The dark man moved forward. Now Travis could see a circlet of tiny
stars, revolving and shimmering, coruscating light, that swung like a
fallen halo about his head. As the man went, so went the ever-turning
stars.
"You know me? But you must, to be so familiar with my sciences. I do
not know ... you. Or do I?"
The black eyes touched Travis, slid away. Travis growled low in his
throat at the blank dismissal of those eyes. He was less than a slug,
not given as much courtesy as a canal-minnow. Nuala was shrinking back
against his chest as the eyes drove into her.
Rudra whispered, "But--_you_! You are familiar. Something from out
of the past ... the dead past ... centuries ... eons ... ages ago. A
woman--a queen--Nuatha of the Yellow Hair. Queen of the Nekkalad!"
"I am Nuala. Her daughter."
Rudra looked interested. Nuala went on, "Before you smashed
Flormaseron, my parents and the Nekkalad scientists imprisoned me in
your own crystal crypt. They fed me energy ... and the thought-waves of
all living things. I know of you, Rudra, of your plans...."
The dark man laughed. "By my beginning! I am knowing the first interest
I've had in a thousand million centuries. You've set yourself up
against--me? Against the eternal one? The Werwile?"
Nuala moved her white fingers in a queer pattern. They seemed to blur
before Travis's eyes, become faint and shadowy. Her hand disappeared.
Rudra moved suddenly, swore by a long-forgotten god. He said abruptly,
"You'd pull my heart into a different space-time, would you? Leave me
locked forever in some blackness?"
His own hands moved, but Nuala was quicker. Her body swayed, twisted in
odd manner. She disappeared. Rudra cried out. He brought his hand back
to view again. There were teethmarks and blood on it. Nuala formed,
laughed softly beside Travis; blood on her ruby mouth.
"Am I a fit opponent, Rudra--not-long-to-be-eternal?"
Rudra nursed his bitten hand in the black cloak. His black eyes
glittered dangerously above the beaked nose, the ruddy mouth. Travis
thought he looked like a cornered Saturnian vampire at that moment.
Rudra laughed. It was, surprisingly, a pleasant laugh. He bowed, and
there was no mockery in it.
"You are a worthy opponent, Nuala. None that I know of could have done
that to me--but you. You say you know my plans? Good! You know my
thoughts, my sciences? Good again. Two equal opponents--you with that
creature beside you to aid you, me with my _kovokodans_. Let us see who
will turn the tide....
"I had the Lord Railan and others ease your way to me. I was--curious.
Now I am glad. I will enjoy our duel, Nuala. Good--hunting!"
He was gone.
The silence was cold, as though his passing had taken a fire from the
room. Nuala shivered, looked dubiously at Travis. He said tactlessly,
"I thought you said you'd won."
"I--underestimated him. I'd forgotten that Rudra smashed Flormaseron,
that he has all the science that ever was at his fingertips. I thought
that by taking his tower into another dimension I could strike at him
before he knew where we were. Strike and annihilate! Now ... I do not
know."
[Illustration: "_I--I--underestimated him!_"]
There was doubt in the blue eyes, and the old fear. Only the fear was
stronger, now. It was a curiously tangible thing, beating out and
around the room, running chilled tentacles down Travis's back.
He shook himself, said savagely, "So we can't surprise him. Then let's
slug it out, toe to toe. It's him or--us!"
"But he has so many sciences ..." she wailed.
"Sciences you know just as well!" Travis snapped. "And before we're
over it'll be the first law of nature all over again. The survival
of--the fittest!"
"If I only knew what he meant to do--"
Travis choked. He put out a hand, vised it on her arm. "The crypt! By
the eternal! If you could move this tower into another dimension--move
it to Flormaseron! Enter the calyx! Tap his mind! Checkmate him!"
Hope dawned in the blue eyes. Hope stilled the shudder rippling
down her back. She cried, "Yes, yes. That's our chance, our one big
weapon--the calyx!"
Nuala moved her hands in that queer, flowing motion. Her eyes were
wide and staring. She whispered, "It is easier to move the warping
controls--this way. The distances in the dimensional flows are shorter."
There was a faint dizziness as the tower reeled. Travis had an odd
instant of vision, where he saw whirling clouds of elfin dust, heard
the discordant music of distorted space. In mind's eye, he glimpsed the
tower as it swung through a blackness striped with red traceries. There
was a jar, a sudden shock--
* * * * *
A wall of the tower shone with iridescent nacre. Through the pale pearl
glitter, Travis saw the chamber of the calyx, the cones and globes
circling endlessly and shedding their soft light, the great sculped-out
hollow of the crystal.
"Step quickly," whispered Nuala. "Step through...."
She was a blur of movement, leaping for the nacre. Travis clutched for
her hand and found it warm and soft as he hit the shimmer with her. A
moment of cold, then they were inside the crystal crypt. Nuala went to
the crystal, lay down within it, attached wires to grips, rested her
golden head against the oddly wrought headpiece that was wired to the
dynamos.
Travis watched her hands lift and blur as a faint, nauseous color came
seeping up through the very stones of the floor. Travis knew that some
light-colors could affect people physically, but this was sickening,
overpowering. Much of that color, and he would go mad. His brain
reeled. His stomach writhed--
The light went away, but Nuala's hands were still invisible, as she
worked the forces hidden within the captured tower. Travis knew
she was hitting back at Rudra, reading his mind, searching for and
finding the counter-agent, the necessary checkmate. Her eyes opened a
second, looked into his. She whispered, "Watch the screen, Travis. The
screen...."
He could see now what she was doing. The west wall of the tower that
appeared through the nacre light was a giant visiscreen. In it the
tower of Rudra in his city of Kovokod stood like a blackened giant
above the ruins of the leveled city. Stone buildings were tossed
and flattened. Smoke eddied upward in huge billows from charred and
stark stumps of buildings. A woman fled with clothes ablaze along
the upended stones of what had been a broad street. From the black
and sullen sky red and fiery balls rolled and thundered, broke and
splashed, devouring, on the city. The balls toppled walls, exploding;
ate up wooden buildings with flaming tongues, caught and engulfed human
beings, burning.