The Well of The Worlds

XI

Sawyer’s mind was clicking rapidly, alertly, and so far perfectly futilely. A dozen useless ideas flickered through it as Alper’s demand still hung upon the breathless silence of the stable. From outside the deep booming of a Sselli charge made the walls shake. Humans shouted and there was the heavy, shuddering trample and thump of struggling bodies perilously close outside.

“Quick!” Alper said, slipping his hand toward his pocket. “I hold every card, Sawyer! Don’t be a fool. I can kill you. I can knock you senseless. The Isier can tear you apart. Give me the Firebird and you have everything to win. Refuse, and—”

One of the Isier let out a deep, resonant sigh of impatience and moved forward like a marble angel walking, lifting his great robed arm. He said something in his own language, serene contempt on his face. He stepped around Sawyer, seized Klai by the arm with one tremendous hand and sent her spinning across the stable toward the two gods in the door. They opened to let her pass, and the farther Isier swept her up under his arm and turned away into the darkness.

Sawyer’s futile, unthinking leap after her was halted sharply by the grip of marble the nearer Isier locked about his shoulder. His teeth rattled as the tall god shook him.

“Wait!” Alper shouted. “Isier, wait! Let me handle this. The Goddess bargained with me, remember!”

The Isier sighed again, but let Sawyer regain his footing.

“Sawyer, let’s be sensible,” Alper said impatiently. “Look, now. I did bargain—”

He stopped abruptly, with a glance at the nearest Isier, and then raised his hands to tilt the mask up and away from his face. “I don’t want them to understand what I’m saying—because I told the Goddess I’d get the Firebird for her. She’s got to have it back, and she’s got to keep its theft a secret. I think Nethe took it, not the Goddess. But the main thing is that it’s gone and the Goddess would promise anything to get it back. If I don’t bring it, she’ll kill me. And my life’s important to you, remember. I die—you die. What do you say, Sawyer?”

Sawyer listened to the noise of the fight, so near outside now they had to pitch their voices loud to sound above it. He knew he would have to act fast. The next step would almost certainly be an order from Alper to have him searched, on the off-chance that the Firebird had found its way back into his pocket since Nethe’s search, some hours ago. He had to forestall that, and there was no time to waste. He shot one glance at the alert Zatri, still wearing his mask.

“All right,” Sawyer said. “You win.” He moved his shoulder a little, feeling the warm spot that was the hidden Firebird shift against his side. He said, “It isn’t on me, but I’ll get it. I’ll need a light. Hold everything.”

“Don’t show it,” Alper said quickly. “The Isier mustn’t see—”

At Sawyer’s nod Alper sighed and let go of the tilted mask, so that it dropped back and covered his face again. Sawyer took three steps forward and reached up for the swinging lantern. Every eye was riveted on him, every face tense with expectation. Zatri’s blue eyes blazed through the mask. No one knew what to expect next, but the Khom looked ready for anything.

Sawyer laughed aloud in one reckless burst of grim amusement. With a single strong pitch he sent the lantern straight into the haymow at his shoulder. The Khom who crowded it leaped both ways to give it room, and from a corner of his eye Sawyer was gratified to see someone kick hay helpfully over the flame as he jumped. They could have no idea what he planned, but this much was evident—he wanted a fire.

In the same motion that sent the lantern flying, Sawyer hurtled forward upon Alper, the hand that released the lantern clamping instantly on Alper’s wrist. He snapped the man toward him, locked his other wrist in a bone-breaking grip, and shouted, “Zatri!”

There was no need to shout. Zatri was off the bale and yelling crisp orders before the lantern had more than struck the hay. There was a moment of wildest confusion, in which the two tall Isier, roaring together on a single note of outrage and surprise, surged forward toward the struggling pair. But in a low, dark wave between them the Khom rose up from the floor in one simultaneous surge, hurling themselves doggedly upon the towering gods.

The Isier staggered at the unexpected impact. Then they planted their feet wide and struck angrily at the swarming pack. Every blow that landed snapped bone. And there was no way in which a Khom could hurt a god. But they could hamper them. And desperation made them reckless.

Sawyer needed every ounce of strength in him to control the great bulk and the ponderous weight of the man he held. For the first few moments he thought he was going to fail, and then, quite suddenly, Alper gave imdbimup.

Sawyer thought it was a trick, and held his grip desperately. Then he realized the truth. Alper’s first try had been the only try he could afford. He had strength—but limited strength. After he exhausted the Firebird power he would relapse into senile helplessness. He dared not struggle. He would conserve his little store of energy, and wait. Sawyer twisted the old man’s arms behind him and paused, panting, to survey the scene of conflict.

Smoke already veiled it. The fire had caught and was crackling up in the oil-soaked hay with a roar that grew to a deafening burst of sound in a matter of seconds. The stable filled with blinding light and scorching heat, driving Isier and Khom alike toward the broken door.

The ponies, whinnying in shrill terror, were plunging over the low barrier of their stalls. There was total confusion as the whole swaying, kicking, roaring melee surged outward through the door and into the alley, Sawyer and Alper borne willy-nilly with them out of the burning stable.

From the street at the alley’s end sounded the deep-toned booming of a savage, very near and drawing nearer. The fire had served its purpose. Sawyer had never hoped the Khom could control two Isier, no matter how they outnumbered them, but he thought the savages could, if the fire flared up in time.

He set his teeth and without warning chopped Alper across the temple. Alper grunted and went down.

“Zatri!” Sawyer shouted at the top of his voice, looking wildly around. The old man was hanging stubbornly on an Isier wrist, his arras wrapping the long, ice-robed arm. Above him the serene face bent, sweat beading it but no emotion showing on the cold, smiling features. The Isier shook his other arm free of the crowd that pressed him in and lifted a great white fist over Zatri’s head. Sawyer yelled a futile warning. The fist was already sweeping down, and Zatri’s moments seemed numbered.

Then, without the slightest warning, the Isier vanished.

Blinding light and bursting heat marked the space in empty air where he had stood. For an instant a cloud of dispersing molecules seemed to hang upon the air. Energy had failed him, and he had whirled helplessly away upon whatever mysterious, vanishing cycle the Isier traveled when the soundless summons called them.

Zatri staggered back, shaking his scorched head with the mask still miraculously clinging to it, so that a dwarfed Isier with white ruffled hair seemed to be still ludicrously clasping a vanished arm.

Sawyer reached down and pulled the mask from Alper’s face. It came unwillingly, clasping the head with a firmness that showed why even the exertion of fighting had not unseated it. Sawyer pressed it over his own face with one hand, seeing the world come suddenly back to technicolor vividness.

Alper was suddenly conscious again, his eyes glaring up at them. His hand went toward his pocket. Sawyer bent, trapped the hand, hove the big man roughly to his feet.

“This way,” Zatri said, breathless but calm. “Come along!” and they set off down the alley toward its blind end, squeezing past the blaze of the stable. Alper was a ponderous weight between them.

A door at the alley’s end gave under Zatri’s expert attention. He shouted across his shoulder to his men, and Sawyer, looking back, saw the single remaining Isier locked in a Laocoon struggle with a dozen sinuous, writhing Sselli, their eyes blazing golden in the reflected firelight.

This was the moment for which Alper must have been hoarding all his remaining strength. For with one enormous, desperate heave he threw all his great bulk into the balance and snapped the hold Sawyer and Zatri had locked upon his arms. He reeled back against the firelit wall, gasping, laughing, triumphant, his hand dropping like a striking snake toward his pocket.

Sawyer, staggering from that mighty thrust which must have used up a dangerous supply of energy, braced himself for the killing shock. But Alper, hand upon the control, could afford to speak first. He jerked his big head toward Zatri and said, still gasping for breath:

“Tell him—got to lead us—to the Temple, now!”

“Whose side are you on, Alper?” Sawyer asked wearily. “Was all that planning back there a trick? Or were you lying when you said the Goddess made a bargain?”

“I’m on Alper’s side, you young fool,” Alper assured him, still half-drunk with his sudden victory. “No, it wasn’t a trick. Or a lie. She did bargain—my life for the Firebird. But I don’t believe her. I told you, we’re lower than dogs to the Isier. She might spare my life but she wouldn’t send me home and she certainly wouldn’t give me the Firebird. I want that or nothing. That’s why my plan about Nethe still stands—if the old man will lead us. Will he?” He moved his hand in his pocket significantly. “You’d better talk him into it, my boy!”

The words could have meant nothing to Zatri, but the motion did, and Zatri had his own ideas about the immediate future. In the wavering firelight he seemed to flicker with swift action as his hand shot out, casting a loop of silvery cord…

The coil of it flashed downward about Alper’s neck and drew tight, tight, cut into the jowled throat stanglingly. Alper stood perfectly motionless. But he spoke.

“Tell him to drop it,” he said. “Sawyer! It’s your life!”

“Say no,” Zatri told Sawyer quietly. “I can guess what he said. I’m sorry, young man, but I must think of Klai now. Tell him not to move until I order it. I can kill him with one pull. I am old, but I’m strong.”

“Sawyer, do you want to die?” Alper demanded desperately. “Tell him—”

“He says of course you can kill me,” Sawyer said, almost with indifference. “But you’ll die first. He’s thinking of Klai, Alper. I don’t—”

Zatri said, “Tell him he must take his hand from his pocket. Tell him I’ll pull the noose if he doesn’t. He fears death—he’ll do as I say. I think he knows that no life, not yours or my own, can stand between me and what I must do now.”

Sawyer translated. Slowly, sullenly, Alper lifted his hand from his pocket. Sawyer had a sudden spark of hope and said, “Zatri, make him release me from the transceiver!”

Alper burst out violently, “No! I won’t do that! As long as I have that I’ve got—even if you kill me—no! —”

“He would not,” Zatri said. “I know. We’re both old men, Alper and I, and we understand each other.” He chuckled softly. “I’ll lead you to the Temple now. Do you know why I changed my mind, why I’ll give Alper his chance at the Firebird and immortality?”

“Why?” Sawyer asked.

“It takes more than the Firebird to make a man a god,” Zatri said. “I’m too old—my mind wasn’t clear about this until just now. Alper could achieve immortality, yes—but never invulnerability!” He smiled. “Tell him that,” he said.

Zatri said softly through the mask, “Beyond this point, we talk in whispers.”

Sawyer looked back along the low tunnel twisting out of sight. They had come a long and devious way underground since they left the noisy streets. Zatri, still carefully holding the cord that noosed Alper’s neck, was fumbling at the wall. Rectangular stone blocks hewn perhaps a thousand years ago had been put together with a luminous mortar that glowed with a clear, soft light, so that they stood in what looked like an endless trellis of shining squares.

Zatri gave a little sigh of satisfaction and a door-sized square of the wall before him went dead, the glowing mortar fading as if a switch had cut off a flow of electrons through it. He pushed gently and the whole square receded, letting a soft golden light shine into the trellised passage.

“If we’re lucky,” Zatri said, turning his masked face to Sawyer, “there won’t be any guards outside. The ceremony’s under way, and all the Isier who aren’t out fighting should be in the Hall of the Worlds. We’re directly under it now, and the cells of the sacrifices are just outside. There’s no danger of their escaping.” He chuckled with a curious, sardonic note Sawyer did not understand. “The only way they could escape,” he said, “is a way the Isier needn’t worry about. Come along, and be careful!”

Sawyer followed the two old men through the wall.

It seemed to him that he had stepped out at the foot of Niagara. He stood half-stunned for a moment, his head craned back, staring up at the golden waterfall which rose up, up, up into misty infinities overhead. They stood at the foot of a long ramp that wound upward across the face of the waterfall in gentle zig-zags like a streak of frozen lightning patterning the golden sway above.

The sway was the motion of curtains that looked as if they were woven of bright gold light, hanging straight out of a golden sky. Tier after tier of them rippled slowly in deep, changing folds to no tangible breeze, brushing the ramp with level after ascending level of golden hems.

“We go up,” Zatri said in a whisper. “Keep still, both of you. If anyone comes, get behind the curtains—and pray!”

They went fast, stilling the noise of their feet on the ramps. At the third level Zatri began to twitch the curtains aside and peer quickly behind them without pausing in his climb. At the fifth level they found her…

A tiny room like a bee’s cell opened behind its curtain, hexagonal, walled with a continual crawl of colors that flowed, merged, faded and renewed themselves continually in a motion so compelling the eye followed them in fascinated wonder.

“Don’t look,” Zatri warned them. “That’s hypnosis. Tell Alper. We need him.”

Sawyer murmured his warning without turning his head, for he was staring through the blurred wall at the dreaming figure of Klai, kneeling upon the small hexagon of the cell’s floor, her hands loose in her lap, her head thrown back, staring up in a daze at the changing spectra as they crept across the walls.

Through the blur of colors, Sawyer caught a glimpse of a chamber beyond so vast, so overpoweringly strange that he jerked his gaze away instinctively, afraid to look, afraid to believe his eyes.

Zatri rapped softly on the glassy wall of the hexagon before him. Klai stirred a little, a very little, and subsided again, her head lolling back, her eyes upon the patterns. He rapped again. Very slowly she turned.

“Good,” Zatri said in a whisper. “It’s not too late. We can still save her. Young man—” He turned, fixing Sawyer with a strangely intent gaze. “I have something to ask you,” he said softly. “Listen carefully. I have my own plan all laid. It involves risk to everyone. I want you to understand that can’t be helped. There’s no alternative for any of us except a life of endless slavery under the Isier rule.”

He paused, gave Sawyer a look of curious appeal, and said, “So I must ask you this. Do you have the Firebird now? ”

Sawyer hesitated, trying to read the meaning behind the old man’s intent blue gaze. He could not. But after a long moment of uncertainty, he said:

“Yes. I do.”

Zatri let out a deep sigh. “I’m glad,” he said. “It may mean we all live in spite of everything.”

Alper had been watching this exchange with a restless gaze full of suspicion. “What’s he saying?” he demanded of Sawyer. “Translate!”

“Be still!” Zatri twitched the cord slightly, then made a quick gesture urging patience. “One more thing before we act,” he told Sawyer. “You see Klai in there, helpless, hypnotized. There’s one way of releasing her, and one way only.” He laughed softly. “The Isier know us very well. They can leave the cells unguarded, because no one can release a prisoner—without taking the prisoner’s place.”

As he spoke, he moved. And he moved with that startling speed he could call upon when he had to, old as he was. Sawyer went staggering against the cell-wall at the unespected hard push the old man gave him. He struck it with one shoulder, staggered and felt the wall give beneath his weight—