“If he who wore the cap controlled it all,” surmised Koris, “then his death must have sealed them in. Also, since he is the one you battled from afar through the Power, he might have already been giving muddled orders to lead to confusion here.”

“Perhaps,” Simon agreed absently. He was thinking of what he had learned from that other in his last few seconds of life. If the rest of the Kolder force were sealed into those ships, then indeed Estcarp had good reason to rejoice.

They got a line to one of the vessels and brought it alongside the wharf. But the fastenings of the hatch baffled them and Koris and Simon left the Sulcarmen to puzzle it out, returning to the keep.

“This is another of their magics.” Koris slid the door of the lift closed behind them. “But seemingly one the capped man did not control, seeing as how we can use it now.”

“You can control this as well as he ever did,” Simon leaned back against wall, weariness washing over him.

Their victory was inconclusive; he had an inkling of the chase yet before him, but would those of Estcarp believe what he had to tell them now? “Think upon the corridor where you met me, picture it in your mind.”

“So?” Koris pulled off his helm; now he set his shoulders against the opposite wall and closed his eyes in concentration.

The door opened. They looked out upon the laboratory corridor and Koris laughed with a boy’s amusement at an exciting toy.

“This magic I can work also, I, Koris, the Ugly. It would seem that among the Kolder the Power was not limited only to women.”

Simon closed the door once again, pictured in his mind the upper chamber of the wall map. Only when they reached that did he answer his companion’s observation.

“Perhaps that is what we now have to fear from the Kolder, Captain. They had their own form of power, and you have seen how they used it. This Gorm may now be a treasure house of their knowledge.”

Koris threw his helm on the table below the map, and leaning on his ax regarded Simon levelly.

“It is a treasure house you warn against looting?”

He picked that out quickly.

“I don’t know,” Simon dropped heavily into one of the chairs, and resting his head on his fists, stared down at the surface on which his elbows were planted.”I am no scientist, no master of this kind of magic. The Sulcarmen will be tempted by those ships, Estcarp by what else lies here.”

“Tempted?” Someone had echoed that word and both men looked around. Simon got to his feet as he saw who seated herself quietly a little from them, Briant beside her as if playing her shieldman.

She was helmed and in mail, but Simon knew that she could disguise herself with shape-changing and still he would know her always.