The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

Did one of the Wyverns have a disk focused on them? Were they being pulled into one of those blank periods, to awaken as prisoners once more—say, in the cavern of the veil? The Terran fought with every ounce of will power to escape unconsciousness, but he failed.
    This time he did not awaken half-drowning in an underground stream or facing a green mist. And there was an ache in his arm which was somehow reassuring with the very insistence of pain. Before opening his eyes, his fingers crossed the smooth slick of a bandage there, went on to investigate by touch a sleep mat such as he had found in the cavern structure. Was he back in that web of rooms and corridors?
    Shann delayed opening his eyes until a kind of shame drove him to it. He first saw an oval opening almost the length of his body as it was stretched only a foot of two below the sill of that window. And through its transparent surface came the golden light of the sun—no green mist, no crystals mocking the stars.
    The room in which he lay was small with smooth walls, much like that in which he had been imprisoned on the island. And there were no other furnishings save the mat on which he rested. Over him was a light cover netted of fibers resembling yarn, with feathers knotted into it to provide a downy upper surface. His clothing was gone, but the single covering was too warm and he pushed it away from his shoulders and chest as he wriggled up to see the view beyond the window.
    His torn arm came into full view. From wrist to elbow it was encased in an opaque skin sheath, unlike any bandage of his own world. Surely that had not come out of any Survey aid pack. Shann gazed toward the window, but beyond lay only a reach of sky. Except for a lemon cloud or two ruffled high above the horizon, nothing broke that soft amber curtain. He might be quartered in a tower well above ground level, which did not match his former experience with Wyvern accommodations.
    “Back with us again?” Thorvald, one hand lifting a door panel, came in. His ragged uniform was gone, and he wore only breeches of a sleek green material and his own scuffed-and-battered boots.
    Shann settled back on the mat. “Where are we?”
    “I think you might term this the capital city,” Thorvald answered. “In relation to the mainland, we’re on an island well out to sea—westward.”
    “How did we get here?” That climb in the slab, the stream underground.… Had it been an interior river running under the bed of the sea? But Shann was not prepared for the other’s reply.
    “By wishing.”
    “By what ?”
    Thorvald nodded, his expression serious. “They wished us here. Listen, Lantee, when you jumped down to mix it with that fork-tailed thing, did you wish you had the wolverines with you?”
    Shann thought back; his memories of what had occurredbefore that battle were none too clear. But, yes, he had wished Taggi and Togi present at that moment to distract the enraged beast.
    “You mean I wished them?” The whole idea was probably a part of the Wyvern jargon of dreaming and he added, “Or did I just dream everything?” There was the bandage on his arm, the soreness under that bandage. But also there had been Logally’s lash brand back in the cavern, which had bitten into his flesh with the pain of a real blow.
    “No, you weren’t dreaming. You happened to be tuned in one of those handy little gadgets our lady friends here use. And, so tuned in, your desire for the wolverines being pretty powerful just then, they came.”
    Shann grimaced. This was unbelievable. Yet there were his meetings with Logally and Trav. How could anyone rationally explain them? And how had he, in the beginning, been jumped from the top of the cliff on the island of his marooning into the midst of an underground flood without any conscious memory of an intermediate journey?
    “How does it work?” he asked simply.
    Thorvald laughed. “You tell me. They have these disks, one to a Wyvern, and they control forces with them. Back there on the beach we interrupted a class in such control; they were the novices learning their trade. We’ve stumbled on something here which can’t be defined or understood by any of our previous standards of comparison. It’s frankly magic, judged by our terms.”
    “Are we prisoners?” Shann wanted to know.
    “Ask me something I’m sure of. I’ve been free to come and go within limits. No one’s exhibited any signs of hostility; most of them simply ignore me.