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Updated: May 31, 2025
Poor little Elza! She was shivering with fright. Tarrano seemed not to need information as to what had transpired. His eyes, roving over us, saw the lifeless, seared body of Wolfgar lying on the floor. "Too bad," he said. Then his gaze swung to Argo. "Master " "Silence!" There was on Tarrano's face and in his voice an expression, a tone quite new to me. A quiet grimness. More than that.
His voice was low and labored; and at once his eyes closed again as though the effort of speaking were too great. Maida was sitting near me at Wolfgar's head, bending over him. She had recovered from her terror of Argo; and as she leaned down, gazing at the dying Wolfgar, I think I have never seen so gentle, so compassionate an expression upon the face of any woman.
It was now morning. Wolfgar and Elza told me I had been unconscious some hours. We were still imprisoned as before in the tower. Georg had escaped with Maida, they said; or at least, they hoped so. And they described the burning of the other tower. The city had been in a turmoil. It still was; I could hear now the shouts of the crowd outside.
"It is a great honor." The gesture he made to check her words of thanks exhausted him. His eyes closed; for a moment he seemed not to breathe. As Maida leaned down in alarm, her beautiful white hair tumbled forward over her shoulders. A lock of it brushed Wolfgar. He could not lift his hands, but they groped for the tresses, found them and clung.
I saw now that the violet light had encircled us. Only Maida and Argo were outside it. He was approaching her, with a cylinder in his hand. The ray from it struck her without power of movement or speech. Her eyes, terrified, turned to us. Again Georg would have leaped, but Wolfgar shouted, "Wait! That's death! Don't you understand?" Argo was leering. "Death? Yes! If you touch that violet light!
"What have you to gain by playing for time?" I demanded. He stared. "You would question me, Jac Hallen? How absurd!" He looked at Elza, as though to share with her his amazement at my temerity. Wolfgar said suddenly to Tarrano: "You will gain nothing." Tarrano's face went impassive. I understood him better now; that cold, inscrutable look often concealed his strongest emotions.
With a scant ceremony in sharp contrast to his courteous words to Elza, he hurried us off. Three of us Elza, Wolfgar and myself, with one attendant who still carried Elza's personal belongings. Hurried us into the vertical car which had brought us up into the tower. It descended now, down the iron skeleton shaft.
All of it, or most of it, doubtless, with his instruments as he approached. But, even with the knowledge of Elza's vehement appraisal of him, he seemed now quite imperturbable. His gaze touched me and Wolfgar, then returned to the women. "So? It would seem, Tara, that your plan to wait upon the Lady Elza was not very successful." He dropped the irony, adding crisply: "Tara, come here!"
Measured footsteps were coming up our incline. We stood motionless, breathless. A moment; then into the room came Wolfgar. He did not speak. Advancing close to us as we stood transfixed, he jerked an instrument from his belt. It whirred and hummed in his hand.
And turning as I lay there, through the casement I could see the blackened, still smoking ruins of Maida's tower; the broken iron terrace; the spider bridge melted away, hanging loose and dangling like an aimless pendulum. The latest news, Elza and Wolfgar could not give me. The instrument room of our tower had been disconnected by Tarrano when he left some hours before.
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