They helped but not enough and Dumarest staggered as he led the way to the opening giving onto the column of light. It blazed brighter than he remembered, the soft susurration like voices calling from across vast distances, the tingle stronger now as if it were some form of atomic gas.
Mirza said, 'That? Are we supposed to walk into that?'
'Have we any choice?' Again Dumarest vented a carmine stream. Fighting for breath he said, 'It's a chance but what can we lose? We'd never get out in the condition we're in. Move, now. Carry Chenault into the column. I can't help.'
'But you'll be able to manage?'
'Yes.'
'To hell with Chenault. I'll drop him. Lean on me, Earl. We'll go in together.'
'Just do as I say.' And hurry, woman! Hurry before the old man is dead and it's too late! 'Please, Mirza. Do it for me. Please!'
For a moment she stared at him and then she was gone, leaving him with the memory of her ruined face, the body of the old man held like a baby in her arms. Dumarest saw her step into the pool and walk without hesitation directly toward the central column. The mist-water-smoke-like blueness rose to her knees and, after she had reached halfway, he followed her as he had promised.
Slowly for he was heading into the unknown and every instinct warned him against it. The column could consume everything within it to atomic ash. Like the shining thing it could exist only to feed and yet it still was the only chance they had. One they couldn't afford to ignore.
Dumarest stepped into the pool.
Something like a tingling perfume rose around him and he inhaled, doubling to cough his pain as agony tore into his lungs. Sacrificing Toyanna's dead body had negated the healing medication and now even the pain killers had lost their power. He coughed again, staggering as the column spun in his sudden giddiness. One which dominated his actions, causing him to sag, to fall, to immerse himself in the pool as Mirza and her burden reached the column and vanished inside.
Too weak to move, Dumarest drifted like a dead fish in the lambent mist.
One which held magic.
The world was what a world should be with hard, clear seasons, a moon and stars a man could recognize and use to guide his way. A place where, at times, it was gentle and at others harsh. One where it was necessary to work and that was good, for to be idle was to grow weak. A planet which donated a heritage of pride.
'Earl!' The woman was tall with hair the color of flame, pendulous breasts above a belly swollen with child. She smiled and waved as he looked at her. 'Take care of your son, Earl. I've enough to do teaching our daughter to cook.'
A girl with a winsome face and hair the color of her mother's as the boy matched his father. The first-born who stood straight and strong and looked older than his years.
'I want to learn how to throw a knife,' he said. 'I have one, see? Mother doesn't want me to learn but I think I should. Please teach me.'
'Why doesn't your mother want you to learn?'
'She thinks it will get me into trouble.'
'Or out of it.' Dumarest lifted the blade from his boot. 'A knife is a tool, son, and only as dangerous as the man who uses it. With it you can cut, slice, chop, stab and throw. Like this.' His hand moved, a blur as the knife was a blur, one which halted against the bole of a tree the sharp point buried deep.
'Like this?' The small hand rose, the knife it held spinning to fall far to one side of the tree. The eyes masked his disappointment. 'I failed.'
'You have yet to learn,' corrected Dumarest. 'Now, son, hold it like this.' He placed the recovered blade firm on the palm and adjusted the fingers. 'Hold it firm and make it a part of your arm. Now look at what you want to hit. Look at it. Forget the knife. Just concentrate on the target then, as if you're throwing out your hand, you throw the knife.' He watched as, again, the blade fell to one side. 'It takes practice.'
'Lots of practice?'
'As much as it takes.'
Dumarest smiled as he watched his son recover the blade, throw it, pick it up again with a dogged determination to succeed. It was good to have had the boy and extend himself into new generations and so ensure the continuation of his genes. Good to have a woman he loved and who loved him. Good for her to have children and to know that his love for her was big enough to encompass them all. Good to be home where Chenault-
Chenault?
Chapter Fifteen
Dumarest opened his eyes and frowned at the rock in front of him. Stone illuminated with a bright blue radiance on which he lay half-out of the mistlike pool. As if even in his sleep he had struggled to gain familiar ground and he climbed higher to draw his legs free of the pool and to lie, eyes narrowed against the brightness of the column. One he had failed to reach but he felt no regret as he felt no pain. His only sadness was induced by the fading memory of a dream but the joy it had contained was something which still could be. Govinda was waiting with her warm, soft body and her wondrous scarlet hair. Kalin's hair but Govinda's talent could absorb the ghost of what had been and make it real again. And, soon now, he would be taking her home.
If Chenault was still alive.
A thought which sent him to his feet to stand as he examined his body. The pain had gone, the grate of broken, tearing bones. Beneath his fingers the ribs were whole again and strong. The breath he drew into his lungs brought exhilaration not agony. He felt no thirst, no hunger, no fatigue. The magic of the lambent pool had made him well.
Proof of the legend of Ryzam-if not renewed youth at least he had restored health. And the others?
The column was enigmatic, pulsing a little, flaring into a new brightness even as he watched. Flaring to fade a little as it followed the pattern of its nature. A pulse which must have been repeated many times as he lay drifting and dreaming in the pool. He had awakened naturally-if the others were still alive they would probably do the same.
Waiting, he did what had to be done.
The surrogate lay where it had fallen, a ghastly travesty of a man, too heavy for him to lift. Dumarest passed it, slowed as he neared the place where the casket had been left, slipped into it as he spotted no danger. The air stank of blood, Massak's corpse lying like a broken, headless doll in a dull brown puddle. Dumarest ignored it, uncoupling the cable from its junction, returning with it to the surrogate, looping it around the massive torso and then, sweating, dragged it to where Chenault had rested.
The casket yielded treasure; rods of heavy metal and power packs now exhausted but still composed of compact atoms. Other things which he set aside then moved the surrogate to rest on the spread-out components. On it he placed the body of the dead mercenary.
At the opening, his hands filled with a wire-lashed bundle, he looked at what he had done. A funeral pyre lacking fuel but the composition was the same and, if the mercenary was watching, he would approve.
As a thin, high, familiar sound began to fill the air Dumarest hurried down to the chamber of light. The hollow egg, he was certain, would provide sanctuary from the shining thing. An assumption proved correct as the bell- chimes came no nearer, fading, to be lost in the soft susurration from the column.
One which, together with the varying intensity, cast a hypnotic spell almost impossible to resist.
Dumarest sat, his back against the wall, nails driven hard into his palms. To wait was never easy and now it was harder than at any other time he had known. Was Chenault alive? Would he emerge unscathed from the column? How long would it be?
Questions coupled to others and Dumarest retraced their path through the caverns a dozen times, mentally reviewing each turn and junction, each mark he had left, every danger they had faced.
Of them all the shining thing was the worst.
He rose finally, impatient to know the result of his calculated guess, moving softly back to where he had fashioned the mercenary's pyre. It had been without fuel-but now it glowed with fire.
With writhing movement and shimmering coruscations. With a covering of radiant beauty as the shining thing
