Falcons of Narabedla (2 page)

My hand went out automatically and switched the light off.

“Damn!” I thought incredulously. I'd shorted the dynamo again. The radio stopped as if the whole orchestra had dropped dead; every light in the cabin winked swiftly out, but my hand on the switch crackled with a phosphorescent glow as the entire house current poured into my body. I tingled with weird shock; I heard my own teeth chattering.

And something snapped wide open in my brain. I heard, suddenly, an excited voice, shouting.

“Rhys!
Rhys!
That is the man!”

CHAPTER TWO

Rainbow City

“
You are mad
,” said the man with the tired voice.

I was drifting. I was swaying, bodiless, over a huge abyss of caverned space; chasmed, immense, limitless. Vaguely, through a sleeping distance, I heard two voices. This one was old and very tired.

“You are mad. They will know. Narayan will know.”

“Narayan is a fool,” said the second voice.

“Narayan is the Dreamer,” the tired voice said. “He is the Dreamer, and where the Dreamer walks he will know. But have it your way. I am very old and it does not matter. I give you this power, freely—to spare you. But Gamine—”

“Gamine—” the second voice stopped. After a long time “You are old, and a fool, Rhys,” it said. “What is Gamine to me?”

Bodiless, blind, I drifted and swayed and swung in the sound of the voices. The humming, like a million high-tension wires, sang around me and I felt myself cradled in the pull of a great magnet that held me suspended surely on nothingness and drew me down into the field of some force beneath. Far below me the voices faded. I swung free—fell—plunged downward in sickening motion, head over heels, into the abyss....

My feet struck hard flooring. I wrenched back to consciousness with a jolt. Winds blew coldly in my face; the cabin walls had been flung back to the high-lying stars. I was standing at a barred window at the very pinnacle of a tall tower, in the lap of a weird blueness that arched flickeringly in the night. I caught a glimpse of a startled face, a lean tired old face beneath a peaked hood, in the moment before my knees gave way and I fell, striking my head against the bars of the window.

I was lying on a narrow, high bed in a room filled with doors and bars. I could see the edge of a carved mirror set in a frame, and the top of a chest of some kind. On a bench at the edge of my field of vision there were two figures sitting. One was the old grey man, hunched wearily beneath his robe, wearing robes like a Tibetan Lama's, somber black, and a peaked hood of grey. The other was a slimmer younger figure, swathed in silken silvery veiling, with a thin opacity where the face should have been, and a sort of opalescent shine of flesh through the silvery-sapphire silks. The figure was that of a boy or a slim immature girl; it sat erect, motionless, and for a long time I studied it, curious, between half-opened lids. But when I blinked, it rose and passed through one of the multitudinous doors; at once a soft sibilance of draperies announced return. I sat up, getting my feet to the floor, or almost there; the bed was higher than a hospital bed. The blue-robe held a handled mug, like a baby's drinking-cup, at me. I took it in my hand hesitated—

“Neither drug nor poison,” said the blue-robe mockingly, and the voice was as noncomittal as the veiled body; a sexless voice, soft alto, a woman's or a boy's. “Drink and be glad it is none of Karamy's brewing.”

I tasted the liquid in the mug; it had an indeterminate greenish look and a faint pungent taste I could not identify, although it reminded me variously of anis and garlic. It seemed to remove the last traces of shock. I handed the cup back empty and looked sharply at the old man in the Lama costume.

“You're—Rhys?” I said. “Where in hell have I gotten to?” At least, that's what I meant to say. Imagine my surprise when I found myself asking—in a language I'd never heard, but understood perfectly—“To which of the domains of Zandru have I been consigned now?” At the same moment I became conscious of what I was wearing. It seemed to be an old-fashioned nightshirt, chopped off at the loins, deep crimson in color. “Red flannels yet!” I thought with a gulp of dismay. I checked my impulse to get out of bed. Who could act sane in a red nightshirt?

“You might have the decency to explain where I am,” I said. “If you know.”

The tiredness seemed part of Rhys' voice. “Adric,” he said wearily. “Try to remember.” He shrugged his lean shoulders. “You are in your own Tower. And you have been under restraint again. I am sorry.” His voice sounded futile. I felt prickling shivers run down my backbone. In spite of the weird surroundings, the phrase “under restraint” had struck home. I was a lunatic in an asylum.

The blue-robed one cut in in that smooth, sexless, faint-sarcastic voice. “While Karamy holds the amnesia-ray, Rhys, you will be explaining it to him a dozen times a cycle. He will never be of use to us again. This time Karamy won. Adric; try to remember. You are at home, in Narabedla.”

I shook my head. Nightshirt or no nightshirt, I'd face this on my feet. I walked to Rhys; put my clenched hands on his shoulders. “Explain this! Who am I supposed to be? You called me Adric. I'm no more Adric than you are!”

“Adric, you are not amusing!” The blue-robe's voice was edged with anger. “Use what intelligence you have left! You have had enough sharig antidote to cure a
tharl
. Now. Who are you?”

The words were meaningless. I stared, trapped. I clung to hold on to identity. “Adric—” I said, bewildered. That was my name. Was it? Wasn't it? No. I was Mike Kenscott. Hang on to that. Two and two are four. The circumference equals the radius squared times pi. Four rulls is the chemming of twilp—
stop that
! Mike Kenscott. Summer 1954. Army serial number 13-48746. Karamy. I cradled my bursting head in my hands. “I'm crazy. Or you are. Or we're both sane and this monkey-business is all real.”

“It is real,” said Rhys, compassion in his tired face. “He has been very far on the Time Ellipse, Gamine. Adric, try to understand. This was Karamy's work. She sent you out on a time line, far, very far into the past. Into a time when the Earth was different—she hoped you would come back changed, or mad.” His eyes brooded. “I think she succeeded. Gamine, I have long outstayed my leave. I must return to my own tower—or die. Will you explain?”

“I will.” A hint of emotion flickered in the voice of Gamine. “Go, Master.”

Rhys left the room, through one of the doors. Gamine turned impatiently to me again. “We waste time this way. Fool, look at yourself!”

I strode to a mirror that lined one of the doors. Above the crimson nightshirt I saw a face—not my own. The sight rocked my mind. Out of the mirror a man's face looked anxiously; a face eagle-thin, darkly moustached, with sharp green eyes. The body belonging to the face that was
not
mine was lean and long and strongly muscled—and not quite human. I squeezed my eyes shut. This couldn't be—I opened my eyes. The man in the red nightshirt I was wearing was still reflected there.

I turned my back on the mirror, walking to one of the barred windows to look down on the familiar outline of the Sierra Madre, about a hundred miles away. I couldn't have been mistaken. I knew that ridge of mountains. But between me and the mountains lay a thickly forested expanse of land which looked like no scenery I had ever seen in my life. I was standing near the pinnacle of a high tower; I dimly saw the curve of another, just out of my line of vision. The whole landscape was bathed in a curiously pinkish light; through an overcast sky I could just make out, dimly, the shadowy disk of a watery red sun. Then—no, I wasn't dreaming, I really did see it—beyond it, a second sun; blue-white, shining brilliantly, pallid through the clouds, but brighter than any sunlight I had ever seen.

It was proof enough for me. I turned desperately to Gamine behind me. “Where have I gotten, to? Where—
when
am I? Two suns—those mountains—”

The change in Gamine's voice was swift; the veiled face lifted questioningly to mine. What I had thought a veil was not that; it seemed to be more like a shimmering screen wrapped around the features so that Gamine was faceless, an invisible person with substance but no apprehensible characteristics. Yes, it was like that; as if there was an invisible person wearing the curious silken draperies. But the invisible flesh was solid enough. Hands like cold steel gripped my shoulders. “You have been back? Back to the days before the second sun? Adric, tell me; did Earth truly have but one sun?”

“Wait—” I begged. “You mean I've travelled in time?”

The exultation faded from Gamine's voice imperceptibly. “Never mind. It is improbable in any case. No, Adric; not really travelling. You were only sent out on the Time Ellipse, till you contacted some one in that other Time. Perhaps you stayed in contact with his mind so long that you think you are he?”

“I'm not Adric—” I raged. “Adric sent me here—”

I saw the blurring around Gamine's invisible features twitch in a headshake. “It's never been proven that two minds can be interchanged like that. Adric's body. Adric's brain. The brain convolutions, the memory centers, the habit patterns—you'd still be Adric. The idea that you are someone else is only an illusion of your conscious mind. It will wear off.”

I shook my head, puzzled. “I still don't believe it. Where am I?”

Gamine moved impatiently. “Oh, very well. You are Adric of Narabedla; and if you are sane again, Lord of the Crimson Tower. I am Gamine.” The swathed shoulders moved a little. “You don't remember? I am a spell-singer.”

I jerked my elbow toward the window. “Those are my own mountains out there,” I said roughly. “I'm not Adric, whoever he is. My name's Mike Kenscott, and your hanky-panky doesn't impress me. Take off that veil and let me see your face.”

“I wish you meant that—” a mournfulness breathed in the soft contralto. A sudden fury blazed up in me from nowhere. “And what right have you to pry for that old fool Rhys? Get back to your own place, then, spell-singer—” I broke off, appalled. What was I saying? Worse, what did I mean by it? Gamine turned. The sexless voice was coldly amused. “Adric spoke then. Whoever sits in the seat of your soul, you are the same—and past redemption!” The robes whispered sibilantly on the floor as Gamine moved to the door. “Karamy is welcome to her slave!”

The door slammed.

Left alone, I flung myself down on the high bed, stubbornly concentrating on Mike Kenscott, shutting out the vague blurred mystery in my mind that was Adric impinging on consciousness. I was not Adric. I would
not
be. I dared not go to the window and look out at the terrifying two suns, even to see the reassurance of the familiar Sierra Madre skyline. A homesick terror was hurting in me.

But persistently the Adric memories came, a guilty feeling of a shirked duty, and a frightened face—a real face, not a blurred nothingness—beneath Gamine's blue veils. Memories of strange hunts and a big bird on the pommel of a high saddle. A bird hooded like a falcon, in crimson.

Consciousness of dress made me remember the—nightshirt—I still wore. Moving swiftly, without conscious thought, I went to a door and slid it open; pulled out some garments and dressed in them. Every garment in the closet was the same color; deep-hued crimson. I glanced in the mirror and a phrase Gamine had used broke the surface of my mind like a leaping fish. “Lord of the Crimson Tower.” Well, I looked it. There had been knives and swords in the closet; I took out one to look at it, and before I realized what I was doing I had belted it across my hip. I stared, decided to let it remain. It looked all right with the rest of the costume. It felt right, too. Another door folded back noiselessly and a man stood looking at me.

He was young and would have been handsome in an effeminate way if his face had not been so arrogant. Lean, somehow catlike, it was easy to determine that he was akin to Adric, or me, even before the automatic habit of memory fitted name and identity to him. “Evarin,” I said, warily.

He came forward, moving so softly that for an uneasy moment I wondered if he had pads like a cat's on his feet. He wore deep green from head to foot, similar to the crimson garments that clothed me. His face had a flickering, as if he could at a moment's notice raise a barrier of invisibility like Gamine's about himself. He didn't look as human as I.

“I have seen Gamine,” he said. “She says you are awake, and as sane as you ever were. We of Narabedla are not so strong that we can afford to waste even a broken tool like you.”

Wrath—Adric's wrath—boiled up in me; but Evarin moved lithely backward. “I am not Gamine,” he warned, “And I will not be served like Gamine has been served. Take care.”

“Take care yourself,” I muttered, knowing little else I could have said. Evarin drew back thin lips. “Why? You have been sent out on the Time Ellipse till you are only a shadow of yourself. But all this is beside the point. Karamy says you are to be freed, so the seals are off all the doors, and the Crimson Tower is no longer a prison to you. Come and go as you please. Karamy—” his lips formed a sneer, “If you call
that
freedom!”

I said slowly “You think I'm not crazy?”

Evarin snorted. “Except where Karamy is concerned, you never were. What is that to me? I have everything I need. The Dreamer gives me good hunting and slaves enough to do my bidding. For the rest, I am the Toymaker. I need little. But you—” his voice leaped with contempt, “you ride time at Karamy's bidding—and your Dreamer walks—waiting the coming of his power that he may destroy us all one day!”

I stared somberly at Evarin, standing still near the door. The words seemed to wake an almost personal shame in me. The boy watched and his face lost some of his bitterness. He said more quietly “The falcon flown cannot be recalled. I came only to tell you that you are free.” He turned, shrugging his thin shoulders, and walked to the window. “As I say, if you call that freedom.”

I followed him to the window. The clouds were clearing; the two suns shone with a blinding brilliance. By looking far to the left I could see a line of rainbow-tinted towers that rose into the sky, tall and capped with slender spires. I could distinguish five clearly; one, the nearest, seemed made of a jewelled blue; one, clear emerald green; golden, flame-colored, violet. There were more beyond, but the colors were blurred and dim. They made a semicircle about a wooded park; beyond them the familiar skyline of the mountains tugged old memories in my brain. The suns swung high in a sky that held no tint of blue, that was as clear and colorless as ice. Abruptly I turned my back on it all. Evarin murmured “Narabedla. Last of the Rainbow Cities. Adric—how long now?”