But Kael McCanahan shook his head stubbornly. "I cannot believe that.
If I once tell you--"
_Beware, Terran!_
The Doyen thought warned him just in time.
The High Mor brought his hand out from under his cloak and he held a
black-metal stinger in his fingers. It spat a stream of violent fire at
the McCanahan.
Kael dove sideways. The tip of his finger slipped through the violet
fire and it stung with the agony of seared nerve-ends. If full effect
of that blast had touched him he would be writhing helplessly on the
floor, his body one gigantic mass of pain.
He had seen the stinger turned on unregenerate killers. It softened
them in a hurry.
His shoulder hit the edge of the table where the High Mor sat. The
table upended, and the High Mor fell to the floor with him.
Kael put a hand to the throat of the other man and his fingers
tightened and squeezed. It was like choking a bar of steel. The High
Mor forced a laugh through his lips, and his body twisted like an
uncoiling spring and forced the McCanahan from him.
"The Doyen warned you. I caught the thought they put in your brain!
Well, let them play their game. They can only interfere with me when I
use my Doyen powers to destroy you. I have other gifts to use!"
A fist dove at his face, but the McCanahan was a master at rough and
tumble fighting. He slipped it and bored in. His fists drummed into the
High Mor's belly, lifted and threw him back to rebound off the far wall.
A dozen weapons came tumbling down on the ruler of Senorech. A cloak
swathed his flailing arms.
Kael stepped back, waiting.
That was where he made his mistake. For the High Mor slid to the floor
in a crumpled heap, and the thing that was Noorlythin glowed and pulsed
and moved its frosted tendrils, free of its fallen body.
As Noorlythin moved its tendrils, the floor fell away beneath the
booted heels of the McCanahan. The walls of the guardroom went out of
existence, and Kael was falling, falling.
_Gird yourself, Terran! You go into subspace where no other living
thing can enter! Not even another Doyen to shield you from my wrath!
For each Doyen has in him the seeds of material creation, and what one
Doyen materializes, no other Doyen can disturb!_
And the high, mocking laughter followed him down and down, into the
eternal blackness where he fell.