I dismissed Gosan-ha there, leaving orders with the guardsmen that I was not to be disturbed unless it was a matter of the gravest urgency, and then I went on along the richly furnished corridor.
The next morning, Oontawa awakened us. She was shocked and it showed on her face. Armandra took charge of the situation at once, saying, “Oontawa, do you disapprove? This is my husband that fought for me in the Choosing of a Champion. Yes, and I love him.”
“Yes, Armandra,” the Indian girl began, “butâ”
“There may be very little time left for us,” Armandra interrupted. “In the battle that must soon come we may be the losers. It is not a thought I want spread among my people but the possibility exists. You are just a maiden, a girl who has been friend and companion to me and who loves me. I love you too, for your innocence. Though not too many years separate us, our minds are centuries apart. I am old in strange wisdom and you are innocent. In your innocence I have seen you smile favorably upon a certain brave. Is it not so?”
“It is so,” Oontawa bowed her head and flushed.
“And is he not the handsome brave that keeps the bears for our warlord? His name isâ”
“Kota'na, my princess.”
“Just so. Then I repeat that time is very precious, Oontawa. I suggest we arrange a Choosing of Champions for you. As of this moment you are dismissed from my service, but I know you will remain my friend. Go, girl, and find your happiness, as I have found mine.”
Oontawa bowed again and when she lifted her head there were glad tears in her eyes. She turned to me. “Lord Sil-ber-hut-te, your friend Whitey waits to see you. He is with Gosan-ha and Kasna'chi. They wait where the guardsmen stand with their bears.”
I smiled and nodded. “I will come.”
Oontawa waited on the far side of the curtained doorway that closed off Armandra's rooms, and when I was ready we walked together to the guarded end of the corridor where Whitey and my bodyguards waited. She left me there to go in search of Kota'na, taking him the news that Armandra had ended her service so that the Keeper of the Bears could take her to wife.
I walked with Whitey, slowly pacing the fantastic labyrinths of the plateau and talking to him while my bodyguards kept a discreet distance to the rear. Whitey was up-to-date on everything, had heard of my new office, was pleased that Armandra had placed the might of
the plateau in my hands. He said as much, and yet I sensed that something was bothering him.
“I feel I've kind of let you down this time, Hank,” he finally said after a long period of silence. “SomethingâI don't know whatâisn't right.”
“How do you mean, Whitey?”
“It's hard to explain, a funny thing. And yet not so funny, if you follow me. All my life, even before I was fully aware of this power of mine to, well, to gauge the mood of the future, so to speak, before I was a hunchman proper, I could kind of
sense the existence
of tomorrow. I was as much aware of the reality of the future as other people were of the past. Tomorrow was as certain to me as yesterday.” He paused for a moment, then continued, “I suppose it must be a difficult concept for anyone who's not a hunchman. Anyway, as I've grown older the impressions of tomorrow have occasionally been clearer. Such flashes have been my hunches, of course, the end results of the special talent that made me valuable to the Wilmarth Foundation. Until recently ⦔
“Oh.” I frowned. “Well, go on, Whitey. What's the problem?”
He shrugged resignedly. “It's a worrying thing, Hank. I feel like I just lost a leg or something. You know what I mean?”
“No more hunches, eh?”
“Right the first time. Sorry, Hank.”
“But how could it happen? Have you any ideas?”
“Yeah, I have an idea,” he grimly answered. “My idea is, how can I see tomorrows that aren't going to be?”
“Not going to be? There'll always be tomorrows, Whitey.”
“Sure!” he said. “But will we be here to enjoy them?”
The Lull Before the Storm
(Recorded through the Medium of Juanita Alvarez)
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The next fortnight
was one of frantic activity. Working to Charlie Tacomah's suggestions I garrisoned soldiers close to the plateau's outer walls, in temporary cavern-barracks from which they could rapidly deploy to defensive positions. The plateau's weak spotsâseveral
large and easily accessible entrances opening straight into the guts of the plateau from the plainâwere specially strengthened and fortified to my orders. Quarriers worked nonstop to cut and lever massive blocks of stone into place. We did a similar job with the snow-ship keeps, those fjordlike, frozen reentries where the great ski-borne battlecraft were harbored. These tasks, wherever possible, I personally supervised. If I was not available, Charlie was there in my stead. With each and every person in the plateau realizing the urgency of the situation, the work went ahead with very few complications; the plateau peoples were all right there behind their princessâyes, and behind their new warlord, too.
Heartening as all this was, over that same period of time there were worrying things happening out on the white waste in the vicinity of the Wind-Walker's temple. The watchers on the roof of the plateau had reported the activity; I myself had seen it enlarged in my binoculars. The Children of the Winds had gathered from far and wide, were exercising in orderly military maneuvers across the frozen terrain of their territory. Northan was flexing his new and savagely powerful muscles, making a vast and disciplined fighting body out of the entire nation of Ithaqua's worshippers. And always the Snow-Thing watched over the ex-warlord's progress, and always the tension heightened.
Then, during the third week, there were two new developments. Ithaqua departed yet again, walking away across the winds and disappearing over Borea's rim, and Jimmy Franklin brought me news of that which I could only consider an act of sheerest lunacy. The latter concerned Tracy.
It was midweek and I was with Armandra, who was trying to explain to me her alien father's eternal wanderlust, his apparent inability to remain in any specific sphere for any appreciable length of time, which she explained as being simply one of the conditions of the limited freedom allowed him by the Elder Gods, when Jimmy came to us. He breathlessly told us his story.
He and my sister had been walking together through the complexes of the plateau when their wanderings had taken them to the forbidden tunnel. They had stood together at that dark entrance, and suddenly he had noticed a new light in Tracy's eyes. She was aware, of course, that her star-stones were believed to be somewhere in that sinister burrow, left there by Northan's now incurably crazed underling.
Realizing what she intended to do, Franklin had tried to stop her but discovered he was neither physically nor mentally strong enough to do so. His wounds had healed, true, but his strength was not yet back to normal. When she broke loose from him and ran off down the tunnel, bearing with her a torch snatched from the nearest flambeau, he had tried to follow her but was held back by the dreadful power emanating from that hideous shaft. It had been as if he threw himself against the solid wall of some castle of evil, while a brain-eating acid was dripped upon his head from the unseen battlements.
Finally, reeling and clutching at his sanity where the
power
had brought him to a halt just a few paces inside the nightmare entranceâknowing that to remain would certainly mean succumbing to madnessâhe realized that he could do nothing at all to help Tracy. She would not return until she either found the star-stones or satisfied herself that they were not there. Then Franklin crawled from the place on all fours, and as soon as he had recovered he hurried to me.
We returned to the forbidden tunnel immediately, Armandra and my bodyguards with us, and on our way I obtained a slender spear. Seeing that I had armed myself, Armandra clung desperately to my arm and I felt her mental fingers worriedly probing the edges of my telepathic consciousness. I closed my mind to her, though already she must have known what I intended to doâwhat I would at least attempt.
I expected objections but at the tunnel mouth no one tried to stop me; it would have been futile to do so. I simply ran into the tunnel, a burning brand in one hand, my spear in the other, shouting Tracy's name. And immediately the
power
was there pushing against me, trying to hold me back with fingers of fear that worked in my brain, so that with every step I felt I was leaping from a precipice, or hurling myself down the living throat of some primordial reptile. And the echoes of my cries came back to me: “Tracy! ⦠Tracy! â¦
Tracy
!”
And then I was on my knees, pushing forward, spear and torch before me, with shadows leaping on the walls and ceiling like mad demons while fear tore at my insides. And I knew I was going to go mad with fear. I knew it.
And I would have gone mad if I had forced myself onâbut I didn't have to. From around a bend in the tunnel It came, waves of fear beating out from It, the horror that the plateau dreaded, hitherto unseen, unknown. Manlike It was, an inky anthropomorphic blot that
dripped namelessly; but small as I could never have expected It to be, this Thing that radiated such
fear!
As It came closer I backed away on all fours, dropping my torch from nerveless fingers, feeling the fear eating my brain. And then I remembered Tracy.
“Monster!” I screamed, I got to my feet, drew back my arm and balanced the slender spear, which the instinct for self-preservation had made me hold on to, aiming at the thing's heartâ
And the monster spoke!
“Hank? Is that you? Are you all right?”
Tracy! But if this was my sister, why should I feel the
fear
radiating from her? Why should my stomach twist and writhe with every step she took toward me?
I backed away, noting through waves of terror how the inky figure kept well away from the sputtering flame as it edged around the still burning torch where it flared upon the floor. With every step the figure advanced I had to retreat, pushed back by the
fear
.
“Tracy.” I somehow managed to force words from my parched throat. “Is it really you? What's happened to you?”
“Of course it's me, Hank,” the figure replied, and certainly it spoke with Tracy's voice. “Yes, it's me. I'm covered in oil, that's all.”
“But Tracy,” I pressed her, still backing away, “whyâwhy am I
afraid
of you?”
“What?” she stopped moving toward me and I the growing concern and disbelief in her voice. A moment later she laughed and I knew at last that it really was Tracy. “Oh, it must be the star-stones!” she said in sudden relief. “I came down here to look for two of themâand I found hundreds! Down at the other end of the tunnel there's a huge cavern, with star-shaped symbols on the walls and all over the ceiling, and the floor is literally covered with the stones. I'm carrying dozens of them with me right now, and they're heavy! It must be the stones you can sense; you're frightened of
them
, not me.”
She was right, of course she was. “And this cavern,” I questioned, still retreating before her. “Is itâempty?”
“Yes, apart from the star-stones and the oil. At one place the cavern wall is cracked and oil is seeping in, I guess from the place where the plateau's people draw off their fuel. I left my torch stuck in the floor while I was gathering up some of the stones. Then I slipped and
fell in the oil. That's why I had to leave the torch behind and come back in the dark. Are you all right, Hank?”
Now it was my turn to laugh, weakly, almost hysterically.
“Oh, yes, I'm all rightâbut you'd better let me warn the others or they're likely to make a pincushion of you as you come out.”
“Yes, yes do!” she cried. “Oh, go on, Hank, get out of here. You sound dreadful. Please hurry on ahead. And don't worry. There's absolutely nothing down here to hurt you. Oh. except the star-stones, of course.”
Of course. Nothing but the star-stones!
I turned then and ran, or rather I staggered, back along the way I had come. And all the way the
fear
snapped at my heels, right behind me. Only now I knew exactly what I was afraid ofâwhat everyone in the plateau had fearedâand though the knowledge made no difference and I was still desperately afraid, I was also jubilant!
“Let them come,” my spirit cried inside me, “and Ithaqua with them. At least the odds are balanced a lot more in our favor now!”
Â
And that brings us up to five days ago, Juanita. I've probably missed things, I know, but nothing that I think is of any real importance. Let's see now, how long have we been in touch? With time off for a few breaks and a couple of hours sleep, I reckon it must have been all of thirty-six hours. Is that a record for telepathic contact between worldsâor rather, between “spheres?” I suppose it must be. You say Peaslee has given you a team of stenographers, typists, tape recorders? Methodical as ever. He doesn't miss a trick.
With you right now? Yes, I see in your mind that he is. He says to quit the casual chatter and get on with it, does he? Well, you can tell him from me that the Wilmarth Foundation doesn't carry much weight way out here on Borea! He's right, though, so I suppose we'd better get on with it. Not that there's a lot left to tell.
We're simply waiting now, there's nothing else to do. Armandra has been resting for two days, seeing no one, not even me. She says she'll need all her strength for the coming fight, and try as I might I can't convince her that she won't have any part of it. The trouble is, I know that if she wanted to join in there's not much I could do to stop her; she would only be fighting for her people after all. And for her freedom.
It can't be far off now, the fight, for Northan has quit exercising his army and holds it in readiness. And Ithaqua is hack. The Wind-Walker perches atop his pyramid as always, except that he no longer stares out and away over the white wastes. Now he faces squarely in the direction of the plateau.
Tracy has been busier than anyone else since she found the star-stones in the cave at the end of the forbidden tunnel, those same star-stones that once held the Wind-Walker imprisoned deep in the guts of the plateau. That's why the horror has always held the plateau in great respect, why he himself has not yet seen fit directly to attack the place.
But to get back to Tracy: she must have walked miles, poor kid, before she let Kota'na talk her into riding one of his bears. Since then she's been getting about much faster. And her work is probably the most important of all, for Tracy has been putting the finishing touches to the plateau's defenses.
I suppose I could say that the idea was a group effort of Charlie Tacomah, Tracy and myselfâbut the truth is that Tracy's had the lion's share of the work. I had a rough idea how I wanted the star-stones used; Charlie worked out the mechanical details; Tracy is still working to finish it off, but it's just about done now.
Roughly the idea was this: that the stones be used as a secondary defense behind the new tunnel barriers, to deny entry into the plateau should the barriers be breached. Charlie designed heavy wooden frames, had them built and suspended from the ceilings of the outer tunnels. Fixed to the fronts of these frames are spears set in two rows. The bottom row consists of conventional spears fixed about two feet apart, and these are meant to impale the giant wolves. The upper rows are less conventional; in fact they're not spears at all but simply stout poles, like slender battering rams. Only nailed to the end of each pole is a star-stoneâand these are not meant for wolves â¦
Tracy's hands are a mass of blisters. Because she's the only one able to handle the star-stones, by now she must have nailed up almost two hundred of the things.
Anyway, Charlie's devices work like this: swinging from the ceilings of the tunnels and operated by teams of men hauling on ropes from the rear, they should form impassable barriers. The spears are not barbed: that is, they will impale men and wolves alike, but their victims will not pile up on the shafts. By the time a wall of bodies has
built up in front of one of these fearsome devices, well, the passage will be impassable by then anyway. And when they are not in use the spear-frames can be hauled up to the tunnel ceilings to allow my warriors passage beneath them.
There have been one or two minor accidents when Tracy's assistants have come into momentary contact with her stones, but once burned means twice shy. Those who suffer make sure they don't get burned a second time! I imagine that when these terrible weapons are in action, nothing Ithaqua can send against them will stand a chance.
And that is only one of the uses to which the star-stones have been put. They've also been fixed on the massive gates that guard the snow-ship keeps, and they form a five-pointed design in the battlements of the plateau's roof. All in all, I believe we've used them to their best advantage. Time alone will tell, and I think there's precious little time left.