Trapped!
Afterward, when I had found my way back to the Crimson Tower, I
searched for hours for something that might give a clue to Adric's
mystifying past. I was puzzled about this Adric who came and went as he
pleased in the chambers of my memory. But I found nothing; whoever had
stolen Adric's memory, had made sure that nothing in his surroundings
should clear up the puzzle in his mind. I knew only one thing. Adric
was feared, disliked, distrusted by all the Narabedlans, and all except
Gamine had something to gain by feigning friendship. I could not decide
whether Karamy's attitude was love that pretended contempt to mold
Adric, or me, to her will, or contempt that pretended love for the same
reason. And although habit found affection for Evarin, I could not
trust him long. Trust a cyclone sooner than that half-mad effeminate!
The name, _Narayan_, stuck burr-like in my mind. Friend, or enemy?
I sat at the barred window of Adric's high room, trying to force memory
from the alien mind in which I was prisoner. And whether it was sheer
effort of will, or the result of the fragmentary look in Evarin's
mirror, or whether, as Gamine insisted, I was really Adric and Mike
Kenscott was a mere superficial illusion of my conscious mind, memory
did begin to pulse back.
In the early days....
In the early days, before the vagueness came on my mind, I, Adric of
the Crimson Tower, had been a power in the Rainbow City. The memories
of that time were not the kind Mike Kenscott would have cared to own,
but I, as Adric, found them vastly pleasing. Unlike Gamine, who loved
only knowledge, or Evarin, who toyed with pleasure and trickery, I had
wanted power. I had it, unlimited, from a Dreamer who stirred only
vaguely in sleep. Half the known portions of this world had known the
Crimson Tower as lord. And Karamy--
Some memories were triumphant. Some were humorous in Adric's cynical
mind. Some were terrible beyond guessing--for Adric had not counted
cost, and even he shuddered from the price the Dreamer had exacted.
Then, to this wilful and wild man, something had happened. I had no
idea what; Karamy had reached that far back and blurred, though not
entirely erased, my memory. It had something to do with a blond boy's
face, lifted in incredulous terror--or joy; and a fleeing form, veiled,
that retreated down the long corridor of my mind, averting its face
as I followed. Whatever had happened, it had come when Adric was sick
with blood and horror, when he was surfeited, even if momentarily, with
conquest, and sickened at the price the Dreamer extorted. The power,
forced through the mind of the Dreamer, called for energy; kinetic
energy, available from one source and one only. Adric had fed the
Dreamer with that power. For a while.
One day, as a whim, I had redeemed a young woman slave--then the
vagueness came and choked me. I might think; I might burst my brain,
but so far and no farther my memories would carry me. I _could
not_ force memory of that chain of events. But after that, Adric's
reign had collapsed like the unstable arch it had been. His armies
scattered, and he had shut himself up or been imprisoned in his Tower;
his memories had been stolen and he had gone, or been sent, spinning
along a time line forward, or perhaps back, until somewhere in the
abyss of time he touched Mike Kenscott.
It had been then, perhaps, that Adric had escaped. He had reached,
drawn Mike Kenscott back--and switched the two. It was a perfect escape
from a life Adric had come to hate.
But I _was_ Adric. There was an explanation for that, too. The
physical body could not make the transit in time. I had Adric's body;
the convolutions of his brain, the synaptic links of habit. His memory
banks. Only the Ego, the super-imposed pattern of the conscious
identity, insisted I was Mike Kenscott. In Adric's body, the old
patterns ruled, and to all intents and purposes, I _was_ Adric.
And back in my own time, I thought, Adric was living in my body--living
Mike Kenscott's life, going through the motions, with only the same
queer lapses I was making here. And after a while, even these would
stop. I was wholly trapped. Here, living Adric's life, the part of me
that was Adric would grow stronger and stronger till--he?--unseated the
other identity wholly. And he, in my body? Andy, I thought with a wild
swift fear, _what will he do to Andy_?
Nothing. He could not hurt Andy--not in my pattern--any more than I
could hate Evarin. Or could he?