But they did not have Valdir’s son; and sooner or later, Larry supposed, Cyrillon would find it out. He didn’t like to think what would happen then.
As the fourth day was darkening into night, he heard sounds in the distance; feet hurrying in the corridors, horses’ hooves trampling in the courtyard, men calling to one another in command. He looked up, in frustration, at the high window which prevented him from seeing out; then dragged a heavy bench toward the window and clambered up on it. He could just see over the broad, high sill, and down into the courtyard below.
Nearly two dozen men were milling around below, leading out and saddling horses, choosing weapons from a great pile in the corner of the bricked-in courtyard. Larry saw Cyrillon’s form, tall and lean, striding through the men; here pausing to speak to one, here inspecting a saddle-girth, here lashing out, swift as a striking snake, to knock a man head-over-heels with a swift fist. The great gate was swinging open, the mounted men forming to ride through.
Was the castle empty, then? Unguarded? Larry looked down to the courtyard, in frustration. He was at least thirty feet above the bricks; a thirty-foot fall might not kill him if he landed on grass, but on stone… ? The castle wall was smooth below him for at least ten feet; with the use of both hands, he might well have managed a foothold on the ledge below. With one hand tied behind his back, he might as well have tried to walk a tightrope to the nearest mountain peak.
He let himself slide down to the floor again. Doubtless they had left someone here… possibly only the feeble old man who brought Larry’s food.
If he had a weapon…
They had left him his pocketknife; but the main blade was broken, and the magnetized blade remaining was less than two inches long. The furniture in the room was all old and too heavy to be broken up for a club of any sort. If he could somehow manage to club the man over the head when next he came in…
There seemed nothing from which he could improvise even a simple weapon. With both hands, he might have thrown his jacket at the old man and managed to smother him with it. They seemed to be guarding against the Comyn telepathic tricks, but they had not tried to guard against ordinary attack… and yet there was nothing in the room that could be used as a weapon.
He sat, scowling, considering, for a long time. If he could have smashed the window, perhaps a long splinter of glass might serve.
He heard shuffling footsteps down the hall, and a thought —almost too late!—occurred to him. He dropped to the floor and, with his one free hand, fumbled to unlace his boot. It was heavy, a Darkovan riding-boot, and if it struck the man on the back of the head—
But it was slow work with one hand and before he had it off, a key moved in the lock, the door came open in one burst, as if the man had stood back and kicked it open without coming inside. Then the man appeared in the door. He had a tray with food balanced in one hand; the other held a long, wicked-looking riding whip. He held it poised to strike, saying in his barbarous dialect, “None of your tricks, boy!”
Larry jerked off the boot, clumsily with his right hand, and hurled it at the man’s head.
As soon as he had thrown it, he knew that the throw, with the wrong hand, would go wild: he saw the old man start slightly, the dishes on the tray clashing together. The whip, as if with a life of its own, flicked out and wrapped round Larry’s free wrist, with a stinging slap; the man jerked the whip free, laughing harshly.
“I thought you might have some such little trick,” he jeered, raised the whip again and brought it down, not very hard, across Larry’s shoulders. Tears started to Larry’s eyes, but really it was more of a warning than a blow—for Larry knew that a blow with such a whip, given seriously, would cut through his clothes and an inch into the flesh.
“Want some more?” the man asked, with a grin.
Furious with frustration, Larry bent his eyes on the ground.
The man said good-naturedly, “Eat your dinner, lad. You don’t try any tricks and I won’t hurt you—agreed? No reason we can’t get along very nicely while the Master is away—is there?”
When the man had gone, Larry turned dispiritedly to the tray. He didn’t feel like eating; yet he had eaten so little in the last four days that he was tormented with hunger. The final ignominy was that he couldn’t even get his boot on with one hand. He took the dishes off the tray, listlessly. Then he raised his eyebrows; instead of the usual dried meat strips and coarse bread, there was some sort of grilled fish, smoking hot, and a cup of the same chocolate-like drink he had had in the Trade City.
Awkwardly, with his free hand, but hungrily, he gobbled down the fish, even gnawing on the bones. It was an unfamiliar fish and had a strange tang, but he was too hungry to be particular. He leaned back, sipping the drink slowly. He wondered about the change. Perhaps Cyrillon— who obviously was somewhat afraid of him since the episode with the crystal—considered him valuable as a hostage and, seeing the coarser food left uneaten, had decided he had to feed him better, and keep him in good health and good spirits.
The light from the high window crept across the floor. The shadows were pale purple, the light pink and sparkling. Strange motes danced in the pink beam.
Larry, feeling full and comfortably sleepy, leaned back, watching the motes. He realized suddenly that on each of the motes a tiny man rode, pink and purple and carrying an infinitesimal spear that looked like a fiber of saffron. Fascinated, incurious, he watched the tiny men slide down the sunbeam and mass on the floor. They formed into regiments, and still they kept sliding down the beam of pink light, until their small forms covered the floor. Larry blinked and they seemed to merge and melt away.
A huge black insect, almost the width of Larry’s hand, stuck his quivering head from a hole in the floor. He waggled huge phosphorescent whiskers at Larry and spoke… and to Larry’s listless interest, the bug was speaking perfect Terran.
“You’re drugged, you know,” the bug said in a high, shaky voice. “It must have been in the food. Of course, that’s why it was so much better than usual this time, so you’d be sure to eat it.”
The pink and purple men reappeared on the floor and swarmed over the bug, shrilling in incomprehensible voices, nonsense syllables: “An chrya morgobush! Travertina fo mibbsy!”
As each little man touched the bug’s phosphorescent tendrils, he burst into a puff of green smoke.
The door swung open, invitingly. Someone said in the distance, “No tricks this time, hah?”
The man was standing there, and the twilight in the room darkened, brightened again into dawn. The man with the whip jeered from a corner. The little pink and purple men were crawling all over him and Larry laughed aloud to see his jailer covered with the swarming creatures; one of them disappeared into his pocket, another did a hornpipe on the man’s bald head. Dimly he felt someone bend over him, shove up his closed eyelid. How could he see with closed eyes? He laughed at the absurdity of it.
“No tricks,” said the jailer again; and all the little pink and purple men shouted in chorus, “ ‘No tricks,’ he said!”
Behind the man the door opened and Kennard Alton, in dark-green cloak and a drawn dagger in his hand, stood there. The little pink and purple men swarmed up his legs and nearly blotted out his figure. He raised the dagger and it turned into a bunch of pink tulips as he brought it down toward the old bandit’s back. Larry heard himself laugh, but the laugh came out like a trumpetblast as the pink tulips plunged into the man’s back and a great flight of blackbirds gushed out, screaming wildly. Kennard kicked the fallen man, who disappeared into a swarming regiment of little pink and purple men laughing in isolated notes like small bells. Then Kennard strode across the room. The purple men swarmed up him, sat astride his nose, soared down the sunbeams, as Kennard stood over Larry.
“Come on! Every minute we’re here, there’s danger! Somebody might come. I’m not sure that old fellow’s the only guard in the castle!”
Larry looked up at him and laughed idly. The little pink and purple m
annikin on Kennard’s nose was climbing up, digging footholds in Kennard’s chin with a tiny ax of green light. Larry laughed again.
“Brush the gremlins off your chin first.”
“Zandru!” Kennard bent over, pink tulips cascading from the front of his shirt. His hands clasped on Larry’s shoulders like nutcrackers. “I want some nuts,” Larry said, and giggled.
“Damn you, get up and come with me.”
Larry blinked. He said clearly, in Terran, “You’re not really here, you know. Any more than the little pink and purple gremlins are here. You’re a figment of my imagination. Go away, figment. A figment with purple pigment.”
The figment bent over Larry. In his hands there seemed to be a bowl of chili with beans. He began throwing it at Larry, handful by handful. It was unpleasant; Larry’s head hurt and the beans, dripping off his chin, hurt like hard slaps. He yelled in Darkovan, “Save the beans! They’re too hard! We might better eat them!”
The vision-Kennard straightened as if he had been knifed. He muttered, “Shallavan! But why did they give it to Larry? He’s no telepath! Did they believe—”
Larry protested as Kennard turned into a steamshovel and lifted him sidewise. The next thing he knew, water was streaming down his face and Kennard Alton, white as a sheet, was standing and staring at him.
It was Kennard. He was real.
Larry said shakily “I—I thought you were a—a steamshovel. Is it—”
He looked down at the floor of the room. The old man lay there, blood caked on his leather jacket, and Larry hastily turned away. “Is he dead?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Kennard said grimly, “but we’ll both be dead unless we get out of here before the bandits get back. Where’s your other boot?”
“I threw it at him.” Larry’s head was splitting. “I missed.”
“Oh, well—” Kennard said, deprecatingly, “you aren’t used to this sort of thing. Get it on again—” he broke off. “What in the devil—” He surveyed the leather harness, anger in his eyes. “Zandru’s hells, what a filthy contrivance!” He drew his dagger and cut through the leather. Larry’s hand, numb and cramped, fell lifeless to his side. He could not move the fingers, and Kennard, swearing under his breath, knelt to help him with the boot.
Larry realized that he had no idea how long he had been drugged. He had a vague sort of memory of his jailer having come in once or twice before, but was not sure. He was still too dazed to do more than stand, swaying and weak, before Kennard.
“How did you come to be here? How did you find me?”
“You were taken for me,” Kennard said briefly. “Could I leave you to face the fate they meant for me? It was my responsibility to find you.”
“But how? And why did you come alone?”
“We were in rapport through the crystal,” Kennard said, “so I could trail you. I came alone, because we knew that with any assault in strength, they’d probably kill you at once. That can wait till later! Right now, we still have to get out of this place before Cyrillon and his devils come back!”
“I saw them ride away,” Larry said slowly. “I think they’re all gone except that one old man.”
“No wonder they doped you, then,” Kennard said. “They’d be afraid you’d play some telepathic trick. Most people are afraid of the Altons, though they wouldn’t know if you were old enough to have the laran—the power. I don’t have much of it myself. But let’s get out of here!”
Carefully he went to the door and opened it a fraction. “The way he yelled, if there was anyone within shouting distance, they’d be all over us,” Kennard said. “I think maybe you’re right. They all must have gone.”
Carefully, they came out into the corridor; walking on tiptoe, stole down the long stairs. Once Kennard muttered, “I hope we don’t meet anyone! If I don’t go out the way I came in, it would be damned easy to get lost in this place!”
Larry had not realized how immense this bandit stronghold was. He came out of the prison room wavering, unsteady on his feet so that Kennard had to take hold of his arm and brace him until he could stand without shaking. Still groggy from the drug, it seemed that they hurried through, miles of corridors, starting at every distant sound, flattening themselves against the walls when once something like a step echoed at the bottom of a flight of stairs. But it had died in the distance and the old castle was silent again, brooding.
A great gate loomed before them and Kennard, shoving Larry back against the wall, peered out, sniffing the wind like a hunter. He said, tersely, “Seems quiet enough. We’ll chance it. I don’t know where the other gates are. I saw them ride away and took the chance.”
The fresh air, bitterly cold, seemed to bite at Larry’s bones, but it cleared the last traces of the drug from his head, and he stood staring around. Behind them, a high steep mountain face towered, rocky, speckled faintly with a scruff of underbrush and trees. Before them the narrow trail led away downward, through the valleys and hills, through the mountains where they had come.
Kennard said, swiftly, “Come on—we’ll make a dash for it. If anyone’s watching from those windows—” He made an edgy gesture upward toward the bleak castle face behind them. “If that old fellow isn’t dead, and there are other guards, we’ve got maybe an hour before they start beating the woods for us.”
He poised, said briefly, “Now—run,” and raced across the yard toward the gates, Larry following. His arm ached fiercely where it had been strapped, and he was shaky on his feet, but even so, he reached the edge of the forest only a few seconds after Kennard, and the Darkovan boy looked at him a little less impatiently. They stood there, breathing hard, looking at each other in wordless question. What next?
“There’s only one road through these mountains,” Kennard said, “and that’s the one the bandits used. We could follow it—keeping in sight of it, and hiding if we heard anyone. There’s an awful lot of forest between here and home—they couldn’t search it all. But”—he gestured—“I think they have watch-towers too, all through this country along the road. We ought to stay under cover of the trees, night and day, if we take that route. This whole stretch of country—” he stopped, thinking hard, and Larry saw vividly, in his mind’s eye, the terrible journey over chasms and crags which had brought him here. Kennard nodded.
“That’s why they don’t guard their stronghold, of course; they think themselves guarded well enough by the mountain trail. You need good, mountain-bred, trail-broken horses to make it at all. I left my own horse on the other side of the mountain ridge. Somebody’s probably picked her up by now. I’d hoped—”
The deep throat of an alarm bell suddenly clanged, raising echoes in the forest; a bird cried out noisily and flew away, and Kennard started, swearing under his breath.
“They’ve roused the whole castle—there must have been some of them left there!” he said, tensely, gripping Larry’s arm. “In ten minutes this whole part of the woods will be alive with them! Come on!”
He ran—feeling twigs catch and hold at his clothing, stumbling into burrows and ridges, his breath coming short in the bitter cold. Before him Kennard dodged and twisted, half doubling back once and again, plunging through the trackless trees, and Larry, stumbling and racing in desperate haste to keep up, his head pounding, fled after him.
It seemed hours before Kennard dropped into a little hollow made by the fallen branches of a tree. Larry dropped at his side, his head falling forward against the icy-wet grass. For a few moments all that he could do was to breathe. Slowly the pounding of his heart calmed to something like normal and the darkness cleared from before his eyes. He raised himself half on his elbow, but Kennard jerked him down again.
“Lie flat!”
Larry was only too glad to obey. The world was still spinning; after a moment it spun completely away.
When he came up to consciousness again, Kennard was kneeling at his side, head raised, his ear cocked for the wind.
“They may have trackers on o
ur trail,” he said, tersely. “I thought I heard— Listen!”
At first Larry’s ears, not trained to woodcraft, heard nothing. Then, very far away, lifting and rising in a long eerie wail, a shrill banshee scream that grew in intensity until his ears vibrated with the sound and he clasped his hands to his head to shut out the sheer torture of the noise. It faded away; rose again in another siren wail. He looked at Kennard; the older boy was stark white.
“What is it?” Larry whispered.
“Banshees,” Kennard said, and his voice was a gasp. “They can track anything that lives—and they’ll scent our body warmth. If they get wind of us we’re done for!” He swore, gasping, his voice dying away in a half-sob. “Damn Cyrillon—damn him and his whole evil crew—Zandru whip them with scorpions in his seventh hell—Naotalba twist their feet on their ankles—” His voice rose to a half-scream of hysteria. He looked white with exhaustion. Larry gripped his shoulders and shook him, hard.
“That won’t help! What will?”
Kennard gasped and was silent. Slowly the color came back into his face and he listened, motionless, to the siren wail that rose and fell.
“About a mile off,” he said tersely, “but they run like the wind. If we could change our smell—”
“They’re probably tracking by my clothing-smell,” Larry said. “They took away my cloak. If I—”