 STORM OVER WARLOCK by Andre Norton, Chapter 11 This is a LibriVox Recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by RJ Davis, STORM OVER WARLOCK by Andre Norton, Chapter 11, The Witch There are patches of light in the inner valley marking these fluorescent plants, some creeping at ground level, others tall as saplings. On other nights, Shan had welcomed that wan radiance, but now he lay in as relaxed a position as possible, marking each of those potential betrayers as he tried to counterfeit the attitude of sleep and at the same time plan out his route. He had purposely settled in a pool of shadow, the Wolverines beside him, and he thought that the bulk of the animal's bodies would cover his own withdrawal when the time came to move. One arm lying limply across his middle was in reality clutching to him an intricate arrangement of small hide straps which he had made by sacrificing most of the remainder of his painfully acquired throngs. Their trap must be set in place soon. Now that he had charted a path to the critical point avoiding all light plants, Shan was ready to move. The tearing pressure's hand on Taggy's head in the one impurity command, the Wolverine was apt to obey. The order to stay where he was. Shan set up and gave the same voiceless instruction to Togi. Standing instowed of the hollow, a worm's progress to that narrow way along the cliff top. The path which anyone or anything coming up from the sea gate on the beach would have to pass in order to witness the shoreline occupied by the half-built outrigger. So much of his plan was based upon luck and guesses, but those were all Shan had, and as he worked at the stretching of his snare, the tearing heart pounded, and he tensed at every sound out of the night. Having tested all the anchoring of his neck, he tugged at his last knot and then crouched the listen not only with his ears, but with all his strength of mind and body. Pound of weight, whistle of wind, the sleepy complaint of some bird, a regular splashing, on the fish in the lagoon, or what he awaited. The tearing retreated as noiselessly as he had come, heading for the hollow where he had bedded down. He reached there breathless, his heart pumping, his mouth dry as if he had been racing. Taggy stirred and thrust a nose inquiringly against Shan's arm. But the Wolverine made no sound as if he too realized that some menace lay beyond the rim of the valley. Would that other come up the path Shan had trapped, or had he been wrong? Was the enemy already stalking him from the other beach? The grip of his stunner was slippery and his damp hands. He hated this waiting. The canoe, his work on it had been a careless blushing, better to have the job done right, while it was perfectly clear now how he had been mistaken. His whole work plan was wrong. He could see the right way of doing things laid out as clear as a blueprint in his mind. A picture in his mind. Shan stood up and both Wolverines moved uneasily, though neither made a sound. A picture in his mind, but this time he wasn't asleep. He wasn't dreaming a dream to be used for his own defeat, only that other could not know this. The pressure which had planted the idea of new work to be done in his mind, an idea of one part of him accepted as fact, had not taken warning from his move. He was supposed to be under control. The Terran was sure of that. All right, so he would play that part. He must if he would entice the trapper into his trap. He holstered his stunner, walked out into the open, paying no heed now to the patches of light through which he must pass on his way to the path his own feet had already worn to the boat beach. As he went, Shan tried to counterfeit what he believed would be the gate of a man under compulsion. Now he was on the rim, fronting the downed slope, fighting against his desire to turn and see for himself if anything had climbed behind. The canoe was all wrong. A bad job which he must make better at once so that in the morning he would be free of this island prison. The pressure of that other's will grew stronger and the Terran read into that the overconfidence which he believed would be part of the enemy's character. The one who was sending him to destroy his own work had no suspicion that the victim was not entirely malleable. Ready to be used as he himself would use a knife or a force axe. Shan strode steadily down slope. With a small spur of fear, he knew that in a way that unseen other was right. The pressure was taking over even though he was awake this time. The Terran tried to wield his hand to his stunner, but his fingers fell instead on the heel of his knife. He drew the blade as panic seeped in his head, chilling him from within. He had underestimated the other's power. And that panic blared into open fight, making him forget his careful plans. Now he must wrench free from this control. The knife was moving to slice a hide lacing, directed by his hand but not his will. A soundless gas, a place of dismay rocked him. But neither was his gas nor his dismay. That pressure snapped off, he was free. But the other wasn't. Knife still in fist, Shan turned and ran up slope. He torched in his other hand. He could see a shape now rithing, fighting, outlined against a light and fearing that the stranger might win free and disappear, the Terran spotlighted the captive in the beam, reckless of throb or enemy reinforcements. The other crouched, plainly startled by the sudden burst of light. Shan stopped abruptly. He had not really built up any mental picture of what he had expected to find in his snare, but this prisoner was a weirdly alien to him as he thronged. The light on the torch was reflected off a skin which glittered as a scale, glittered with a brilliance of jewels and bands and coils of color, spreading from the throat down the chest, spiraling about upper arms around waist at thighs, as if the stranger were a treasure house of gems as part of a living body. Except for those patterned loops, coils and bands, the body had no clothing. Though a belt about a slender middle supported a pair of pouches and some odd implements held in loops. Roughly the figure was more humanoid than the throats. The upper limbs were not too unlike Shan's arms, though the hands had four digits of equal length instead of five. But the features were nonhuman, closer to Charon in contour. It had large eyes, blazing yellow in the dazzle of the flesh, with vertical slits of green for pupils, a nose united with the jaw to make a stout. And above the dome forehead, a sharp beam point of raised spiky growth extended back and down until between the shoulder blades it widened and expanded to resemble a pair of wings. The captive no longer struggled, but set quietly in the tangle of the snare Shan had set, watching the terrain steadily as if there were no difficulty in seeing through the breach of the beam to the man who held it. And oddly enough, Shan experienced no repulsion, gorgeous reptilian appearance as he had upon first sighted the beetle thralls. On impulse, he put down his torch on a rock. They walked into the light to face squarely the thing out of the sea. Still eyeing Shan, the captive raised one limb and gave an absent minded tug to the belt at war. Shan, noting that gesture, were struck by a wild surmise, leading him to study the prisoner more narrowly. Allowing for the alien structure of bones, the nonhuman skin, this creature was delicate, graceful, in its way beautiful, with a fidelity of limb which backed up his suspicion. Moved by no pressure from the other, but by his own will and sense of fitness, Shan stooped to cut the control line of his snare. The captive continued to watch as Shan pieced his blade and then held out his hand. Yellow eyes, never blinking since his initial appearance, regarded him, not with any trace of fear or dismay, but with a calm measurement which was curiously based upon a strong belief in its own superiority. He did not know how he knew, but Shan was certain that the creature out of the sea was still entirely confident, that it made no fight because it did not conceive of any possible danger from him. And again, oddly enough, he was not irritated by this unconscious arrogance, rather he was intrigued and amused. Friends, Shan used the basic galactic speech devised by survey and the free traders, somatics which depended upon the proper inflection of voice and tone to project meaning when the words were formed. The other made no sound and the Terran began to wonder if his captive had any audible form of speech. He withdrew a stepper to then pulled at the snare, drawing the cords away from the creature's slender ankles. Rolling the thongs into a ball, he tossed a crude nap back over his shoulder. Friends, he repeated again, showing his empty hand, trying to give that one word the proper inflection, hoping the other could read his peaceful intent in his features if not by his speech. In one life, flowing movement, the alien arose, fully erect to warlock him, had a frail appearance. Shan, for his breed, was not tall, but the native was still smaller, not more than five feet. That stiff V of head crest is topping Shan's shoulder. Whether any of these fittings that he felt could be a weapon, the Terran had no way of telling. However, the other made no move to draw any of them. Instead, one of the four digit hands came up. Shan felt the feather touch his strange fingertips on his chin, across his lips, up his cheeks, to the last press firmly on his forehead at a spot just between the eyebrows. What followed was communication of a sort, not in words or in any describable flow of thoughts. There was no feeling of enmity, at least nothing strong enough to be called that. Curiosity, yes, and then a growing doubt, not of the Terran himself, but of the other preconceived ideas concerning him. Shan was other than the native had judged him, and the stranger was disturbed, that self-confidence a little rough. And also Shan was right in his gift. He smiled, his amusement growing, not aimed at his companion on his clip top, but at him still. For he was dealing with a woman, a very young woman, and someone as fully feminine in her way as any human girl could be. France, he asked for the third time, but the other still exuded a weariness, a weariness mixed with surprise, and a tenuous message which passed between them, then astounded Shan. To this forelocking out of the night, he was not following the proper pattern of male behavior at all. He should have been in awe of the other merely because of her sex. A diffidence rather than an assumption of equality should have colored his response. Judged by her standards, at last he caught a flash of anger at this preposterous attitude of his. Then her curiosity won, but there was still no reply to his question. The fingertip no longer made contact between them. Stepping back, her hands now reached for one of the pouches at her belt. Shan watched that move carefully, and because he did not trust her too far, he whistled. Her head came up. She might be dumb, but plainly she was not deaf. And she gazed down into the hollow as the Wolverines answered his summons with grounds. Her profile reminded Shan of something for an instant, but it should have been golden yellow instead of silver with two jewel patterns bringing him to sound. Yes, that small plaque he had seen in the cabin of one of the ship's officers, a very old terror and legend. Dragon, the officer had named the creature. Only that one had possessed a serpent's body, a lizard's legs and wings. Shan gave a sudden start of where his thoughts had made him careless or had she in some way led him into that bypass, the memory for her own purposes. Because now she held some object in the curl of her curl fingers regarding him with those unblinking yellow eyes. Eyes, eyes. Shan dimly heard the alarm cry of the Wolverines. He tried to snap-draw his stunner, but it was too late. There was a haze about him hiding the rocks. He outed Bali with his radius plants, the night sky, the bright beam of the torch. Now he moved through that haze as one walks through a dream approaching nightmare, guiding with an effort as if waiting through a geetering flood. Sound, sight, one after another, those senses were taken from him. Desperately, Shan held to one thing, his own sense of identity. He was Shan Landy, tearing bread out of tire of the survey service. Some part of him repeated those facts with fast urgency against an almost overwhelming force which goes to defeat that awareness of self, making him nothing but a tool or a weapon for another's use. The tearing foundlessly but fearlessly on a boundless ground which was within him, knowing in a detached way that his body obeyed another's command. I am Shan. He cried without audible speech. I am myself. I have two hands, two legs. I think for myself. I am a man. And to that came an answer of sorts, a blow of will striking at his resistance, a will which struggled to drown him before every, leaving behind it a faint suggested of bewilderment of a dawn of concern. I am a man. He hurled at a search and as you might have trust me, was one of the crude spears he had used against the Throne. For against what he faced now, his weapons were as crude as spears from his blasters. I am Shan Lante, tearing, man. These were facts. No haze could sweep them from his mind or take away that heritage. And again, there was a lightning of the pressure, the slight recoil which could only be a prelude to another assault upon his last stronghold. He clutched three facts to him as a shield, groping for others which might have afforded a weapon or prebuttal. Dreams, these were lock-ins dealt in and through dreams. And the option of dreams are facts. His name, his breed, his set, these were facts. And Warlock itself was a fact. The earth under his boots was a fact. The water which washed around the island was a fact. The air he breathed was a fact. Flesh, blood, bones, facts, all of them. Now he was a struggling identity imprisoned in a rebel body. But that body was real. He tried to feel it. Blood pumped from his heart. His lungs filled and emptied. He struggled to feel these processes. With a terrifying shock, the envelope which had held him vanished. Shan was choking, struggling in water. He flailed out with his arms, kicked his legs. One hand grated painfully against stone. Hardly knowing what he did, but fighting for his life, Shan caught at that rock and drew his head out of water. Copping and gasping half-drowned, he was weak with the panic of his close brush with death. For a long moment, he could only cling to the rock which had saved him. Reaching and dazed as the water worked about his body, a current tugging on his trailing legs. There was light of his sword here. Patches of green which glowed with the same subdued light as the bushes of the outer world. For he was no longer under the night sky. A rock roof was but inches over his head. He must be in some cave or tunnel under the surface of the sea. Again, a gust of panic shook him as he felt trapped. The water continued to pull at Shan, and in his weakened condition, it was a temptation to yield to that pull. The more he fought it, the more he was exhausted. At last, the tear turned on his back, trying to float with the stream. Sure, he could no longer battle it. Luckily, those few inches of space above the surface of the water continued, and he had air to breathe. But the fear of that ending, of being swept under the surface, chewed at his nerve. And his bodily danger burned away the last of the spell which had held him, brought him into this place, wherever it might be. Was it only his heightened imagination or had the current grown swifter? Shan tried to gauge the speed of his passage by the way the patches of green light slipped by. Now he turned and began to swim slowly, feeling as if his arms were leavened weights. His ribs accaged to bind his 18 lungs. Another patch of light, larger, spreading across the roof overhead. Then he was out, out of the tunnel into a cavern so vast that his arching roof looked like a skydome far above his head. But here the patches of light were brighter and they were arranged in odd groups which had a familiar look to them. Only, better than freedom overhead, there was a shore not too distant. Shan swam for that haven, summoning up the last rags of his strength, knowing that if he could not reach it very soon, he was finished. Somehow he made it and lay gasping, his cheeks resting on sand finer than any of the outer world. His fingers digging into it for purchase to drag his body on. But when he collapsed, his legs were still aworced in water. No football could be heard on that sand, but he knew that he was no longer alone. He braced his hands and with painful effort, levered up his body. Somehow he made it to his knees, but he could not stand. Instead, he half-tumbled back so that he faced them from a setting position. Them, there were three of them. The dragon-headed ones with their splendor, dual-set bodies glittering even in this subdued light. Their yellow eyes fashioned on him with a remoteness which did not approach any human emotion, say perhaps that of a cold and limited wonder. But behind them came a form, one he knew by the patterns on her body. Shan clasped his hands about his knees to stop the trembling of his body and eyed them back with all the defiance he could muster. Nor did he doubt that he had been brought here. His body as captive to the will as had been that of a spy or messenger in his crude snare on the island. Well, you have me, he said hoarsely. Now what? His words boomed weirdly out over the water where echoed from the den out of reaches of the cavern. There was no answer. They merely stood watching him. Shan stiffened, determined to hold to his defiance and to that identity which he now knew was his weapon against the powers they used. The one who had somehow drawn in there moved at last, circling around the other three with a suggestion of depotence in her manner. Shan jerked back his head as her hand stretched to touch his face and then guessing that she sought her peculiar form of communication, he submitted to her fingertips. Though now his skin crawled under that light but firm pressure and he shrank from the contact. There were no sensations this time. To his amazement, a concrete inquiry shaped itself in his brain as clear as if the question had been asked aloud. Who are you? Shan, he began vocally and then turned words into thoughts. Shan, Lante, Taren, Man. He made his answer the same which had kept him from succumbing to their complete domination. Name, Shan Lante, Man, Yes. The others accepted those. Taren, that was a question. Did these people have any notion of space travel? Could they understand the concept of another world holding intelligent beings? I come from another world. He tried to make a clear cut picture in his mind. A globe in space, a ship blasting free. Look, the finger still rested between his eyebrows. But with her other hand, the warlock in was pointing up to the dome of the camera. Shan followed her order. He studied those patches of light which had seemed so vaguely familiar at his first sighting, studying them closely to know them for what they were. A star map, a map of the heavens as they could be seen from the outer crust of warlock. Yes, I come from the stars, he answered, booming with a voice. The fingers dropped from his forehead. The scaled head swung around to exchange clansons which were perhaps some unheard communication with the other three. Then the hand was extended again. Come. Fingers fell from his head to his right wrist. Closing there was surprising strength. And some of that strength together with a new energy flowed from them into him. So that he found and tapped his feet as the other drew him up. This concludes a reading of chapter 11, Storm Over Warlock by Andre Norton, chapter 12. This is a Leverbox recording. All Leverbox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit Leverbox.org. Recording by RJ Davis. Storm Over Warlock by Andre Norton, chapter 12. The Vale of Illusion. Perhaps his status was that of a prisoner, but Shan was too tired to press for an explanation. He was content to be left alone in the unusual circular but ruthless room of the structure to which they had brought him. There was a thick mat-like pallet in one corner, short for the length of his body, but softer than any bed he had rested on since he had left the tearing camp before the coming of the throngs. Above him glimmered those patches of light symbolizing the lost stars. He blinked at them until they all ran together in bands like the jewel coils on warlocked-in bodies. Then he slept, greenless light. The tearing awoke with all his senses alert. Some silent alarm might have triggered that instant awareness of himself and his surroundings. There had been no change in the star pattern still overhead. No one had entered the round chamber. Shan rolled over on his mat bed, conscious that all his aches had vanished. Just as his mind was clearly acting, so did his body also respond effortlessly to his demand. He was not aware of any hunger or thirst, though a considerable length of time must have passed since he had made his mysteriously contrived exit from the outer world. In spite of the humidity of the air, his ragged garments had dried on his body. Shan got to his feet, trying to order the sorry remnants of his uniform, eager to be on the move. Though to where and for what purpose he could not have answered. The door through which he had entered remained closed, refusing to yield to his pooch. Shan stepped back, eyeing the distance to the top of the partition between the ruthless rooms. The walls were smooth with the gloss of a seashell's interior, and the exuberant confidence which had been with him since his awakening refused to accept such a minor obstacle. He made two test leaps, both times his fingers striking the wall well below the top of the partition. Shan gathered himself together as might a cat and tried a third time, putting into that effort every last ounce of strength, determination, and will. He made it, though his arms jerked as a way that his body hung from his hands. Then they scrambled, a knee hooked over the top, and he was perched on the wall, able to study the rest of the building. In shape, the structure was unlike anything he had seen on his home world, or reproduced in any of the TrID records of survey accessible to him. The rooms were either circular or oval, each separated from the next five short passage, so that the overall impression was that of 10 strings of beads, radiating from a central knot of one large chamber, all with the uniform, mackered walls and a limited amount of furnishings. As he balanced on the narrow parts, Shan could sight no other movement in the nearest line of rooms, those connected by corridors with his own. He got to his feet to walk the tightrope of the upper walls toward that inner chamber, which was the heart of the Warlock Inn palace, town, apartment dwelling. At least it was the only structure on the island, for he could see the island rim of that smooth soft sand ringing in the bounce. The island itself was curiously symmetrical, a perfect oval, too perfect to be a natural outcrop of sand and rock. There was no day or night here in the cavern. The light from the roof patches remained constantly the same, and that flow was embedded within the building by a soft radiation from the walls. Shan reached the next room in line, hunkering down to see within it. To all appearances, the chamber was exactly the same as the one he had just left. There were the same on the dorm walls, a thick mat bed against the far side, and no indication of whether it was in use or had not been entered for days. He was on the next section of the corridor wall when he caught that faint taint in the air, the very familiar scent of Wolverines. Now it provided Shan with a guide as well as a promise of allies. The next bead room gave him what he wanted. Below him, Toggy and Toggy paced back and forth. They had already torn to bits the sleeping mat, which had been the chamber's single furnishing, and their temper was none too certain. As Shan squatted well above the range of vision, Toggy reared against the opposite wall, his claws finding no hold on the smooth coating of his circus. They were as competently in prison as if they had been dropped into a huge feast bowl, and they were not taking to it kindly. How had the animals been brought here? Down that water tunnel by the same unknown method, he himself had been transported until that almost disastrous awakening in the center of the flood. The Terran did not doubt that the doors of the room were securely fastened as those of his own further down the corridor. For the moment, the Wolverines were safe. He could not breathe it. And he was drawing increasingly certain that if he found any of his native jaders, it would be at the center of that wheel of rooms and quarters. Shan made no attempt to attract the animals' attention, but kept on along his tightrope path. He passed two more rooms, both empty, both differing in no way from those he had already inspected, and then he came to the central chamber, four times as big as any of the rest, and with a much brighter wall light. The Terran crouched. One hand on the surface of the partition top as an additional balance, the other gripping his stunner. For some reason, his captors had not disarmed him. Perhaps they believed they had no necessity to fear his offworld weapon. Have you grown wings? The words formed in his brain, bringing with him a sense of calm, amusement to reduce all his bold aspirations at the level of a child's first staggering stealth. Shan followed his first answering flair of pure irritation. To lose even a fraction of control was to open a door for them. He remained where he was, as if he had never heard that question, surveying the room below with all the impassiveness he could have summoned. Here the walls were no smooth barrier, but honeycombed with niches and a regular pattern, and in each of the niches, the rest of they polished skull, a non-human skull. Only the outlines of those ranked bones were familiar. For just so had looked the great purple red rock for the wheeling pliers issued from the ice occass. A rock island had been fashioned into a skull by design or nature. And upon closer observation, the Terran could see that there was a difference between those ranked skulls. A mutation of color from row to row, a softening of outline, perhaps by the wearing of time. There was also a table of dull black rising from the flooring on legs, which are no more than a few inches high. So that from his present perch, the board appeared to rest on the pavement itself. Behind the table in a row, as shopkeepers might have weighed a customer, three of the Warlockians seated cross-legged on mats, their hands folded primarily before them. And at the side, a fourth, the one who he had trapped on the island. Not one of those spiked heads rose to view him, but they knew that he was there. Perhaps they had known the very instant he had left the room or cell in which they had shut him. And they were so very sure of themselves. Once again, Shan subdued a spark of anger. That same patience with his core of stubborn determination, which had brought him to Warlock, back to his moves now. The Terence swung down, landing lightly on his feet, facing the three behind the table, towering well over them as he stood erect, yet getting no sense of satisfaction from that merely physical fact. You have come. The word sounded as if they might be a part of some polite formula. So he replied in kind and allowed. I have come. Without waiting for their bidding, he dropped into the same cross-legged pose, grounding them now on a more equal level across their dead black table. And why have you come, Star Voyager? That thought seemed to be a concentrated effort from all three residents of any individual questioning. Why did you bring me? He hesitated, trying to think of some polite form of address. Those he knew which were appropriate to their sex on other worlds seemed incongruous when applied to the bizarre figures now facing him. Wise ones, he finally chose. Those unblinking yellow eyes conveyed no emotion. Certainly his human gaze could detect no change of expression on their non-human faces. You are a male. I am, he agreed, not seeing just what that fact had to do with either diplomatic fencing or his experiences of the immediate past. Where then is your thought-guider? Shan puzzled over that conception. Yes, Ted, it's me. I am my own thought-guider. He returned stoutly with all the conviction he could manage to put into that reply. Again, he met a yellow-green stare, but he sensed a change in them. Some of their complacency had ebbed. His reply had been as a stone dropped into a quiet pool, sending ripples out afar to disturb the customary mirror surface of smooth serenity. The star-born one speaks the truth. That came from the warlocked in who had been his first contact. It would appear that he does. The agreement was measured, and Shan knew that he was meant to overhear that. It would seem, readers of The Rogge, the middle one of the triumph barrier that the table spoke now, that all living things do not follow our pattern alike. But that is possible. A male who thinks for himself unguided, who dreams perhaps, or who can understand the truth of dreaming, strange indeed must be his people. Shares of my vision, let us consult the old ones concerning this. For the first time, one of those crested heads moved. The gaze shifted from Shan to the ranks of the skulls, pausing at one. Shan, ready for any wonder, did not portray his amazement when the ivory inhabitant of that particular nest moved, lifted from a small compartment and drifted buoyantly through the air to settle at the right-hand corner of the table. Only when it had safety grounded did the eyes of the warlockian move to another niche on the other side of the curving room. This time bringing up from close to the floor level, a timed darkened skull to occupy the left corner of the table. There was a third stirring from the weird storehouse, a last skull to place between the other two. And now the youngest native rose from her mat to bring a bowl of green crystal. One of her seniors took it in both hands, making a gesture of offering it to all three skulls and then gaze over his rim at the terrace. We shall cast a rod, man who thinks was out of guide. Perhaps then we shall see how strong your dreams are to be bent to your using or to break you for your impudence. Her hands swayed the bowl from side to side and there was an answering whisper from its interior as if the contents slid loosely there. Then one of her companions reached forward and gave a quick tap to the bottom of that container, spilling out upon the table a shower of brightly colored slivers each an inch or so long. Shan, staring at the display in bewilderment, saw that in spite of the seeming carelessness of that toss, the small needles had spread out on the blank surface to form a design in arrangement and color. And he wondered how that skillful trick had been accomplished. All three of the Warlockians met their heads to study the grouping of the tiny sticks. The young subordinate leaning forward also, her eagerness less well-controlled than her elders. And now it was as if a curtain had fallen between the Terran and the aliens. All since the communication which had been with him since he had entered the skull line chamber was summarily cut off. A hand moved, making the jewel pattern, racializing wrists and extending up the arm, flash subdued fire. Fingers swept the sticks back into the bowl. Four pairs of yellow eyes raised to regard Shan once more. But the blanket of the withdrawal still held. The youngest Warlockian took the bowl from the elder who held it, stood for a long moment with it resting between her palms, fixing Shan with an unreadable stare. Then she came toward him, one of those at the table put out a restraining hand. This time Shan did not master his start as he heard the first audible voice which had not been his own. The skull at the left hand on the table, by its yellow color, the oldest of those summoned from the niches was moving. Moving because his jaw gaited and then snapped, emitting a faint bleep which might have been a word or two. She, who would have halted the young Warlockian's advance, withdrew her hand, then her fingers curled in an unmistakable beckoning gesture. Shan came to the table, but he could not quite force himself near that chattering skull even though he had stopped his biggest feats. The bowl of sticks was offered to him, still no message from mind to mind, but he could guess at what they wanted of him. The crystal substance was not cool to the touch as he had expected, rather it was warm as a living flesh might feel. And the colored sticks filled about two-thirds of the interior lying all mixed together without any order. Shan concentrated on recalling the ceremony the Warlockian had used before the first toss. She had offered the bowl to the skulls in turn, the skulls, but he was no consulter of skulls. Still holding the bowl close to his chest, Shan looked up over the roofless walls at the star map on the roof of the cavern. There, that was Ramam. And to its left, just a little above with Tyre's system, first won the stark world of his birth, and of which he had only few good memories, but of which he was a part. The chair had raised the bowl to that spot of light with Mark Tyre's pale sun. Smiling with a wide twist, he lowered the bowl. And on the impulse of pure defiance, he offered it to the skull that had shattered. He immediately realized that the move had had an electric effect upon the alias. Slowly at first, and in faster, he began swing the bowl from side to side, the needle slipping, mixing within. And as he slung it, Shan held it out over the expanse of the table. The Warlockian who had given him the bowl was the one who struck it on the bottom, causing a grain of splinters. To Shan's astonishment, Mixer's Ed bent in the container. They once more formed a pattern. And not the same pattern the Warlockians had consulted earlier. The daphnian curtain between them vanished. He was in touch, mind to mind, once again. So be it, the center Warlockians spread out her four-fingered thumbless hands above the scattered needles. What is red is red. Again, the formula. He caught a course of answer from the others. What is red is red. To the dreamer of the dream. Let the dream be known for what it is. And there is life. Let's dream encompass the dreamers falsely, and all is lost. Who can question the wisdom of the old ones? Ask their leader. We are those who read the messages they send out of their mercy. This is a strange thing they bid us to do, man. Open for you our own initiate road to the veil of illusion. That way had never been for males who dream without set purpose and have not the ability to know true from false. Have not the courage to face their dreams to the truth. Do so if you can. There was a place of mockery in that combined with something else. Stronger than this safe, not as strong as hatred, but certainly not friendly. She held out her hands and shan'ts on now, lying on a slowly closing palm, a disk such as one Thorwald had shown him. The Terran had only one moment of fear and then came blackness. More absolute than the dark of any night he had ever known. Light once more. Green light with an odd simmering quality to it. The skull line walls were gone. There were no walls. No building held him. Shan showed forward and his boots sank in sand. That smooth satin sand which had rained the island in the cavern. But he was certain he was no longer on that island, even within that cavern. Though far above him there was still a dome of roof. The source of the green simmer lay to his left. Somehow he found himself reluctant to turn and face it. That would commit him to action, but Shan turned. A veil? A veil of rippling green material? No, rather mist or light. A veil depending from some source so far over his head that its origin was hidden in the upper gloom. A veil which was a barrier he must cross. With every nerve protesting, Shan walked forward, unable to keep back. He flung up his arm to protect his face as he marched into that stove. It was warm and the gas, if gas it was, left no slick of moisture on his skin in spite of its foggy consistency. And it was no veil or curtain for although he was already well into the murk, he saw no end to it. Finally he trudged on, unable to sight anything but the rolling billows of green. Pausing now and again to go down on one knee and pat the sand underneath reassured at the reality of that footing. And when he meant nothing menacing, Shan began to relax. His heart no longer labored, he made no move to draw the stunner or knife. For he was and for what purpose he had no idea. But there was a purpose in this and that the warlockians were behind it, he did not doubt. The initiates rode, the leader has said, and the conviction was steady in his mind that he faced some tests of alien devising. A cavern with a green veil, his memory awoke, Thorvald's dream. Shan thought, trying to remember how the other had described this place. So he was enacting Thorvald's dream. And could the survey officer now be caught in Shan's dream in turn? Climbing up somewhere into the nose slit of a skull shaped mountain? Green fog without end and Shan lost in it. How long had he been here? Shan tried to reckon time, the time since he's coming into the water world of the starred cavern. He realized that he had not eaten or drank, nor desired to do so either, nor did he now. Yet he was not weak. In fact, he'd never felt such tireless energy as possessed his fair body. Was this all a dream? His threatened drowning and the underground stream a nightmare. Yet there was a pattern in this. Just as there had been a pattern in the needles he had spilled across the table. One even led to another with discernible logic. Because he had tossed that particular pattern, he had come here. According to the ambiguous instructions or warnings of the warlock in which his safety in this place would depend upon his ability to tell true dreams from false. But how? Why? So far he had done nothing except walk through a green fog and for all he knew, he might well be traveling in circles. Because there was nothing else to do, Shan walked on. His boots pressing sand, rising from each step with a small sucking sound. Then, as he stood to search for some indication of a path or road which might guide him, his ears caught the slightest of noises. Other small sucking whispers. He was not the only warfare in this place. This concludes chapter 12, Storm Over Warlock by Andre Norton, chapter 13. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by RJ Davis. Storm Over Warlock by Andre Norton, chapter 13, He Who Dreams. The mist would not a quiet thing. It billowed and curled until it appeared to have concealed darker shadows, any one of which could be an enemy. Shan remained hunkered on the sand, every sense abnormally alert, watching the fog. He was still sure he could hear sounds which marked the progress of another. Whatever. One of the Warlockians tracking him to spy, or was there some prisoner like himself lost out there in the merc? Could it be Thorvald? Now the sound had ceased. He was not even sure from what direction it had first come. Perhaps that other was listening now as intent upon locating him. Shan ran his tongue over dry lips. The impulse to call out to try and contact any fellow traveler here was strong. Only hard-learned caution kept him silent. He got to his hands and knees uncertain as to his previous direction. Shan crept. Someone expecting a man walking a wreck might be suitably distracted by the arrival of a half-seen figure on all fours. He halted again to listen. He had been right. The sound of a very muffled football, or footballs, carried to his ears. He was sure that the sound was louder, that the unknown was approaching. Shan stood, his hand close to his center. He was almost tempted to spray that beam blindly before him, hoping to hit the unseen by Shan. A shadow, something more swift than a shadow, more than one of the tricks the curling fog played on eyes, was moving with purpose and straight for him. Still, prudence restrained Shan from calling out. The figure grew clear. A tear, it could be four-balled. But remembering how they had last parted, Shan did not hurry to meet him. That shadow-shape stretched out a long arm and a sweep, as if to pull aside some of the vapor concealing them from each other. Then Shan shivered as if that fog had suddenly turned into the drive of frigid snow. For the mist did roll back, so that the two of them stood in an irregular clearing in a smith, and he did not front four-balled. Shan was caught up in the ice grip of an old fear frozen by him, but somehow clinging to a hope that he did not see the unbelievable. Those hands drawing the lice of a whip back into striking readiness. A brutal nose, broken as skew. A blaster burned puckering across cheeks to misshapen ears. That evil gloating grin of anticipation. Flick, flick. The slight dance of the lice in a master's hand as those thick fingers tightened about the stalk of the whip. In a moment it would whirl up to lie a ribbon of fire about Shan's defenseless shoulders. Then Logali would laugh and laugh. His sadistic mirth echoed by those other men who played jackals to his rogue lion. Other men, Shan shook his head daisily, but he did not stand again in the dump-side bar of the big strike. And he was no longer a terrorized juncture, fit meat for Logali's amusement. Only the whip rose, the lice curled out, catching Shan just as it had that time years ago, delivering a red slice of pure agony. But Logali was dead. Shan's mind screamed fighting frantically against the evidence of his eyes, of that pain in his chest and shoulder. The dump-vully had been spaced by off-world miners, now also dead, whose claims he had tried to jump out in the Ajax system. Logali drew back the lice, preparing to strike again. Shan faced a man five years dead who walked and fought. Or Shan bit hard upon his lower lip, holding desperately to sane reasoning. Did he indeed face anything? Logali was the ancient devil of his boyhood produced anew by the witchery of warlock. Or had Shan himself been led to recreate both the man and the circumstances of the first meeting with fear as a weapon to pull the creator down. Dream true or false, Logali was dead. Therefore, this dream was false. It had to be. The tearing began to walk toward that grinning ogre, rising out of his old nightmares. His hand was no longer on the butt of his stunner, but swung loosely at his side. He saw the coming lice, the wicked promise in those small, narrowed eyes. This was Logali at the acme of his strength when he was most to be feared, as he had continued to exist over the years in the depths of the boy child's memory. But Logali was not alive, only in a dream could he be. For the second time, the last bit at Shan, curling about his body to dissolve. There was no alteration in Logali's grin. As much as the arm drew back as he aimed the third blow, Shan continued to walk forward, bringing up one hand, not to strike at that sweating, bristly jaw, but as if to push the other out of his path. And in his mind, he held one thought. This was not Logali. It could not be. 10 years had passed since they had met, and for five of those years, Logali had been dead. Here was poor lock-in wittery to be met by St. Teran Reasoning. Shan was alone. The mist which had formed walls enclosed him again, but still there was a smarting brand across his shoulder. Shan drew aside the rags of his uniformed blouse to discover a wilt, raw and rare, and seeing that his unbelief was shaken. When he had believed in Logali and in Logali's weapon, the other had reality enough to strike that blow, make the lash cut deep. But when the Teran had faced the phantom with the truth, then neither Logali or his lash existed. Shan shivered, trying not to think what might lie before him. Visions out of nightmares we could put on substance. He had dreamed of Logali in the past many times, but he had had other dreams just to strike them. Must he front those nightmares, all of them? Why? To amuse his captors or to prove their contention that he was a fool to challenge the powers of such mistresses of illusion? How did they know just what dreams to use in order to break him? Or did he himself furnish the actors and the action projecting old tears in this mist as it tried to take projected a story in three dimensions for the amusement of the viewer? Dream true. Was this progress through the mist also a dream? Dreams with them dreams? Shan put his hand to his head, uncertain, badly shaken, but that stubborn core of determination within him was still holding. Next time he would be prepared at once to face down any resurrected menomery. Walking slowly, pausing to listen for the slightest sound, which might herald the coming of a new illusion, Shan tried to guess which of his nightmares might come to face him. But he was to learn that there was more than one kind of dream. Stealed against old fears, he was met by another emotion altogether. There was a fluttering in the air, a little crooning cry which pulled at his heart. Without any conscious thought, Shan held out his hand, whistling on two notes they call, which his lips appeared to remember more quickly than his mind. The shape which went through the fog came straight to his waiting hole, tore at long, walled away hurt with his once familiar beauty. It flew with a lift, one of the delicately tended wings was injured, had never healed straight, but the syrup nestled into the hollow of Shan's two palms and looked up at him with all the old liquid truss. Trout, trout, he cradled the tiny creature carefully, regarded with joy his feathered body, the curl plumes of his proudly held head, felt the silken patting of those infantestimal claws against his protecting fingers. Shan sat down in the sand, hardly daring to breathe. Trapped again, the wonder of this never-to-be-hopeful return filled him with a surge of happiness, almost too great to bear, which hurt in its way with as great a pain as Logali's life. It was a pain rooted in love, not fear and hate. Logali's life. Shan trembled. Trav raised one of those small claws towards the tearing space, creating a soft caressing cry for recognition, for protection, trying to be a part of Shan's life once more. Trav, how could he bear to will Trav into nothingness to bear to summon up another harsh memory, which squeaked Trav away? Trav was the only thing Shan had ever known, which he could love wholeheartedly, that had answered his love with a return gift of affection so much greater than the light body he now held. Trav, he whispered softly, then he made his great effort against the second and far more subtle attack. With the same agony, which he had known years earlier, he resolutely summoned a bitter memory. Set nursing was more a broken thing which died in pain he could not eat, aware himself of every moment of that pain. And what was worse, this time there clung that nagging little doubt. What if he had not forced a memory? Perhaps he could have taken Trav with him unhurt, alive at least for a while. Shan covered his face with these now empty hands. To see a nightmare flicker out after facing squarely up to his tear, that was no great task. To give up a dream which was part of a lost heaven, that cut cruelly deep. The siren dragged himself to his feet, drained and weary, stumbling on. Was there no end to this aimless circling through a world of green smoke? He shambled ahead, moving his feet leddenly. How long had he been here? There was no division in time, just the unchanging light which was a part of the fog through which he plotted. Then he heard more than any shuffle of foot across sand, any crooning of a long dead syrup. The rising and falling of a voice, a human voice, not quite singing or reciting, but something between the two. Shan paused, searching his memory, a memory which seemed bruised for the proper answer to match that sound. But though he recalls scene after scene out of the years, that voice did not trigger any return from his path. He turned towards his source, dullly determined to get over quickly the meeting which lay behind that signal. Only though he walked on and on, Shan did not appear any closer to the man behind the voice, nor was he able to make out separate words composing that chant. A chant broken now and then by pauses, so that's a tear and grew aware of the distress in his fellow prisoner. For the impression that he saw it, another captive came out of nowhere and grew as he cast wider and wider in his quest. Then he might have turned some invisible corner in the mist for the chant broke out of new and stronger volume. And now he was able to distinguish words he knew. Where blow the winds between the whirls and hang the sun's in darkest space, for power is given a man to use, let him do so well before the last accounting. The voice was hoarse, cracked. The words faced with uneven catches of breath, as if they had been repeated many, many times to provide an anchor against madness, form a tie to reality. And hearing that note, chant slowed his pace. This was out of no memory of his. He was sure of that. Blow the winds between the whirls and hang the sun's in dark, that hoarse croak of voice was running down as the clock runs down for lack of winding. Chants sped on reacting to a plea which did not lie in the words themselves. Once more the mist curled back, providing him with an open space. A man set on a sand. His fist buried wrist deep in the smooth grains on either side of his body. His eyes set, red rims glazed. His body rocking back and forth in time to his labored chant, the darkest space. Thorbald, chant skittered in the sand, went down on his knees. The manner of their last parting was forgotten as he took in the officer's condition. The other did not stop his swing, but his head turned with a stiff jerk. The gray eyes make it a visible effort to focus on chant. Then some of the strains smoothed out of the conch fingers and Thorbald laughed softly. The scars, chant stiffened, but had no chance to protest that mistaken identity as the other continued. So you made class one status voice. I always knew you could do if you worked at it. A couple of black marks on your record, sure, but those can be rubbed out, boys. When you're willing to try, Thorbald's always have been surveyed. Our father would have been proud. Thorbald's voice flattened. His smile faded. There was a growing spark of some emotion in those gray eyes. Unexpectedly, he hurled himself forward. His hands clawing for chant's throat. He bored the younger man down under him to the sand for land he found himself fighting desperately for his life against a man who could only be mad. Shan used a trick learned on the dunks and his opponent doubled up with a gasp of agony to let the younger man break free. He planted a knee on the small of Thorbald's back, digging the offshore into the sand, pinning down his arms in spite of the other struggles. Regaining his own breath in gulps, Shan tried to appeal to some spark of reason in the other. Thorbald, this is Lanty. Lanty, his voice echoed in the mist walled void like an unhuman whale. Lanty, no throg. Lanty, throg, kill my brother. Shan puffed out with the breath, which expelled that indictment. But Thorbald no longer fought and Shan believed him close to collapse. Shan relaxed his hold, rowing the other man over. Thorbald obeyed his pull limply, lying face upward, sand in his hair and eyebrows, crushing his slack lips. Younger man brushed the dirt away gently as the other opened his eyes to regard Shan with his old impersonal stare. You're alive, Thorbald stated briefly. Garsh dead, you ought to be dead too. Shan drew back rubbed sand from his hands. His concern dampened by the other's patient hostility. Only that angry accusation vanished in the blink of those gray eyes. Then there was a warmer recognition in Thorbald's expression. Lanty, younger man might just have come into sight. What are you doing here? Shan tightened his belt. Just about what you are, he was still alone, giving no acknowledgement of difference in rank now. Running around in this fog, hunting the way out. Thorbald set up, surveying the building walls of the hole which contained him. Then he reached out a hand to draw fingers down Shan's forearm. You are real, he observed simply, and his voice was warm, welcoming. Don't bet on it, Shan snapped. The unreal can be mighty real here. His hand went up to the starting brand on his shoulder. Thorbald nodded. Masters of illusion, he muttered. Mr. Suss Shan corrected. This place is run by a gang of pretty smart witches. Witches, you've seen them? Where? And why? Who are they? Thorbald pounced with a return to his old-time sharpness. They're females right enough, and they could make the impossible happen. I'd say that classifies them as witches. One of them tried to take me over back on the island. I set a trap and caught her. Then somehow she transported me. Quickly he outlined a chain of events leading from his sudden awakening in the river tunnel to his present penetration of this far world. Thorbald listened eagerly. When the story was finished, he rubbed his hands across the drawn face, bringing away the last of the sand. At least you had some idea of who they are and the suggestion of how you got here. I don't remember that much about my own arrival. As far as I can remember, I went to sleep on the island and woke up here. Shan studied him and knew that Thorbald was telling the truth. He could remember nothing of his departure in the Outrigger, the way he had fought Shan in the Lagoon. The survey officer must have been under the control of the Warlockians then. Quickly he gave the older man his version of the other's actions in the outer world, and Thorbald was clearly astounded, though he did not question the fact Shan presented. They just took me. Thorbald said in a husky half whisper, but why, and why are we here? Is this a prison? Shan shook his head. I think all this, a wave of his hand, encompassed the green wall, what lay beyond it and in it, is a test of some kind. This dream business, a little while ago, I got the thinking that I wasn't here at all, that I might be dreaming at all. Then I met you. Thorbald understood. Yes, but this could be a dream meeting. How can we tell? He hesitated almost defiantly before he asked, have you met anyone else here? Yes, Shan had no desire to go into that. People out of your past life? Yes, again he did not elaborate. So did I. Thorbald's expression was bleak. His encounters in the fog must have proved no more pleasant than Shan's. That's a guess that we do trigger the hallucinations ourselves. But maybe we can really lick it now. Now, well, if these phantoms are born of our memories, there are only about two or three we could see together. Maybe a frog on the rampage or that hand we left back in the mountains. And if we do sight anything like that, we'll know what it is. On the other hand, if we stick together and one of us sees something that the other can't, well, that fact alone will explode the ghost. There was sense in what he said. Shan aided the officer to his feet. I must be a better subject for their experiments than you, the older man remarked ruthlessly. They took me over completely at the first. You were carrying that disc, Shan pointed out. Maybe that acted as a focusing lens for whatever power they used to make us play trained animals. Could be, Thorbald brought out the cloth, wrap, bow, and coin. I still have it, but he made no move to pull off the bit of rag about it. Now he gauged at the wall of green, which way? Shan shrugged. Long ago, he had lost any idea of keeping a straight course through the merc. He might have turned around any number of times since he first walked blindly into this place. Then he pointed to the packet Thorbald held. Why not flip that? He asked. As we go that way, he indicated the direction in which they were facing. Tails, we do a right about face. There was an answering grin on Thorbald's lips. As good a guide as any were likely to find here. We'll do it. He pulled away the twisted cloth and with a swift snap, reminiscent of that used by the Warlockian witch to empty the bowl of sticks. He tossed the disc into the air. It spun, whirled, but to their open jawed amazement, it did not fall to the sand. Instead, it spun until it looked like a small globe instead of a disc. And it lost its dead white for a glow of green. When that glow became dazzling for tearing ice, the miniature sun swung out, not in orbit, but in straight line of flight heading to their right. With a muffle cry, Thorbald started in pursuit, Shan running beside him. They were in a tunnel of the fog now, and the pace set by the spinning coin was swift. The terrans continued to follow it at the best pace they could summon, having no idea of where they were headed. But each with the hope that they finally did have a guide to lead them through this place of confusion and into a sane world where they could face on more equal terms those who had sent them there. This concludes the reading of chapter 13, Storm Over Warlock by Andre Norton, chapter 14. This is a Libra Vox recording. All Libra Vox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org, recording by RJ Davis. Storm Over Warlock by Andre Norton, chapter 14. Escape, something ahead. Thorbald did not slacken the pace set by the brilliant spot of green they trailed. Both of the terrans feared to fall behind to lose touch with that guide. They're believed that somehow the traveling disc would bring them to the end of the mist and its attendant illusions had grown firmer with every foot of ground they traversed. A dark fixed point now partly veiled by mist lay beyond and it was towards that looming half shadow that the spinning disc curdled. Now the mist curled away to display its bulk. Larger, blacker and four or five times Thorbald's height. Both men stopped short for the disc no longer played pathfinder. It still whirled on its axis in the air faster and faster until it appeared to be throwing off sparks. But the sparks faded against a monolith of dark rock unlike the native stone they had seen elsewhere. For it was neither red nor warmly brown but a dull, dead black. It could have been a huge stone slab, trim, smooth, set up on end as a monument or marker except that only infinite labor could have accomplished such a task. And there was no valid reason for such a toil as far as the terrans could proceed. This is it, Thorbald moved closer. By the distraction they deduced that their guide had drawn them to this feature as black steel with the precision of a beam-controlled ship. However, the purpose still eluded them. They had hoped for some exit from the territory of the Vale but now they faced a solid slab of dark stone and either a conventional exit or entrance as they proved by circling its face. Beneath their boots was the eternal sand around them the fog. Now what Shan asked, they had made their trip about the slab and went back again for the disc quarrel with unceasing vigor in a shower of emerald sparks. Thorbald shook his head, scanning the rock face before them glumbling. The eagerness had gone out of his expression, a vast weariness replacing it. There must have been some purpose in coming here, he replied, but his tone had lost the assurance a moment earlier. Well, if we strike away from here, we'll just get right back in again. Shan waved a hand towards the mist waiting as if with a hunter's watch up on them. And we certainly can't go down. He dug a boot toe into the sand to demonstrate the quality of that. So what about up? He ducked under the spinning disc to lay his hand against the surface of the giant slab. And in so doing he made a discovery. Revealed to his touch, although hidden from sight, for his fingers running aimlessly across the cold, slightly uneven surface of the stone, slipped into a hollow, quite a deep hollow. Excited, half fearing that his sudden guest might be wrong, Shan slid his hand higher in line with that hollow to discover a second. The first had been level with his chest, the second perhaps 18 inches or so above. He jumped to draw his fingers down the rock with damage to his nails, but getting his proof. There was a third niche deep enough to hold more than just the toe of a boot and a fourth above that. With a ladder of shorts here, he reported, without waiting for any answer from Thorvald, Shan began to climb. The holes were so well matched in shape and size that he was sure they could not be natural. They had been bored there for use, the use to which he was now putting them, a ladder to the top of the slab, though what he might find there was beyond his power to imagine. The disc did not rise. Shan passed that core of light, climbing above it into the greater gloom, but the holes did not fail him. Each was waiting in a direct line with his companion. And to an active man, the scramble was not difficult. He reached the summit, glanced around, and made a quick grab for a secure handhold. Waiting for him was no level platform such he had confidently expected to find. The surface of which he had just made his way, fly fashion, was the outer wall of a well or chimney. He looked down now into a pit where black nothingness began within a yard of the top. For the radiance of the mist did not penetrate far into that descent. Shan thought of the attack of getting us. It would be very easy to lose control, to tumble over and be swallowed up in what might well be a bottomless chasm. And what was the purpose of this well? Was it a trap to entice a prisoner into an unwary climb, and then let gravity drag him over? The whole setup was meaningless. Perhaps meaningless only to him, Shan concluded, with a flash of level thinking. The situation could be quite different as far as the natives were concerned. This structure did have a reason for it would never have been erected in the first place. What's the matter? Thorvald's voice was rough with impatience. This thing's a well. Shan edged about a fraction to call back. The inside is open, and, as far as I can tell, goes clear to the planet's core. Ladder on the inside too, Shan squirmed. That was, of course, a very obvious supposition. He kept a tight hold with his left hand, and with the other he did some exploring. Yes, here was a hollow, righted up, twinned to those on the outside. But to swing over that narrow edge of safety and begin a descent into the black of the well was far harder than any action he had taken since the morning the throbs had raided the camp. The green mist could hold no tears greater than those with which his imagination peopled a deaf smell waiting to engulf him. But Shan swung over, fitted his boot into the first hollow, and started down. The only encouragement he gained during that nightmare ordeal was that those holes were regularly spaced, but somehow his confidence did not feed on that fact. There always remained a nagging fear that when he searched for the next, it would not be there. And he would cling to his perch, lacking the nipple strength, in aching arms and legs to recline the inside ladder. He was fast losing that sense of well-being which had been his during his travels through the fall. A fatigue tugged at his arms and weighed leaden on his shoulders. Mechanically, he prospected for the next hole and then the next. Above, the oblong of half-light grew smaller and smaller, sometimes half-flotted out by the movements of Thorvald's body as the other followed him down that interior way. How far was down? Shan giggled light-headedly at the humor of that or what seemed to be humor at the moment. He was certain that they were now below the level of the sand floor outside the slab, and yet no end had come to the well hollow. No break of light down here. He might have been sightless, but just as the blind developed an extra-perceptive sense of unseen obstacles, so did Shan now feel that he was aware of a change in the nature of the space about him. His weary arms and legs held him against the subtlety of a wall, yet the impression that there was no longer another wall at his back grew stronger with every niche, which one him downward, and he was as sure as if he could see it that he was now in a wide-open space another cavern, perhaps, but this one totally dark. Deprived of sight, he relied upon his ears, and there was a sound, faint, distorted, perhaps, by the acoustics of this place, but keeping up a continuous murmur. Water, not the wash of waves with their persistent beat, but rather the rippling of a running stream. Water must lie below. But gifts as his weariness had grown with his leaving behind the fog, so now did both hunger and thirst gnaw at Shan, all the sharper for the delay. The tavern wanted to reach that water, could picture it in his mind, putting away the possibility, the probability, that it might be seaborn and salt, and so unfit to drink. The upper opening to the cavern of the fog was now so far above him that he had to strain to see it. And that warmth which had been there was gone. A dank chill wrapped him here, dampened the holes to which he clung until he was afraid of slipping. While the murmur of the water grew louder, until its flap-flap sounded within arm's distance. His boog-toes gitted from a niche. Shan fought to hold on with numb fingers. The other foot went. He swung by his hands, kicking vainly to regain a measure of footing. Then his arms could no longer support him and he cried out as he fell. Water closed about him with an icy shock, which for a moment paralyzed him. He flailed out, fighting the flood to get his head above the surface where he could gas in precious gulps of air. There was a current here, a swiftly running one. Shan remembered the one which had carried him into that cavern, in which the Warlockians had their strains dwelling. Although there were no clusters of crystals in this tunnel to supply him with light, the Terran began to nourish a faint hope that he was again in that same stream, that those light crystals would appear and that he might eventually return to the starting point of this meaningless journey. As he strove only to keep his head above water, hearing his flashing behind him, he called out, four vaults, land team, the answer came back at once, the splashing grew louder as the other swam to catch up. Shan swallowed a mouthful of water laughing against his chimp, the taste would brackish, but not entirely salt. And though it stung his lips, the liquid relieved a major of his thirst. Only no glowing crystals appeared to stud these walls and Shan's hopes that they were on the way to the cavern of the island faded. The current grew swifter and he had to fight to keep his head above water. His tired body reacting sluggishly to commands. The murmur of the racing flood droned louder in his ears, or was that sound the same? He could no longer be sure. Shan only knew that it was close to impossible to snatch the necessary breath as he was rolled over and over in the hurrying flood. In the end, he was ejected into blazing, blinding light into a suffocation of wild water as a bullet in an ancient charing rifle might have been fired at no specific target. Gasping, beating, more than half drown, Shan was plummeted by waves, literally driven up on a rocky surface which skins his body cruelly. He lay there, his arms moving feedably until he contrived to raise himself in time to be richingly sick. Somehow he crawled on a few feet further before he subsided again, blinded by the light, flinching from the heat of the rocks on which he lay but unable to do more for himself. His first coherent thought was that this speculation concerning the reality of this experience was at last resolved. This could not possibly be an hallucination. At least this particular sequence of events was not, and it was still hazily considering that when a hand fell on his shoulder, fingers biting into his raw flesh. Shan snarled, rolled over on his side. Thor-volt, water dripping from his rags or rather steaming from him, his shaggy hair plastered to his skull, sat there. You all right? Shan set up in turn, shielding his smarty eyes. He was bruised, battered, badly enough, but he could claim no major injuries. I think so. Where are we? Thor-volt's lips stretched across his teeth in what was more grimace than a smile. Right off the map, any map I know, take a look. They were on a scrap of beach, beach which was more like a reef, for it lacked any covering comparable to sand except for some cupfuls of coarse gravel locked in rock depressions. Rocks, red as a rust or dried blood, rose in fantastic water-sculpted shapes around the small, semi-level space they had somehow won. The space was V-shaped, worst by equal streams on either side of the prong of rock by water which spouted from the face of a sheer cliff not too far away. With force enough to spray several feet beyond his exit point, Shan seeing that and guessing at his significance drew a deep breath and heard the ghost of an answering chuckle from his companion. Yes, that's where we came out, boy. Like to make a return trip? Shan shook his head and then whoosed that he had not so rashly made that move for the world swung in a dizzy whirl. Things had happened too fast. For the moment it was enough that they were out of the underground waves back under the amber sky feeling the bite of Warlock's son. Steadying his head with both hands, Shan turned slowly to survey what might lie at their backs. The water poured by on either side suggested that they were again on an island. Warlock, he thought gloomily, seemed to be for Terrence a succession of islands all hard to escape. The tangle of rocks did not encourage any exploration just gazing at them added to his weariness. They rose tear by tear to a ragged crown against the sky. Shan continued to set staring at them. To climb that, his voice trailed into the silence with a complete discouragement. You climb or swim, Thorval stated, but Shan noted the survey officer was not in a hurry to make either move. Nowhere in that wilderness of rock was there the least relieving bit of purple foliage. Nor did any clack-clack or the leather-headed birds tour the sky over their heads. Shan's thirst might have been partially assodged but his hunger remained. And it was that mead which forced him at last into action. The barren hides promised nothing in the way of food. But remembering the harvest the Wolverines had taken from under the rocks along the river, he got to his feet and merged out on the reef which had been their salvation, hunting some pool which might hold an edible captive or two. So it was that Shan made the discovery of a possible path consisting of a ledge running toward the other end of the island. Yet this were an island where they had taken refuge. The spray of the water drips that way, feeding small pools in the uneven surface as strips of yellow weed trailed in slimy ribbons back below the surface of the waves. He called the Thorval and gestured to his spine and then close together licking hands when the going became hazardous, the men followed the path. Twice they made finds in the pools, finned or clawed grotesque creatures which they killed on eight, whooping down the few fragments of odd tasting flesh. Then in a small crevice which could hardly be dignified by the designation of cave, Thorval chanced upon a quite exciting discovery, a clutch of four greenish eggs, each as large as his double fists. Their outer covering was more like tough membrane than through shell and the Terran's worried it opened with difficulty. Shan shut his eyes, trying not to think of what he mouthed as he sucked his share dry. At least that semi-liquid stayed put in his middle though he expected disastrous results from the experiment. More than a little hardened by this piece of luck they kept on. Though the ledge changed from a reasonably level surface to a series of rising unequal steps, drawing them away from the water. At long last they came to the end of that path. Shan leaned back against a convenient spur of rock. Company, he alerted Thorvald. The survey officer joins him to share an outcrop of rock from which they were provided with an excellent view of the scene below and it was a scene to hold their full attention. That soft sweep of sand which had floored the cavern of the fog lay here also. A gray-blue carpet sloping gently out of the sea. For Shan had no doubt that the far stretch of water before them was the western ocean. Walling the beach on either side and extending well out into the water so that the furthest piles were awarse except for the crowns were pillars of stone. The shape with the same finish as that slab which had provided them a ladder of escape. And because of the rigorosity of their facing Shan did not believe them were subnature. Group between them now were the players of the drama. One of the warlock in witches, her gym body patterns clearing in the sunlight was walking backward out of the sea. Her hands held palms together, dressed high in a torn attitude of prayer and following her, something swam in the water. Clearly not another of her own species but her actions suggested that by some invisible means she was drawing that water driller after her. Waiting on her shore were two others of her kind viewing her actions with close attention. The attention of scholars for an instructor. Wyverns, Shan looked inquiringly at his companion. Thorvald added a whisper of explanation. A legend of terror. They were supposed to have a snake's tail instead of hind legs, but they hiss. They're Wyverns. Wyverns, Shan liked the sound of that word. To his mind it well fitted the warlock in witches and the one they were watching in action continued her steady backward retreat, rowing her bemused captive out of the water. What emerged into the blaze of sunlight was one of those fork-tailed sea dwellers such as the Terrans had seen die after the storm. The thing crawled out of the shallows, his eyes focused in a blind stare on the praying hands of the Wyvern. She halted well up on the sand when the body of her victim or prisoner, Shan was certain that the fork-tail was one or the other, was completely out of the water. Then with lightning speed, she dropped her hands. Instantly fork-tail came to life. Bang, jaw snapped. Arrails, the beast was the incarnation of evil rage, a rage which had a measure of intelligence to direct it into deadly action and facing it seemingly unarmed and defenseless with the slender fragile Wyverns. Yet none of the small group of natives made any attempt to escape. Shan thought them suicidal and they're indifferent as fork-tailed short legs ended the fine sand flying in a dust cloud made a rush towards its enemies. The Wyvern who had led the beast to shore did not move, but one of her companions swung up a hemp as if negligently waving the monster to a stop. Between her first two digits was a disk. Thorvol caught at Shan's arm. See that? It's a copy of the one I had. It must be. They were too far away to be sure it was a duplicate, but it was coin-shaped and bone white. And now the Wyvern swung it back and forth to the metrotrome suite. Fork-tail skidded to a stop. Which had beginning, reluctantly at first, and then with increasing speed to echo that left-right suite. This Wyvern had the sea beasts under control, even as her companions had earlier held it. Chest dictated what happened next. As had her sister Charmer, the Wyvern began a backward withdrawal of the length of the beast, drawing the sea-thing in her way. They were very close to the foot of the drop above which the Terran stood, fascinating. Then the sand betrayed the witch. Her foot slipped into a hole and she was thrown backward, her control disk spinning out of her fingers. At once, the monster she had charmed shot forth his head, snapped at that spinning trifle and swallowed it. Then the Fork-tail hunched in a posture Shan had seen the Wolverine Jews when they were about to spring. The weaponless Wyvern was appraised and both her companions were too far away to interfere. Why he moved, he could not have explained. There was no reason for him to go to the aid of the Vorlockian, one of the same breed who had ruled him against his will. But Shan's spring landed in the sand on his hands and knees. The sea-thing whipped around, undecided between two possible victims. Shan had his knife free, was on his feet. His eyes on the beast, knowing that he had appointed himself Dragon Slayer for no good reason. This concludes the reading of chapter 14.