to a load he already carried. “Where else?” he asked her simply. He had never wanted to do more than what now seemed light and pleasant duty in his own time. But there was no turning back. From the moment he had laid hand on the key, he had chosen the path that led straight here, and he could not turn aside, even if he would.
“But not alone,” she protested.
He was too tired to argue. Sometimes when he was alone (which seemed to be very seldom now), he would close his eyes and rub his fingers across the lids, as if to so rub away all the light and sound about. Without Shara he could not have played his part for an hour. Sometimes he wished she would let him blunder into self-betrayal so he could be free.
Now he went to the window of the small room to which the rule of the empire had shrunk. For a space action was out of his hands. All hung now on the surrender of Drak Mount.
“Emperor”—Yolyos gave him the title without any of the accompanying honorifics his own people used—“there is someone coming and”—he had faced around, his nostrils dilated—“this is not right—”
Andas had no chance to ask for explanations, for the door sentry looped back the blanket that served as a curtain.
“Lord, it is the Arch Priest with tidings of urgency.”
“Let him enter.”
The man whom came in was twin to the Kelemake Andas remembered. He had not followed the universal habit of eradicating his beard, but sprouted a small growth on his chin, trimmed into an aggressive point. His voluminous robe was not as shabby as the garments of the rest of the garrison and was the russet-red of the temple. And he also had the conical, pointed miter of his rank, though this was not jeweled in regal splendor, but merely carried on its front a silver representation of the key. A like replica depended on a long chain about his neck.
Andas had seen him twice since he had come to the fort. But both times it had been a purely formal meeting in company. It seemed to him that the Arch Priest, instead of making a point to welcome his emperor back, had, as unobtrusively as possible, chosen to escape any direct communication with his leader. But he was here now and seemed eager for an interview.
“Pride of Balkis-Candac”—his voice was that of a man who had learned to use it effectively with audiences—“the message is that we move on Drak Mount.”
“After a fashion,” Andas agreed. “An offer for surrender—”
“These off-worlders, these evil ones—they should not be allowed parole!” There was a glint in the priest’s eyes now. How much dared Andas judge this double by the man he had known? Of old such a look meant that Kelemake, the scholar, was preparing to rip to shreds some long-held belief.
“They are mercenaries. We shall offer them the usual peace by oath.”
“When such as they have despoiled this world, brought the empire to dust? Pride of Balkis-Candace, those who have passed beyond will not be honored by such mistaken mercy. I pray you think again before you offer terms to drinkers of blood. Let them stay and die in the hole into which they have sealed themselves.”
“Much the easier way.” Andas hoped that he sounded reasonable. The priest’s attitude was a little strange. Theirs was not usually a cry for revenge. “Save that it may take years. And we do not have years to go on starving out our own existence. If this struggle can be brought to an end, then the oaths are worth it.”
“There will be no peace with Kidaya!” Kelemake fairly spat. “And she is not at the mount.”
“No. She is where we must seek her.”
Kelemake showed his teeth in what might be a smile, savoring of contempt. “Doubtless with weapons taken from the mount. Which perhaps might be a worthy plan, save that th
ose with whom she shelters now have such weapons as can put to naught any taken from Drak.”
“Not at all.” Andas’s hand went to his tunic breast beneath which lay the key. “There is this.” On some impulse he did not understand, he drew forth his heritage. Again it seemed that the light in the room gathered to it.
The change in Kelemake was astounding. His hand had been resting on his own silver key, the badge of his office. Now he twisted that up and out as if thus he held a cutting weapon. But whatever he intended was never completed, for Yolyos sprang. The Salariki had been edging to the side, and his sudden attack beat the priest of his knees. A second chop from the alien’s hand collapsed him. Yolyos stopped and jerked loose the key, examined it, and a moment later uttered a deep growl.
“A fine toy indeed for a priest, Emperor. Behold!” Holding the key as Kelemake had done, he moved closer to the table. There was a click, and in the wood of its top quivered a tiny dart hardly as long as a cloak pin, which must have been fitted snuggly into the shaft of the key.
“Do not touch it!” Yolyos swept out an arm to keep Andas back. “There is a very suspicious smear on it. But I will tell you something else. This”—he stirred the body of the priest with a boot toe—“was not a man—not as we know men.”
“Android?” Andas jumped to the one conclusion ever with him.
“No, he was human once. What he is now, perhaps your followers of the old Woman can best name. But this is your traitor or I never have sniffed one with more of such stink!”
“Kelemake!” breathed Shara. “But the priests, they are armored against the Old Woman. They have to be, or they could not function as priests.”
“But how long has it been since there was a temple with protective safeguards to uncover such?” Andas asked. “You smelt his treachery?”
“I picked up a foulness like those woods creepers, enough to know he had kinship with them. And he came here to kill you, which suggests one thing—that those you would face hold you in fear. Perhaps this last plan of yours is what they dislike.”