Something raised chill bumps again-an energy like that from the security screen in the corridor, intensifying as he proceeded downward. The stairwell continued below the first floor landing and its weak bulb, and so did he.
At the bottom was a final door, of heavy oak, and carefully he opened it, enough to peer inside. Opening it had doubled the energy he felt, making his skin crawl, his hair stand on end. Inside was a small, thickly shadowed mezzanine, stone paved and with no parapet, overlooking a stone-walled pit. Firelight danced on walls, as if from flames below, and the place smelled of charcoal smoke. There seemed to be no other light. On his belly, Macurdy crawled to the edge and looked down.
The cellar floor was perhaps four meters lower, the flames in a large brazier near one end. In the center was a stone altar, with a naked, long-limbed blond woman lying on it, clearly the aristocrat the guardsmen had told of. She was not physically restrained, but motionless, as if waiting, hands folded on her abdomen. Her eyes were open, her limbs and features composed as if for burial. Her aura suggested a hypnotic trance, her torso and head resting on what seemed to be a silver tray. Kurgosz stood at the head of the altar. To one side were seven tall Voitar, not robed now, but wearing blood-red breeches and tunics, blood-red slippers.
Though the altar was centered in the room, the focus of the ritual was an intricately wrought tripod of what appeared to be black iron, topped with a shallow bowl, the seven Voitar forming a circle around it. The bowl held a round gem the size of an egg, surrounded by a soft pure glow that seemed more than light.
It gripped his attention, and with an effort, Macurdy pulled his gaze from it. A feeling of suffocation alarmed him; he'd been holding his breath. Cautiously he inhaled.
Kurgosz held a slender knife in one hand, and in the other a silver shield, which he positioned over the woman's head and chest. Reflexively Macurdy closed his eyes. After a long blurred minute, the energy swelled, then surged powerfully. Macurdy's eyes sprang wide, and he lost consciousness.
When he awoke and looked down again, the sorcerers had left and the flames had burned out, the coals sullen red. The woman was slack, throat cut, torso bloody, with only the residual body aura of a corpse. The stand and jewel were gone. These things registered on his mind without conscious thought. Groggily he stood and backed away from the edge, failing to hearth e bolt turn behind him. The door opened, almost hitting him, leaving him partly shielded by it. Someone, seemingly Tsulgax, stepped inside, leaving it open. Too groggy to wonder if his cloak had survived his unconsciousness, Macurdy watched broad shoulders and erect head disappear down stairs he hadn't noticed before. Only in hindsight would he wonder what the half-Voitu had arrived to do: clean up perhaps, and carry off the corpse.
Shivering, Macurdy left, plodding zombie-like up the stairs, not stopping at any of the levels, but continuing past the third, up a last flight to a gable door. It opened on a minuscule balcony, a tiny standing place at the eaves of the steep and circular tower roof.
The sky was clear, a great vault spangled with stars. Only then did he realize, vaguely, that the psychic energy he'd felt earlier was gone; had been since before he'd awakened. For several more minutes he thought not at all, until, shivering, he realized how cold the night was. Without checking to see if things were clear, he went back in, down to the second level and into the corridor. He didn't notice whether there was light beneath the doors. Gathering his wits, he cleared the alarm or barrier-whatever it was-and stepped through.
The sentry lay comatose on the floor. It registered, but Macurdy didn't wonder at it. Thinking only of bed, he returned to his room, where the auras would have told him, if he'd noticed, that the psychics were as comatose as the guard.
When he lay down, he had wits enough to deactivate his cloak, and as he pulled the covers over himself, thought blurrily that Tsulgax, or whoever had gone to clean up, was either enormously durable, or remarkably insensitive to psychic shock.
26
A Peculiar Gate
The next morning the psychics weren't taken to their instructors. They weren't even wakened for breakfast, but instead rousted out for an early lunch. It seemed to Macurdy that the psychic "power surge" of the night before must have left everyone, except Tsulgax and probably the Voitar, in a state of collapse.
About the time they'd finished lunch-rye bread, margarine, cheese and sausage-Macurdy became aware of a hum of energy; a different energy than he'd felt the night before. The others felt it too; he could read it in their auras, and by the way they looked around.
Not long afterward, a haggard Lieutenant Lipanov and an entire squad of equally haggard guardsmen took the psychics for a walk; all but the old woman. And if that wasn't remarkable enough, Greszak went with them, long legs like swift scissor blades. The Voitu's vigor startled Macurdy.
This time they didn't stay on the country road, with its mild ups and downs, but in just a short distance turned off on a truck trail that angled up the side of the Witches' Ridge. Built by the military for four-wheel-drive vehicles, Macurdy decided. He wondered why.
The day was sunny and mild, somewhat above freezing, and the upgrade unrelenting, so that despite frequent short breaks to catch their breath, most were soon sweating. The middle-aged gypsy complained of chest pain, and a guardsman took her back to the schloss, but everyone else kept hiking up the stony road until, two-thirds of the way to the top, they stopped. By that time the energy field was considerably stronger, oppressing all of them except himself-himself and Greszak who'd been scanning the psychics continually.
On the way back down it suddenly cut off. By then Macurdy knew what kind of energy field it was, knew it well from Injun Knob: Somewhere on the Witches' Ridge was a gate, if not to Yuulith, then to some place like it-an activated gate, though the hour was far from midnight. The realization, when it hit him, had given him chills.
And the Voitar? The Voitar were definitely not from Mars. They were-they had to be from the other side of the gate.
Neither Landgraf nor Kupfer nor the Voitar explained the unusual walk. Nor Schurz, who almost surely didn't know. It was not a coincidence though, Macurdy felt sure. Perhaps a test, to see which of them were affected, and how much.
The next day the psychics returned to their class routine, but something had changed. The gate field turned on for something approaching an hour, but at roughly an hour later. It repeated the next day, an hour or so later than on the day before.
Later that day, the glowering Tsulgax took Montag from the classroom to Kurqosz's office.. "Herr Montag," said Kurqosz, "have you felt anything unusual in the air, lately? In the afternoons?"
"Yessir, Herr Kronprinz!"
"How would you describe what you feel?"
Montag frowned as if trying to think: "There is a-feeling to it. It made my skin buzz at first."
The red eyebrows arched. "Indeed! Do you find it unpleasant?"
"No sir, Herr Kronprinz!"
"Hmm." It seemed clear to Macurdy that his answer was no surprise to Kurqosz, yet the intense green eyes looked as if they were trying to bore into his skull. Abruptly they disengaged, turning to Tsulgax, and the crown prince nodded dismissively without speaking.
And that was all there was to that. Tsulgax gripped his arm and returned him to class. Something, Macurdy told himself, was up, but he had no idea what.
After class that day, Schurz delivered him to Kupfer's office, and Kupfer delivered him next door to Landgraf. The colonel looked him over with a gaze serious but mild.