Iduna

Chapter Eleven

Nothing!

Kathryn stared bleakly through the transparent partition separating her from Iduna. It was her right to have entered the room and the technicians had assured her there could be no danger of infection, but the risk was one she refused to take. A chill, a fever-to her a temporary indisposition but how could she ever forgive herself if the girl caught the infection? Protected as she was, cosseted, nurtured with the aid of machines, her resistance would be low. It was wiser to keep her distance.

Wiser, but not easy. The child looked so helpless lying on her snow-white bed. So young and so pitifully vulnerable. Kathryn ached to take her in her arms, to run her hand over the rich tresses of her hair, to comfort her, to mother her. An ache made all the more poignant by the dream.

Closing her eyes, she thought about it. A field of dappled flowers, the sun warm in the emerald sky, a soft breeze carrying the perfume of summer. A cloth spread on the sward and all the furnishings of a picnic. And Iduna, running, laughing, playing with a natural, childish grace. A dream so real that she had been reluctant to wake and, waking, had hurried to the room full of hope that Iduna would be sitting up, awake, restored.

Nothing!

Nothing had changed. The slim figure still rested on the soft bed, the eyes closed, the lashes making crescents on the cheeks, the hair a gleaming halo. The dream had been a lie as all dreams were lies. Wishes dragged from the subconscious and given a surrogate life. Illusions which tormented and shattered into the broken mockery of ill-kept promises.

"My lady?" A technician was at her side, face anxious, and Kathryn realized she had been leaning with, her forehead resting against the partition. "Are you well?"

"Yes."

"You look pale. A stimulant, perhaps?"

"No! Nothing!" The woman was being kind and Kathryn softened her tone. "I shall be all right in a moment. A little giddiness, that's all."

"To be expected after your recent illness, my lady. The blood sugar is low but that can easily be rectified. A cup of tisane with glucose will adjust the balance. I will order it immediately."

It was easier not to argue and the tisane did help. Kathryn sipped the hot, sweet fluid in an adjoining chamber barely finishing the cup as Gustav arrived. His expression changed to one of relief as he saw her.

"Kathryn! I understand-"

"That I was sick and wandering and delirious," she interrupted. "How rumor exaggerates. I felt a little giddy and sat down to rest with a cup of tisane. You would like some?" She ordered without waiting for his answer. The technician had been right, the glucose had given her strength, and Gustav looked as if he could use a little. Had he, too, been the victim of dreams?

"You left your bed too soon, my dear," he said. "And will try to do too much too quickly. If the Matriarch cannot set an example of intelligent behavior then who can?"

"Don't nag. Gustav. I wanted to see Iduna." She read the question in his face. "I hoped there would be a change," she explained. "It's been so long now since Dumarest went after her and still we wait."

As they had waited for years and it hadn't really been all that long since the man had entered the Tau. Not really long-but, dear God, long enough!

She heard the thin ringing and looked down and realized the cup in her hand was rattling against the saucer. A sure betrayal of the trembling of her hand which in turn was a betrayal of her over-strained nerves. The waiting. Always the waiting and, already, she was sure there could be no hope. Dumarest would follow the others into insanity and death. A condemned slave who had gambled and lost-what did it matter how they treated his body?

Gustav looked at her as she rose. "Kathryn?"

"Something Tamiras mentioned," she said. "Electronic stimulation of muscle and sinew. If we use electroshock therapy on Dumarest the impact might produce an interesting reaction."

"No." Rising, he caught her arm, talking as he followed her from the room. "Kathryn, you can't. The man is at our mercy. To sear his brain with current-no! No, I won't allow it!"

"You won't allow it?" You? For a moment her eyes held him and he was reminded that she was the Matriarch and he a lower form of life. "Your wishes have nothing to do with it. My orders will be obeyed. We have waited too long as it is."

"And his brain? You could destroy it with what you intend."

"A chance he must take."

"And our word? Your word as Matriarch?"

"Dumarest is a slave who merited death. He was offered a chance to redeem himself. As yet he has failed to do that. I have beeen patient long enough." Too long and now patience was over. Why didn't Gustav understand? "He is expendable," she reminded. "If he should die what have we to lose?"

He looked odd lying on the bed. An appararent contradiction as a wild creature looked out of place when held in a cage. Standing, watching the technicians as they fussed about their business, Kathryn studied the hard lines of the face, the mouth, the jaw. The face which had looked so bleak and the mouth so cruel when he had held her at his mercy. An animal fighting to survive-could she blame him for that? And could he blame her for having the same attributes as himself? She was a mother fighting for her child and if she had to kill for Iduna's sake then she would not hesitate.

"All ready, my lady." A technician straightened from where she had been applying electrodes to Dumarest's skull. Others snaked from his torso, stomach and groin, a mesh of wire set to monitor his every physical and mental reaction. To one side a machine waited, a battery of pens hovering over an endless roll of paper, and panels studded with dials and telltales added to the laboratory-like appearance, of the room. "I suggest we commence with a short burst of high-level current applied directly to the thalamic area."

"Wait!"

"You have another suggestion?" She had denigrated her consort and regretted it. Now Kathryn wished to make amends. "Gustav?"

"Just wait," he begged. "Make more tests on minor physical stimuli. Try hypnotic therapy. Try drugs-but don't rush to burn his brain."

The technician was affronted. She said, stiffly, "We are not ignorant savages and neither are we sadistic torturers. Stimulus applied to the area I have specified has resulted in beneficial results in a great majority of cases of personality maladjustment."

"A great majority," said Gustav. "And the others? Cabbages? Mindless idiots who would be better dead? Can you honestly claim to know exactly what you are doing?" He turned to Kathryn as she made no answer. "At least the woman is honest. She would be more so if she admitted that her treatment was like throwing a jigsaw up into the air. It sometimes could fall into a new and pleasing shape but more often it lands as a jumble."

"You're wasting time, Gustav."

"We have time. A day, a week, a year even, what does it matter? Dumarest is surviving which is more than the others did. By this time they were idiots, already dying, some even already dead. He could have found Iduna and be leading her back to us. Kathryn-dare you risk our daughter for the sake of a little more delay?"

A good argument and she pondered it, looking at the wire-wreathed man on the bed. A dedicated servant fighting on her behalf or a self-seeking mercenary only out for what he could get? Neither, she decided, but a man who was doing what had to be done.

"My lady?" The technicians were waiting. Kathryn looked at her hands, the knuckles, the gleam of the polished nails. "Shall we begin?"

"An hour," said Kathryn. "We'll give him an hour."

The defenses were yielding and soon the battle would be over. In the flare of rolling explosions the castle glittered like a solid gem, turrets and spires limned in flame, the triple arch a fading challenge flung against the sky. Shadows clustered over the meadow and in the gloom things raced and rustled and reared with vibrant clickings. Other shapes of nightmare met them, struggles culminating in dissolution, new menaces rising from the ashes of the old. The air quivered with the pulse and throb of war.

A war of fantasy which Dumarest directed from the summit of a mountain, hurling shafts and javelins of destruction against Iduna and her host, sending the figments of his imagination to stalk the terrors created by hers.

It had escalated from small beginnings; troops of armed and armored men riding, charging, falling to rise again. To be stiffened with the sinews of modern destruction which he knew all too well; the mercenary bands in which he had served providing the template for new armies more savage and vicious than those born from romantic imagery. Then they, in turn, yielded to images of delirium; horrors such as he had first experienced in the Tau, the product of buried fears and whispered fantasies; men with triple heads and spined hides, birds like lizards, dragons spouting fire, spiders which dropped from the clouds and stung like scorpions.

War which waged with unremitting fury and turned the area into a cratered and fuming waste in which the castle alone stood untouched and shining with an inner, lambent glow.

Dumarest hurtled toward it at a thought.

"Iduna! Will you yield?"

Serpents lanced toward him where he stood facing the arched doorway now blocked by the upraised drawbridge. They darted from the battlements, writhing streamers of flame which seared and hissed and fell to the foot of the hemisphere of protection he maintained about his person. From the soil darted things with many legs which scrabbled and reared to fall in puffs of ash and his guardians blasted them.

Things of the mind-when all else had been tried what more terrible than the creatures of childish terrors?

"Iduna! Yield!"

"No!" She stood on the highest battlement and her hair was a pennon of midnight glory. "Earl, I won't let you win!"

A game-always to her everything was a game and she was right. What else could life be but a game with death as the inevitable winner? A gamble to see how long it could be extended and how much accomplished in the time so won.

But Dumarest had had enough of childish games.

To win. To beat her to her knees. To make her surrender her will and then to discover how to lead them both from the Tau. One way to escape, perhaps, the other he preferred not to think about.

"Iduna!"

She was stubbornly defiant. Soldiers sprang like weeds from the ground to be mown down and left in winnowed heaps and piles of bizarre armor and shapes and weapons. Dumarest fired a torpedo at the triple arch and saw the sky explode in searing, blue-white flame which died to leave the arch untouched, the air filled with drifting motes of burning destruction.

"Iduna?"

"This is silly, Earl." Again she appeared to lean over the glistening stone. "We haven't any rules and neither of us can beat the other. Of course I could-"

And he was deep underground with fires glowing at his feet and only the bubble of protection allowing him to breathe. Then he was back on the surface.

"— But it's no good. Why did you leave me, Earl?"

"I didn't like where you put me."

"It was only for a little while. You'd upset me and I was angry but I'm not angry now. Come and have some tisane."

Come into my parlor …

"Earl?"

"Why not? Lower the drawbridge and I'll come inside and we can talk. I've thought of something really nice we can do."

"Something new?" The woman stood upright as the child within her clapped her hands. "That's lovely! Hurry, Earl! Hurry!"

The skies quieted as he crossed the lowered drawbridge, the sound and fury of war muttering into a calm tranquility as he mounted the stairs to where Iduna waited on the battlements. Shamarre was attending her, the beast at her side and others thronged close; men with bandaged wounds, women with haggard faces. Warriors and their ladies who changed even as he watched into bland courtiers and simpering maidens.

"The game, Earl! Tell me about the new game!"

Iduna was dressed as a warrior queen, retaining the scaled armor which molded itself to her body, the cloak of shimmering silk adorned with abstract devices. Her head was bare and her hair flowed in rippling tresses. Watching her, Dumarest concentrated on seeing the child; catching glimpses of a long-legged girl dressed up in her mother's clothing. Flashes which dimmed against the immediate impression of firm flesh and rounded limbs-the child as she imagined herself to be. The woman she had become.

"The game?"

Dumarest said, "We fight on neutral ground. The winner is obeyed."

"Fight? Really fight?" A hand lifted to place a thumb within the carmined mouth. "Like men fight with women before they make love? Will we make love again, Earl? Like we did before?"

"The game, Iduna."

"I like it. A personal challenge. Yes, I like it. But we should balance the odds because it wouldn't be fair for me to face you. I'm too small and too light and far too weak. And the wager? What shall we decide."

"The winner to be obeyed."

"I know. You said that. But obeyed in what? In all things, Earl? In all things?"

"Yes."

"And I may use a champion?" Her laughter rose as he nodded. "Very well then, Earl. He is behind you. Begin!"

Dumarest spun-and looked at himself.

Facing him was a man who wore gray, who stooped to lift the knife from his boot, who attacked with sudden, blinding speed, the blade whining as it ripped through the air, the tip slicing a long gash in the breast of his tunic.

Dumarest sprang back, his own blade lifting, steel clashing as the weapons met, to part, to reflect a glitter of light as they joined again with the sound of chiming cymbals.

A moment in which muscle strained against muscle and face looked at face eye to eye. A hard face and hard eyes and a mouth savagely cruel in its determination to kill. His face and yet not exactly so. There were minor differences: the finer arch to brows, the lines less deeply scored, the nostrils less flared. Small touches which added to a gentler type of masculine attractiveness as judged by a certain kind of woman. One unaccustomed to the harsh realities of an unprotected existence.

Not himself then but a copy and Dumarest could guess why. A replacement to fill the gap he had made by leaving the castle. A doll modeled on her need to be always kind, always obedient, always the attentive lover and now the protective champion.

A facsimile which would kill if he gave it the chance.

The blades parted as Dumarest swung wide his own, backing as he did so and feeling the bulk of the parapet pressing against him as the stone halted his progress. A barrier along which he slid as again the other attacked, dodging to attack in turn, seeing his blade touch a cheek and create a rill of blood.

"First blood, Iduna! I've won!"

"We didn't decide that, Earl. You fight until one yields."

And the surrogate would never yield.

He attacked again, the face cold, hard, intent on plunging the knife home in soft and yielding flesh. A glitter and the point raked up over the stomach, the edge grating on protective mesh. Dumarest flung back his head as the blade lifted toward his face, saw the glint of steel and struck back at the body before him. A cut which opened plastic and revealed the same mesh he wore himself.

"You're equally matched, Earl!" Iduna, watching, smiled her delight. "But you can't both win."

And, if he lost?

Dumarest dismissed the thought as he faced his opponent. Even to think of losing was to give the other an advantage, for a man dwelling on the possibility of defeat robs himself of that much concentration on victory. And he ignored the likeness to himself. He was not fighting a brother and he was not fighting himself. He was only fighting a man who looked as he did and one who did not fight as well.

Iduna had done her best but it was not good enough.

Dumarest turned, pivoting on a heel, feeling air brush his cheek as, again, the man aimed at his face. A stupidity, the target was too small and contained too much bone and a cut could do little harm unless it hit the eyes. As the blade threw light into his eyes he slashed upward, drawing back the blade as it hit, the edge catching the wrist and biting deep into the naked flesh. Maimed, the man dropped the knife and backed, his face now taut with fear.

"Shamarre!"

Dumarest heard the cry as he stepped in for the kill seeing the beast at the woman's side launch itself toward him. A creature twice the weight of a man with sharp claws on all four paws and fangs which could crush bone and sever a limb. Dropping, he rolled, felt the jar as the animal landed, slashed out as it struck at his face.

Blood dripped from the wounded paw and the beast snarled, foul breath gusting from gaping jaws, the lash of the tail a club which pounded Dumarest's arm. A blow followed by another as a boot slammed into his ribs. A boot which lifted to grind a heel into his face.

Dumarest dropped the knife as it descended, catching the foot in both hands, twisting as he rose to send his opponent hurtling over the battlements to fall screaming to the moat below. The beast sprang before he could recover the knife, claws ripping at arm and side, the impact knocking him over to sprawl flat on his back. As the animal sprang again Dumarest lifted both legs, feet close together, knees bent, kicking out with the full force of back and thighs as the creature came within range. Blood dappled the muzzle and before the half-stunned creature could recover Dumarest was on his feet, knife in hand and body tense.

"Iduna-"

"Keep fighting, Earl. My champion wasn't specified."

A cheat-but why was he surprised? He could never win and even if he did she would not agree to the bargain. A hope lost and a new danger to face.

Air blasted as wings drummed and this time when the creature sprang it hovered, striking, filling the air with razor claws and stabbing fangs, claws which ripped at head and face and shoulders as the fangs snapped at arm and side, sinking in, lifting even as Dumarest plunged home the knife, twisting it so as to release a fountain of blood from the laboring heart.

But, dying, the creature held on.

Dumarest lifted his legs and kicked as the edge of the battlements came close. He felt them brush past beneath him as the winged creature bore him from the castle. To carry him far to one side where rocks studded the ground like a nest of broken teeth.

To drop him where they waited.

"His eyes!" Gustav's voice was sharp. "Look at his eyes!"

They were moving beneath the closed lids in the rapid eye movements which told of dreams. A technician stared then turned to check a bank of dials. Another engaged the waiting machine and the banked pens began tracing their patterns on the rolling paper.

"Well?" Kathryn was impatient. "What does all this mean?"

"He's waking up!" Gustav fought to control his voice. "Don't you see? Dumarest is waking up!"

He was triumphant but he had reason for his emotion. It had been a long, tense hour with the technicians urging Kathryn to let them begin and she wavering between her decision and natural impatience. Twice he'd had to remind her of the value of a Matriarch's word, each time busying himself with make-work, acting with assumed confidence as he'd played with the waiting instruments, giving her a reason for delay until a new "setting" had been tested. A pretense the technicians had noticed but had thought better to ignore.

"Waking?" Kathryn glanced at a technician. "Is that so?"

"There is no evidence to support the contention." The woman was thin-faced and with a manner radiating hostility to all who dared to question her professional capability. "True, there are signs of REM but-" She saw Kathryn's expression and hastily explained. "REM, my lady, rapid eye movements, are a sure sign of a dreaming person. However it does not follow that a dreaming person is one about to wake."

Gustav said acidly, "Did the others display similar symptoms?"

"I'm not sure. I could check. My own work lay in calibrating blood-sugar levels."

"Don't bother to check," said Gustav. "I can tell you the answer. No REM were noted in any other volunteer. When and if they woke it was without that preliminary symptom. Kathryn! Don't you understand what this could mean?"

Success!

It could be all summed up in that one word. A man had entered the Tau and was returning and-she hardly dared to hope, Iduna could be returning with him. But why didn't he waken? What was keeping him so long?

Gustav caught her arm as she extended it to touch Dumarest's cheek.

"No."

"Why not?"

"There is a better way." His own arm reached to rest, the palm over the lips, the thumb and forefinger nipped to close the nostrils. "A trick a mercenary taught me years ago. It wakes a man up and keeps him silent as it does so. There you see?"

Dumarest had opened his eyes.

For a long moment Katbryn stared into them, wondering if again she would see the horrible vacuity she had seen so often before. The telltale sign of an empty brain. Of an idiot returned to once again blast her hopes.

"Earl!" Gustav was at her side, his tone urgent. "Come back, Earl! Come back!"

Back from a dream in which he had tumbled through air to crash on waiting rocks. But it had been no dream and the rocks and the impact had been real. As real as any rocks could ever be-and the death had been as genuine.

"Earl?" Gustav was staring at him, the Matriarch at his side. She looked paler than Dumarest remembered, older, her eyes containing a bruised hurt. She said quickly before Gustav could speak again, "Did you see her? Iduna, did you meet?"

He saw the smile irradiate her face as he nodded.

"And?"

"She sends you her regards, my lady." Then, adding to the lie, "Her regards and her fondest love and affection for you both."