The Warlock of Rhada by Robert Cham Gilman Read Free Book Online

only the polar islands ever froze; the continents had a cold but even climate.
    For a time Glamiss pondered the peculiar similarities and strange differences of the animal forms he knew. The horses of Rhada, like Blue Star, Sea Wind, and the others of this troop, were light-boned, swift beasts. Their eyes were pale blue--the color of turquoise--with slit pupils. Like many other of the life-forms with which the warman was familiar, they were rudimentarily telepathic (according to Emeric, bred to it so that they would obey their warrior without bit or bridle in battle) and possessed of a simple language. Yet on Vegan worlds, horses were much larger, less intelligent, and heavily armored with chitinous plates like those of insects, or armored lizards. How had this come about, Glamiss wondered. The legends said that the men of the Golden Age, expanding into the galaxy from mythic Earth, had taken with them the life-essence of many Earth animals, and from this source had bred the beasts to suit their strange needs on alien planets. Perhaps it was so, though how the thing was done was beyond imagining. For a thoughtful moment he tried to imagine the men of the Empire boarding the great starships laden with their sinful packets of life. Had there been an Order of Navigators then? Priests believed it, or said they did. But Glamiss did not. No, in those days there could have been no priesthood and the piloting of starships must have been done by ordinary men. The young warman tried to imagine what Earth must have been like (if it existed at all, that is)--a world of gold and silver avenues and jeweled buildings circling a diamond sun situated in the exact center of the galaxy, 333,333 kilometers to the Rim of the Great Sky in all directions. The orderliness of such a society seemed utopian to Glamiss and quite unreal. But the idea of so many millions of people living and working together in amity and safety was strangely moving. Even if it never was, actually, that way--it should have been, he thought.
    Nav Emeric, his robe hitched up to show his mail-clad legs, appeared from the direction of the bivouac. He had stripped off his weapons and unlaced the throat of his iron-chain shirt, and he carried a cup of hot bouillon and a strip of broiled meat.
    “Have you eaten? Here.” He offered the rations to Glamiss, who took them silently.
    “I have been thinking of what you said, Glamiss,” the priest said in a low voice. “What, exactly, do you think we will find down there?” He indicated the valley, in shadow now.
    “I don’t know,” Glamiss replied. “But there is something there. Things we have never seen before, perhaps. I can’t explain it. It is as though we’ve stumbled on something I need to know--something I must have before--” He broke off suddenly and the Navigator studied his somber face intently.
    “There is a strangeness in you, Glamiss Warleader,” Emeric said. “I felt it from the first day we met. You are different from other men of our time.”
    Glamiss raised his eyebrows. “Why do you say ‘from other men of our time’?”
    “A feeling, no more. Vulk Asa senses it, too. We’ve spoken of it together.”
    “You have discussed me with the Vulk?”
    The Navigator smiled wryly. “Terrible, is it not? But there it is. It might be blasphemous to say so, but it is almost as though you have been chosen for something. Have you never wondered at how men follow you so willingly? Don’t you think it strange that a man of your humble birth should come so far as you have?”
    “The thought has occurred to me,” Glamiss said in a dry tone.
    “Forgive me, my friend. But you asked me. Why, you come from a tribe that isn’t even allowed to bear arms, isn’t that so?”
    “It is,” Glamiss said. “My people are herdsmen. Like those.“ He turned his eyes on the darkening valley.
    “Yet now you are the most honored warleader in Ulm’s warband. Has it never come to you that perhaps there is the hand of God