Gamine caught my arm roughly and the steel of those narrow fingers bit to the bone as they hauled me almost bodily from the room. I heard the echo of a sob in the spell-singer’s whispering croon.
Rhys—Farewell!
The next thing I knew we were racing side by side down flight after flight of stairs. Together we fled through the subterranean passages of Rainbow City. Outside, in the pillared court, a man ran toward us. His brown tunic was ripped and torn; his blond hair was rumpled. A smudge of blood reddened his forehead. I gasped “Narayan!”
The man whirled—saw us—pulled his weapon from his belt. There was no time for explanations. I threw myself at his knees in a flying tackle no football coach would approve, but it did the trick. Narayan went down under me, kicking. Gamine was not one to stand aside in a fight; the robed figure rocketed forward, flung itself on the prone Narayan, holding him motionless with that steely strength. I wrenched the electrorod from Narayan’s relaxed fingers. “Listen—” I urged, “I’m not one of Karamy’s men—Gamine, let him up!”
“He’s got Cynara—” the Dreamer muttered dizzily, “Cynara—who in Zandru’s hells are you?” He picked himself up, gazing at me with a stunned, blank look. “My name’s Kenscott,” I said briefly. Suddenly, feeling it was the best way to establish my good-faith, I pulled out the Toy Gamine had put in my hand. “I’ve seen Rhys. He sent—this.”
Narayan stared at the thing in my hand, a double grief in his young face. “Rhys—” he muttered, “I felt he was—gone!” With bent head, he reached out to take the small thing from me.
In his hand it came alive. The small jewelled Toy seemed suddenly brilliant, flaring, dazzling with a wild burst of faceted light, blue, golden, crimson, flame-color. Gamine’s low sweet voice breathed “In the Dreamer’s hands!”
“In my hands,” Narayan murmured in a choked, almost a tranced ecstasy. I broke in on their raptures rudely. “Here, Narayan! Is it Adric who’s got Cynara?”
He gulped; swallowed hard; thrust the Toy into a pocket and came back to himself, but that light was still in his eyes. He spoke with a hard restraint. “Yes. Adric surprised me—knocked me out. When I came to, they were gone.” He blinked once or twice; rubbed his eyes; then, resolutely fumbled for the little Toy and extended it to me. “Here. Keep this till we get to the Dreamer’s Keep.”
I took it without comment. Gamine slipped away; came back, leading horses. “I couldn’t find a single guard,” the cold voice murmured, “I wonder where they are?” “Adric knows,” said Narayan, tight-lipped.
We mounted.
The wind was rising. Above us the moons swung slowly in an indigo sky. Sparks flew from our hooves against the frosty stones. We were racing against time, and a nightmare panic had me while I gripped the saddle of my racing horse. It took all my concentration to stick on the animal’s back, but I was acquiring balance and a feel for riding. The ill wind was blowing some good, I thought inanely. Narayan’s blond hair was frosty pale in the moonlight, and the eerie Gamine was a nightmare ghost, a phantom from nowhere. Far away we heard the spatter of gunfire, the screams of dying men, the ring of swords and spears. Thinly Gamine chanted in the night. Narayan’s face looked haunted. “There are the guards—attacking—” he jerked out over the hoof-noises.
The scream of falcons rang swiftly above Gamine’s chant. The too-familiar beat of wings slapped around my head, and I flung up my arm to knock away one serpentine neck. My terrified horse plunged and I rocked in the saddle nearly falling. Another bird swooped down on Narayan—another—then there were swarms of them, gold and purple and green, crimson, blue, flame-color. The air was thick with their wings. Gamine screamed; I saw Narayan beat the air with his cloak. The veiled spell-singer, crouched in the saddle, was lashing at them with the whip from her saddle. The lash kept the falcons at bay, but the razor talons caught at the blue shroudings. Narayan, whip in one hand, sword in the other, beat round him in great arcs, and I heard one bird’s death-cry sending ringing echoes to the sky. I flung round me with my knife—
“The mirror—” screamed Gamine, “Evarin’s mirror! Quick, they’re coming by millions!”
They were coming in scores—hundreds, whirling and screeing. These were not the soul-falcons, belled and elaborately endowed with the intelligence and cunning of their launcher. These were—machines. Alive, yes, but not a life we knew. Only the nightmare freak of a science gone mad could produce—or control—these hateful things that were filling the clean air, groping for us with needle beaks and talons and wild wings. Only Evarin—
I fumbled blindly for the mirror, clumsily stripping the silks. A needle-talon raked at my wrist, and by sheerest instinct I struck upward, turning the face of the mirror toward the bird.
The bird reeled in mid-air—flapped—fell. A tingling shock rattled through my arm. I dropped the mirror—leaped to catch it. The thing was a perfect conductor. It—drained energy. I knew now why Evarin had been so anxious to have me—or Adric—look into its depths. It could have touched the energy waves of my brain through my eyes. The birds were brainless; all energy. I grabbed the mirror and held it upright; I caught a half-glimpse, from the tail of my eye, of the weird lightnings coiled inside it, but even that glimpse coiled my stomach in nervous knots. Shielding my face, I held it upward. The birds flew toward it like a moth to the candle. Shock after shock flowed along my arm. Three more of the horrible falcons fell limp, lifeless—drained.
A strange exhilaration began to buoy me up. The force from the birds was not electricity but a kindred force, which my nerves drank greedily. I thrust the mirror out; was rewarded again by the surge of power, and again the birds, this time by dozens, flapped and fell.
Then, as if whatever had loosed the army of falcons had realized their uselessness, the whole remaining force of the birds wheeled and fled, winging swiftly over the land to the distant donjon that rose high and far into the black midnight.
Recalled—to the Dreamer’s Keep!
The Last Sacrifice
The flow of strength had renewed me; I felt that I could face whatever came. I thrust Evarin’s mirror into my pocket; flung a word to Narayan and we were riding again, Gamine racing behind us. The blue shroudings had been torn to ribbons by the snappings of falcon-claws; I could see the pallid gleam of naked flesh through the torn veils. The noise of battle behind us grew more distinct; I could make out the explosions and the distant flashes of colored flame. I shuddered; even now that frightful army of falcons might be winging to join Adric and Evarin. The rebels could kill some of them, but for every falcon dead there would be twenty more slaves for Narabedla! What could Narayan’s men with their scythes and pitchforks and rude rusty guns do against the incredible science of a Toymaker? Narayan’s strained face was ghastly in the moonlight; I needed no telepathy to read his thoughts. Slaughter for his men—what for his sister? Our horses seemed to lag, to drag through a mire of motionless, yet they were at the full gallop of their endurance. The sound of fighting grew closer. Everything in me cried out that I was an utter fool, riding full tilt into a battle in which I had no stake. Yet something else told me, coldly and with a grim truth, that all I possessed was what I might win today, for this was the only world I would ever know; that I would never see my own world again.
Never! And Adric should rot in a hell of his own choosing for that!
The sounds of fighting seemed very close. Narayan pulled up his horse so quickly that it nearly sent Gamine plunging into his back. He said in a low, concentrated voice “Adric isn’t at the battle! This way—quick!” He whirled the horse and dashed down a side road at right angles to the way we had been riding. If we had raced before, now our horses seemed to fly. The battle raged behind us; I heard dim screams, the neighing of wounded horses, the muffled sound of earth flying upward,