The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

to focus on Shann. Then some of the strain smoothed out of the gaunt features and Thorvald laughed softly.
    “Garth!”
    Shann stiffened but had no chance to protest that mistaken identification as the other continued: “So you made class one status, boy! I always knew you could if you’d work for it. A couple of black marks on your record, sure. But those can be rubbed out, boy, when you’re willing to try. Thorvalds always have been Survey. Our father would have been proud.”
    Thorvald’s voice flattened, his smile faded, there was a growing spark of some emotion in those gray eyes. Unexpectedly, he hurled himself forward, his hands clawing for Shann’s throat. He bore the younger man down under him to the sand where Lantee found himself fighting desperately for his life against a man who could only be mad.
    Shann used a trick learned on the Dumps, and his opponent doubled up with a gasp of agony to let the younger man break free. He planted a knee on the small of Thorvald’s back, digging the officer into the sand, pinning down his arms in spite of the other’s struggles. Regaining his own breath in gulps, Shann tried to appeal to some spark of reason in the other.
    “Thorvald! This is Lantee—Lantee—” His name echoed in the mist-walled void like an unhuman wail.
    “Lantee—? No, Throg! Lantee—Throg—killed my brother!”
    Sand puffed out with the breath, which expelled that indictment. But Thorvald no longer fought, and Shann believed him close to collapse.
    Shann relaxed his hold, rolling the other man over. Thorvald obeyed his pull limply, lying face upward, sand in his hair and eyebrows, crusting his slack lips. The younger man brushed the dirt away gently as the other opened his eyes to regard Shann with his old impersonal stare.
    “You’re alive,” Thorvald stated bleakly. “Garth’s dead. You ought to be dead too.”
    Shann drew back, rubbed sand from his hands, his concern dampened by the other’s patent hostility. Only that angry accusation vanished in a blink of those gray eyes. Then there was a warmer recognition in Thorvald’s expression.
    “Lantee!” The younger man might just have come into sight. “What are you doing here?”
    Shann tightened his belt. “Just about what you are.” He was still aloof, giving no acknowledgment of difference in rank now. “Running around in this fog hunting the way out.”
    Thorvald sat up, surveying the billowing walls of the hole which contained them. Then he reached out a hand to draw fingers down Shann’s forearm.
    “You are real,” he observed simply, and his voice was warm, welcoming.
    “Don’t bet on it,” Shann snapped. “The unreal can be mighty real—here.” His hand went up to the smarting brand on his shoulder.
    Thorvald nodded. “Masters of illusion,” he murmured.
    “Mistresses,” Shann corrected. “This place is run by a gang of pretty smart witches.”
    “Witches? You’ve seen them? Where? And what—who are they?” Thorvald pounced with a return of his old-time sharpness.
    “They’re females right enough, and they can make the impossible happen. I’d say that classifies them as witches. One of them tried to take me over back on the island. I set a trap and caught her; then somehow she transported me—” Swiftly he outlined the chain of events leading from his sudden awakening in the river tunnel to his present penetration of this fog-world.
    Thorvald listened eagerly. When the story was finished, he rubbed his hands across his drawn face, smearing away the last of the sand. “At least you have some idea of who they are and a suggestion of how you got here. I don’t remember that much about my own arrival. As far as I can remember I went to sleep on the Island and woke up here!”
    Shann studied him and knew that Thorvald was telling the truth. He could remember nothing of his departure in the outrigger, the way he had fought Shann in the lagoon. The Survey officer must have been under the control of the Warlockians then. Quickly he gave the older man his version of the other’s actions in the outer world and Thorvald was clearly astounded, though he did not question the facts Shann presented.
    “They just took me!” Thorvald said in a husky half whisper. “But why? And why are we here? Is this a prison?”
    Shann shook his head. “I think all this”—a wave of his hand encompassed the green wall, what lay beyond it, and in it—“is a test of some kind. This dream business.… A little