Tatja Grimm's World

long.”

He turned and walked quickly into the lock area between the double doors. The outer door slid shut, the inner lifted open, and he stepped into the crown room.

The vault was a disappointment. The room was large and without ornamentation. Svir’s lamp provided the only illumination. Over all hung a musty smell. The treasures were not heaped in some spectacular pile, but were neatly catalogued on racks that filled most of the room. Each object had its own classification tag. A row of cabinets along one wall housed the personal records of the Royal Family. Svir walked along the racks. He almost didn’t notice the Crown Jewels and the 930-carat Shamerest diamond; in the dim light everything looked dull. Finally he reached the red-tag area—the prime sacrifices for the festival.

And there it was: the Fantasie collection. Its sheer bulk was impressive. The thousands of volumes were stacked on seven close-set racks. The racks sat on dollies for easy handling. Obviously Benesh thought of Fantasie as an article of portable wealth rather than a source of philosophical pleasure. But—as Tatja had so cynically pointed out—the collection was also the vehicle of Cor’s salvation. Even in this dim light, he could read some of the binding titles. Why, there was the last obra of Ti Liso’s zombie and golem series! For the last three centuries, Chainpearl experts had been trying to find that issue. The series had been illustrated by Inmar Ellis, probably the greatest artist of all time. Svir noticed all this in passing. No matter how valuable this collection, its physical dimensions were more important to him now. There was indeed enough room between the third and fourth racks to hide a human body.

Now he had to find the correct passage to the prison tier. If Tatja had lied about that… But if she lied, then she couldn’t possibly get the collection. Not by Svir’s efforts, anyway.

The vault doors were so well constructed that Svir did not notice that he had been discovered until the inner door lifted and he heard the raging voice of—

Tar Benesh.

The regent advanced into the room. A look of astounded shock came to his face as he saw Svir. Svir wondered briefly what authority figure the dictator saw in Ancho’s illusion.

Benesh was less than five feet tall. He weighed more than two hundred pounds. Once that weight had been slab-like muscle, but now he was as soft as the velvet and flutter-feather costume he wore.

He raised his arm shakily and pointed at Svir. “Take that—man,” he choked. The black-uniformed guardsmen swarmed toward Svir, their momentary confusion replaced by professionalism. Svir felt only confidence as they approached. He was in trouble, true, but he could work his way out of it.

The confidence vanished, replaced by sudden terror.

Then the guardsmen had him. He felt a needle thrust into the base of his neck, and his entire body became a single charley horse. He couldn’t move, he could scarcely breathe, and what he saw and heard seemed to be far away, observed through a curtain of pain. He felt his person being searched, and heard Benesh say, “A dorfox, that’s the creature you saw.”

“But M’Lord Regent, that’s a mythological creature.” “Obviously not! Search the crown room.” An unprecedented order. “No one enters or leaves this vault till we find—” He paused, realizing that this was impractical. It would tie up the guard situation in the whole Keep. “No, forget that. But I want that creature, and I want it alive.” There was a lustfulness in his voice. “Check everyone and everything that passes through these doors.”

Svir felt himself picked up, moved swiftly toward the door. Of all the humans in the room, he was the only one who noticed the dorfox seated on the shoulder of Tar Benesh.

As they rushed him through the keep, Svir wondered what had given him away—though he really didn’t care now. Nothing could save Cor and himself. And soon this paralysis would be replaced by the ultimate agony of interrogation.

Finally his captors stopped. There was a creaking sound. Then he was sailing through the air. His hip struck the hard stone floor, adding extra fire to his pain. His head and shoulders were resting in a pile of straw. He smelled rot and blood. The door swung shut and he was in darkness.

There was a shuffling, and someone touched him. Cor! She held his shoulders and whispered what seemed a complete irrelevancy. “I’m sorry, Svir! I tried to warn you but they got me.” She was silent for a second, waiting for some response. He longed to put his arms around her. “Svir?” she whispered. “Are you all right? Svir!” He was so thoroughly paralyzed he couldn’t even croak.

Eleven

“—realize we’re sitting beneath the keep artillery. To get out, we have to go around the peninsula past the entrance guns. And now you want me to send twenty people on a raid! When Benesh connects us with this scheme, we’ll be blown out of the water—if we’re lucky!” Kederichi Maccioso slammed his fist down on Tatja’s desk, jarring her drafting instruments an inch into the air.

“Relax, Ked, we aren’t suspected of anything. It’s still a state secret that the collection is one of the sacrifices. There’s—” She broke off and motioned Maccioso to be silent. Barely audible against the thrumming crowd sounds, there was scratching at her office window. Tatja pushed the window open and pulled a shivering, croaking Ancho into the room. She held him close, comforting him with low sounds. Maccioso sat down abruptly and stared at them, shocked.

“The dorfox wouldn’t come back alone unless Hedrigs had been taken.” It was an accusation.

Tatja smiled. “That’s right. Svir never had a chance, though he lasted longer than I thought he would.”

“So Benesh knows. We’ve—” Then he realized what Tatja had just said. “You knew all along he would fail.” His voice became flat, deadly. “For all that you’ve done for Tarulle, I knew there’d come a time you’d sacrifice the barge. Don’t think I haven’t planned for it.”

“Shut up, Ked,” Tatja said pleasantly. “You’re disturbing Ancho. I know all about the coup you and Brailly have had in reserve the last three years.” She set Ancho on her desk. “You know,” she said with apparent irrelevance, “I’ve studied dorfoxes. If they were just a little smarter or a little more mobile, they could take over the world. As it is, I can manipulate them—much to Hedrigs’s surprise, I’m sure. With him out of the way, Ancho will accept me as his new master.” She undid the clicker and laid it carefully on her desk. “Hand me that bottle of lacquer, will you?” She accepted the bottle and screwed an atomizer onto its cap. She inserted the nozzle into the clicker’s keyhole and puffed the volatile lacquer into the box. In spite of himself, Kederichi Maccioso leaned over the table to watch. Ancho moved to the corner of the table and munched the klig leaves that Tatja had thoughtfully provided.

“That should fix it.” She undid hidden catches and lifted the top off the box. “You know that picturemaker we’ve been using in our latest issues? I’ve made some refinements.”

Maccioso looked at the machine’s innards. It did resemble the picturemaker Tarulle used. In that device, light was focused on a cellulose plate coated with a special green dye. Wherever light fell on the plate, the dye faded toward transparency. If the plate were properly coated with fixing lacquer, a permanent picture resulted.

Tatja pointed. “See, this clock movement pulls the tape through the central area. Once every two seconds, this shutter flicks open. On alternate seconds, the shutter on the other side of the box takes a picture. So we have a record covering nearly three hundred degrees, a picture every second for ten minutes.” She pulled the reel out of the clicker and began to examine it under a large magnifying glass. Maccioso had a distorted view of the pictures through the same lens.

The first thirty pictures covered Svir’s approach to the keep. Every other picture was reversed, since it had been made on the opposite side of the cellulose. Despite this and the fact that the pictures weren’t as clear as ones made with one-shot devices, the sequence gave Maccioso the strange sensation that he was sitting on Svir’s shoulder. On every second frame, Svir’s head blocked out part of the picture.

Tatja carefully inspected each picture, becoming increasingly excited as they showed the interior of the keep. Here the exposure she had chosen was more effective and the pictures sharper. “See, the paneling, the paintings—they weren’t in any of the reports. And here, I’ll bet this is what snagged Hedrigs.”