Wraiths of Time (14 page)

“She will do very little,” Khasti returned calmly. “I will see to that. Now!”

In one hand he still held the object he had used to examine the Rod, but in the other he had, with the speed of a conjuror, produced something else, a glittering disk he spun out through the air, twirling it on the end of a chain. Against her will Tallahassee's eyes were drawn to that. Over her dropped the same compulsion that had held her to another's will back in the museum.

So compelled, she arose jerkily, not even mistress of her own body, and then stooped to close her hand on the Rod. The shaft felt warm, almost alive in her grasp. There was something she could do—should do—but Ashake memory was not strong enough to tell her. No, as Khasti's prisoner she must take up the Rod and carry it, three—four tottering steps forward, to place it once more within the guarding case.

“Well done, Great Lady.” He made a sneer of her title as he leaned forward to push down the lid, seal the Rod from sight. “So it is true, you have some control over that thing.” Now he swung the box up before her, holding it steady at her heart level and watching its surface. Once more the frown line appeared and he shook his head, perhaps denying the path of his own thoughts.

“You see, Princess,” he said to Idieze, “how the new knowledge confronts and vanquishes the old? She is now as obedient to my control as might be a hunting leopard in leash.”

“She is dangerous, too. She can be our deaths,” Idieze retorted.

“Quite so. Yet it was you who brought her here, Princess.”

“Because we must have a hostage until our plans are full ripe. They deem her the Heir, they will not want to lose her.”

“So you have thought it all out?” Khasti smiled—coldly. “There is no need for the old methods of hostages and bargains. Did we not agree, Princess, that the time has come to sweep away the past and strike out anew, unburdened by age-old superstition and custom?”

“We have not yet the strength—”

“We have all we need—for the present. If more must be sought, we know well where to discover it.”

Idieze gazed at him in open bitterness. Maybe she was beginning to realize now, Tallahassee suspected, that the power behind the Emperor Userkof would not be his wife after all, but this other.

“Then what do we do with her?” She stabbed a finger at their prisoner as if she wished it were steel aimed to take the other's life.

“She will be very safe, Princess—with me.” As he uttered those words Khasti let the whirling disk grow still, thrust it back into the folds of his robe. But before Tallahassee, released from that compulsion, could move to save herself, his hand came into the open again holding a cylinder. Once more there was discharged into her face the same narcotic spray that had brought her prisoner here. She remembered crumpling forward and that was all.

She roused slowly, but now she played no game of trying to confuse her captors concerning her state, for she had an idea that she could achieve nothing by that a second time. Around her shone light, bright enough to make her blink, and she heard queer sounds she found hard to identify.

The surface under her was level and hard as she levered herself up on her arms to look about. She was—caged! There was indeed a mesh of netting secured to four stout posts which kept her in one section of a very large chamber. But there was far more than her own cage here.

Tallahassee had no difficulty in identifying objects that would have been totally strange to Ashake. This was a laboratory of sorts, hardly differing from those in which she had once been a student. To her left stood a clicking box which reached nearly to the ceiling, but elsewhere there were two long tables crowded with retorts, bottles, instruments. And the air was slightly acrid with the fumes of chemicals.

On the nearest table there stood a much smaller cage, fashioned exactly like hers but of slightly different shape, and in that lay the Rod, out of its box again. Even in this strong light Tallahassee believed she saw a shimmer of radiance about the gem that was its head. Beside it lay something else—the Key—or at least an ankh which was enough like the one she had seen in Jayta's hand to be its twin. Yet it had not been displayed earlier as part of Idieze's loot.

There was something—a sudden small spark of Ashake memory stirred at the sight of it. But it faded quickly when Tallahassee tried to define it more clearly. She was left with the feeling that with the Rod and the Key together something could be done for her own defense and perhaps return attack against those responsible for bringing her here.

The cage did not have any visible door, and when she tentatively reached out her hand toward the mesh there was a warning reflex that made her wary of touching it. She would not sacrifice her single garment, but the cloth about her head might be used.

Carefully Tallahassee twisted it into a hard knot and then gingerly touched one end—holding it as far from her fingers as she could—to the screen wall. There came an instant flare as Tallahassee froze. What if her hand or arm had come in contact with that? Now she sat cross-legged in the middle of her cage and tried to see ahead—though the future was more than unpredictable.

Her thoughts were unpleasant and led nowhere, but it was some time before she began to realize that she was not alone in this room. Though she arose to her feet and turned slowly around, giving a long and searching survey to every portion of the long room, there was no one else. And the room itself was very open, with no screened corners or places she could not view.

But—she was
not
alone!

Some spy device? Tallahassee could well believe that such might be turned on her. Only she could not
sense
such a thing! That would be impossible. Therefore the identity was of another kind. Identity—yes, this was the same sensation she had had in her own—or Ashake's home—that there was a definite personality, unseen, perhaps unhearable (if it was trying to communicate), yet none the less present.

Slowly Tallahassee settled back on the floor of the cage. She was attempting something now that was very new to her. How does one locate a
thing
that is invisible (for this time there was not the least hint of the shadows she thought she had previously seen on such occasions) but which is
here?

She set about methodically quartering the room, studying each part with a painful intensity, trying to “listen,” if one might term it that, with her mind. Not there, nor there—nor there … Bit-by-bit she became somehow convinced that each judgment, ruling out a portion of the chamber, was correct.

In the end—she knew!

It
hung close to the other cage, the cage where lay the Rod and the Key.

Who? Idieze had spoken of using her as a hostage, a term that presupposed there were those left who might bargain for her life. Naldamak, perhaps, on her return? The Followers of the Upper Way, locked now within their city temple? Or Jayta and Herihor? But had there not been that clean sweep of death at the villa which she had made herself halfway accept? She remembered that Khasti had pushed aside the suggestion of hostages as of little account. And this was Khasti's own stronghold—Tallahassee had no doubt of that at all.

They had sought always, those of the Upper Way, for things that might be termed of the spirit—for control over their own minds, the sharpening and lessoning of their own talents. Khasti was plainly one who was achieving, outside himself, something of their same ends. That he had succeeded in part was why she was here. Hypnotism, that must be the answer to that swinging disk that had compelled her to his will. Also there was the chemical which rendered one so speedily unconscious, as well the initial stealing and hiding of the Rod and the Key in another plane of consciousness, the one that was her own. What other weapons and tools had he devised?

It was still there, that
thing
. Now and again she tested her strange sense of awareness and always found the same answer.
Was
it the identity of the messenger who had wrought Khasti's will in transporting the Key and the Rod and then been “locked out” by Jayta's quick action in the desert? Could she communicate with
it
or
him?
Would she dare to try? Now that Khasti had the two symbols of power in his hold he might well free his messenger—or could he?

Tallahassee's hands balled into fists. There was so much she wanted to—had to—know. And all she could reach were guesses.

There came a sharp sound at the far end of the room. Here there were no hanging curtains such as she had seen at the villa, but rather a door of the kind she had known most of her life. Khasti, his long grey robe exchanged for a sleeveless, knee-long smock of white, came purposefully down the aisle between the two lengthy tables of equipment to face her.

He must have noted at once the burned edge of the cloth knot which she had thrown down beside her, for now he smiled.

“You have already realized the folly of any thought of escape, you were quick,” he commented. “How did you guess that there might lie some such danger in the walls about you?”

“I knew,” she returned with all the calm she could command. “Just as,” something made her add, “I know that we are not alone here now.”

He looked around quickly, even a little startled, which displayed a small sense of unease in him that Tallahassee had not believed he would show. She marked it in her mind as a chink in his facade of complete authority.

Now he laughed. “Spirits of the air, Great Lady? Or the shadow of Apedemek Himself waxing strong to give freedom to His Chosen?”

“What is here, barbarian”—deliberately she gave to that word all the opprobrium it held among the nobility—“is not of Apedemek, nor of the Way, but of your dealing. It hangs now above the Things of Power.” She pointed to the caged Rod and Key as if she could indeed see some shadow there. “It was sent by you, so it returns to you.”

He had turned his head to look in the direction she had pointed. Once more he laughed.

“Do you seek to enweb
me
with your ancient follies? I know better than to believe such.”

Tallahassee shrugged. “Believe or not, Khasti—but Akini is here.” From whence had come that name into her mind? She could not have told, she had only said it aloud as if it had been that moment whispered into her ear—or called to her despairingly from a long, long distance.

His eyes swung back to her. “You know much, Great Lady. But it will do you no good to use the name of a dead man to make me believe in your ‘Power.' Such a name could well be known already to those who have served your cause. I say that that cause is dead, just as you are dead when and if I will it so. Do you believe me? Yes, in the innermost part of you, you do. Good, now we understand each other. And I have yet to meet the man or woman who will not bargain for life itself.

“If you will give me your knowledge—such as how you blasted that weak fool Userkof without laying finger on him—of the energy that abides in this”—he waved to the caged Rod—“then we can deal together. Did you think that I would make any lasting compact with Userkof and that she-leopard who moves him about at her whim? They have been of use. Now they are no longer. One can wipe them away as dust from the hands.”

“You want the Old Knowledge, yet you say it is no longer of any worth,” Tallahassee returned. “It seems with your own speech you contradict yourself.”

“Do I? Not so, Great Lady. That there is a portion of the unexplained, and perhaps the usable, in your knowledge, that I am willing to concede. Amun has endured a long time, and before that was Meroë, and earlier still Egypt. What you possess now must be only the near-worn-out crumbs of what was once a vast alien science. And there are other ways of achieving a return to that day—shorter and straighter ways. Let me learn the secret of such power as these can generate”—again he pointed to the smaller cage—“and there is nothing I cannot aspire to! Would you rise to set foot upon the very moon above us, Great Lady? Who knows that that might not be done!”

Though enthusiasm colored his voice, she sensed his falseness. This was how he wooed those dissatisfied with the past to join in his dream of the future. Did he think that one with the Talent could not read him for what he was—one who would rule, draw power into his hands, until he believed himself Lord of Life and Death?

The girl did not answer, only locked stares with him. One small part of her senses told her that whatever had brooded above the caged talismen now had drawn closer to him.

“Does Akini whisper in your ear, Khasti? He stands close enough now to lay hand upon your shoulder.”

“So—you loose your witchcraft? Well, do not believe that it will do aught for you here. I have had secrets out of brains in plenty, Great Lady. Do not think that I will suffer yours to escape me. See—I shall give you but a small taste of what can be done.”

He strode to the click box, pushed with his forefinger upon a certain place. Tallahassee jerked. It was as if a band had settled about her head, was closing, squeezing inward. Fear brought a sour taste to her mouth.

Then Ashake memory came without her tapping it. This is what he wishes, do thus and thus. All life is a state of mind, use your mind as a tool.…

It was as if she were able to retreat into herself, passing swiftly over some well-known path into a place of safety where no pain or fear could reach, a castle where the core of her identity could hold the walls against all assault.

She had believed that she could not find in Ashake memory those portions that dealt with the Power—yet this was such a one. Perhaps it was fear of that which had turned the proper key to let her in.

Thus—and thus—and thus!

She saw shadows, the very cage that held her became a wispy thing, like a cobweb, to be struck lazily away if such was her will. And Khasti—he was not a man, but rather a beam of light, pulsing a lurid red-purple, the color of arrogance and self-belief which no man should hold within himself. For all knowledge comes from the Fountain of Life, and such as Khasti deliberately deny that Fount and say it is naught.