Jango (31 page)

"Yes, well, I'll do what I can, of course."

He didn't sound at all convinced.

The little scientist laid one hand on Similin's arm.

"Who knows? Perhaps it will be my power that protects you."

"The charged water, you mean?"

"No. Me."

Similin almost laughed. How could this comical baldheaded midget protect him?

"Not as I am," added Ortus, "but as I will be."

"What are you talking about?"

The scientist lowered his voice, glancing round to make sure that none of the carpenters at work assembling the ramp could hear him.

"The charged water," he said, "can be absorbed into the human body. I believe it can make the human body invulnerable."

"Invulnerable!"

"I mean to test it on myself. So far I've only tested it on a small animal, but the effects were beyond all my expectations."

"What animal? What effects?"

"A mouse. A mouse in a stout well-made cage of timber frame and steel mesh. I infused the mouse with charged water. I turned away to seal the container. There was a crash. I turned back. The mouse was gone. The cage had been torn apart."

"Torn apart!"

"The radiant power stored in the charged water gives the body astonishing strength."

"Astonishing strength! But I don't remember any such result last year, when we tested it on the axer."

"That time, the charge was in the blood. This time, the charge will infuse the flesh."

"Can you be sure?"

"There is no certainty in this life, Radiance. But you will see. I mean to test it on myself."

Similin fell silent. He started to pace up and down once more, clasping and unclasping his hands behind his back. He looked up and saw the ramp assembly rising ever higher. He looked across the river and saw the thousands of Orlans massing there. He knew he had very little time. He came to a bold decision.

"Professor," he exclaimed. "I order you to do this test on me."

"On you!" The scientist goggled at him in disbelief.

"On me."

"But Radiance, it's never been tested on a man."

"I'll take that risk."

"I must test it on myself first. I have promised myself that honor."

"We don't have the time."

"But—but—but—I want it!"

Similin strode up to the little man and seized him by the shoulders and shook him.

"I am Radiant Leader!" he said. "I am the chosen son of the Great Power above! Your duty is to obey!"

Ortus trembled before him.

"Yes, Radiance. Yes, of course."

Similin released him.

"So let's get on with it. What do I have to do?"

"What courage!" murmured the little man, gazing on Similin and not moving. "What leadership!"

Similin clapped his hands sharply in the air before Ortus's face.

"Quickly! What do I do?"

"Do? Oh, that is simplicity itself. You drink."

"Drink? From a cup?"

"No, no. The charged water must not make contact with the air. You suck it through a thin tube. See—I have it here."

Ortus produced from his bag a metal cylinder from which protruded a rubber tube clamped with a metal clasp.

"Once in your body," he said, "the stored energy is absorbed into the tissues."

"And it will give me—what did you say?—astonishing strength."

"You will become invulnerable!"

"How long will it take?"

"With the mouse, the transformation took just a few seconds. Your mass is far greater, of course. I would anticipate many minutes. Perhaps as long as an hour. No longer."

"Then let's get on with it! We have no time to lose!"

The little scientist unwound the rubber tube and took hold of the clasp.

"Once you have the tube in your mouth," he said, "I will release the clasp. Suck the water up the tube and swallow it. Keep sucking and swallowing until it's all gone. Don't open your mouth. That is most important. Do not open your mouth."

"I understand."

Similin sat down and prepared himself. He was trembling, but he was determined.

"Soon now," he said to himself, "I will be—invulnerable!"

He took the tube in his mouth and began to suck. Evor Ortus watched with shining eyes.

Amroth Jahan, now mounted on Malook, rode slowly along the shore to the point where the bridges were being constructed. There were five of them, each one formed of eight barges, over which swarms of carpenters were fixing beams and cross-struts and surface planks. The beams were all in place. The planks were advancing, from the mainland side towards the island.

"How much longer?" said the Jahan.

"Soon now, Excellency! Very soon!"

The Jahan stared up at the high walls of the castle-monastery but could see no signs of life. One of his officers rode up with a request from the company captains. They wanted to know how much time remained before they were to go into action.

The Jahan looked across the river at the high ramp, now nearing completion. Then he looked back at the bridges, where teams of men were hauling the heavy planks forward and nailing them down so rapidly that it seemed as if they rolled a carpet before them.

"Tell the captains," he said, "to mount for battle."

This order was received with joy. Behind him, all across the great army, the Jahan heard the familiar sound of his
Orlan warriors mounting their horses and forming lines, company by company. But his gaze was still on Anacrea.

Now the last planks were fixed into place. The workmen ran back over the bridges, making them bounce on the water. The captains rode up to the Jahan to ask if they were to advance and take the island.

"Wait," said the Jahan. "Let them see the power at my command. I want the Nomana to beg me for mercy on their knees."

Even as he spoke, the great gate of the Nom began to open, and out came the Nomana. They came in silence, their badans over their heads, their eyes cast down. They descended the steep stone steps in a long file and wound their slow way to the island's shore.

The Jahan watched, also silent. His men watched, waiting for his command. The only sounds now were the crunch of hooves on pebbles and the restless movement of the Caspians and the ebb and flow of the sea.

When the first of the Nomana reached the bridges, they separated and spread out, so that shortly there were five lines crossing the five bridges. They advanced slowly and steadily, seemingly unaware of the presence of the great army drawn up before them. When they were halfway across the swaying bridges, the Jahan drew his group back, to place himself on a high ridge to one side of the line of the Orlans, on the upper shore. From here he could survey the battle to come. Before him, filling the great space between the river and the trees, his men were lined up company by company, ten ranks deep.

The Nomana now stepped off the bridges onto the
shingle and fanned out in a long line facing the mounted Orlans. Still the Jahan gave no signal for attack. He wanted them all before him, all at his mercy.

His eyes glanced over the river at the ramp. How soon before it was finished? It must be almost ready now. The builders of the ramp could see that the battle was about to begin. All he had to do was be patient.

Now all the Nomana were off the bridges and lined up on the shore. They formed a long shallow crescent. The Jahan guessed there were over a thousand of them.

He sent one of his captains to within hailing distance.

"Will you kneel to the Great Jahan?" he cried out. "Or will you fight?"

He received no answer.

The Jahan smiled a proud angry smile. He knew now they would fight.

There came a slow ripple all down the line of the Nomana. They were raising their heads, looking up. Hundreds of eyes, very still, very intent. In the center of the long crescent of hooded men sat one who was in a wheeled chair. He too raised his old head, then fixed his gaze on the Orlan army.

The Noble Warriors stood at the Tranquil Alert. They calmed their breathing and let the lir in them flow to a still, deep pool. They reached out to one another, feeding on one another's strength. Then they began to release their lir, letting it flow out of each one of them, to form a single massive charge of energy: the First and Last.

They waited for the Elder to give the command.

T
HE DENSE MIST
S
EEKER WAS NOW BREATHING HAD NO
smell and caused him no discomfort. If anything, he sensed a slight tang in his nostrils that was refreshing. The ground beneath his feet was sloping downwards. He only knew this because he could feel the soft pull of the slope. He could see nothing. All round him was whiteness. He could make out his own hand if he held it up before his face, but it was the hand of a ghost, veiled and insubstantial. He could hear the pad of his own feet on the earth, but even this sound was muffled and distant. He listened for other sounds, for the fleeing shuffle of the savanters, but he heard nothing.

There seemed to be no features in this lake of cloud, no buildings or trees or walls. He knew no way to orient himself and no reason to choose one direction over another; indeed, he was barely able to distinguish any direction from
another, when every way he turned presented the same vista of milky whiteness.

It struck him then to wonder how he was seeing at all. What was the source of light? As far as he knew, he was still in the immense cloud-filled cave where he had met the savanters. But the soft cool light that filtered evenly through the mist on all sides had the look of daylight. He had descended into the cloud pool; but somehow in going down, he had found his way into open air.

Such puzzles troubled him little. He was no longer concerned about finding his way. The killing of the savanters had changed him. He was filled with a new conviction that was more than the sensation of power. He felt that everything he did was right.

"It doesn't matter which way I go," he told himself. "My way is wherever I am. I'm not the seeker any more. I'm the one who is sought."

This made his task simple. All he had to do was move forward and be prepared to withstand attack. He no longer had any doubts about the nature of the savanters. They were a source of danger and evil to the Nom and to all people. He was walking ever deeper into the cloud pool to meet them. And he was the instrument of their destruction.

Now ahead in the whiteness, he began to make out looming shapes. He walked on more slowly, his eyes searching the cloud. The shapes were clearer when he didn't look directly, when he glimpsed them from the sides of his eyes. There were many of them, one beyond another: they seemed to be high frames, like scaffolds or gibbets. Suspended from each frame was a shadowy mass that was the shape of a human body.

His heart began to bump with fear. Was this some form of mass execution?

He came nearer. Now he could see the dark outline of the frames and the way they formed a curving line disappearing away from him. The frames were not vertical like scaffolds, but at a slant. The gray masses hanging from the frames were indeed human forms—there was no mistaking the outspread limbs. But where were the heads?

Seeker forced himself to keep moving, drawing closer to the leaning mist-shrouded scaffolds all the time, seeing more and more of the bodies that hung there, spread-eagled, headless.

Not headless. Upside down.

He could make out one of them now. A man in a white robe, strapped on his back to a steeply sloping frame, his legs spread out at the top, his head at the bottom. A band of folded cloth was tied over his eyes. His mouth sagged open. And from his lips oozed a thick creamy white syrup.

Seeker stopped and stared. The man seemed to be unharmed. But the sight of that white ooze trickling from his lips and over his cheeks to the ground was peculiarly horrifying. As the thick white substance dribbled down, it formed a puddle, and the puddle was steaming. White vapor rose from its surface and swirled up and away. Evidently on contact with the air, the dense ooze expanded and became a heavy gas.

Seeker looked beyond this nearest victim and saw through the mist all the other scaffolds curving away in a wide circle. Each one holding a victim, each one dribbling out this same ooze. No doubt deeper in the mist there were other similar circles. All that ooze forming puddles on the ground; all those puddles rising up as white gas. This, then, must be the source of the cloud.

Seeker had no way of knowing what the white substance was. Clearly it had no value to the savanters, because they allowed it to drain away and be wasted. It could only be the by-product of something they did want.

The initial shock now past, he moved closer still, and saw that a thin tube ran from the suspended body, over the ground, into the cloud. He tracked the tube to find the point at which it was fixed to the man's body. It ended in a long fine needle, and the needle was inserted into the base of his neck.

Seeker was so close now that he could see the slow rise and fall of the victim's chest. So he wasn't dead. He moved on, past other victims strapped in the same way to their high sloping frames, his eyes now on the slender tubes. Every frame had its tube, and the tubes converged on a central point. The arrangement was becoming clearer. A wide circle of victims, made up of a larger number than he had at first realized, were connected by tubes that snaked their way over the ground to the circle's center, which was lost in the mist. There, he presumed, he would find the remaining four savanters.

Seeker padded cautiously through the whiteness, following the tubes. They led him to a long low cylinder;
and beside the cylinder, a chair made of canvas and wood, like a garden recliner; and in the chair, an old man in a bathrobe, fast asleep. The cylinder that received the tubes from the victims was connected to the sleeping man by a single much thicker tube, which was fixed to the back of his neck. This tube was twitching as if it were alive. The old man's lips shuddered as he slept. A low humming sound came from the cylinder. At one end, there was a knurled wheel that looked as if it opened and closed an inner valve.

Seeker watched the sleeping man for a few moments, and the anger in him mounted. By what right did he feed on the life force of so many victims? Seeker knew he had not been sent here to save the victims from their own folly, but how could he leave them to die like this?