“Of all the People of the Plateau, I reckon that about sixty of them have arrived here on Borea within the last twenty or thirty years. They learn to fit in pretty quickly. Of course, the great majority of folks that Ithaqua brings stay out on the plains, too frightened to try to escape. If an escapee is recaptured,” he shrugged, “Ithaqua has his own ways of punishing deserters.”
“And now?” Tracy prompted him after a moment's silence. “What's to become of us?”
“Well, you heard what Armandra said. There's not a great deal we can do with you just yet. Right now, though, it is my pleasure to show you all around the plateau; a fascinating place, as you'll see. Eventually my colleagues' proposals will be put before Armandra for her approval. It is not anticipated that you will be required to contribute in any mundane fashion to the plateau's welfare. Of course, you are far different from run-of-the-mill newcomers.”
As he finished speaking Oontawa returned. Tracy cocked her head to one side and smiled wickedly at me. She whispered: “Here comes the handmaiden, Hank. Before she takes you to Armandra, you'd better promise me you'll be a good boy. I've noticed the way you look at the Woman of the Winds.”
“Star-stones or not,” I told her, grinning, “another crack like that, little sister, and you go over my kneeâand I'll do a bit of wind-raising myself!”
And so I started out with Oontawa for Armandra's apartments, and it immediately became apparent that the Priestess of the Plateau dwelt in the topmost levels of her realm. Staircase after stone staircase we climbed, ever spiralling upward through basalt caverns and tunnels until I was sure we must soon reach the battlements of the roof; and we could not have been far short of that roof when finally we came to the first corridor I had seen with its own selected guardsmen.
During our long climb the symbols above tunnel entrances or at
the feet of the staircases had been gradually narrowing down to a handful, but already I had guessed which symbol led to Armandra: that of a flash of lightning. Sure enough, above that last, guarded corridor entrance, the lightning flash was the sole remaining symbols, and I saw that beyond it even the tunnel walls themselves were draped with priceless furs.
Two huge squat Eskimo guards, each attended by a towering white bear that swayed and yawned in a rock-cut niche to his rear, stood up straight and saluted with their viciously barbed, ceremonial harpoons as we passed. Flambeaux were now absent where natural light flooded in through windows lining the vast curve of the outer wall. By “windows” I may give the wrong impression; I paused to look out through one of them and found myself staring into a shaft, for the window was cut through a wall of rock all of fifteen feet thick!
Closer to our destination the light flooded in more brightly, and here I saw that the thickness of the outer wall was much diminished. We came to a huge, iron-barred balcony with a stone ceiling; the balcony reached out from the face of the plateau into open air. Now I saw indeed that we were at a great height above the white waste. Fighting the wind that howled in from outside, I put my head out between the bars and looked down. More than two hundred and fifty feet beneath me, the rocky base of the plateau froze into the surface of the surrounding ground. Craning my neck I looked upward and saw that the topmost ramparts were still some twenty to thirty feet higher than this level, that the solid rock above my head must form the ceiling of Armandra's rooms.
I turned to Oontawa, saying; “A dangerous place. A careless person could be sucked out by the wind, or fall through the bars.”
She nodded. “Yes, Armandra sometimesâwalks outâfrom here. When she seeks solitude.”
With those innocent words; so naively spoken, the Indian girl brought back to me all that I had tried to forget of the woman who was about to give me audience. Here was I, going to Armandra's apartments almost like some fancy courtier on his way to the boudoir of a precocious princess, and yet it was not like that at all. Armandra was more goddess than woman, as much an alien creature as a human being, and I was merely a man of the Motherworld.
Oontawa chattered away as we walked the perimeter corridor, practicing her English and doubtlessly trying to be very informative,
but I scarcely heard a word she said; my mind was now fully on her mistress. Perhaps fifty yards beyond the great balcony we came to a curtained entrance where the lightning flash symbol was inlaid in gold; the door to Armandra's quarters. Oontawa passed through the curtains ahead of me, murmuring something as she went, but again my mind was not on what the Indian girl was saying. I followed directly behind her through the curtains.
The room beyond was gorgeously appointed, rich as an eastern sultan's wildest dreams of opulence. Delicately carved, curtained archways led off into adjoining rooms; soft furs of a texture and coloring guaranteed to delight any furrier of the Motherworld overlapped across the floor; the white walls were carved with pillars and arches and intricate arabesques; gold and silver ornaments stood in arched niches in the walls, and fretted agate and marble furniture was cushioned with white furs as soft as freshly fallen snow. But in the very center of the room stood the greatest wonder of allâArmandra, rising naked from a crystal pool!
We saw each other and froze, and simultaneously Oontawa realized that I had followed her into the chamber of her mistress without waiting. She turned with a sharp cry of consternation, her almond eyes wide and flashing.
“Calm yourself, Oontawa,” Armandra said. “I am sure that my guest has seen naked women before. The Motherworld is full of âfascinating' women!”
Stepping from the pool she folded herself in a white fur wrap that covered her body completely. Before her feet vanished in the robe's folds, I thought for a moment that I saw something odd about them. What it was I could not have said exactly, just that they seemed to beâscarred? It had been only a glimpse.
“Well,” she continued, shaking her red hair and sprinkling crystal droplets all about; “you might as well sit, Hank Silberhutte, or do all men of the Motherworld stand like statues with their mouths open?”
At that I offered an awkward, embarrassed grin, in answer to which I saw mischievous lights dancing momentarily in the depths of her fjord eyes. “Oontawa, leave us,” she told the girl. “I will call you when I want you. Oh!â” she called out in an afterthought as, with a look of disbelief stamped upon her face, the girl turned to go. “Though I trust you above all others, Oontawa, make sure you say
nothing of this man's unfortunate eagerness to attend me; there are those it would surely enrage. You may see to it that the elders, too, remain silent about this interview. Particularly those with whom the warlord has influence.”
Oontawa. bowed and went out through the curtains. I sat at a delicately carved table, hardly daring to rest the weight of my arms upon it in case it fell apart. Armandra seated herself upon the fur cushions of a settee carved of a single gigantic agate, hugging her robe about her and gazing at me curiously.
She said: “Are your hands gentle, Hank Silberhutte?”
Again she had me tongue-tied. “My hands?”
“Are they
gentle
,” she frowned impatiently, “for the drying of my hair?”
“They can be gentle,” I answered, “when they need to be.”
“Good. Come and dry my hair.”
I went to her and took the square of woven material that she handed me. She continued: “I know that your hands can be hard, for you knocked down that strutting bear, Northan. But I expect that they are soft, too; how else would you handle all of those âfascinating' women of the Motherworld?”
I caught up her damp tresses and began to dry them, pausing to turn her head away so that I could make a decent job of it.
“Your hands
are
gentle,” she told me, laughing at me out of sea green eyes. “Perhaps I'll find a place for you as a handmaiden, andâ”
At that point I stopped her. To say what she had said to any man, which most ordinary women of Earth would know better than to do, would surely be folly. To say it to a Texan â¦
I turned her head back and kissed her fiercely, feeling her fingers fly to the back of my neck and head to tear at my hair, ignoring the shock and anger obvious in her suddenly squirming, furiously fighting body, until she no longer fought but sank her nails into my neck and drank as deeply as I.
For a moment only!
Then, as I relaxed my hold upon her, she snatched herself back from me and slapped me so hard that my ears rang.
“You beautiful
witch!
” I said through clenched teeth.
But now she tilted her head warningly and I thought her eyes were suddenly flecked with pink. Those great eyes widened and,
seemingly of its own accord, the still damp hair of her head fitted eerily to float free of her shoulders. For a moment she was a goddess again, utterly inhuman. But then, amazingly, she burst into tears and buried her face in her hands!
Armandra Chooses a Mate
(Recorded through the Medium of Juanita Alvarez)
Â
Her tears were
the perfectly normal tears of a woman face to farce with utter mental and physical frustration. The tears of a
woman,
not a being of supermundane powers. Telepathically probing the edge of her emotions, gently, so as to remain undiscovered, I found a stark island of bitter frustration afloat in a sea of loneliness.
Whitey's words came back to me, about Ithaqua's need for a companion:
It's a terrible lonely existence,
he had said,
walking the spaces between the spheres.
How much more true for a human or half-human child of the Snow Thing with alien powers trapped in a human psyche, framed by human emotions?
Carefully, concentrating on what I was doing, I allowed sympathy to flow along the line of one-way communication I had established, and instantly the bleak hopelessness in Armandra's mind began to soften. She lifted her head and leaned toward me, searching my face with eyes as round as saucers. Her tears were already drying.
“Was it really you, Hank, that came to me when my father held me fast?”
I nodded, answering her in a manner guaranteed to satisfy her curiosity and quell any last doubt she might have. “Yes.” I said.
“It really was. It's a power I have.”
And she could see that it was so, that I was speaking in her mind. Proof of my success showed in her frown, then in the widening of eyes already huge. “A very dangerous power,” she said, forming her words carefully. “How can any woman trust a man who listens to her thoughts?”
“She must first learn to believe that he would not listen uninvited,” I answered. Then I launched into an explanation of my telepathic power, briefly telling her what I had already made known to the
Council of Elders. “So you see,” I finished, “that among my colleagues of the Motherworld it is considered outrageous for one telepath to âlisten' to another without his permission. But in any case, mv own power is rather special.”
And there I paused, for how could I say that I was limited to intercourse with alien thoughts, the hideous mental gibberings of monsters, when Armandra herself was now a vehicle for my talent? I groped for words. “I can only detect the thoughts ofâof very special Beings.”
“Other people?”
“There is one other woman I can talk to in this fashion,” I hedged, “and she is like a sister, the same as Tracy.”
“But you have listened to my mind. Is it not so?”
“No, not really. When you spied upon your father out over the frozen wastes, it was not telepathy that trapped me there when you were trapped. It was your own power, yours and your father's, a power in no way like mine. It is far greater, different.”
She nodded, warming to the empathy growing between us. “I believe you. I know it is true. The power I have, which came to me from my father, is not like yours. But have you not listened to my mind within the last few moments, here in this very room?”
“No,” I again denied it. “I merely felt your hurt, your loneliness, and tried to comfort you. I have not stolen a single thought out of your lovely head, though any man might easily be tempted to try Particularly if he thought you were thinking about him.” I stared at her pointedly.
“One day, Hank Silberhutte, I might invite you into my head,” she said, quite seriously. “Would you come to me if I called you? If I needed you?”
“That I promise.”
“But wait,” she said. “I have heard
your
voice talking to
my
mind, yes, but how do we know ifâ”
“Would you like to try an experiment?”
She nodded eagerly.
“Then think something at me, anything. See if I can read it in your mind.”
She opened her eyes wide and stared straight at me. It was very strange, that sensation, like the chiming of golden bells at the bottom of some mental well, rising slowly to the surface, forming pictures. I
looked, then chuckled as the mischievous lights again lit in Armandra's eyes. “Yes,” I nodded, “I think perhaps Northan would be angry if he knew I was here. But it does not worry me. Do you fear him, Armandra?”
“Fear Northan? I fear only Ithaquaâbut I know that many of my people, even a handful of the elders, do fear the warlord.” Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “He is ambitious. And he does not like his ambitions thwarted. You must watch out for him, Hank. Be very watchful of Northan.”
“It surprises me,” I said, “that he was not in the Hall of the Elders for yourâseeing.”
“No, he would be celebrating the victory of the ships over the wolf-warriors. Sometimes the celebrations last for days. Oh, they strut and boast, as their forefathers did before them. In many ways they are like children.”
“Well,” I answered, “the battle was well won, with your help. But without you Northan would have been hard put. And he lost a lot of face when I returned his blows. I can hardly see that he has much to celebrate!”
“Oh, he'll knock a few heads together, find excuses for your beating him on his own ship and awe his cronies with feats of strength.” Again her eyes narrowed. “I know Northan the Warlord. It will not take him long to regain whatever face he feels he has lost. He is ambitious.” Again that word.
“And what is his ambition, do you think?”
“Is it not obvious?” she lifted her eyebrows. “He desires to share these apartments with me. For while the People of the Plateau are satisfied with their princess, Northan would give them a king, a High Priest. And in a way the elders aid him, for they want me to have children.”
“But you do not want him?”
“I could do worse,” she tossed her hair, dry now, and began to comb it. “Does the thought annoy you?”
“No,” I immediately answered, then bit my tongue and spoke in her mind.
“You damn well know it does!”
She laughed. “Because I am fascinating, and beautiful?”
“Those are good reasons,” I agreed.
“I am not all beautiful,” she told me, her face becoming serious in an instant. “You saw my feet when I left the pool?”
“Your feet? Yes, they lookedâ”
She flicked the fur wrap so that it flew wide below her knees. “They are ugly!” she said.
For a moment she stared down in something like horror at her feet, then said; “My mother was stolen from your green Earth by Ithaqua. She was given into the care of the Children of the Winds until I was born. Later, in my father's absence, having learned that he had fathered a child upon a human woman, the plateau people stole me away in a raid and brought me here; my mother too, but she died from the wound of a harpoon hurled in the fighting. They say she was very beautiful.
The elders raised me. When I was ten a physician, specially trained for ten years to perform one work, cut my feet down from the great webbed pads they were to their present shape. He was supposed to leave them looking like normal human feet, so that I would forget my origins, but the operation was not very successful. For a long time I was in constant pain.”
A moment longer I looked at her feet. They were the shape of human feet but with square looking, nailless toes and a covering of smooth scar tissue. Then she flicked her wrap back into place.
“When my feet had healed, about a year after the operation, I had a terrible dream of great angry winds and of the physician whose knives had scarred me. When I awakened the elders told me that there had been an accident; that same physician had fallen from a window of his room high in the outer wall of the plateau. A freak gust of wind, they said.
“When I told them that I had sent that wind to kill himâsent it in my sleep to settle a debt I hardly recognized in my waking hoursâthen they stood in awe of me and knew that they could never suppress that in me which was of Ithaqua. Thus I became what I am.
“But there,” she looked at me and sighed. “Now you must go. Soon I meet with the elders again and I need a few hours sleep. The seeing drained me. Today was especially hard. I became too involved with my father's awful justice. He has never come so close to trapping me before. But, Hank Silberhutte, I am glad you are my friend And I know that if I call you will come to me. Now go.”
“There's a lot you could tell me, many questions youâ”
“Your questions will he answered, in time.” She stood up, holding her wrap about her. She held out her free hand and I took it, following
her to the curtained exit. “Only promise me,” she said, “that however tempted you may be, you will never look into my mind uninvited. When I want you to know my thoughts, you shall know them.”
“I promise.”
“Wait!” she cried as I was about to leave. “You gave me something I did not ask for. Now take it back.” She leaned forward, brushed my lips with hers, and quickly withdrew. Seeing the mischief rising in her eyes I reached out my arms to her, and she drew the curtains in my face and was gone.
On returning to my room I felt suddenly exhausted. That experience I had shared with Armandra's psyche had severely sapped my strength, as much as the fight against her father's alien will had taxed hers. Since the others were not back yet from their sightseeing, I lay down and slept.
No sooner had I awakened than they returned. They were tired, but so full of what they had seen I decided that in the near future I most explore the plateau for myself.
“This place,” said Whitey, “is a maze of marvels. We've seen the wells that supply half of the plateau's water, and the cavern where weeds and mushrooms grow at the edge of the geyser flats. We've seen cave pools chock-full of fish, and watched the Eskimos spearing them.”
“From the other side of the plateau,” Tracy cut in, “we've seen the rim of Borea's sun. Like the moons, it never moves; only its upper curve shows. There's a forest of pines on that side, too, and in the distance a great stretch of woodland that reaches to the horizon. It looks like a rather flat version of Canada.”
Jimmy was less enthusiastic. “We saw the pool of oil where they draw their fuel in wooden buckets, and we saw the dark tunnel whose entrance has a skull carved above it as a warning: We felt the horror lurking there, emanating from forbidden nether-caves. No one knows what lies at the tunnel's lower level; its mysteries have never been explored. It reeks ofâfear!”
When Tracy shivered I knew it was not because of any normal chill she might feel. “It's funny,” she said. “Jimmy and Whitey felt thisâthis
thing
âand so did Charlie Tacomah. All of the People of the Plateau feel it when they are close to the tunnel. No one will enter it, not by a single step. And yet I felt nothing. Well, I felt something, but not fear. If anything, I felt safer there. But not really safe, if you know
what I mean.” Suddenly she clung to my arm: “Hank when can we ⦠I mean, do you thinkâ”
“Tracy,” Whitey cut her off. “Let's have it out in the open. We must all have thought of the same thing, and I've been trying my best to see what the outcome might be. You know, I've been looking for a hunch. But I haven't found one.”
“You don't come over too well, Whitey,” I told him. “You mean we're stuck here?”
He nodded. “I think so. It looks like we're here for good. If these people have been on Borea for thousands of years and haven't found a way back yet, what chance do we stand?”
Tracy looked miserable so I put my arm round her. “Not much of a chance,” I agreed. Then I thought of Armandra and realized that the thought of staying on Borea hadn't really been bothering me too much.
“Still,” I added, “never say die.”
For me the next month passed slowly. I seemed always to be waiting for a call from Armandra, but I only saw her twice, at meetings of the council to which I was invited as a courtesy. On both occasions. though, I had caught her eyes on me when she thought I was looking elsewhere. Between times my dreams were full of her.
Once I dreamed we walked together on the wind between the worlds. We moved where stars were frosted to the firmament and Borea was far away. And yet, though I saw Armandra mostly in my dreams, there was always this peculiar feeling that she was with me in the waking world also. I began to suspect that she was “peeking” into my mind. If so, then she knew well enough by now my feelings for her.
I say the time passed slowly, and yet there were diversions. The plateau's weapon-masters took me in hand and I was trained for three hours daily in a variety of weapons. I soon discovered that what skill could not achieve in a tight spot might often be realized by use of my considerable size and strength. And my strength never failed to amaze my instructors.
During one such session Northan entered the exercise cave. I was throwing a harpoon at a painted target of woven hide when the warlord came in. I saw him and his presence put me off; my throw went a few inches wide of the bull.