The Winds of Gath

Chapter Fifteen

The room was very quiet, the lights soft, the air tainted with the odor of antiseptics beneath the comforting scent of spice. On a pneumatic mattress the Matriarch rested, almost mummy-like in her immobility, the withered pattern of her face. Bandages swathed her side and drugs coursed their slow way through her blood. She felt no pain, no trepidation, only a peculiar detachment as if her mind were divorced from her body so that she could ponder events with an objective viewpoint.

She was thinking of Dumarest and what he had said.

He had known nothing of the mirror and its secret so why should he have been so interested in discovering how she had learned of what had transpired between himself and her ward? He had meant something unconnected with the mirror. He had seemed to be trying to give her a message. He-

She opened her eyes and stared at Dyne.

"My Lady." His voice was smooth, his face, his very clothes. He stood at the foot of the bed, tall in his scarlet, his cowl throwing shadow across his face. A machine of flesh and blood uncontaminated by emotion. And then she remembered.

"You!" Her voice was a whisper. "You knew what had taken place between them. You could have told the girl."

"My Lady?"

"You were with me watching in the mirror. Just before the phygria attacked. You-" She broke off, seeing the pattern as it fell into place, each piece fitting to make an incredible whole. "It had to be you. No one else could have arranged for the exchange. No one else could have told her all she needed to know. You!"

He said nothing, waiting.

"You killed her," she whispered. "After she attacked me you killed her. You had to keep her silent for your own sake. Alive she could have told too much." Her hand scrabbled on the coverlet. "But why? Why should you, a cyber, engage in such intrigue?"

His eyes were cold, relentless, his face as if carved from marble.

"Power? Wealth? Personal ambition?" She whispered the motives which drove normal men into such actions and knew that none of them could apply. The cyber was not a normal man. "But you failed!" she said triumphantly. "You failed!"

"Because of Dumarest," he admitted. "Because of an unknown factor. I told you once, My Lady, that I was not infallible. Always there is the unknown element to take into consideration. But, if it had not been for the traveler, your ward would be dead and her substitute your successor to the throne of Kund."

"Is that why you tried to kill him? You must have primed the phygria-or told your agents to do it. They must have tried to burn him on the journey and stab him during the storm." She paused, chest heaving, cold with the knowledge of how close he had been to success.

"The mirror," she whispered. "You would have changed the setting but I gave you no opportunity. You had no time. Dumarest exposed the plot before you could do the one thing which would have proved him to be a liar." Her mind spun with the unanswered question. "But why? Why?"

He had no intention of giving her the answer. The plans of the Cyclan encompassed the universe and rulers were merely pawns to be moved according to the great design. The Lady Thoth was independent and had no love for any cyber. Her substitute, prepared years ago, was amenable and, better, utterly predictable. More he neither knew nor guessed.

"I shall ruin you!" Anger stiffened the thin voice. "I shall expose you and your Cyclan for what you are. Never again will you be trusted." Her hand lifted, trembled as she pointed. "Go!"

"No, My Lady."

"You dare-?"

"If you shout your guards will not hear you." He touched the bracelet around his wrist. "A cone of silence surrounds us. But you will say nothing, do nothing. If you do then I will be impelled to divulge certain facts about you and your ward. The fact that you and she are blood relations, for example."

"You lie!"

"No, My Lady. The girl is the daughter of your grandchild-the one you placed in a position of safety when you accepted the throne of Kund. She should have been killed. No Matriarch of Kund is permitted to have natural issue and you know the law. Instead you took the throne and kept both your romance and its issue a secret. Now you intend to make her your successor. If the truth became known that would not be permitted. And it is the truth-I can prove it."

He paused, looking down at her.

"Your silence for mine, My Lady. It seems a fair enough exchange."

She was helpless to do other than agree.

The Prince of Emmened was hopelessly lost. He stood in a circle of his guards and cursed them, the fates, the lack of guidance and everything but himself. They were too cold to argue, too afraid to do other than huddle together for mutual protection. Around them the cold gripped the soil, threw streamers of frost over icy boulders, made even the dancing shadows things of menace.

"Move!" screamed the prince. "Move! Move!"

His words came as dull, rolling echoes to the man above. Dumarest leaned against a boulder and stared down at the bobbing lights, the immobile men. He was tired with a bone-aching weariness that numbed his mind and made even the hunger clawing at his stomach seem insignificant by comparison. He had walked countless miles against the never ending pressure of strength-sapping wind, following false trails, circling the area, climbing and slipping and clawing his way over rock and ice. He had fallen, ripping his clothes and bruising his flesh, so that his face was a mask of blood and dirt. Now, at last, he could rest.

But not for long.

He jerked awake from the edge of sleep, sucking great gulps of air to clear his lungs, wishing that he could feel some of the cold of the region. Instead he sweltered in the generated heat of forty times normal living. It did nothing to help him combat the fatigue of days of traveling without rest. It was hard for him to realize that he was only hours normal traveling from the plain.

Below, the circle of men had moved a little, perhaps a step or two. They did not look up as he scrambled down toward them. They remained motionless as he circled, looking for the girl. He found her, a huddled bundle of misery, her feet white with frostbite. Beside her the prince, face twisted, mouthed his insane filth.

Dumarest poised his fist.

Sense came almost too late. He twisted, venting the force of his blow on the empty air, feeling sweat bead his forehead at the thought of what he had almost done. His fist, traveling so fast, would have crushed the prince's skull-but would have shattered itself to ruin at the same time. That was not the way.

He stooped and picked up a stone. It felt as heavy as lead, rising slowly from the ground, hanging poised as he aimed it. He threw it with the full strength of shoulder and arm directly at the skull of the prince.

Before it hit he was beside the girl. He saw the impact, the slow unfolding of flesh and bone and spurting brain. He stooped and slowly, very slowly, picked up her unresisting body. It was stiff, unyielding, feeling as if made of wood, but he knew better. Care was needed to avoid bruising the tender flesh, snapping the delicate bone. As blood began its slow pulse from the headless trunk he was walking from the dead prince and his unsuspecting guards. The wind of his passage was the only sound he heard. The ice was his only danger.

The ice and his own fatigue.

He walked, toward the end, in delirium. Faces swam toward him from the starlit gloom, voices whispered from the wind of his passage, each boulder seemed to hold a snarling enemy, each twist of the path a cowled figure intent on his death. It was a long time before he realized that someone was calling his name.

"Dumarest! Dumarest! What's the matter with you? Dumarest, answer me!"

It was the girl. He looked down at her, a leaden weight in his arms, and saw her lips move, the breath vaporing above her mouth. Even as he watched it grew still and the wind of his passage droned again past his ears.

He was coming out of slow-time but not as he would if unconscious: a single step from fast to normal. The dying effect of the drug was erratic, his overstrained metabolism swinging to its stimulus.

"Dumarest!"

He heard the voice and spoke quickly while he had the time.

"It's all right. You're safe. The prince is dead and I'm taking you home."

"You saved me." Her voice was soft, warm, promising. "You won't regret this. Yooo…o…o…o… o…"

Her voice slowed, deepened, ground to a stop as again he jerked into accelerated living. Ahead the mountains cut across the sky. They jerked closer, closer, dipping and swaying as he stumbled toward them. A part of his mind told him that he was being a fool, that he should slow down, take things easy. There was no need to hurry now that they were safe.

Then, in the shadow of the mountains, his delirium became real.

"Dumarest!"

He heard the voice and saw the shape, tall, cowled, the scarlet black in the cold light of the stars. He looked down. The girl was asleep or unconscious; he couldn't tell which. He halted, stooped and placed her on the ground. He rubbed his arms as he rose to face the cyber.

"Remain still!" Dyne advanced, the laser in his hand accentuating his command. He glanced down at the cloaked figure on the ground. "How is the girl?"

"Unconscious."

"It is as well. There is no need now for her to die."

"Are you sure about that?"

"I am sure." Dyne came a step closer. "You are surprised? But then you are a creature of emotion, not of logic. The Cyclan does not waste time on the futility of revenge. The past is irredeemable. We are interested only in the future."

"I am glad to hear it." Dumarest swayed, fighting the fatigue which threatened to engulf him. "Sime is lying dead a short way from here," he said. "The prince must have killed him. I found his body on my way out."

"And the prince?"

"Dead."

"Yes." said Dyne. "He would be." Starlight splintered on the rising barrel of his gun. "As you will be."

"Why?" Dumarest took a slow and cautious step aside and away from the girl. "Why must you kill me? Because I exposed your plot? I thought you regarded the past as irredeemable." He took another slow step. "Or is there another reason? Is it because I come from a planet called Earth?"

"What do you know of Earth?"

"I lived there. I spoke of it and you must know that. I think that you want me dead because of it. What is so important about Earth that no one must speak of it?" He took another cautious step.

Dyne followed him with the gun.

"You are trying to distract me," he said. "You hope to approach and then, suddenly, attack. You have confidence in the speed of your reflexes but they will not save you. When you reach a certain position I shall fire."

Dumarest drew a deep breath.

"Earth," he said. "A lonely world with a strange form of life. Underground life, cyber, do you understand? I escaped on a ship serving that life and it bore a device similar to that you carry on your breast. The Cyclan seal."

"So?"

"I think that perhaps you could tell me how to find that world. You or others of your breed."

"You are talking to gain time," said Dyne. "The reason eludes me. There seems to be neither logic nor sense in your actions and yet you must have a motive. It can only be that-" His eyes widened. His fingers closed on the trigger of his weapon.

Dumarest dropped as he fired.

He rolled, snatched up the stone he had spotted, threw it as he came to his knees. Anger and fear gave strength to his arm. The stone smashed wetly against the cyber's head.

"Dumarest!" The sound of the shot had wakened the girl. She lifted herself on one elbow, staring at the crumpled shape, the dark pool of blood surrounding the shattered skull. "Dumarest!"

"It's all right." He stooped, picked her up, cradled her in his arms. "He's dead. It's all over."

"Dead?"

"He died in the storm."

It was true enough and it would serve to keep the Cyclan quiet. His racing thoughts outmatched the slow progress of his feet. The girl was vague, suffering from cold and exposure, unaccustomed to hardship but she would live and might even be grateful. The Matriarch would certainly be.

It could be an advantage to have powerful friends.

They could even help him to find his way back home. He stumbled and almost fell, suddenly conscious of the ache of his body, the fatigue tearing at his dwindling reserves. Well, that could be cured too given time and the skill of the physician.

He paused as he neared the tents of the Matriarch, a freak action of the drug suddenly accelerating his metabolism. A gust of wind swept from the mountains and he heard the music of Gath.

Deeper now, slower, but quite unmistakable.

The empty sound of inane, gargantuan laughter.