by Andre Norton
For some odd reason, she was beginning to feel stronger, more alert than she had in days. She straightened up from leaning against the hamper, reached behind her to tend the zorsals. What he said—could anyone believe that such things were? No, he was not testing her by some new folly that to him might be the truth—on another world.
“No,” she answered shortly. She did not like at all this talk of things so strange. All her life she had been burdened by her difference in color, in kind, from anyone in the Burrows, any she had seen in Kuxortal. She had done the best that she could to conceal that difference—which was of the body. Now he spoke of worse differences—for, to her, that talk appeared more dangerous than any mirror image of herself.
“Such things are known. Those who have a gift such as that are recognized among my people, trained to use it—”
“I have no such ‘gift’!” Gift indeed, it would have been only one more thing which would have set her apart. “If you are through with that,” she nodded to the pannikan, “the zorsals must be tended.”
Unless, she thought with a sudden stab of fear, he might consider the creatures useless baggage, believe that the water she must have to keep them alive would be better used to continue their own existence.
However, he did not protest. In fact, she noted that the portion he poured out was certainly higher in the cup than that which he had taken for himself. One by one, she brought the limp and drooping creatures out of their shelter, induced them to drink, laid them carefully, their feet under them, their wings smooth against their backs, on the lid of the hamper.
She became aware as she did so that her store of new energy was growing. In spite of the heat which lingered here, she had found some reserve within herself which gave her the power to move with more strength than she had known since they left the shoreside. The cliff held shadows now and the off-worlder was settling, with extreme care, the magic lift box in the center of the carrier which arose with something close to a leap and then floated near his shoulder level until he dragged it down and had Simsa sit on the edge and hand him the hampers and the rest of the gear when he called for them, he making very certain that each was put in an exact place, though she could see no real purpose in his care.
They ate, and now the zorsals were fanning their wings, their heads raised, hooting a little back and forth.
Simsa, as Thorn tied the last cord, lifted Zass to her shoulder ready to move out. Thus, once more they began the journey along what seemed, from all Simsa could spy ahead, to remain an endless chasm, the walls, the footage no different than those they had passed the night before.
Their journey started with the coming of dusk, Thorn again in the lead, Simsa swinging from side to side behind, her attention for the carrier when its sway might bring it into contact with the rocks. It rode, she believed, a little higher above the ground than it had the first night of their journey. Perhaps the water and food they had taken, small as that quantity was, had made the difference.
It was a weary business, her own small surprise was that she found herself stepping out so briskly after the long baking of the day, able to move quickly to fend off the carrier from some obstruction at need. With the downing of the sun, the zorsals once more took to the air, Zass screaming harshly after them as if to make sure she would be entitled to some portion of any prey this achingly barren land might yield.
Once more, they halted at intervals and the second time they did, Thorn asked suddenly: “How do you feel?”
There was a note in his voice which alerted the girl. Almost as if he expected her to report some measure of difficulty—because of her dream? She shied away from such questions as he had asked her about the strange “talent,” as he had named it, which some off-worlders believed in.
“I am able to go where you lead,” she retorted sharply. “All have dreams they would rather not remember by retelling over and over—or are your people so different that they are not troubled by such?”
“It is not your dream.” The shadows in the cut lay between them, so thick a curtain she could not see his face except as a lighter patch in the general gloom, for the light which showed them their way and which hung from his belt was now, as he sat eating, directed on the slightly swaying carrier. “I must tell you what I did, for the time may come when it is necessary that you know what to do. In this,” he tapped his pouch—“the liquid you saw me add to the water before I drank—is a stimulant, a distillation of several, as you would call them, medicines which strengthen the body, clear the mind. One cannot use much, nor too often. It is meant to carry one through such trials as we have had to meet. I did not know whether it would aid you—I had to take the chance. You—you were far gone.”
She chewed upon that information along with the piece of concentrated food she held and tried not to smell as she ate.
“You could have slain me so.” She hoped her voice was as steady as she wanted it to be.
“Yes, I might have killed you.”
Simsa considered that. He was a truth speaker, this off-worlder. At first her anger flared up, but she would not allow that to cloud her wits as badly as those half-visions she had seen upon awakening. He had taken a chance, and it had worked. She knew she was stronger, more alert, better able to carry on. When she thought back to the heat and torment of the day behind, she wondered if she could have summoned the power, even if she had had the will, to start forth again on the journey unaided.
“It did not.” She would not allow him to know if she cared one way or another. They were nothing to each other. Just as she had been nothing to anyone since Ferwar had died. For a moment or two, another part of her was surprised even at that fleeting thought; Simsa need not be anything to or for anyone but herself!
“Simsa,”—it was the first time he had not added “lady” to her name, but spoke it as if she were one with him, equal and a part of the same venture—“whose House gave you birth?”
“House?” She laughed scornfully and Zass gave her instant answer, querulously. “When did a Burrower have a ‘House’ to boast of? We may know our mothers—some our fathers also—but beyond that . . .” she shrugged, even though he might not see that gesture. “No, we count no further.”
“And your mother?” he persisted past all common courtesy—though she had believed that he at least owed her that much.
She could say anything—that she was some drop child even of a Guild Woman and he could not now name her liar. Why should she? It was easier in one way to answer with the truth.
“You know as much as I do. I remember rolling in the dirt of Ferwar’s Burrow—no farther back than that. But I was not any fruit of her body. She was past the age of spawning when I was born.” Deliberately, she used the harsh terms of the Burrowers, stripping away all the fine talk such as he might be used to. “Perhaps I was a heap child.”
“A heap child?”
“One thrown on the refuse heaps and left for the scavengers.” Still deliberately, she set herself as low as this world would rate her. Taking, for a reason she could not understand, a perverse pleasure in doing so. “Perhaps Ferwar gleaned me there. She was one curious enough to bring back strange things. Do you not carry with you even now some of her finds? I am not as remarkable perhaps as your things of this—this X-Arth—but it would well be that to the Old One I had some value.
“At least I had such to her as she grew older. She was troubled with much pain in her joints and became so crippled that it was hard for her to go either burrowing or comb the rubbish. I was too small to carry large things, but she always said I had good eyes. I am lucky, too—or was—” She thought she could not claim that her present state was a fortunate one. “I found some of the Old One’s good pieces. And I had Zass; no one else had ever thought of trying to tame a zorsal and then loan its services for hire.”
“Yes.”
She wished that she could see his expression now. He had agreed with her in a single word. Oddly enough, she would have liked him to be more asto
unded. But then, how could an off-worlder know what it was like to live in the Burrows? To live a life in which one existed on what all in Kuxortal threw away, or lost, or had hidden and forgotten, long before one was born?
“There were none there who were like you—with your hair—your skin?”
“None!” she did not know whether to be proud of that, but she made her answer ring proudly enough. “They called me Shadow—I need only bind up my hair, use the soot from the cooking pot on my brows and lashes and I had become part of the night itself. Also, Ferwar warned me to be careful. She said there were those who might use my strangeness for trading—making me part of what they would sell. I learned to hide much of what I am. That was useful many times over.” She allowed herself a small laugh, but did not hear him equal it.
“So none saw you to remark upon your difference. And this Old One of yours believed it could be a danger—?”
Simsa could not understand why he harped so on her appearance. She was strange—but there were many in the Burrows who were the result of hasty and near forgotten coupling between strangers. She had once been envious of Lanwor who had been bought from his “father” (if Qualt was his father) because of his extraordinarily long arms. He had been taken into the Thieves’ Guild, which was an upward advance in the world. She had sometimes wondered whether Ferwar had ever been approached—a small child who could fade into the dark and be a part of it should have had a price also. Was that why the Old One has so often harped upon concealment? By the time Ferwar was dead, she was too independent, too old, to be trained by their harsh and rigid under-rules.
“Not many ever saw me when I was older.” Thinking back, she saw that that was true. “Not as I was. The Old One put a cap on me when I went out foraging. She did not want to shave my head, I don’t know why. It was easier to go capped than to wash color out in the river. Then she began rather to send me at night and taught me how to go unseen. There were those in strange places with whom she dealt in some manner—I never understood how or why—I took things to them secretly and brought other packages in return.”
It seemed that he had now run out of questions for he was busy with the water jar they had opened earlier, dealing out their shares. Having drunk down the flat tasting warmth of that, she had a question in turn:
“And what of your House, starman? Are you a lord’s son that you have been free to flit from world to world as Zass’s sons can alight on one rock and then another? How great are your courts, and how many gather to call aloud your clan name in the dawn?”
Now he did laugh. “Our customs are not quite as those of Kuxortal. No one of us sets up such a household of kin. There were my parents, but they are dead long since. My brother was the older, therefore, the head of our House, as you would name it. We have one sister. She is wed to a star captain and lives ever traveling. That life is to her liking, but I have not seen her for many years. My brother is a man respected by men of learning and, to a part, I share his teaching and his tastes. We were engaged on different projects when I heard of his disappearance here. Then I knew that I must come and seek him. So I went to my chief—the Histor-Techneer Zashion himself—and I said this I must do. He gave me leave and I came on the first ship I could find which was to make landing here. On the way, I learned from tapes what my brother was seeking and what might be before me. Hence my bringing of such as the nullifier, though that was unlawful. But I could not see why, once I arrived, the questions I asked brought such hesitations to the very people who should be the first to give me full aid.
“After all, it would be to their advantage to help a Histor-Techneer of the League. If they feared that we were such as to steal ancient treasure, they had our bonds and the assurance of the League itself that we were nothing of the kind.”
“This League of yours,” Simsa had given Zass a full half of her share of cake, having heard no hunting calls from the two who had taken to the sky overhead—“where is its city?”
“City? There is no one city. The League is a union of worlds, many worlds, like your union of Guild Masters in Kuxortal.”
“But it has,” she pointed out triumphantly, “no guild guards here has it? How think you that any Guild Lord would take seriously the word of a man whose guards he could not see every day, whose house badge was not displayed openly? Your League is far away, they are here. They will do as they please and see no reason why that should not be so.”
She thought he sighed, but she could not be sure. He did not break the silence again. She had begun to lose quite a bit of her recent awe of him. He possessed such tools as the box which lightened a load until it was no real burden at all, a light which burned without consuming anything as a lamp did oil, but in the affairs of men, he was less than any child of the Burrows on his first lone seeking and shifting.
The zorsals killed and again brought a portion to their dam. Then they arose and whirled away before Simsa could lay any command upon them. It was a night without moonlight, and she had not seen in which direction they flew. She only hoped they would come home before the rise of the pitiless sun.
There was a grayness in the sky when, for the first time, Simsa became aware that the flooring of the cut was changing, deepening. Also it was smoother, here were fewer rock falls about which they must guide the carrier. At the same time, she heard an exclamation from her companion. He had halted abruptly, the carrier actually sliding a little ahead with the momentum of his steady pull, to strike against his hip. Simsa stepped to one side to see the better.
They had certainly come to the end of this valley. Before them, as forbidding as any wall set about an armed keep such as the river people spoke of in the far places, was a cliff, which went up and up. She saw Thorn detach the light giver from his belt, hold that at angle so that its beam illumined the rise. To her, it looked as if the light failed before the top, if this wall had any top at all. Certainly, it must be twice the height of the cliffs which had been on either side during their whole journey up from the sea.
“I think,” Thorn said, as calmly as if he were not staring straight at what the girl saw now only as disaster, “that we have reached our goal—this must be the beginning of the Hard Hills.”
Simsa dropped down. That energy which had sustained her through the night might have washed out of her in the same moment as she realized the meaning of his words.
“We cannot climb that.” Oh, there were fissures and holes which she could see in the light, but they dare not attempt such a feat until day would make all clear, and with day would come the sun which would crisp them as they struggled.
“Then we shall find another way—”
She would have hurled a stone at him had there been any to hand, but this way was barren of all but gravel. He was so calm, always so very sure that there was no problem which would not yield to him.
“Your lifting box might carry Zass,” she returned, refusing to let her irritation break through. “Us it could not manage.”
However, it was as if he had not listened to her at all, instead he asked a question which half buried her comment: “How much communication do you have with these zorsals of yours? I know they will come to your call, and that you could set them in Gathar’s warehouse to keep the vermin down. But can you impress upon them some other task?”
“What kind of task?” She was smoothing Zass’s fur and felt that the antennae on the zorsal’s head were not only completely uncurled, but slanting in the direction of the off-worlder, quivering slightly, which she knew meant that the creature was concentrating. Could Zass grasp the sense of what he said to the extent that she knew he was speaking of her and her two sons?
“To make it to the top of this.” He let his light flicker up and down the surface of the cliff as far as the beam would reach. “We would need a rope. That we have—or will when I do a little work upon the lashings. Could your zorsals be sent to carry such aloft, put it around some outcrop there and return with the end to us or—”
His suggestion w
as drowned out by a scream of rage from the sky. Down into the beam of the light came one of the zorsals, and it was pursued by something else—a thing which, to Simsa, might have flown out of a dream as harrowing as that which had held her before waking last evening.
This monster was like a long thin rope in itself, and it would seem that its other end was safely rooted somehow, for they could only see the forepart of the head—that which was all gaping jaws and needle teeth, darting and striving to strike at the zorsal. Into the beam of light in which that attack was so clear to view, flew the second zorsal who flung itself, to fasten on the darting head just behind the jaws. Three long clawed paws found anchorage and held, the fourth ripped busily back and forth across the large, seemingly lidless, eyes of the monster.
Seeing its attacker so engaged, the other zorsal turned swiftly and flew back and forth while the monster apparently, so mad with rage it did not realize just which was its attacker, kept trying to snap at the second, leaving the other to inflict continued punishment.
Both eyes were bloody pits now and an outflung paw had ripped a length from the long, darting tongue. Simsa had always known that the zorsals were killers and that they took a certain enjoyment in their slaying—unless they killed quickly for food alone. But she had never guessed they would tackle so large a prey, or that they were keen-witted enough to fight it in the only way possible for them to survive.
8
From Simsa’s shoulder, Zass set up a clamor, flexing her good wing, flapping uselessly with the other as if she fought to take to the air and be a part of that battle. The zorsal who had fastened on the head of the monster still raked that viciously. Now his brother darted in and sank both claws and teeth into the scaled throat as the embattled creature tossed its head wildly, trying to shake off its tormentor. There was a gash opened across the column of the body. From that spurted a thick, yellowish stream of blood which bespattered the stone, flew in great gouts through the air, so that the two below leaped back and away to escape the shower.
