outside in the streets it was full day, and the color and life of charin had subsided into listlessness again, a dim morning dullness and silence. only a few men lounged wearily in the streets, as if the sun had sapped their energy. and always the pale fleecy-haired children, human and furred nonhuman, played their mysterious games on the curbs and gutters and staring at us with neither curiosity nor malice.[100]
miellyn was shaking when she set her feet into the patterned stones of the street-shrine.
"scared, miellyn?"
"i know evarin. you don't. but"—her mouth twitched in a pitiful attempt at the old mischief—"when i am with a great and valorous earthman...."
"cut it out," i growled, and she giggled. "you'll have to stand closer to me. the transmitters are meant only for one person."
i stooped and put my arms round her. "like this?"
"like this," she whispered, pressing herself against me. a staggering whirl of dizzy darkness swung round my head. the street vanished. after an instant the floor steadied and we stepped into the terminal room in the mastershrine, under a skylight dim with the last red slant of sunset. distant hammering noises rang in my ears.
miellyn whispered, "evarin's not here, but he might jump through at any second." i wasn't listening.
"where is this place, miellyn? where on the planet?"
"no one knows but evarin, i think. there are no doors. anyone who goes in or out, jumps through the transmitter." she pointed. "the scanning device is in there, we'll have to go through the workroom."
she was patting her crushed robes into place, smoothing her hair with fastidious fingers. "i don't suppose you have a comb? i've no time to go to my own—"
i'd known she was a vain and pampered brat, but this passed all reason, and i said so, exploding at her. she looked at me as if i wasn't quite intelligent. "the little ones, my friend, notice things. you are quite enough of a roughneck, but if i, nebran's priestess, walk through their workroom all blown about and looking like the tag end of an orgy in ardcarran...."
abashed, i fished in a pocket and offered her a somewhat battered pocket comb. she looked at it distastefully but used it to good purpose, smoothing her hair swiftly, rearranging her loose-pinned robe so that the worst of the tears and stains were covered, and giving me, meanwhile, an artless and rather tempting view of some delicious curvature. she replaced the starred tiara on her ringlets and finally opened the door of the workroom and we walked through.[101]
not for years had i known that particular sensation—thousands of eyes, boring holes in the center of my back somewhere. there were eyes; the round inhuman orbs of the dwarf chaks, the faceted stare of the prism eyes of the toys. the workroom wasn't a hundred feet long, but it felt longer than a good many miles i've walked. here and there the dwarfs murmured an obsequious greeting to miellyn, and she made some lighthearted answer.
she had warned me to walk as if i had every right to be there, and i strode after her as if we were simply going to an agreed-on meeting in the next room. but i was drenched with cold sweat before the farther door finally closed, safe and blessedly opaque, behind us. miellyn, too, was shaking with fright, and i put a hand on her arm.
"steady, kid. where's the scanner?"
she touched the panel i'd seen. "i'm not sure i can focus it accurately. evarin never let me touch it."
this was a fine time to tell me that. "how does it work?"
"it's an adaptation of the transmitter principle. it lets you see anywhere, but without jumping. it uses a tracer mechanism like the one in the toys. if rakhal's electrical-impulse pattern were on file—just a minute." she fished out the bird toy and unwrapped it. "here's how we find out which of you this is keyed to."
i looked at the fledgling bird, lying innocently in her palm, as she pushed aside the feathers, exposing a tiny crystal. "if it's keyed to you, you'll see yourself in this, as if the screen were a mirror. if it's keyed to rakhal...."
she touched the crystal to the surface of the screen. little flickers of snow wavered and danced. then, abruptly, we were looking down from a height at the lean back of a man in a leather jacket. slowly he turned. i saw the familiar set of his shoulders, saw the back of his head come into an aquiline profile, and the profile turn slowly into a scarred, seared mask more hideously claw-marked and disfigured than my own.
"rakhal," i muttered. "shift the focus if you can, miellyn, get a look out the window or something. charin's a big city. if we could get a look at a landmark—"
rakhal was talking soundlessly, his lips moving as he spoke to someone out of sight range of the scanning device.[102] abruptly miellyn said, "there." she had caught a window in the sight field of the pane. i could see a high pylon and two of three uprights that looked like a bridge, just outside. i said, "it's the bridge of summer snows. i know where he is now. turn it off, miellyn, we can find him—" i was turning away when miellyn screamed.
"look!"
rakhal had turned his back on the scanner and for the first time i could see who he was talking to. a hunched, catlike shoulder twisted; a sinuous neck, a high-held head that was not quite human.
"evarin!" i swore. "that does it. he knows now that i'm not rakhal, if he didn't know it all along! come on, girl, we're getting out of here!"
this time there was no pretense of normality as we dashed through the workroom. fingers dropped from half-completed toys as they stared after us. toys! i wanted to stop and smash them all. but if we hurried, we might find rakhal. and, with luck, we would find evarin with him.
and then i was going to bang their heads together. i'd reached a saturation point on adventure. i'd had all i wanted. i realized that i'd been up all night, that i was exhausted. i wanted to murder and smash, and wanted to fall down somewhere and go to sleep, all at once. we banged the workroom door shut and i took time to shove a heavy divan against it, blockading it.
miellyn stared. "the little ones would not harm me," she began. "i am sacrosanct."
i wasn't sure. i had a notion her status had changed plenty, beginning when i saw her chained and drugged, and standing under the hovering horror. but i didn't say so.
"maybe. but there's nothing sacred about me!"
she was already inside the recess where the toad god squatted. "there is a street-shrine just beyond the bridge of summer snows. we can jump directly there." abruptly she froze in my arms, with a convulsive shudder.
"evarin! hold me, tight—he's jumping in! quick!"
space reeled round us, and then....
can you split instantaneousness into fragments? it didn't make sense, but so help me, that's what happened. and[103] everything that happened, occurred within less than a second. we landed in the street-shrine. i could see the pylon and the bridge and the rising sun of charin. then there was the giddy internal wrenching, a blast of icy air whistled round us, and we were gazing out at the polar mountains, ringed in their eternal snow.
miellyn clutched at me. "pray! pray to the gods of terra, if there are any!"
she clung so violently that it felt as if her small body was trying to push through me and come out the other side. i hung on tight. miellyn knew what she was doing in the transmitter; i was just along for the ride and i didn't relish the thought of being dropped off somewhere in that black limbo we traversed.
we jumped again, the sickness of disorientation forcing a moan from the girl, and darkness shivered round us. i looked on an unfamiliar street of black night and dust-bleared stars. she whimpered, "evarin knows what i'm doing. he's jumping us all over the planet. he can work the controls with his mind. psychokinetics—i can do it a little, but i never dared—oh, hang on tight!"
then began one of the most amazing duels ever fought. miellyn would make some tiny movement, and we would be falling, blind and dizzy, through blackness. halfway through the giddiness, a new direction would wrench us and we would be thrust elsewhere, and look out into a new street.
one instant i smelled hot coffee from the spaceport cafe near the kharsa. an instant later it was blinding noon, with crimson fronds waving above us and a dazzle of water. we flicked in and out of the salty air of shainsa, glimpsed flowers on a daillon street, moonlight, noon, red twilight flickered and went, shot through with the terrible giddiness of hyperspace.
then suddenly i caught a second glimpse of the bridge and the pylon; a moment's oversight had landed us for an instant in charin. the blackness started to reel down, but my reflexes are fast and i made one swift, scrabbling step forward. we lurched, sprawled, locked together, on the stones of the bridge of summer snows. battered, and[104] bruised, and bloody, we were still alive, and where we wanted to be.
i lifted miellyn to her feet. her eyes were dazed with pain. the ground swayed and rocked under our feet as we fled along the bridge. at the far end, i looked up at the pylon. judging from its angle, we couldn't be more than a hundred feet from the window through which i'd seen that landmark in the scanner. in this street there was a wineshop, a silk market, and a small private house. i walked up and banged on the door.
silence. i knocked again and had time to wonder if we'd find ourselves explaining things to some uninvolved stranger. then i heard a child's high voice, and a deep familiar voice hushing it. the door opened, just a crack, to reveal part of a scarred face.
it drew into a hideous grin, then relaxed.
"i thought it might be you, cargill. you've taken at least three days longer than i figured, getting here. come on in," said rakhal sensar.
