Norton, Andre - Brother To Shadows

Jofre could have taken the Tssekian during that short meeting, he was sure of it, but it would avail him nothing. Not on board ship. In the meantime he might seem for periods to be dozing himself, but instead he was actively exercising issha fashion.

When the tape was run and Jofre invited to look at the small screen of the reader there appeared a building of formal and austere architecture with a wide audience hall. Centered in this was a two-step dais on which were several chairs alined. Though the tape was in color the apartment was bare, grey-white wall and showed no attempt at decoration. There was nothing to view except the static dais and the chairs.

Then flashed on a second scene in bright color but so static that those in it might have been caught in the same paralyzing stass which had held Jofre prisoner. They wore brightly colored clothes with the look of uniforms and there were a sprinkle of jeweled insignia everywhere. A voice, using trade tongue, came out of nowhere in explanation:

"The historic meeting between the Holder Fer s'Rang and the Lords of Nin and Vart as shown in the painting of Re s'Dion."

Five men were seated in those chairs on the dais; the sixth stood among them, one hand upheld as if to underline some point of speech. Two of his listeners were leaning forward as if very intent on what he was saying. The other three did not appear so moved. Now Jofre sighted a seventh man on the lower step of the dais towards the back where the shadow overhung and nearly erased him from sight: the present Holder in attendance.

Jofre could see very little of the man, his head was turned away so that his face was only a slice of cheek. Yet there was something—Jofre wished there was some way of sharpening the screen or bringing the scene closer that he might catch more details of that near-hidden man. He could only guess, but it seemed to him that the position of one hand was odd. It seemed to be raised breast high and flattened horizontally as if it supported a weight and yet there was plainly nothing resting there.

From the time the Zacathan had told him the history of this scene Jofre had fastened on the relationship between Fer s'Rang and the man who had succeeded him. If this shadow figurewas the Holder-to-be, why was he not in a more important position at this meeting? Certainly he was not on the dais, where one expected the second-in-command to stand.

"Learned One," Jofre asked, "after the death of Fer s'Rang was there any trouble? Any claim that he was the victim of some attack?"

"Far from it. His personal physician revealed that he had been suffering from a fatal illness for several months, that he had really made a supreme effort to rise from his deathbed to cement the alliance pictured here. Itwas cemented over his body by those shocked into fellowship by such a loss."

Still—Jofre was too well versed in the devious tricks played by the valley lords to completely accept that story. It was far too convenient for the present Holder— an alliance at the death of his predecessor, sworn to by men who had doubtless been completely stunned by that death—too much a whim of fortune. He had heard tell of other deaths, carefully executed to order by issha trained to complete anonymously action requiring months of tortuous intrigue. Not that it mattered now what had happened fifty years ago—unless Zurzal's time scanner could produce a copy of just what they were viewing now.

"Can it be done—that scene brought into being again?" He wriggled one finger at the screened picture.

"You can answer that perhaps as well as I can." Zurzal's good hand arose to rub across the growing stump of his maimed one, as if the renewing flesh and bone itched as might a wound in the progress of healing. "I have had some fleeting successes, it is true."

He did not continue but Jofre thought he could pick up what the other was leaving unsaid, that Zurzal was honestly wary of any success in this venture. Which meant that they could have only a fleeting value to their captors.

Frustration bit at Jofre but he could do nothing, save prepare as best he could for the first chance he would have which would promise even the remotest chance of escape.

In the days which followed he had to fight against the constant urge for action. He refused to let himself walk the floor as sometimes his body demanded, wanting to be free. All he could do was draw upon the Center—

There was one small thing to which his mind continually turned—the fact that when he had been, he was sure, very near death from the stass weapon, contact with the stone from Qaw-en-itter had somehow given him the strength to hold on. He took to studying the stone and made small discoveries, though he was cautious about it—it came from a cursed place and some of the darkness which gathered there could well cling.

He found that if he held it cupped between his palms when he did his Center seeking, he was brought much more quickly to the state of body awareness he wished. Once, when trying a memory exercise he pressed it to his forehead and then nearly dropped it when he was answered with a painful burst of jangled images which even left him partially blinded for some very frightening moments.

Something kept him from showing his find to the Zacathan. He only brought it out when Zurzal was resting or deeply occupied with the studies which had to do with the scanner. By now Jofre was convinced that what he held could only have broken off of the Lair stone whose death had signified also the abandonment of Qaw-en-itter. No one—except the Masters and the senior priests—knew the relationship between men and the Lair stones. Those were assha—of the innermost of the Shadows. Nor had Jofre ever heard of anyone possessing an artifact such as he had found.

Perhaps a prudent man would have left it where he had discovered it—any Brother would—but—it remained that he was not by birth or blood a Brother—he was an off-worlder. And when he thought of that he knew a trickle of cold within. From what world had he sprung in the beginning? How did that other breeding limit—or aid—the issha now ingrained in him?

There would be more than one trial ahead to test both his limits and his successes, and all he was must be pushed to making certain he faced all squarely and alert.

THEY DID NOT TOUCH FOOT TO TSSEKIAN SOIL ONCE they had earthed. Rather Jofre found himself squeezed in between Harse and one of his look-alikes on the second seat of a flitter which had made a precise connection with a landing platform. While Zurzal was wedged in with the Horde Commander and the pilot on the fore seat. Just as his first glimpse of Tssekian architecture via the vision screen had impressed him with stark utility and no concessions to any softening of line, so did the loom of the buildings between which their present vehicle streaked its way offer a vague threat, as if each was a sentinel on duty and those of the population about were prisoners.

They did not linger in that somber pile of a city but rather sped on into open land beyond. Jofre could not move enough in his seat to see what lay below them. But the walls were gone and, except for sight of a distant skeleton-like erection or two, they were now in the clear.

Their craft apparently had reached maximum speed and was being held so. However, they were not alone in the sky. During their flight through the city they had passed a number of similar craft and, once they had reached the outer ways beyond that stand of buildings, a second flitter hung close, a little behind, but apparently bound for the same goal.