Charon (39 page)

 
On the road we ate mostly by transmutation, a rather fascinating process. Just as Garal had changed fruit punch into acid and Korman had changed it back, so our own sores could take almost any vegetable matter in the jungle and make almost anything of it we desired. To this day I'm still not sure if we really were eating transmuted stuff or just leaves and the like we were fooled into believing was the good food it seemed to be. In the end, it probably made no difference. At least our bodies not only accepted the stuff but seemed to make good use of it

 
We had two and a half days to reach the Castle, which was easy enough considering the distance involved. Still, the trek was through the rough of the jungle, and not even Darva and I were any longer prepared to feel completely at home there. As we approached the mountains, though, the jungle gave way first to thick forest and then to intermittent groves with bare glades and rocky outcrops. The going was steep, since we could hardly use the known roads, and tough. Much of the open spaces had to be negotiated at night
We
had our first practice with Koril's little nocturnal vision spells, but still needed the more natural and nearly perfect night eyes of Ku to keep us from breaking our fool necks.

 
By the morning of the appointed day, we had made it to the place where we knew we'd be entering the caves. It was a good spot, really. Nearby, through a small grove of trees, was a sheer cliff and we were able to look out on the valley below. From any point we could see the top of the Castle, which looked even more fearsome in person than it did in any pictures.

 
We settled down to wait for the late afternoon, when the real work would begin. Standing short watches, we tried to get as much sleep as we could. With some interest I noticed that, somehow, Zala hadn't been included in the watch schedule.

 
I slept in short stretches, but couldn't really relax. I was simply too keyed up, although I knew that was an amateur's problem and wasn't supposed to happen to me. Early in the afternoon, before the start of one of Charon's interminable rains, I wandered down through the grove of trees to the cliffside and looked out, perhaps for the last tune, on the landscape below.

 
And, finally, I saw a tabarwind.

 
The view across the valley was fifteen, maybe twenty kilometers at worst, although it was obscured by ram. The cloud cover remained above the line of hills on both sides, though, allowing fair visibility with no real resolution of fine detail on the ground. Still, there was no mistaking what I was seeing—I watched it form.

 
First a small area far off to the east seemed to Sash on and off with upper-level lightning. But instead of the intermittent and irregular illumination within the clouds it grew quite regular and very strong, so strong that it was almost as if a bright light was shining in the center of the cloud mass. Still nothing had emerged from the cloud. Then, suddenly, the immediate area began to swirl around. I had seen something of the pattern before, although not with the central globe of increasingly steady light Tornado, it was called, or sometimes cyclone.

 
From that bright center in the clouds long fingers of electricity shot down to the ground, and seconds later, reported their arrival to me with a series of loud booms that echoed back and forth across the valley. I couldn't make out much of what was under those bolts, but I felt relieved that it wasn't me.

 
Now, out of that bright, shining center a funnel shape seemed to emerge, not like a tornado but almost mathematically regular. A conical shape of charged—what
?—
moving down, surrounded by a maniacal dance of lightning all around. The yellowish cone began to change, darken, take on colors as it reached for and then touched the ground. Reds and oranges and purples swirled within but did not mix.

 
I could see where the ignorant might ascribe a supernatural power to such a thing. It was a swirl of color and forces, and as I watched, it flattened into an almost cylindrical shape and began to move.

 
Others, bearing the thunder, came and joined me at my watching place. The storm, although far off, was awesome, and everyone seemed magnetically attracted to its grim, erratic march across the valley.
Everyone but Koril.

 
"I think it's time we went in," he said calmly.

 
A couple of us turned and looked in surprise at
him.
"But it's not nearly five yet," I noted.

 
He nodded. "They won't risk a shuttle landing with ta-barwind conditions in the area. The automatic systems will close down completely for the duration so as not to attract the storm. That means no electricity or automatic watchdogs, no landings, nothing. And right now any laser charges are being hauled down the long tunnel away from the Castle. That means we'll be between the charges and the people who can use them, and that's fine with me. The storm's a godsend! Let's move!"

 
The tabarwind's almost hypnotic effect was hard to leave, but we all understood his urgency. We slipped on our packs and headed for ah undistinguished grove of trees some sixty meters from our camp.

 
The watch has retreated," Koril said, almost gloating.

 
"That'll make it easy. If we can get past the ulterior guard-post without being seen we'll be in without a trace."

 
The roar of the tabarwind sounded very close, and the wind picked up to almost gale force. "Hadn't we better ditch out laser pistols?" Kimil asked nervously.

 
"I think not," the chief sorcerer replied. "I'm willing to take the risk. With the luck we're having, it just might mean we have 'em and nobody else wilL"

 
The spell in the grove was a good one, tightly woven and nearly impossible to detect
Few
knew that the Castle had any back entrances and exits in the first place, although nobody builds a fortress without both an escape system and a hidden route of supply. This was one of four such, and the second closest to the Castle itself—but the most direct. The closest in, and most used, of these back doors actually led
away
from the Castle to the underground storerooms in natural caverns in the mountain Though it would be the easiest to uncover and enter, an enemy force might never find the Castle from there.

 
Koril and two of our other sorcerers worked quickly on the spell, with a skill and ease I found fascinating and enviable. I might have their potential, but I was a long way from having their skill.

 
Two of the trees seemed to shrivel, wither before our eyes,
then
they bent backward to reveal a solid metal door. Medusan metal, I knew—and totally inert to us. Both door and lock were beyond our powers, but not the rock in which the lock was imbedded. I watched as our advance team of sores sent then* combined energies into and around the rock, and saw the
wa
of the rock respond as if it was some living thing, compressing back from die locking mechanism. In a matter of minutes a hole appeared on one side of the door large enough for an arm to go through. Koril nodded to himself, walked forward, reached in almost to his elbow, and slid the door back. We could all see that the locking mechanism also slid back, still in place. No alarms had been tripped because the lock had not been tampered with.

 
Quickly we were inside the tunnel entrance, then waited there as the door returned to its original position and our wizards replicated the spells they had broken on the way in, moving the trees and the rock back into place. A Class 1 sore could detect the tampering if he was in any way suspicious, but I sure couldn't.

 
With the door shut, we were suddenly encased in total darkness, but we were neither blind nor helpless. Ku scampered up the wall and stuck firmly to the top of the cave. He would travel with us that way and be our surprise insurance policy. As for us, we could see each other's distinctive
wa—
Zala's twin mind was particularly visible— thus providing us with our own outlines as well as the
wa
in the rock of the cave itself. The sight, uncomplicated by anything visual, was eerie, and useful—but not only to us. Anyone else could see us, too.

 
Ku in the lead proceeded slowly about five meters ahead of us. As silently as possible, in this configuration, we began our walk down that long, dark tunnel, most attention focused on Ku. Koril took the lead in our
group,
Darva remained the last, her attention less on Ku than on Zala, as agreed. This was, in fact, one of Koril's little master strokes. The weakest in power, Darva's
wa
was linked immutably to mine. If she saw anything unusual, she could signal me with a prearranged pinch code. If anybody tried anything on her, I'd know it immediately, too. Koril, I now understood, had good reasons for everything he did, including bringing both Darva and me along.

 
We rounded a turn in the runnel and suddenly had some sight—a flickering torch not in the cave itself but coming from a small room just off it Ku was a nervy bastard, I had to give him that much. He scampered on the cave roof right up to that door, which didn't reach his position, and peered cautiously
in
from his upside-down angle. Then, cautiously, he made his way back to Koril.

 
"Two troopers," he hissed to Koril in a voice barely audible to me in the middle of the group.
"Repeaters with exploding bullets.
Power's still off."

 
Koril nodded to him and appeared to be satisfied. Then, as Ku went on ahead once again, the man who used to own both cave and troopers stepped forward, almost to the open door itself, and raised his hands in what I knew was a power gesture. He seemed immobile, frozen but majestic, and yet the index finger of his outstretched right hand wriggled, telling us to proceed.

 
One at a time, as silently as we could, we approached Koril, then the door,
then
passed it, walking right under Ku. We could see the two men in the room, looking bored and occasionally glancing up at some device beyond our gaze.
Neither seemed to notice us.

 
Once Darva was past, Koril himself finally moved, retaining his outstretched form and moving first sideways, then back to the far cave wall, past the door, under Ku, and to the rest of us waiting on the other side. Only then did he relax, move forward, and allowing Ku to go ahead once again, he led us down the tunnel and around another curve, back into the darkness once again. There was no need to explain what he had done. We all knew he had maintained the illusion of peace, quiet, and no intruders for the two men while we all passed.

 
We continued another forty or fifty meters when the cave opened up into a large, circular area—an obvious junction point. The trouble was, once you stepped into it the
wa
glowed brightly all around, indicating solid rock. We couldn't even tell where we'd entered. This, then, was the first of the maze traps, and a very good one it was.

 
The tunnel system had the intricate workings of a circuit diagram, as I knew from my earlier sessions with the diagrams and floor plans. It would be obvious to anyone getting this far that the solidness of the chamber was a blind, but you had no real clue as to which opening to take, even if you found it. Of the five tunnels that actually fed into the place, only one led towards the Castle. Another, of course, led back the way we had come. The other three were laced with very nasty traps and ultimately led to storage areas away from the Castle itself.

 
I slipped back to Darva. "How're you holding up?" I whispered.

 
"Fine, except I feel like I have to pee," she responded just as quietly. I patted her comfortingly and retook my position.

 
Koril looked around, then urged us back and again stretched out his arms. He began to turn, slowly, for more than a minute, making three complete circles before he stopped. Finally he said, in a very low voice, "Somebody very good's done a nice job. They're all badly booby-trapped, and they've added a new cross-tunnel about ten meters out
Okay
—follow me closely and
don't
get ahead of me. Ku, no more than a couple meters at a time."

 
With that he made his decision, pointed his finger, and some of
the if
a to his left dissolved a bit He walked cautiously through it allowed Ku to go on, then waited for the rest of us. The
wa
curtain, made of some thin strands of something or other that simulated rock but were easily penetrable, slid back into place.

 
Slowly, cautiously, we reformed and started down the new path. After only two or three meters, though, Koril gestured for us to stop.

 
"Dumb shits," Koril mumbled. "They ought to know better than to use offworlder traps." He pointed to the floor, and we all could sense what he meant. All around us was
wa—
in
us, in the walls, floor, and roof. Everything shone with its distinctive
wa
pattern—except an area four meters long that ran the width of the cave on the floor right in front of Koril. Inert matter meant Medusan metal, and its very lack of any sight, including
wa
,
outlined it perfectly.