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Falcons of Narabedla

<h2>CHAPTER THREE Flowers of Danger</h2> I turned my back on the window. "Rhys is a Dreamer," I said with slow certainty. "What is Gamine?" Evarin nodded slowly, ignoring the question. "Rhys is a Dreamer, yes. He is old—so old he is almost mortal now; so he wakes, and he too walks. But he was one of us once—the only Dreamer ever born within the Rainbow City. His loyalty is double; but he will never harm Narabedla, because he is of our blood." Evarin cleared his throat. "So Gamine takes what knowledge can be had from his old, old mind. And does not pay." "Who is Gamine?" I asked again. Evarin still hesitated. "Karamy hates Gamine," he said, after minutes. "So no man sees Gamine's face. I would not ask too many questions—unless you ask them of Karamy." A smile flickered on the mobile features. "Ask Karamy," he said gleefully, "She will tell!" "She will?" I said stupidly, because I could think of nothing else to say. Evarin's grin was delicately malicious. "Oh, I am sure of that! Karamy is quick to strike. Gamine and I have little love lost, but we agree on one thing; that Karamy's procession of slaves is monstrous. And that you are a fool to help Karamy pay for her—desires. Karamy is far too fond of power in her own hands, to pay to put it into yours." Karamy. Karamy who took my memory— "She did." Evarin murmured, and I realized I had spoken aloud. The room seemed full of a weighty silence. Evarin's prowling footsteps made no noise as he came to my side. "I can give it back to you, though. I have made you a Toy." His effete voice rather disgusted me, and I moved away, but he followed. "Look here, and find your memory." And he put something small and hard into my hand; something wrapped in silvery silks. I raised my hand curiously, untwisting the wrappings. They were smooth and shining and colorless, with a bluish cast, like Gamine's veils; no fabric I had ever seen. Evarin backed slowly away from me. For an instant all I could see was a blurred invisibility—like Gamine's face behind the veils—then a sort of mirror became slowly visible. It did not seem to reflect anything; rather, it was a coldly shining surface, cloudy, glittering from within. I bent to examine the pattern of the shadows that moved on the surface. There was a curious pull from the mirror, a cold that crept sluggishly from my hand. A familiar, soothing cold. As if drawn by a magnet, my eyes bent closer— Recognition crashed in my mind. Evarin—and his gilt deadly Toys.... I dashed the colorless thing to the floor, giving it a savage kick. The blurred invisibility wavered; I caught a glimpse of a tiny jewelled mechanism, before it sprang back to gray ice again. Evarin had backed halfway across the room; I leaped at him, collaring the dandy and wrenching him close. "I've a good mind to tie the thing across your throat!" I grated. Evarin's lip twisted up. Suddenly his whole face melted in a blurring invisibility and I felt his whole substance evaporate from between my hands. He writhed like smoke, and I leaped backward just as he materialized, whole and deadly, too close. "I am always—guarded!" he jerked out at me, "I might have known—" He stooped, reaching for the fallen toy. I kicked the little mirror out of his reach, bent to retrieve it. "I'll keep this," I said, and wadding the insulated silk around it, I thrust it into a pocket. Evarin's eyes glared at me helplessly. "You'll stay solid for awhile now," I jeered. "Toymaker! Damned freak—" I stormed out of the room, leaving him rubbing his bruised shoulder. Now that Adric was back in control, I had no trouble discovering where I wanted to go. Some blind instinct led me through the maze of elevators and staircases; I stepped into servant's quarters, kitchens, a roomful of buzzing machinery I dismissed with a glance of familiarity; and finally found myself in the open, the semicircle of rainbow towers around me. Overhead the suns, red and white, sent a curious, double-shadowed light downward through the neatly-trimmed trees. A little day moon, smaller than any moon I had known, peeped, a curious crescent, over the edge of a mountain. The grass under my feet was just grass, but the brightly-tinted flowers in mathematically regular beds were strange to me. Paths, bordered by narrow ditches to keep the pedestrian off the flowers, wandered in and out of this strange pleasaunce; I accepted all this without conscious thought, but some unconscious scrap of memory gave me a vague practical reason for the ditches. I carefully avoided them. Faint shrill music tugged siren-like at my ears; wordless, like Gamine's crooning. Staring, I realized that the flowers themselves sang. The singing flowers of Karamy's garden—I remembered their lotus song. A song of welcome? Or of danger? I was not alone in the garden. Men, kilted and belted in the same gaudy red and gold as the flowers, passed and repassed restlessly, unquiet as chained flames. For a moment the old vanity turned upper-most in my mind. For all her slaves, all her—lovers, Karamy paid tribute to the Lord of the Crimson Tower! Paid—would continue to pay! The men passed me, silent. They were sworded, but their swords were blunt, like children's toys; they were a regiment of corpses, of zombies. Their salutes as I passed were jerky, mechanical. A high note sang suddenly in the flowers; I felt, not heard, their empty parading cease. In a weird ballet they ranged themselves into blind lines that filed away nowhere; toy soldiers, all alike. And between the backs of the toy-soldiers and the patterned, painted flowers, I saw a man running. Another me, from another world, thought briefly of the card-soldiers, flat on their faces in the Red Queen's garden. Wonderland. I heard myself say, with half-conscious amusement, "They all look so alike until you turn them over!" The man running between the ditched flower-beds was no dummy from a pack of cards. I saw him beckon, still running. He called to me; to Adric. "Adric! Karamy walks here—just listen to the flowers! I was afraid I'd have to get all the way into the tower to find you!" His voice was urgent, breathless; he slid to a stop not three feet from me. "Narayan knew they'd freed you! He's outside the gates. He sent me to help. Come on!" The sight of the man touched another of those live-wires in my brain; the name of Narayan, another still. "Narayan—" I said in dull recognition. The word, on my lips, hit a chord of fear, of dread and danger— But I had come straight from Evarin. I knew the man; I knew the response he expected, but the brief glimpse into Evarin's mirror had set up a chain of actions I could not control. I tried to put out my hand in friendly greeting; instead I felt, with horror, my fingers at my belt and tried, without success, to halt the sword that flew without volition from its sheath. The man backed away, his eyes full of terror. "Adric—no—the Sign—" he held up one arm, deprecatingly, then howled with agony, clutching the severed fingers. I heard my own voice, savage, inhuman, the thin laughter of Evarin snarling through it. "Sign?? There's a sign for you!" The man threw himself out of range; but his face, convulsed with pain, held a stunned bewilderment. "Adric—Narayan promised—you were sane—" he breathed. I forced my sword back into the scabbard, staring without comprehension at the blood from the wound I had inflicted, and at the darting heads of the flowers. I could not kill this man who carried the name of Narayan on his tongue. The flowers twitched—stirred—threw tendrils at the man's bleeding hand. A quick nausea tightened my throat; I motioned urgently to him. "Run!" I begged, "Quick, or I can't—" The flowers shrilled. The man threw back his head, his eyes wide with panic, and screamed. "Karamy! Aiiieeeee—!" he staggered back wildly, teetering on the edge of the ditch. I cried another warning, incoherent—but too late. He trod on the flowers—stumbled across the little ditch. The writhing flower-heads shot up shoulder-high. They screamed a wild paean of flower-music, and he fell among them, sprawling, floundering helplessly. I heard him scream, hoarsely, horribly—I turned my eyes away. There was a wild thrashing, a flailing, a yell that died and echoed among the brilliant towers. There was a sort of purring murmur from the blossoms. Then the flowers stilled and were quiet, waving innocently behind their ditches. Karamy, gold and fire, walked along the winding path through the trees. And in the space of a second I forgot the man who lay lifeless in the bed of the terrible flowers. Karamy was all gold. From her glowing crown of hair to the tips of her little slippers, she was one sunny shimmer; there was amber on her brows and at her throat, and an amber rod twisted lightly between her fingers, its delicate movement outlining my face. Karamy's smile of welcome was a dream which made me know I could be well content if this were my world. But old habit made me turn my face away; her eyes, cat-eyes of wide yellow, watched me slyly, but her face was turned to the sprawled man in the flowers. "So? I thought I heard—something." Without taking her eyes from my face, she spun the lucent rod. The flower-song rose again, a soft keening wail. Two of the silent guards moved noiselessly through the garden, and at an expressive movement of the rod, they lifted the corpse and bore it away. The music died. The woman's hands went out to pull me close. "Adric, Adric! As soon as you are free, they pursue you! That is not what you want, is it?" "Isn't it?" I asked shortly. I still could not look full at the cat-eyes, the caressing face. A memory scuttled, rabbit-fashion, across my mind, giving name and identity to the man I had betrayed to the flowers. Karamy slid in front of me so I had to look at her, and the lovely lazy voice murmured the name I was beginning to know. "You are angry," the soft voice caressed me, "I knew it was not right to let Evarin near you! Adric, we need you, Narabedla needs you! We felt betrayed when you left us, when you shut yourself up alone with your stars! Have you forgotten, or are you still—my lover?" It rang phony! Phony, was the way I put it to myself. Part of me felt like calling her a lying she-devil and having that much, at least, on record. But I was fast acquiring a double cunning. The animal cunning of Adric's old habit—and a desperate, trapped cunning of my own, born of a desperate fear of this unfamiliar world. There was nothing I could do except ride on the surface and let my hunches take me where they would. Karamy was very soft and sweet and something more than lovely in my arms and I held her crushingly close while I struggled with a memory. Who was Karamy? Who—and what—was I? Karamy dropped her arms. The mantle of lazy seductiveness dropped with them. She spoke with eager annoyance. "You are still angry because I sent you on the Time Ellipse! You do not know it was for your own good—you haven't learned your lesson yet—" That talk meant danger for me. I could think of only one way to silence it. She seemed to like it; but even with her lips acquiescent under mine, I was wary. Was I fooling her—or was she only playing my own game, and playing it a little better? "Now we can make plans," she said a little later, "First, Gamine." She looked sharply at me, but I kept my face expressionless. "Gamine is always with the old Dreamer; she lets him wake; he will grow too strong. We must send Rhys away from Narabedla. Gamine may stay or follow him to exile. But Rhys must go." "Rhys must go," I conceded. "He should be slain, but Gamine will never do it," said Karamy with a shrug that disposed of Rhys. "Evarin—" she snapped her jewelled fingers. "His Dreamer sleeps sound! Evarin fears even his own power! My Dreamer grows strong—but he serves me!" The beautiful face looked ruthless and savage. "Your Dreamer walks—free in the forest! Only you can re-bind him. You, with my help—Adric of the Crimson Tower!" Her eyes smoldered. "Yes, and my Dreamer shall serve you as well, till then!" She breathed. "I will pay to put power in your hands!" The very phrase Evarin had used! A shudder stung me briefly. Her glowing face burned through my sting of fear. "I go to the Dreamer this night, Adric! Ride with me, and he shall lead you where the Dreamer walks—and lead you back to power! I have said enough—" the lambent eyes tilted at me, "Have I not?" She had, and too much. For I knew now how the Dreamer must be paid. And the small part of me that was still Mike Kenscott cowered; the rest of me accepted the memory with a shrug. It was this Adric part that spoke. "I'll go. And afterward, I'll go into the forest where the Dreamer walks—and bring him back to you!" But even as I swept Karamy into my arms and bent her head back roughly under my mouth, a warning prickle iced my spine. I said, insinuatingly "And then, Karamy—" but my eyes narrowed over her golden head. Karamy had tricked me before this. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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