JUDGMENT OF THE GUARDIAN
"The man stirs, mistress! I told you that he was but stunned."
Nelson heard that queer voice inside his mind, as he floated through infinities of aching darkness.
"Tark, it might be better for him if he had died out there in the forest!"
It seemed to Nelson that time had doubled back upon itself and that he lay again in the squalid inn in Yen Shi as he had lain that night he had first heard the thought-voices in his dreams.
But the throbbing pain in his head was no dream. He tried to raise his hand toward his temple and discovered by the attempt that his sitting body was bound in a chair.
Fear and memory pounced together upon Nelson's mind. He made a convulsive effort and opened his eyes. Brilliant sunlight from an open window caught his eye first and then the detail of the room focused slowly.
It was a high-ceilinged, long gallery with pale blue glassy walls. The sunlight danced and quivered and shimmered off those walls, sunbeams seeming to play around the room.
Nsharra sat in a chair six feet from him, and the great wolf, Tark, crouched like a dog beside her. Both were watching him. Subconsciously, he'd expected it. He'd remembered their disputing thought-voices as he had heard them at Yen Shi. He knew he'd heard them more clearly now because he still wore the thought-crown.
"Yes," said Nsharra quietly. "You are in Vruun, where you wished to come, Eric Nelson."
It was strange to hear his name from her lips and to remember that night in Yen Shi when he had told it to her between kisses. And it was stranger, to Nelson, to see her here sitting in her chair like a gray-eyed young princess in white silk and to realize that this was the singsong girl of that faraway night.
"Lefty?" he said. He said it without hope and the girl nodded her dark head slightly.
"Tark was forced to kill him. It was courageous of you to turn back for him. If you had not you too might have—"
She stopped. But Nelson, every sense sharpened to acuteness by his situation, seized on the unfinished sentence.
"I too might have escaped, you were going to say? Then Shan Kar did escape?"
Nsharra said nothing but her lids had half-veiled her eyes for a moment and Nelson knew that he had guessed correctly. For a moment, he wondered what Nick Sloan and Shan Kar would do now. Sloan wouldn't give up the campaign to crush the Brotherhood-not with a fortune in platinum to win.
Then, mentally, Eric Nelson shrugged his shoulders. What difference did it make to him now?
"Are you going to kill me too?" he asked directly.
"Are you afraid of death?" Nsharra countered.
He answered levelly. "I don't want to die. But I think I can manage it if I have to."
Nsharra smiled faintly. "That is an honest answer, Eric Nelson." Then her face sobered swiftly. "But it is not mere death you have to fear."
Tark looked up at the girl. The wolf's thought came clearly to Nelson.
"Mistress, I did what I could with the others of the Council. But your father is grimly resolved and Quorr and Hatha demand vengeance."
"And Ei?" questioned Nsharra's thought.
"Who knows the Winged One's mind?" countered the wolf. "They will all be here soon to judge the man."
Nelson had watched this silent discussion between the girl and wolf in a strange fascination that had undertones of horror. Witch-girl and her familiars! Mistress of kuei, Li Kin had called her! Not human, not wholly human—
Nsharra apparently read the thought behind his staring gaze. For a quick flush mantled her olive face.
"You are here for judgment, not I, outlander!" she flashed. "Do not look at me so!"
Witch-girl, maybe, but utterly feminine in that reaction, Nelson thought. The door opened suddenly and a man stood in the doorway looking in at them.
Nelson knew at once this was the Guardian of the Brotherhood — Kree, Nsharra's father. He had the stamp of authority on his face. He was old enough to have iron-gray hair but he stood sword-straight in the doorway. He wore a loose black silken tunic and trousers, and over them a long, gold-worked black cloak.
His piercing dark eyes were bent upon Nelson, but it was to Nsharra and Tark he spoke.
"So the outlander has regained his senses? That is well. The Clan leaders wish to see him."
He came into the room, and a great tiger stalked softly in after him. And with click of hoofs on the floor came too the big fire-eyed black stallion whom Nelson remembered also from Yen Shi.
Wings swished and through the broad open window swept an enormous eagle that perched lightly on the back of Nsharra's big chair.
Clan-leaders of the Brotherhood! Beast-eyes and bird-eyes watching him, judging him! Nelson's stomach began to crawl. It wasn't just fear. It was the outer world tradition of man and beast as separate orders of being that put a horror of this unhuman panel of judges into his mind.
Tark rose to his feet and looked at Kree and at the stallion and tiger and eagle.
"Before you judge, brothers, remember that this outlander is the last thread by which we may still draw Barin out of danger!"
Kree looked somberly at the great wolf. "It is your love for my son and daughter that speaks, Tark. These outlanders and their weapons are our greatest peril."
The stallion, Hatha, looked at Nelson with fiery eyes and Nelson heard his savage thought.
"This man should die. He seeks to help Shan Kar make L'Lan like his outer world, a place where our races are driven, enslaved brutes."
The raging thought of the great tiger Quorr instantly supported Hatha.
"Blood of our dead calls for vengeance! These outlanders have brought death into our land and must taste death!"
Nsharra's thought interrupted, as she rose from her chair.
"Yet this man sinned in ignorance! He knew nothing of the Brotherhood in all his life till he came to L'Lan."
The great eagle turned his head to the others and Nelson barely caught the swift flash of Ei's thought.
"Nsharra speaks truth. The man may have blundered into killing without realizing his crime."
Nelson was astonished. Why should the Winged One, seemingly farthest of them all from humanity, speak for him?
"Have you grown blind who boast sharpest sight, Ei?" raged the tiger. "Can you not see the deadly danger in these men?"
"Yet we could use him as hostage to free Barin!" Tark reminded them again anxiously. There was a silence in which they all looked at Kree. Nelson realized that, in this Council, the Guardian's decision would carry.
Kree spoke slowly. "We can do both things you wish. We can use this outlander as a hostage for Barin and at the same time we can punish him for what he has done. This man came into L'Lan to help shatter the Brotherhood. There is a penalty that we invoke on those who sin against the Brotherhood."
Nelson did not understand. But his brief flicker of relief vanished as he saw the horror that came into Nsharra's eyes.
"Let the man die rather than that!" she exclaimed. "He does not merit that penalty since he knew nothing of the Brotherhood!"
"He will learn and he will learn quickly," Kree said grimly.
"The Guardian is right! The punishment of the ancients for the outlander!" cried Quorr, tiger-eyes blazing.
"Tark, it shall be one of your clan," Kree told the wolf. "But that one must volunteer."
"There will be no lack to volunteer for the Brotherhood!" cried the wolf's thought. He raced swiftly out of the room.
Kree went out too. Tiger, eagle and stallion remained, watching Nelson.
Nsharra's face had an aching pity on it as she looked at Nelson. And that pity awakened true fear in him.
"Nsharra, what are they going to do to me?" he asked her.
"It is the penalty of the ancients," she answered. "Long ago, from the Cavern of Creation, a Guardian brought one of their subtle instruments that he had learned from their records to operate. It has been used rarely to punish those who transgress the Brotherhood."
"But what is it?" he asked thickly. "Torture?"
"Not torture nor death," she whispered. "But worse, a—"
She broke off to hasten across the room toward her father. Kree had returned, wheeling a bulky object in front of him. Nelson felt his fear increasing. He remembered what Shan Kar had said — that the Guardian possessed a queer power of the ancients to effect terrible transformations. A power that had been used only rarely against transgressors but that had left a memory of horror in all L'Lan.
He stared at the big object Kree had brought. It was an upright man-high platinum box mounted on wheels. The only clues to whatever strange apparatus was inside it were two levers upon its face.
From opposite sides of the top of the tall box branched two heavy platinum rods. Each ended in a queerly grooved quartz disk three feet in diameter. Each of the two big disks was parallel to the floor.
Nsharra was appealing to her father. "He does not even know what you plan, father! He will go mad! Does he merit that?"
"Do the beasts of the outer world merit the slavery and death that this man and his kind deal them?" retorted Kree harshly.
Nelson tried to reassure himself. He tried to tell himself that the queer platinum apparatus could be only a meaningless relic, that this was mere primitive mumbo-jumbo.
He couldn't do it. He couldn't conquer the horror that was tightening across his chest like a steel band.
Tark had come back into the room. And with him was another wolf, a young, rangy dog-wolf, lean of flank and bright of eye, big but dwarfed by the great leader of his Clan.
"This is Asha of my Clan," came Tark's thought. "He offers to be the one."
Kree looked at the young wolf. "You know the danger to you, Asha?"
"I know!" rang the dog-wolf's thought. "It is for the Brotherhood. I am willing."
"Then stand there, close to the outlander's chair," ordered Kree, pointing.
Nelson saw the dog-wolf walk over and stand a few feet from him, where the Guardian had indicated. The wolf looked over at him-strangely. Something in that bright unhuman gaze shook Nelson.
He wouldn't let all this flummery of superstitious rites shake his nerve — he wouldn't!
Kree wheeled the tall platinum machine between Nelson's chair and the young wolf. He adjusted it so that one of its branching quartz disks was over Nelson's head, the other over Asha the wolf.
"Let the ancients witness that I use their power not lightly but for the Brotherhood!" intoned the Guardian.
Superstition, traditional ritual-that was all it was, all it could be. But Nelson's heart had begun pounding hard as he saw the horror grow and grow on Nsharra's pale face.
Kree's hand fell. It thrust down both of the levers on the face of the platinum machine. From the two big quartz disks, white light sprang downward. One beam of blinding brilliance struck and bathed Nelson, the other struck the dog-wolf on the other side of the enigmatic machine.
Light? No, force! For Eric Nelson felt himself rocked by a terrific shock as the brilliant beam struck him. His brain shrieked to a nightmare rending sensation. He had a ghastly feeling that he, the real he, was being torn loose from something and dragged through nothingness.