"A trap?" Tamiras shook his head, outwardly calm, indifferent, as again he dipped his fingers into the scented water. "You talk like a fool. The thing is alien, that is obvious, but a trap? For whom?"

"For a child," said Dumarest, flatly. "The daughter of the woman you hate."

"Hate?" Tamiras's eyes darted to the woman, back to Dumarest. "Are you insane?"

"Earl-"

Gustav fell silent at Kathryn's gesture. "Iduna," she said.

"You're talking about Iduna. My daughter. My child. Tamiras-"

"The man lies! He is deranged. Crazed by his experiences. A man who claims to have talked with a ghost can hardly be given credence." He rose with an abrupt gesture, water streaming from his hands. "I refuse to listen to this nonsense! If I may be excused?"

"Remain in your place!" She looked at Dumarest as Tamiras, reluctantly, obeyed. As he settled in his chair she said, "Earl, he could be right when he says your brains have been addled but you have said too much not to say more. Explain!"

Cutlery rested on the table: sharp-edged steel used for cutting meat, fruit, vegetables; forks, thin knives, spoons with reflective bowls. Dumarest glanced at them, noting their position, the placement of hands, moving his own as he took nuts and held them one against the other in his palm.

"The background," he said. "Gustav is known as a collector of old things so what more simple than to bribe a captain to take him the Tau with an elaborate story of how it was found? But who would hold such a thing in secret for any length of time? Someone not resident on Esslin, perhaps, but who came to live here later. He would have studied it, learned something of its workings. Then, with it safely delivered, a word in a receptive ear and the rest was inevitable. Who was close enough to Iduna to have given her that word?"

Tamiras said, harshly, "This is ridiculous! Accusations without proof!"

"Have I accused you?"

"Who else?" Tamiras appealed to the Matriarch. "Can't you see what he's doing? The man has lied and needs to create a diversion. By accusing me he hopes to gain your trust. But where is his proof?"

"Earl?"

Dumarest looked at the hard face, the hard eyes. The face and eyes of a woman who had sent men to be impaled, who would watch him die if he failed to convince her.

"Proof?" He didn't look at the scientist who sat glowering at him. "Iduna supplied that. She told me how friendly Tamiras was with her. How he used to bring her toys and small surprises. And think of the time it happened. It was late, remember? The sun was setting and the study would have been filled with gloom. It was summer and the days long so it would have been late. Iduna, a child, would not have been permitted too much liberty. It must have been close to her normal bedtime. Why should she have broken routine to run into the study? What better motive than to see the new toy? Who told her it would be there? Who explained how to hold it so as to feel the exciting tingle against the skin? How to look into it so as to see all the pretty pictures?"

"Tamiras?" Gustav glanced at the man, frowning. "But why, Earl? Why?"

"Iduna didn't know that."

Kathryn could guess. The mother who had rebelled, her banishment and later death, the return of her son to a world which offered neither land nor status. God, why had she been so blind!

Gustav was slow to understand. "But Iduna? Why would he want to hurt a child?"

The nuts crushed in Dumarest's hand. "Think of the years of hell you and your wife have lived through and you have your answer."

Revenge, what else, and he could have sown the seeds of hnaudifida to compound his hatred. A realization Tamiras saw mirrored on her face and he rose as she shouted, one hand diving beneath his blouse.

"Guards! Shamarre!"

She came as he jerked free the weapon, too late to prevent or protect her mistress from the killing beam of the laser, seeing a sudden glitter of steel, the blood, hearing his curse as the weapon fell from his limp hand. The meat knife Dumarest had snatched up and thrown had penetrated the wrist and severed the tendons.

Tamiras looked at the wound, at the man who had given it. "Why?" he demanded. "In God's name, why? What are these people to you?"

"Nothing." Dumarest was blunt, his face hard as he remembered what he had seen in the Tau, the horrors which had ruined adult minds. "But you sent a child into hell!"

Soon it would change; walls of carved and fretted stone forming an area which enclosed a shrine, a place made holy by what it contained but, as yet, the place had not changed.

The Tau still rested on its support bathed in a cone of brilliance, catching it, reflecting it in darting rainbow shimmers. A jewel of enigmatic beauty; the instruments to measure and calibrate, to test and monitor set like sentinels all around. Looking at it Kathryn thought of a snake subtle and deadly in its beauty, a snare, a contradiction.

"A toy," she mused. "You were joking, of course."

"No." Dumarest had accompanaied her at her command and now stood at her side. Shamarre, the Matriarch's shadow, was alert, remembering an earlier occasion when he had made a mockery of her protective role. "An alien toy," he said. "But a toy just the same."

"One which kills?"

"A game can kill. And the Tau did not actually kill those volunteers; they fell victim to their own fears." He had explained it too often and was tired of it. Why was the obvious so difficult for certain types of mind to grasp? "Think of it as a book," he urged. "You pick up a book and are enveloped in an author's world. You taste the flavors he mentions, see the images he portrays, meet the people he has created, experience the situations he provides. Reading, you use your imagination to clothe the skeletons and to fill the gaps; the form of a castle seen at sunset, the hues staining the sky, the garb worn by the host of inhabitants he does not bother to mention but which must exist. A thousand small details."

"The servant who opens the door," she said. "The workers who maintain the city. The pedestrians. The poor. Those who die from accident or disease. I understand."

"And think of a chess board on which players fight symbolical wars. Or a construction kit with which children can build palaces."

Analogies, but that of a book was the best. Something to pick up and delve into during odd moments. Something to provide an escape from boredom or reality grown too harsh. Worlds of excitement waiting to be explored. She had read much as a child. What was it an instructor had once told her? Books are the refuge of the lonely.

Was Iduna lost in a book?

If so she could be roused and Dumarest had learned how to reach her. She could go with him and find her child and together they could plan a new life. If Dumarest agreed- there was no need of that. What she ordered would be done!

"No." His voice was soft, a whisper in the echoing stillness. "I won't do it."

"Do what? Have you read my mind?"

"Your face mirrored your thoughts-and why else am I here? But I won't take you into the Tau."

"We made a bargain," she reminded. "You to rescue Iduna in return for certain rewards. You have yet to rescue her."

"I did my best."

"And if I think it not good enough?"

"You can go to hell!" His sudden viciousness startled her and she glanced around to see Shamarre standing close, the glint of a weapon in her hand. Once had been enough; she would not be caught wanting again. Dumarest followed the Matriarch's eyes and guessed her thoughts. "Try it," he invited. "Order me back into a collar and see what happens."

"You'd kill me?"

"I'd try."

And probably succeed before dying in turn. She remembered the speed with which he had acted when Tamiras had been unmasked. The thrown knife had been a blur, hitting even before she'd noticed he'd moved his hand. A flicker which had robbed an enemy of the power to hurt. What greater harm could he have done had Dumarest chosen to remain silent?