"I don't know! We have no time to play guessing games!"
He caught her hand, dragged her into an alleyway where the massive
stone walls of ancient buildings towered high above them. The dark
shadows they cast lay like shielding hands that shrouded them in sudden
darkness.
Flaith panted, "You touched your harp! It made a sound! That must have
done it!"
"I know all that! But for the sake of your unborn children, stop
talking and run!"
* * * * *
They went swiftly through the narrow streets, burdened only by the
silver harp. Under a stone archway, Kael swung to the right. A small
figure stood in the doorway, beckoning to them. It was the bearded
peddler Kael had saved from the sfarri.
"This way," the peddler called. "Lunol forgets no man who saves him
from death!"
An oak door opened. From it, a stone stair led down into a pit of
Stygian blackness. The peddler put a hand on Kael's belt, dragging him
down into the gloom. They went swiftly, toward a stream of water that
rushed and gurgled darkly between two narrow paths of brick that jutted
outward from the sheer rock walls.
"The sewer system of Clonn Fell! Quickly, along the ledge! Gods be with
us! If the sfarri follow and clap their hands on us they'll throw us to
their torturers!"
The peddler whimpered in his fear as he scurried along the narrow brick
ledge. Kael and Flaith ran after him. Soon their sandals were wet with
the accumulated filth and slime of centuries. They moved swiftly, with
the dim light of tiny bulbs, high in the domed ceiling, guiding their
feet.
They went for miles through the sewer, deep down under the streets of
Clonn Fell.
When they emerged into bright sunlight, they stood on a wide beach
where the gray, cold waters of the Taganian Sea rolled restlessly.
Flaith sank on a rock, one hand pushing back her thick red hair. Kael
read her weariness in her haggard face.
"Why were the sfarri after you?" he asked the peddler. "What did you
do?"
Lunol shrugged. "I dwell in the Clith Korakam desert that stretches
from the ocean here to the cliffs of Kamm."
Kael frowned his puzzlement.
It was Flaith who explained. "The black tower of Balzel lies in
the Clith Korakam desert. It is a place forbidden to all people of
Senorech."
The old man whimpered his fright. "I saw a man come out of that tower.
It was many months ago. He was a tall man with a bald head and scrawny,
withered arms. And yet there was something in the manner of his
walking, something in the way he held his head, that sent a cold chill
of terror down my spine!
"Since then I have had dreams. Terrible, frightening dreams! Dreams
of places where no man has ever been! The sfarri have been hunting me
since then. It took them a long time to find me, but now--"
Lunol shrugged. "From here it is not far to Clith Korakam. Once I am on
its sands no man will ever be able to find me! I've spent all my life
on those sands. I know them as I know the fingers of my hands."
Kael looked at Flaith. "Sure, they'll be after us, too, now! They know
what we look like. They'll want us for helping this one get away."
"What can we do?"
The old peddler smiled. His swart face lighted under the loose cowl of
his kufiyah.
"Come with me. I will make a home for you on the desert where none
shall ever find you."
Flaith said, "Perhaps they won't know about us. We left the sfarri
lying like dead men, remember!"
Lunol looked his interest.
Kael said, "I touched my harp and the sfarri fell like poisoned
insects. Why they fell I do not know. Do you?"
Lunol shrugged his shoulders. "I am an ignorant man. I do not know
about these things. But this I do know. If we do not go into the
desert, sooner or later the sfarri will find us!"
They set off across the sands, past the high-humped rocks that were
beaten and weathered by the fierce storms that ravaged the planet. They
struggled across the burning wasteland, their throats choked with the
heat and the sand.
The sun glowed down on them, making sweat run in tiny rivers that
plastered their robes to their flesh. The hours went by. Night came,
and they slept where they fell, exhausted.
With the sun, they were up and moving. The days came and went, long
eternities of heat and thirst, through which they plodded in the
shifting sands. They were tiny motes of life against a backdrop of
level, desolate loneliness.
They crossed ancient beds of rock, where once, in forgotten eons, a
sea had rolled. Here Kael had to lift and carry Flaith, for her thin
sandals were gone, and her white feet were red with blood where the
stones had cut them.
They went on and on. They stopped at an oasis, here and there, to
quench their thirst in the cool waters of a subterranean spring. They
ate of the dried figs and bits of hard black bread that Lunol carried
in his girdle.
Toward dusk of their sixth day on the desert, Lunol cried out. They
focussed eyes salt-encrusted with dried sweat where his finger pointed.
"There! See yonder, and know Lunol did not lie!"
* * * * *
There was livid fear in the eyes of the old peddler as he gestured at
the glistening black pile of the tower lifting upward from the sand. It
was almost as if he expected to see something dark and fearsome slip
from the basalt blocks and come hunting him.
"It's been there for thousands of years," he whimpered. "Even when the
balangs roamed these sands, the tower was there."
Flaith came close to Kael. "I'm frightened! There's something wrong
with it."
Kael snorted and walked forward through the sand, ploughing his way
where the wind had piled thick granules. Flaith ran a few steps after
him, her hand seeking his arm. Behind them, could hear the peddler
moaning.
"I tell you," he chattered, "I've seen it come out of the tower on
clear nights when there wasn't a wind stirring across the sand. It just
moved around, all white and shining, making the sand lift and whirl,
like a storm down off the Barakian hills. It was cold. Terribly cold!
The sand was frozen solid where it had been."
The McCanahan stared at the tower. It was tall, formed of black basalt,
a thick column of rock that was windowless and seemingly doorless.
At the base of the column was a long, low building that stretched on
either side of the tower for forty feet. Two red pylons, carved and
polished, stood like pointing fingers at its ends.
The old peddler was wringing his hands. "It wasn't human, that thing.
It could kill as easy as a harlot winks! Once I saw a hare run past it.
It stretched out a thin wire of that cold white stuff and touched the
rabbit, and the rabbit died. I'm afraid!"
Kael turned and caught the old peddler, yanking him to him.
"You've bleated and brayed ever since we got out of Clonn Fell! Go back
if you want!"
The old man's eyes glazed in his brown face. A wind stirred the wisps
of whitish hair that straggled from under his kufiyah, and the springs
of thin beard that fluttered on his chin. He seemed to shake himself,
and at an effort, his eyes cleared.
"No! No! You saved me from the sfarri. I told you the tower was the
only place where the sfarri never came, on all of Senn. But to go to
the tower, to meet that thing--"
The McCanahan let the old man go, gently. He was ashamed of the burst
of rage that had shaken him. He drew in a lungful of the hot desert
air. He was alone on Senn. His comrades in the _Eclipse_ had been
destroyed. The High Mor was seeking him across a world, and to have
this peddler whimpering his fear in his ears was proving too much.
He said gently, "Sorry, old one! Sooner or later the sfarri will come
here to the tower. After they have searched all Senn. They will find
us. Maybe inside that tower--"
Lunol shivered. "No man can live inside the tower. No man can approach
it. Death strikes down all who try! I've seen too many animals run
close to it and--hofff!--they go up in smoke! There's a band of death
all around it. If you go too close, you'll be the one to turn into
smoke!"
Kael McCanahan shrugged. "As well go up in smoke as die under a Thorn
blaster held in a sfarran hand!"
He went on alone.
Flaith whimpered, watching him. She crouched, her long-nailed fingers
digging into the soft flesh of a white thigh. Her eyes were wide,
frightened.
He went twenty feet, then thirty. He grew smaller, walking across the
flat stretch of dunes toward the great black tower.
As he walked, the McCanahan threw his blaster, fastened on a length of
rope, ahead of him. If some electrical force was probing, it would seek
out the metal of his addy-gun and shatter it.
Nothing happened to the gun.
He walked on and on.
No death struck at him. Now he stood under the shadow of the great
gateway that was formed of a queer, sleek marble that held green fire
frozen beneath its glazed surface. He put a hand on the gate and pushed.
To his surprise, the doorway opened, noiselessly.
Kael moved under the arched gateway, into a region of dim light and
sharp black shadow, where a towering pile of glass and metal bulked
huge in the center of the hall.
And then his legs crumbled beneath him, and Kael McCanahan went down,
onto the tiled yellow flooring of the tower room.