learned that it is bound to one who cannot be named aloud. Whisper the name in his ear, Vridekka.”
Harsan heard, and felt defeat empty him as a slave does a wateijug. They had it all. He had done what he could. Still, it had been so easy for them, like a Daichu — leaf trying to stand against the chill of autumn!
“Now you have only to guide us to it,” the Prince continued smoothly. “This is your only course. Once the Man of Gold is within my hand, I shall use it to bring our enemies, the Yan Koryani-and all who would oppose our Imperium-to their knees. Through it, we shall have her whom I shall not name to serve us-”
Harsan’s heart gave a great leap inside him. Then the Prince really did not know!
“The Man of Gold-serves the-the goddess?” he managed. Vridekka cursed and scuttled around to pluck at Prince Dhich’une’s arm. “Lord Prince! He suspects' He realises that we have only a part of the riddle. I see it in his mind. The Man of Gold is not her servant but must instead be her deadliest foe! He knows this, and his mind has gone shut against us!”
“Then do as you did before! Use your arts!”
“My probing tells me when something is or is not so. Whenever I touch upon the ancients’ Mind-Bar I sense it. But this is not enough. He must aid us willingly. Otherwise we shall waste endless time badgering each step of the road from him! And there will assuredly be pitfalls that he will know and employ to frustrate us. My Lord-”
“You can accomplish no more?”
The bony shoulders rose high, helplessly. “Yes, yes, but it will be long-and dangerous. Others will have time to array themselves against us.”
“Then I see no other path. Bring in the girl.”
Chapter Eighteen
Two of the brown-armoured soldiers of the Legion of Ketl escorted Eyil into the chamber. Hele’a went to her and drew away her cloak. Others dragged something forth from the shadows: a narrow wooden trestle with wide- splayed legs, angled so that one end was higher than the other. On this they laid her upon her back, made her ankles fast at the lower end on either side so that she straddled the thing, and then bound her wrists down to links on the upper legs similarly. She made no protest but permitted the troopers to handle her as though she were a sack of Dmz-grain. All the while she gazed steadily at Prince Dhich’une. She seemed not to see Harsan.
“Eyil!” Harsan cried, “Eyil-!”
She turned her her head toward him, her black tresses falling away from her face. Her eyes were underscored with dark circles of weeping. He could not read her expression: fear, shame, remorse-a mixture of all three?
“Mighty Prince,” he called, “Prince Dhich’une! The Lady Eyil hiVriyen has no part in this matter. She knows nothing of the Llyani relics!”
The still features looked upon him. “Possibly. However, we would have you aid us, priest. You know my power already; yet you refuse me. One more lesson appears to be needed to make you zealous in my cause.”
Harsan attempted to lie. “The Lady is of no real concern to me, mighty Prince-a girl with whom I made liaison upon the road…”
“Not so. Vridekka sees into your heart as easily as a maiden gazes into a mirror. Hele’a? The silver box.”
The ugly little Ghatoni stood by the trestle upon which Eyil lay. He extracted something from a little casket, no bigger than his thumb.
It was tiny, mottled brown and crimson. It wriggled in his fingers.
Eyil gasped. Even from where Harsan lay he could see that the whites of her eyes showed all round, and her face had taken on a waxy pallor.
“One of the servitors of the Worm Lord,” Hele’a announced. He bent and placed the little worm upon the satiny golden skin of Eyil’s abdomen, just above the darkness between her thighs. “It seeks a home, a dark, warm place where it may eat and grow fat…”
Harsan’s resolve crumbled. “I will tell you, mighty Prince- all-whatever I know!” He tried to say more but found that again his tongue would not move, and his lips refused to form the words.
“Tell on, then,” Dhich’une said implacably.
He struggled. All that the Globe of Instruction had contained lay like spring flood waters behind the dam of his lips. But the accursed dam would not break! He strove until the cords stood out in his neck, his teeth grated upon one another, and breath choked in his nostrils. He could utter no word related to what the Skull-Prince sought.
“You see, you are still obstinate,” Prince Dhich’une chided gently.
“Oh, my Lord-I try-”
Eyil strained her head forward to watch the little red-brown worm crawling upon her belly. It left a thin trail of viscous slime.
She spoke for the first time. “Give them what they seek, Harsan,” she pleaded. Her voice sounded somehow artificial, brittle and false.
The hideous worm threw back its sightless sucker-ringed mouth and then curved forward to touch her skin. There could have been little pain, but the horror and apprehension must have been great indeed. Eyil choked and then shrieked. “Tell them, Harsan, tell them! It will kill me!” The sincerity of terror now rang in her words.
“Not there, not yet,” Hele’a said, prodding the worm’s questing head away with his finger. A spot of bright red stained her abdomen where the obscene little mouth had caressed her. Eyil writhed upon the trestle, but the creature did not fall away. It continued its slow progress down over her belly.
Words, pleas, prayers, imprecations whirled through Harsan’s mind. With the Mind-seer beside him, he knew he could not lie. He opened his mouth and promises poured forth: he would serve as the Prince commanded, whatever the task!
All at once there was another violent onrush within his brain. The chamber faded, and he fell shrieking through emptiness again, dizzy, nauseous with vertigo. His thoughts, memories, yearnings-all were ransacked and pillaged by a callous, skillful plunderer: Vridekka! He could no longer hear Eyil’s pleas nor feel the agony in his own wrists as he jerked and tore at his bonds. Pictures arose unbidden before his eyes: the patient Pe Choi tutors of his forest childhood; the sprawling bulk of the Monastery of the Sapient Eye, the crumpled Inner Range drowsing green and gold behind it; Zaren at work upon one of his devices; the warm, reassuring gleam of the great golden image of Lord Thumis within its sanctuary; Eyil asleep in his arms upon the velvet cushions of her litter; the priest at Hauma (what was his name?); Chtik p’Qwe and Kerektu hiKhanmu deep in argument. Then a clear vision of a jagged, leaning black tower, wave-wrack pale around its sea-ringed skirts, where fangs of dark grey stone reached hungrily out into the crashing foam of a lead-hued ocean. Then a ritual of some sort: men and women-and others- doing incomprehensible and obscene things to one another, a tangled mass of limbs and nude, coppery bodies. The white metal sphere, the hideous Thunru’u, Hele’a’s weazened features merging with the skull-visage of Prince Dhich’une- and-and- then-nothing…
Blank.
Vridekka bowed toward the dais. “He will cooperate with us now. I can get no further details-the shield remains intact-yet his willingness to save the girl is clear. I know this priest’s life as though I had spent all my years within his skin.”
“Remove the Worm of Death before it enters her,” the Prince commanded. “We shall require her again later when this lesson grows dim in the young man’s memory.” Hele’a hastened to recapture the tiny creature.
“There is one matter, mighty Lord.” The Mind-seer approached the dais and muttered.
Prince Dhich’une’s head snapped back as though he had been struck.
“Return the priest to his senses. Quickly!”
Harsan floated muzzily up into consciousness. He found himself looking towards Eyil. She seemed dazed but unharmed. The Worm of Death was gone, and her face told him that it had not been allowed to bore within. Her limbs were glazed with perspiration, and she trembled yet with remembered terror, tears of mingled fear and relief staining her cheeks. Harsan became aware of Prince Dhich’une leaning over him, a white-faced phantom in the dancing torchlight and shadow.
“I will serve you, mighty Prince…’’He could say no more.
“Indeed, you shall serve me,” the Prince responded in a strangely altered tone, “but I now must know one
