Iduna

Chapter Six

He sat on a rock in a plain of coarse, volcanic sand, black grains which stretched as far as he could see to a horizon limned with smouldering ruby. Flame which rose to cover the sky with swirling tendrils of somber red and darting, orange, strands and swaths of savage color edged with black, the black fading to scarlet, to crimson, to fill his eyes with the hue of blood.

A sky Dumarest had never seen before, a plain which was strange.

He moved, feeling the solidity of the stone beneath him, the grate of sand against his boots. He was dressed now, the knife snug in its sheath, warm and divorced from the need of food and water. Able to think and plan and review the situation.

He had run to the Tau as a child. As Iduna must have run to it to hold it close in infantile delight at a strange novelty. Luminosity had engulfed him and, suddenly, he had been elsewhere. In a nursery furnished as if for a giant fitted with walking, talking toys. But a child saw things in a different perspective and would think of normal furniture as being large. The dolls too-many a child had dolls as large as itself. Iduna had been spoiled and would have had such toys.

He had passed into a place fitted for the girl, one which to her would have been familiar, and then he had left it to relive again his own childhood. A portion of it-had there been more? Dumarest frowned, thinking, trying to remember. Had there been another woman who would have been kind to him? A man? He couldn't remember. Even the faces of the others who must have lived close in the settlement were nothing but blurs. Only the man had seemed real. The man he had killed and the woman he had left after taking her knife. And then?

The ship and the captain and, suddenly, this plain.

An area which could hold unexpected dangers. The volcanic sand would be loose and easy to shift and serve to provide burrows for lurking predators. The sky itself seemed to be flaring warnings and Dumarest felt his nerves tense with the old, familiar signal of impending danger. A tension which increased as he heard the faint rasp of shifting grains.

Sand moving when there was no wind!

He lunged forward, rising, his hand dropping, lifting with the weight of the knife as he turned to face horror.

It was big, looming against the sky, a thing of spined limbs and oozing palps, of mandilbles which snapped with the rattle of castanets, of eyes which glowed like jewels mounted in short, bristling hair. An insect, armored and armed with glistening plates of chitin, multi-eyed, multi-limbed. A thing three times the size of a man which reared from the sand in a rain of black granules to scuttle toward its prey.

Dumarest sprang to one side and felt his boot slip in the sand so that, thrown off balance, he swung beneath the sweep of a claw to fall, to roll desperately as serrated edges tore at the sand to leave long, ugly furrows. A moment in which the thing heaved itself totally from the black grains to rear in monstrous silhouette against the flame-shot sky, to turn as it fell, to land and lunge forward in one flickering movement.

Dumarest rose, diving to one side, blade lifted to ward off the slash of a spined limb, steel biting into chitin to release a gush of yellow ichor, to thrust at the membrane of a joint, to dig and twist and leave the thing with a crippled limb.

A minor wound which it ignored as, poised, it stood watching.

A thing which lurked beneath the sand, waiting for unguessable hours for prey to alert it to the possibility of food and moisture. Stimulated by his scent, the meat he carried, the fluid his skin contained.

And against it Dumarest had nothing but his knife. It wasn't enough and he'd known it from the first. The creature was too big, the blade too short to penetrate to a vital organ. The eyes he could attack but they were many and even if totally blinded the thing could trace him by scent. The limbs could be crippled but, again, there were too many. To destroy them all would be to leave it a helpless mass writhing in the sand but to do it would require speed and skill as well as judgment and luck. Too much luck.

But he had to try.

Stooping he snatched up sand in his left hand and darted forward as he threw it at the eyes of the creature. Even as the grains left his hand he lunged to the attack, knife a shimmer as he struck, slashed, twisted at joints and softer portions. A moment in which he seemed to be winning then again the thing reared, revealing an underside blotched and mottled with tufted hairs, legs scrabbling as it twisted, falling to smash against him, one leg numbing his arm with a blow which tore the knife from his fingers and sent it spinning to clash against the rock.

As the limb returned for another blow Dumarest caught it in both hands, threw his weight against it, strained until chitin yielded and the broken appendage flopped in streams of sickly yellow. A minor victory and possibly his last. Stars exploded in his skull as a living club slammed against his head and the twitch of the broken limb he held flung him up and away to land heavily in the sand.

To lie and die.

To rise and run and die.

To overcome his weakness, the dizziness, the stench of the insect, to return to the battle, to do what he could against impossible odds and, because they were impossible, to die.

Always it came to that.

Bare-handed he was helpless and even if he still had the knife the end would have been the same. He needed a laser, a heavy-duty weapon which would burn holes in the thing like a red hot wire in butter. A military-type Mark IV Ellman such as he had used before.

And, suddenly, he had it.

Dumarest rose as the thing charged, the gun cradled in his arms, finger closing on the release as a serrated claw moved to cut him in half. A claw which smoked and jerked and turned on the end of its limb to fall in a shower of yellow as the red guide-beam traced a searing path over the natural armor. A ruby finger which lifted to turn jeweled eyes into patches of char. To send destruction in a swath between the gaping mandibles. To fry the soft inner tissues. To reach the main ganglion and caress it and turn it into ash with the heat of its passion.

To kill!

Dumarest lowered the gun as the creature fell, feeling the weight of it in his hands as thin limbs scrabbled at the sand, the creature threshing in reflex action, black grains rising to fall with whispering rustles. Rustles which were repeated on all sides. Mounting into a hideous chittering as the plain boiled with ferocious life.

The dead thing had not been alone.

Dumarest flung himself against the rock as they came scuttling toward him. A mass of insect-like things grotesquely huge, some like mutated spiders, others with the claws and stings of scorpions, more like racing ants, all objects of potential death.

Some met the ruby guide-beam of the laser and fell to be torn apart by others. Others, crippled, lurched away, fighting off those who would feed on their still-living flesh. The rest, uninjured, advanced like running horses over the sand. An endless stream of them which covered the area with shifting patterns of red and scarlet; the sky reflected in the sea of glistening chitin.

Against them the gun was useless.

Dumarest turned, fired, turned and fired again, turned and fired in a circle which ringed him with a mound of dead and smouldering flesh but still they came on filling the air with the rasp of their passage; the harsh clatter of mandibles the chittering of joints and antennae and lifted stings, the scrape of hooked and reaching feet.

One laser-he needed an army!

And, suddenly, he had it.

Men were all around him, grim figures in battle armor, tough mercenaries wearing familiar colors. They dropped into position and built a barrier of crossfire in which nothing living could survive. Darting flashes of laser beams weaving a tapestry of brilliance against the sky. A web of destructive energies directed with the skill of long training. Against such a barrage men would have retreated but the creatures on the plain were not men. With insensate ferocity they continued the attack.

And the red of human blood joined the yellow of spilled ichor.

A man screamed as a claw closed around his waist, lifting him high, closing to let him fall in two parts joined by a shower of crimson. Another tried to run and fell with twitching stumps where legs had been. A third, his face ripped from the bones of his skull, staggered, keening, hands lifted to the ghastly mask until a comrade gave him the mercy of a quick end.

Incidents which stood out among the rest but on all sides men cried out and fell and died beneath the weight of the ceaseless onslaught. Firing, Dumarest climbed on the rock, eyes narrowed as he scanned the distances, seeing yet more creatures and, among them, man-like shapes.

Figures which stood, watching, hands thrust into the wide sleeves of their robes. Robes which glowed scarlet beneath the sky. Cowls which hide the faces but, if the faces were hidden, the device marked in the breast of each robe was not.

The Cyclan-here?

Enigmatic figures which served as targets for the weapon Dumarest lifted to aim and fire. Shapes which wilted only to reappear elsewhere. And, all around, the noise and fury of combat.

Screams and chitterings and the hiss of ichor turned into steam. The near-inaudible hissing of laser fire turning airborne moisture into vapor. The grunts of men recognizing inevitability. The curses which accompanied the foreknowledge of death.

"Keep firing!" Dumarest shouted from his position on the rock. "Maintain positions and coordinate your action. Drop and shoot upward. Keep them back."

Back until, surely, there could be no more. Back until the air grew hot and the plain steamed with noxious vapors. Until guns ceased to fire as stored energies failed. Back until men died and lay where they had fallen with tormented faces turned to an alien sky. Until Dumarest, thrown to one side, knowing he was hit, realized he was dying.

His tunic had been ripped open and the chest beneath was a mass of blood and torn muscle, pulped tissue flecked with the white shards of shattered ribs. Breathing, he felt the rush of blood into laboring lungs and tasted its flavor. Trying to move, he sensed the shattered legs and felt agony jar his spine.

Still he tried to use the gun but now it was too heavy to lift. And his knife was gone. And the sky was darkening.

And he was small and alone and wanting, so desperately wanting, to be helped.

The miracle came in a bubble.

Dumarest watched as it came from over the horizon, a shimmering ball of rainbow colors to drift toward him, to settle and turn into a chamber fitted with a mass of medical equipment staffed by solemn-faced attendants. The plain too had changed; now it was an expanse of rolling sward dotted with brilliant flowers and the sky held the hues of spring, soft greens and delicate yellows tinged with cool violet and warming orange.

And he felt no pain.

Not when, suddenly, he was lying on the gleaming surface of a table with a golden-haired woman leaning over him, her face filled with admiration. Not when, somehow, she healed his wounds and he sat up, his clothing undamaged, the knife back in his boot.

And, as there had been no pain, now there were no corpses either of men or the things which had attacked him.

A thought and they had gone.

But the girl?

Dumarest looked at her as she stood as if waiting for him to speak. Tall, golden haired, her face round and impassive. A nurse or a physician-certainly she had healed him. Or at least he had been healed at the touch of her hands. Hands which, seemingly, had also repaired his clothing and replaced his knife.

Iduna?

She blinked as he asked and looked her astonishment.

"My lord I am Tarunda. To have served you is a pleasure I shall treasure for always."

Her voice was like the caress of a breeze on scented roses and her perfume sent fires running in his blood. A woman and one vaguely familiar. Where had he seen her before?

And why had he been attacked by giant insects?

They had come from the sand, boiling from the plain, too many to find food in such a place and too ferocious for things so large. They had come as if in a dream, a nightmare, and even when dead and dying they had held a sickening horror.

But he had met such forms before and had no fear of different forms of life. Sand and a red sky and creatures which had attacked without warning and, vaguely seen in the background, the watching figures of cybers.

They at least he could understand, the tall shapes dressed in scarlet represented a danger which had threatened him for too long now. They and the organization they served, the wide-flung and powerful Cyclan which manipulated men as if they were puppets.

But here?

The girl worried him with her vague familiarity and he stared at her trying to fit a place and background to the face and figure. The hospital on Shallah? No, he had not seen her there. In a tavern somewhere? There had been too many. Tarunda? He mentally spoke the name. Tarunda of… of… Tarunda!

And it was there before him.

The ring with the circle of watching faces, the smell, the avid gleam of watching eyes. The animal-stink of fear and oil and blood. The reek of anticipated pain. The knife gripped in his sweating palm, ten inches of honed and polished steel, a match to the one held by the man facing him. A tall, smiling, feral shape with the blotch of a tattoo smeared across his torso.

The shriek of a woman's voice.

"Get him, Spider! Slice him open and let's see the color of his guts!"

His first commercial fight.

Dumarest could feel the impact of the floor beneath his naked feet as he waited for the bell. Feel too the hunger gnawing at his stomach. Fight and be fed. Win and get a stake. Lose and what the hell has gone?

A young man, little more than a boy, still mourning the death of his only friend, now forced to fight in order to survive.

"Kill him!" screamed the woman again. "Kill him, Spider-and tonight you can crawl right into me!"

An invitation which sent slanted eyes flickering in her direction as the bell jarred its harsh note. A moment in which Dumarest acted, moving to the attack, cutting, drawing blood, backing-to feel the burn and rip as steel laced a ruby path over his ribs.

A mistake. He should have thrust and aimed for a vital point or, no, he should have cut and cut again and not given the man time to get in a blow of his own. But how to gain the experience of years in a few brief minutes? How to match such acquired skill?

How to live long enough to learn?

Dumarest dodged as the man attacked, steel flashing, seeming to vanish, to reappear again in an unexpected place. Speed alone saved him, the thin, vicious whip of slashed air casting a transient breeze against his side. A blow which if it had landed would have cut him deep to show his insides.

A momentary display of anger on his opponent's part. Confident in his skill, he wanted to extend the bout so as to gain a cheap reputation. The wound he had taken was a minor cut, blood making it seem worse than it was, and it would be better to give the crowd a spectacle rather than a quick kill. The savage cut was a mistake he would not repeat.

Instead he would dart in to cut sinew and nerve and tendon, to leave Dumarest maimed and crippled and a mass of shallow, gaping wounds. An eye ruined, perhaps, an ear removed, the nose converted into gaping orifices, the lips slashed.

The young bastard would pay for getting in first!

He weaved, lunged, blinked as his edge missed flesh, felt the burn of another wound, the wet warmth of flowing blood. Dumarest, backing, watched the interplay of muscle on his opponent's thighs and calves. The set of the feet which signaled an attack, the lift of the hand to position the knife, the flash which he confidently parried-to feel the shock, the pain, the sear of slicing metal as another bloody adornment was cut into his torso.

A cut which could have been a thrust which could have found his heart. Blood which flowed from his ribs but which even now could be spurting from his stomach. A mistake the man had made. He should have gone in for the kill while he had the chance. Now, grimly determined, Dumarest realized that to survive he must kill.

Steel clashed, parted, blades meeting again to emit thin, high ringing notes which hung in the fevered air like the distant chiming of bells. Dumarest dodged, felt the burn of another wound, cut back in turn and dodged again as the more experienced man continued his attack with a sweeping backhanded cut which changed to an upthrusting lunge. A master of his trade, one who had killed so often he had forgotten the count, one who now decided the fight had lasted long enough.

One whose confidence dug him a grave.

Dumarest was young and obviously a novice. He could be deluded and be made to appear a fool. For a moment only he would appear to have the advantage and then he would become meat for butchery. A screaming, whimpering, bloodied thing which would lie on the canvas and stain it with his blood.

Then the blades touched again and the target which should have been within reach had vanished to dart in, to sting with naked steel, to back and dodge and run and hit again, and again, and again until the tattoo was lost beneath red and all thoughts lost but the need to get in and strike. To hit and kill!

A moment in which the watchers saw oiled bodies seeming to embrace, the glitter of blades, the pant, the meaty impact, the sudden spurting of crimson as, slowly, one fell to leave Dumarest standing, knife in hand, his torso a mess of blood.

And then Tarunda who had taken him to her home.

A harlot, she had been touched by his youth and ignorance. A haunter of taverns who chased the flattering gloom of fire and candlelight and who, yielding to a whim, had nursed him back to health. Sewing his cuts and supplying antibiotics when they had festered and food to restore his energies and, later, that which had made him one of many.

Tarunda-how had he forgotten her?

The years held the answer. Too many years and too many journeys and too many fights and too many other women who had wanted to help him and who had loved him in their fashion. But had she really looked as this girl looked now?

Dumarest studied her as she stood beside him patiently waiting. Young, lovely, the hair a mane of natural gold, the skin beneath the chin firm, the mouth lacking the brittle hardness and the eyes clear of the mesh of lines which even cosmetics had been unable to wholly disguise. Things he knew now must have been present. The hallmarks of her trade which, as a boy, he had failed to notice.

"My lord?"

"Leave me. All of you leave me."

They vanished like smoke and Dumarest sat alone on the emerald sward graced with the brilliant flowers beneath a gentle sky. Childhood. For others a time of pleasant memories. A dimly observed paradise inhabited by kind and helpful adults. But for him it had been a time of pain and terror and, after childhood had come the torment of reaching for maturity. The embarrassments of adolescence, the frustrations, the realization of inadequacy.

Was the Tau nothing but a gateway to hell?

"Hardly, my friend." The man who appeared next to him smiled in his whimsical fashion and gave a shrug. "But what is hell? All men, surely, create their own? And as they face the perils of an unfeeling universe, the careless indifference of fate, at least they have a defense. To laugh. To joke. To regard everything as a source of humor. Only so can we remain sane."

Jocelyn, ruler of Jest, a world afflicted with strange attributes. He, above all others, would know how to deal with incomprehensible situations.

"Not incomprehensible, Earl," he said. "Simply unfamiliar. But you'll understand when you have time to think. You'll understand."

"Of course you'll understand, Earl. It just takes application." Phasael, the handler of the ship who had taken a liking to the captain's protege. Sitting now next to Jocelyn but not sharing his smile. "Hold the knife with your thumb to the blade and strike upward. Hit below the ribs and stick the heart. Even if you miss you'll lacerate the lungs and a man can't do much harm when he's drowning in his own blood."

"Blood." The physician shook his head. "It isn't enough, young man. Blood alone won't save him. I'm afraid nothing can now."

And metal doors which had shut and a cold world on which he had to make his way.

Dumarest blinked, again suddenly alone, shivering a little from remembered chill, traces of snow thawing on his arms and shoulders.

Control.

He must maintain control!

A thought and it became real. Jocelyn, Phasael, the doctor who had attended the captain at the last. Scraps of memory given shape and form. Things which moved and talked and yet had no more real substance than a hologram. Ghosts from the past and all best forgotten.

But real. So real.

Dumarest looked at his boots, the knife thrust into the right, the texture of the material he wore. It had come with him, but no, that was impossible. Nothing had come with him. His clothing and body were elsewhere. Only his mind could have entered the Tau. Only his intelligence.

And yet?

He looked at his hand and, lifting the knife from his boot, rested the point against the flesh. A little extra pressure and the sharp point had drawn blood. A twist and with the blood came pain. A dream? If he should stab the blade into his heart surely he would die. Could men die in a dream?

"You are not in a dream, my darling." The voice sighed from the very air. "You are in a world strange but real. Be careful, Earl. Be so very careful."

Kalin? Lallia? Who had spoken? Dumarest stared around, seeing nothing but the rolling sward. A woman had warned him, words given life from fragments of memory, his own thoughts projected and given a weak semblance of reality. Had he concentrated, the speaker would have appeared, clothed in remembered flesh. Derai? Lavinia? The Matriarch herself? Had she, leaning over his unconscious body, breathed a warning? But in such intimate terms? Or had someone else spoken? The mother he had never known?

Dumarest looked at his hand, not surprised to find the minor wound had vanished. In a world where the mind ruled anything was possible. Even that a child who had grown into a young girl while sleeping could be found. But how?

On the horizon a point of light grew into a tremendous flare of released energies, thunder muttering as it grew, the noise increasing to match the blast of atomic destruction. Another, more, bursts of flame which traced the skies with flashing scintillations, patterns woven in coruscating brilliance, bright and gaudy colors spreading to blend and shatter to adopt new and more entrancing configurations.

A spectacle which had lasted for hours.

Sitting on the rolling plain, head bowed, mind aching from the strain of long concentration, Dumarest continued the show. The armies had marched, the combat craft lacing the skies, their weapons creating a threnody of awesome noise. Sound and light which he hoped would be noticed. A mock battle fought from the depths of his memory, given verisimilitude by his own experiences, set as a stage piece to attract a child.

Red set to strive against blue, yellow as an ally, green as a background, orange and purple and violet as minor instruments in the orchestration, swaths and strands of metallic colors to lace the whole into a composite pattern of noise and light which followed the dictates of his mind.

His mind-could it exist beyond his imagination?

And, even if she noticed it, would she be interested enough or curious enough to investigate its cause?

Then a flare died even as he brought it into being. A blaze of expanding light was snuffed and turned into a smoldering ember. A tide of pale cerise washed the sky bringing tranquility and silence.

A whirlpool spun in midair.

A swirling mass of luminous vapor which appeared and swept in diminishing circles to land before Dumarest and to remain a spindle of rapid motion from which sparkled little flashes of brilliance.

It moved toward him and he stepped back to find a wall halting his progress. A tall mass of chiseled stone which moved as he moved and halted when he came to rest. As the spindle advanced a shimmer grew before it, a barrier which halted it as the wall halted Dumarest. Then, abruptly, the whirlpool collapsed in a heap of sand and a man stepped forward and bowed.

"Greetings from Her Majesty the most noble and illustrious Queen Iduna, owner of this world and all within it, supreme head of the forces of good and evil, ruler of all things. Your name and disposition?"

Dumarest gave it, looking at the questioner, seeing a tall figure wearing bizarre armor, his face stern beneath a helmet. A dark, strong face, one cheek scarred, the mouth puckered, the eyes deep-set and darkly brown. A sword hung in a scabbard at his side.

"Earl Dumarest," the man said. "Lord of Earth and Defender of Right. What would you with my lady?"

"That I'll tell her."

"First you tell me." The man dropped his hand to the hill of his word. "I am Virdius, Herald, Champion, a Lord of High Renown."

And, Dumarest guessed, a figment of an active imagination. A doll created by a child for her own amusement as had been the grandiose titles and adoption of power. Iduna, a child with a child's mind and a child's attention to detail. Of course a queen would have a champion-and what else would she be here but a queen? And who else would she respect but another claiming titles and rank of distinction?

A game it did no harm to play.

Dumarest said coldly, "The Lord of Earth does not bandy words with a mere underling. Tell your mistress that I crave audience. And remind her that she has seen a little of my power."

"A meaningless gesture. No rules had been set. No forfeit decided."

"I-"

"Have come to play with my mistress and that is good. I hope that you can play better than the others. Now, for a beginning, you must win to the castle. I will be your guide. If you are beaten you must promise to pay a forfeit."

"And if I win?"

"Then you will be invited inside. It's a good game, Earl Dumarest, and one you'll enjoy. Say you'll agree."

"And if I don't?"

"Then you'll be a spoil-sport."

And perhaps lose his chance of meeting Iduna. If nothing else she would know the laws governing this place better than he and there was no point in putting off the meeting.

"I agree. How do I start? Which way is the castle?"

"It isn't your move yet," said Virdius seriously. "First the queen moves then you then her again. And you mustn't cheat. If you do you will spoil the game. Now, it's her move." He fell silent for a moment. "There!"

Dumarest felt the ground vanish from beneath his feet.