Shakira gave the explanation.

"You are a stranger," he said. "A hostile intrusion into her environment. For the sake of your life, I warn you not to be violent. Do not even think of extracting revenge. Before you could act you would be dead."

"A telepath?"

"No, but with you she has a rapport. One built on fragments of your blood, tissue, muscle, bone. A focal point for her directed thought. Sometimes she incorporates it into a doll."

Small artifacts which Dumarest could see lying around. Crude things with vacuous faces and oddly distorted bodies. The product of unskilled hands or hands so disfigured that they were incapable of normal dexterity.

"I found her on Tomzich, a world in the Bannerheim Cluster. She was living in a cave at the edge of a village living on scraps and hiding from the light of day. A mutant, hated by those from whom she had sprung. At times she cursed them and, at times, those cursed would die. They called her a witch and would have killed her had they been able." Shakira stepped forward and rested one hand on the rounded hump of a shoulder. "My dear," he said gently. "Have I your permission to reveal your face?"

The masked figure turned to face Dumarest, the covered head seeming to tilt as if to question.

He said evenly, "As you wish, my lady. Here, at this time, I am at your command."

Shakira lifted the cloth.

Elagonya was a parody of what a woman should have been. The victim of cruel nature which, tormented by the blasting radiation which had distorted the pattern of genes, had taken a vicious revenge. The face was a jumble of features, one eye higher than the other, the mouth a twisted gash, the chin cleft so that it was forked, the nose the grotesque appendage of a clown. Lank hair hung like worms from a peaked skull and the eyes, muddy brown, flecked with yellow and red, looked like the dusty windows of an empty house.

"No surgery can aid her," said Shakira. "No drugs or treatment alleviate her condition."

It must have been a living hell. Dumarest looked at the warted encrustations on the skin, the puffed cysts marring the lines of the scalp. The gown she wore came high up the throat and covered the arms and legs to touch the floor but he could guess at the condition of the body it covered.

The whisper of her voice was the thin grate of a nail on slate.

"You look at me and do not cringe. Are you so accustomed to horror?"

"That is not what I see, my lady."

"You mock me?" For a moment tension stiffened the air and Dumarest heard Shakira's sharp inhalation, the touch of something like a feather against the naked surface of his mind. And then, as if he had been tested and had passed the test, the tension vanished. "No," she whispered. "You do not mock. Yet I do not need your pity."

"Something else, then?" A question to which she gave no answer and Dumarest continued, "We are what we are, my lady, and have no hand in our making. Therefore we should not be blamed for what we cannot help. Nor derided. Nor abused. But to deny pity is to reject what is good in a person. And there are those who, if they were you, would beg for more than pity."

"A quick and merciful end-you offer me that?"

"If I did, would you accept it?"

"No." The denial was sharp. "I live and while I live I serve. I can help those who have been kind." A sleeve lifted to reveal a knotted appendage which touched Shakira's hand. "Save your pity for those who need it. I do not."

Dumarest bowed, lowering his eyes.

"Yet you have been kind and merciful in your fashion. Tayu!" He lowered the cloth to hide the ravaged features, the fabric softening the harsh timbre of the whispering voice. "Therefore, from me to you, something to remember."

The touch came again, a feather on the mind followed by a wave of pleasure so intense as to send his mind spinning in a vortex of indescribable ecstasy. One which blinded him to the journey back and left him shaken and gasping in Shakira's office.

"Her talent, Earl." The owner offered him a glass of wine. "The reverse of the coin she can spin at will. Pleasure and pain. Reward and punishment. Ironic, isn't it, that such power should be housed in such a frame."

The price paid by most sensitives for their talent; physical weakness and deformity, but Elagonya had paid higher than most. How many others like her did Shakira keep in his private quarters? And how to break the hold she had over him?

Dumarest said, "In order to function she needs a focal point."

"That is so." Shakira lifted his own glass of wine. "You had no choice but others are more cautious. Also her ability is limited." He sipped and swallowed and, looking at his glass, added, "I wanted you to realize how helpless you are, Earl. Run and pain will torment you. Attempt violence against me and you will be rendered helpless. Elagonya's talent has fabricated an affinity between you. In a sense you are an extension of her body."

"And?"

"That makes you mine, Earl. A part of the circus of Chen Wei."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

In a gallery a man was protesting, his voice high, edged with anger, "You cheated me! Sold me rubbish! That's bad enough but you took me for a fool. No one does that and gets away with it!"

"Easy, mister." The grafter, small, wizened, spread his hands in an age-old gesture. "There's no need for temper. You got what you paid for, right?"

"Wrong! A liquid which turns metal into gold-the damned stuff wears off after a day!"

And he had spent more than its cost in coming back to complain. An awkward one. A noise. He turned as Dumarest touched his arm.

"I'm an assistant market-inspector attached to the circus from the main office, sir." A lie the man was willing to accept especially when Dumarest continued, "As I see it you have a good case. You can prosecute or come to some settlement. Naturally we'd prefer you to prosecute; thieves like this mustn't be allowed to rob honest people. Are you willing to place charges?"

"Well-"

"Of course if you prosecute you'll have to attend court and pay certain charges which you can later claim against the defendant should the verdict go against him. And it will take some of your time. The preliminary hearing, the depositions, witnesses and their statements-naturally you have proof of purchase?"

"No." The man scowled. "Look, must I go through all that? It's time and expense I may never recover."

"You'd rather settle without formality?" Dumarest registered his disapproval. "Well, it is your right, of course, but hardly fair to others. But if that's the way you want it go ahead."

"A creep." The grafter scowled as the man, his purchase price refunded, moved away. "What the hell did he expect for a lousy kobold? Thanks for taking care of it, Earl."

"Forget it. How's trade?"

"Bad and getting worse. Why doesn't Shakira up stakes and move?"

"Ask Zucco-he's the one dragging his feet."

A suggestion he'd sown and which would spread like wildfire and if it created discord between the owner and the ringmaster Dumarest would be satisfied.

The gallery ended and he entered another familiar in its scenes of torture and pain. A woman stood before a tableau dimmed with shadows which shrouded the depicted figures in brooding menace. Tall, robed figures in scarlet watching the victim as he strained against his bonds. One lying supine on a bench, face contorted, bulging eyes fastened on the razor-edge of the curved blade swinging above him. A pendulum which lowered by degrees until it would slice through skin and fat and flesh and inner organs.

"Horrible!" She shuddered as Dumarest halted beside her. "The things people imagine! Could a thing like that really have happened?"

Too often and in too many places and he said so, not softening his words.