He had not, so far, been harmed. He had, such as it was, the freedom of this room. He could feed himself after a fashion with his right hand, but he had never realized how helpless anyone was with only one arm; he could not even balance properly when he walked. Morning and night they brought him food; a sort of coarse bread stuffed with nuts, a rough porridge of some unknown cereal, strips of rather good meat, some anonymous soapy-tasting stuff that he supposed was a form of cheese.
Now he sat up, hearing steps in the hall. It might have been someone with his breakfast, but he recognized the heavy, uneven tread of Cyrillon des Trailles. Cyrillon had visited him only once before, to inspect, briefly, the contents of his pockets.
“No weapons,” the man Kyro had told him, holding up the things Larry had carried. Cyrillon turned them over. At the Terran medical kit he frowned curiously, then tossed it into a corner; Larry’s mechanical pencil he tested with a fingertip, thrust into his own pocket. The other items he looked at briefly and dumped beside the Terran boy; a few small coins, a crumpled handkerchief, a small notebook. Larry’s folded pocketknife he looked at curiously, asked, “What’s this?”
Larry opened it, then mentally kicked himself; he might have been able to use the knife somehow, even though the main blade was broken off—he used it mostly for cutting string or building models. It had a corkscrew, a magnetized smaller blade and a hood for opening food cartons too.
Kyro said, “A knife? You won’t want to leave him that!”
Cyrillon shrugged contemptuously. “With a blade not as long as my little finger? Much good may it do him!” He dropped it with the other oddments. “I only wanted to know if he had any of the Comyn weapons.” He had laughed loudly, and walked out of the room, and Larry had not seen him again until, this morning, he heard his heavy tread.
He felt a childish impulse to crawl under the bed and hide; but he mastered it, and got shakily to his feet. Three men entered, followed in a moment by Cyrillon, still masked.
Larry had realized, by now, that for all his contempt, Cyrillon treated him with a respect that verged on wariness. Larry couldn’t quite figure out why. Cyrillon stood back from the bed now, as he ordered, “Get up and come with us, Alton.”
Larry rose meekly and obeyed. He had sense enough to know that any gesture of defiance wouldn’t help anything—except his pride—and might bring more abusive treatment. He might as well save his strength until he could do something really effective.
They conducted him to a room where there was a fire, and Larry’s shivering became so intense that Cyrillon, with a gesture of contempt, motioned him to the fireplace. “These Comyn brats are all soft ... warm yourself, then.”
When he was warmed through, Cyrillon gestured him to sit on a bench. From a leather pouch Cyrillon drew something wrapped in a cloth. He glanced at Larry, curling his lip.
“I hardly dare to hope you will make this easy for me—or for yourself, young Alton.”
He took from the cloth a jewel stone that flashed blue—a stone, Larry realized abruptly, of the same strange kind Kennard had shown him. This one was set into a ring of gold, with two handles on either side.
“I require you to look into this for me,” Cyrillon said, “and if you find it easier to your pride, you may tell your people, afterward, that you did so under the threat of having your throat cut.”
He laughed, that horrible raucous laughter that was like the screaming of some bird of prey.
Did Cyrillon expect him to demonstrate some psi power? Larry felt a pang of fright. His impersonation of a Darkovan must certainly fail, now. He felt his hand tremble as Cyrillon put the stone into it. He raised his eyes ...
Blinding pain thrust through his head and eyes; he squeezed them shut spasmodically against the unbearable sense of
twisting
. . . of looking at something that should not exist in normal space at all. He felt sick. When he opened his eyes, Cyrillon was looking at him in grim satisfaction.
“So. You have the sight but are not used to stones of such power. Look again.”
Larry, eyes averted, shook his head in refusal.
Cyrillon rose; every movement instinct with menace. Quite calmly, without raising his voice, he said, “Oh, yes you will.” He gripped Larry’s bound arm, somehow exerting a pressure that made red-hot wires run through the injured shoulder. “Won’t you?”
Half senseless, Larry slumped forward on the bench. The stone rolled from his lax hand and he felt himself sinking beneath a warm, dark and somehow pleasant unconsciousness.
“Very well,” said Cyrillon, very far away, “give him some
kirian
.”
“Too dangerous,” protested one of the men. “If he has the power of some of the Altons ...”
Cyrillon said impatiently, “Didn’t you see him turn sick at the sight of the stone? He hasn’t any power yet! We’ll chance it.”
Larry felt one of the men seize his head, force it backward; the other was, with great care, uncapping a small vial from which rose strange colorless fumes. Larry, remembering Valdir’s probing of the dying Ranger—what had he done?—jerked his head back, struggling madly; but the man who held him pressed his thumbs on Larry’s jaw, forcing it open, and the other emptied the vial into his mouth.
He struggled, expecting heat, acid, fumes, but to his surprise the liquid, though bitterly cold, was almost tasteless. Almost before it touched his tongue, it seemed to evaporate. The sensation was intensely unpleasant, as if some strange gas were exploding in his head; his sight blurred, steadied. Cyrillon held the stone before his eyes; he realized, to his sick relief, that it was now only a blue glare, with none of the sickening twisting.
Cyrillon watched, intently.
Like shadows moving in the blue glare, forms became clear to Larry. A group of men rode past, Valdir’s tall form clearly recognizable, a pair of curiously configured hills behind them. This faded, blurred into the face of Lorill Hastur, shrouded in a gray hood, and behind it Larry dreamily recognized the outline of the spaceport HQ building. He saw blurs again, then a small sturdy figure on a gray horse, bent low and racing against the wind, gradually cleared before his eyes....
Larry suddenly became aware of what was happening. Somehow, through this magical stone, he was seeing pictures and they were being transmitted to Cyrillon des Trailles—why, why? Was he trying to spy through Larry on the people of the valleys? With a cry, Larry threw his arm over his eyes and saw the pictures thin out, blur and dissolve. A blind fury surged up in him at the cruel man who was using him this way—using, he thought, Kennard Alton against his own people—and such a flare of hatred as he had never felt for a living being. He would like to blast him down....
And as the wrath surged up high and red, Cyrillon des Trailles drew a gasping breath of agony, dashed the crystal out of his hand and, with agonized force, struck Larry across the face. Larry fell, heavily, to the floor, and Cyrillon, doubled over in anguish, aimed a kick at him, missed and sank weakly to the bench.
One of the men said, “I warned you not to give him
kirian
. You gave him too much.”
Cyrillon said, his voice still thick, “I guessed better than I knew ... the accursed race have whelped a throwback! The youngster didn’t even know what he was doing! If I had one or two of that kind in my hands, the whole cursed race of Cassild’ would flee back to their lake-bottoms and the Golden-Chained one would reign again! Zandru, what we could do with one of them on our side!”
The other man said, “We ought to kill him out of hand, before they find some way to use him against us!”
“Not yet,” said Cyrillon. “I wonder how old he is? He looks a child, but all those lowland brats are soft.”
One of the men guffawed. “He seemed not so soft a moment ago, when he had you yelping like a scalded cat!”
Cyrillon said, very softly, “If he were really as young as he looks, I’d guarantee to—re-educate him in my own way. I may try, at any rate. I can bear more than that,” he added with gentle menace, “until he learns to—control his powers.”
Larry, lying on the floor very still and hoping they had forgotten him, struggled with puzzlement greater than fear. Had
he
done that? If so, how?
He
had none of these Darkovan powers!
One of the men bent. Not gently, he lifted Larry to his feet. Cyrillon said, “Well, Kennard Alton, I warn you fairly not to try that trick again. Perhaps it was sheer reflex and you do not know your own powers. If that is true, I warn you, you had better learn control. The next time I will kick your ribs through your backbone. Now—
look into the stone!
”
The blue glare blinded his eyes. Then, crystal bright, intense, there were figures and forms he could not interpret, coming and going.... How was Cyrillon doing this? Or was he simply being hypnotized?
The blueness suddenly flared again. Inside his mind, in a sudden blaze, the voice of his dream spoke,
I’ve blanked it. He’s no telepath and he doesn’t dare force you. Don’t be afraid; he can’t read what you’re getting now—but I can’t hold this for long.... It’s not hopeless yet....
Kennard?
Larry thought,
I’m going out of my mind. . . .
The blue glare spread, became unbearable. He heard Cyrillon snarl something—a threat?—but he saw nothing but that fearful blue.
With utter, absolute relief, for the first time in his life, Larry Montray fainted.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Day followed slow day, in the room where Larry was imprisoned; gradually, his original optimism dimmed out and faded. He was here, and there was no way to tell whether or not he would ever leave the place. He now knew he was being held as a hostage against Valdir Alton. From scraps of information he had wormed out of his jailer, he had put together the situation. Cyrillon and others of his kind had preyed on the lower lands since time out of mind. Valdir had been the first to organize the lowlanders in resistance, to build the Ranger stations which warned of impending raids, and this struck Cyrillon, unreasonably enough, as unfair. It ran clear against the time-honored Darkovan code, that each man shall defend his own belonging. By holding Valdir’s son prisoner, he hoped to stalemate this move, and ward off retaliations.
But they did
not
have Valdir’s son; and sooner or later, Larry supposed, Cyrillon would find 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 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 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.