FORERUNNER FORAY

by Andre Norton

  Secrete, build, strengthen—that Nornoch not yield! Move, so that the waves do not eat us into nothingness again. The Eyes—let the power that is in the Eyes goad the Lurla to awake and work.

  But so few! Was that because, as D’Fani said, her people had dared turn away from the old ways—the sacrifices? Will—she must not let her thoughts, her concentration stray from what was to be done. Lurla—she could see them in her mind—their sluglike bodies as they crawled back and forth across the wall which was her own responsibility, leaving behind them ever those trails of froth that hardened on contact with the air and steadily became another layer within the buttress foundations of the Three Walls, the towers. Stir, Lurla! Awake, move—do this for the life of Nornoch!

  But they were more sluggish than they had ever been. Two dropped from the walls, lay inert. What was -- ? D’Eyree raised her hands from the walls, pressed her palms to the Eyes, feeling their chill.

  Awake, Lurla! This is no time to sleep. The storm is high; do you not feel the tower shake? Awake, crawl, build!

  Lurla—it was as if she raised her voice to shriek that aloud.

  The sea’s pound was in her ears, but fainter, its fury lessened. Then D’Fani was wrong; this was not one of the great storms after all. She need not have feared—

  “Ziantha!”

  There was no window through which she looked. She was in the open with a bird’s screams sounding above the surf. And before her, hands on her shoulders (as if those hands had dragged her out of the time and place that had been), Turan.

  She wrested herself from his grip to wheel about on the rock, face out over the waves, straining as if she could from this point catch a glimpse of Nornoch, learn whether its towers, the Three Walls, were still danger-wrapped, if the Lurla had been kept to their task.

  No, that was all finished long ago. How long? Her talent could not answer that. Perhaps as many years stood now between D’Eyree and Vintra as between Vintra and Ziantha. And that number her mind reeled from calculating.

  Only now she knew where Nornoch lay, if any of Nornoch still survived. That much they had gained. She pointed with an outflung hand.

  “Over sea—or under it—but there!” She spoke aloud, for the burden of weariness which followed upon a trance lay on her. And she allowed Turan to take her hand, draw her back to the flyer.

  As if their coming was a signal, the armsman came out of the cabin. Beneath his close-fitting helmet hood his face was anxious.

  “Lord Commander, I have had it on the wave-speak. They are using S-Code—“

  Vintra’s memory identified that for her and, lest Turan’s memory no longer served him, Ziantha supplies what she knew by mind-touch. “A military code of top security.”

  “The rebels—“ Turan began.

  But the armsman shook his head. “Lord Commander, I was com officer for my unit. They hunt you and—they have orders to shoot you down!”

  There was a look of misery on his young face, as if the first shock had worn off so he could believe, even if he did not understand.

  “Zuha must be desperate,” Ziantha commented.

  “It does not matter. Only time matters,” Turan returned. “Battle comrade, here we must part company. You have served me better than you will ever know. However I cannot take you with us farther—“

  “Lord Commander, wherever you go, then I shall fly you!” His determination was plain.

  “Not to Nornoch—“ what made Ziantha say that she did not know.

  His head jerked around. “What—what do you know of Nornoch?”

  “That it holds what we seek,” she answered.

  “Lord Commander, do not let her! Nornoch—that is a story—a tale of the sea that sailors have used to frighten their children since the beginning. There is no Nornoch, no fish-people, except in evil dreams!”

  “Then in dreams we must seek it.”

  The armsman moved between them and the cabin of the flyer. “Lord Commander, this—this rebel has indeed bewitched you. Do not let her lead you to your death!”

  Tired as she was Ziantha did what must be done, centering her power, thrusting it at him as she might have thrust with a primitive spear or sword. His hands went to his head; he gave a moaning cry and stumbled back, away, until he wilted to the ground well beyond the wing shadow of the flyer.

  “Ill done,” she said, “but there was naught else—“

  “I know,” Turan said, his voice as flat, sounding as tired as she felt. “We must go before he revives. Where we go we cannot take him. You are sure of the course?”

  “I am sure,” she answered steadily as they climbed into the cabin.

  11

  Ziantha wanted to close her eyes as Turan brought the flyer’s engines to life and headed toward the sea. Would the craft lift into the sky, or would they lose altitude and be licked down by the hungry waves below? That he had learned all he could from the pilot, she knew, but his first flight alone might be his last. They were out—over the water—and for a heart-shaking moment, Ziantha thought they had failed. Then the nose of the flyer came up. There was a terrible look of strain on Turan’s gaunt face, as if by will alone he lifted them into the sky.

  She held the focus-stone cupped in her hands, ever aware of the thread of force which pulled. But where lay the other Eye now? Beneath the ocean where they could not find it?

  She concentrated on that guide, being careful, however, not to let the stone draw her into a trance. And to keep that delicate balance of communication between the focus and the retention of her own identity was exhausting. Also her strength of body was beginning to fail. She was aware of hunger, of thirst, of the need for sleep, and she willed these away from her, employing techniques Ogan had long drilled into her to use her body as a tool and not allow its demands to rise paramount.

  How far? That was of the greatest importance. The flyer might not be fueled for a long trip. And if they could not land when they reached their goal—what then?

  Ziantha kept her mind closed, asked no questions of Turan, knowing that his failing strength was now centered on getting them to their goal. And her part was that of guide.

  Time was no longer measured. But the girl became aware that that thread which had been so slight on their setting forth from land was growing stronger, easier to sense. And with that realization her confidence arose. The stone was growing warmer, and she glanced at it quickly. Its brilliance had increased and it gave off flashes of light, as if it were a communication device.

  “The stone,” she spoke aloud, not using mind-touch lest she disturb his concentration, “it is coming to life!”

  “Then we must be near—“ His voice was very low, hardly above a whisper.

  But if the sea covered—

  Ziantha moved closer to the vision port, tried to see ahead. The sun’s reflection from the waves was strong but -- A dark shadow, rising from the sea!

  “Turan, an island!”

  The flyer circled it. What Ziantha could see was forbidding; jagged spires of rock, no vegetation. Where could they land? Had this been a flitter of their own time and world they would need only a reasonably open space to set down. But she had seen the take-off of these ancient machines and knew they required much more.

  As Turan circled he spoke:

  “It is larger than I expected. Either the report was wrong, or more of it has arisen since the first upheaval.”

  “Look!” Ziantha cried. “To the south—there!”

  A stretch of great blocks of masonry locked together, stretching from the cliffs of the inner portion of the island out into the waves. Those dashed against it, leaving it wet with spray. It might have been a pier fashioned to accommodate a whole fleet of vessels.

  “Can you land on that?”

  “There is one way of proving it.” And it would seem Turan was desperate enough to try.

  This time Ziantha did shut her eyes as he banked and turned to make the run along that strange sea-wet roadway, if road it was. She felt the
jarring impact of their first touch, the bumps and bounces as they hurtled along a surface that was plainly not as smooth as it had appeared from the air. Then the vibration of the motor died. They came to a stop without crashing against a rock or diving headlong into the waiting waves.

  When she dared to look she saw the vision port wet with spray. The flyer rocked slightly under the pound of water, diffused though that was by the time it reached them. They were safely down.

  “Turan!” She glanced around. He had slumped in his seat. She caught his shoulder, shook him. “Turan!”

  He turned his head with painful slowness. There was the starkness of death in his eyes.

  “I cannot hold—much longer -- Listen, open your mind!”

  Stiff with fear, she dropped the focus-stone into her lap so that no emanation of that could befog reception for her and leaned forward, set her hands on either side of his head, held it, as if he were some artifact she must read for her life’s sake.

  Information flooded into her mind—all that he had picked up from the armsman, how to fly them away when what she had come to do was finished, and what she must do afterward if she were successful here.

  She accepted this. Then she protested:

  “Hold fast! You must hold fast. For if you cannot—then—“

  To be entrapped here forever! In a way that was worse than death. Or would death free him when it took back the body it had never fully released to life? Ziantha did not know. All she was sure of was that she could not allow him to die here. That she must, if she could, not only find the key for her return, but also for his.

  She leaned closer to him, and instinct moved her to another kind of touch, one that carried in it the seeds of vigorous life as her kind knew it. As her lips met his cold, flaccid ones, she willed her energy into him.

  “Hold!”

  But there was so little time. Ziantha struggled with the catch on the cabin door, forced it open, stepped out. She cupped the focus-stone to her breast and started back along the causeway. From the air it had looked shorter than it was. The flyer had come to a halt about halfway along it, and there was a wide stretch to traverse before she would reach the sharp rise of the main portion of the island.

  It was plain that this roadway was not natural but the work of hands, and also that it had been long under the sea. It was encrusted with shells, and there were patches of decaying water weeds still rooted to it. The stones from which it was fashioned were huge blocks, some fully the size of the flyer in length, and so well set together that even the centuries and the sea had not pulled one from the other.

  The draw of the focus-stone was now so strong that she felt as if a real cord were looped about the gem dragging her forward. Somewhere ahead lay the other end of that cord. But where in that maze of rock could it be?

  Her road ended in a jumble of huge blocks, as if some structure had been shaken down there, yet the focus still pulled. Ziantha began a painful climb in and among the stones. The clothing she wore had never been intended for such usage. And her knees were scraped and bleeding after two unlucky falls, two of her fingernails torn to the quick, her palm gashed by a sharp shell edge.

  But she fought her way on and up that mountain of tumbled stone until she reached a point above. And there—

  Although the cord continued to pull there was no further advance. For before her was another of the incredibly ancient structures, only this had no break. It was a smooth wall projecting from the cliff behind it.

  Ziantha ran her bleeding hand across its surface, seeking an opening her eyes might not be able to detect; there was nothing to meet her touch. Yet she knew that behind this lay what she sought. With a whimper of despair, the girl sank down at the foot of the wall. Her hands could not tear a way through that. Perhaps there was some weapon or tool in the flyer—but she doubted it. This masonry which had withstood sea burial for centuries could not easily be broached.

  There was only one way, and she dreaded it. She could not depend on any backing. To call upon Turan to support her through a trance might mean his death. Yet she must take this final step, or they would fail, and failure would mean they would end here. That inborn spark of refusal to accept death without a struggle that was the heritage of her own species stiffened her resolution. She set the focus-stone to her forehead.

  Once more she was in that nacre-walled room. The Eyes in their band rested heavy on her forehead, just as a weariness which was of the spirit as well as of the body weighed on her heavily. There was fear as dark about her as if shadows drew in from the gleaming walls to smother her.

  The storm—she had lasted out the storm, kept the Lurla to their labor of strengthening the walls—but just barely. They had resisted—resisted! With a small hiss of breath she faced what that meant. Her power, her control over the Eyes, must be fading. And it was time for her—

  No! It was not time! She was not that old, that weak! The storm had been greater than any they had known before, that was all. And the Lurla had tired. It was not her control slipping. She looked down at her still-rounded body, firm under the veiling of her shell-string clothing. No, she was not ready to put off the Eyes, to take the next remorseless and inevitable step her abdication would lead to.

  D’Eyree crossed to the window slit. Now storm-driven waves had subsided for this time. Still the sea looked sullen, angry, and even the tint of the sky was ominous. If the calculations of D’Ongi were right—

  Through the sighing of the sea, she heard a slight sound behind her, turned to face a woman standing at a door that had opened in the apparently seamless wall. She was slight, her coarse hair the darkest green of youth. Her body was bare, sleek, and glistening from recent immersion in the sea, her neck gills still a little open.

  “Honor to the Eyes,” the woman said, but there was mockery in that hail. “There is good gleaning in the storm leavings. Also, D’Huna has spoken—she finds the burden of the Eyes now beyond her power.”

  And all the time she watched D’Eyree with cruel and greedy eyes.

  Ah, yes, D’Atey, how much you wish that I would also resign this power! D’Eyree forced herself not to put hand to the Eye band. D’Atey, you have never rested content since the Eyes came to me and not to you, and you have so carefully provided that your sister-kin will have the next chance to stand for warden. But D’Huna—she is five seasons younger than I! And that will be remembered. I am not loved too greatly in Nornoch. It has been my way to walk a lone path. Yet that I cannot alter, for it is a part of me. Only now—who will stand to my back if clamor grows?

  “D’Huna has served well.” Carefully she schooled her voice. This one must not suspect she had scored with her news.

  “She may serve even better.” A pointed tongue showed, caressed D’Atey’s lips as if she savored some taste and would prolong that pleasure. “There is a meeting of the warriors’ council—“

  D’Eyree stiffened and then forced herself to relax, hoping that the other had not seen that momentary betrayal of emotion, though she feared that nothing escaped those vicious, envious eyes of D’Atey’s.

  “Such is not by custom. The Eyes did not attend—“

  “D’Fani holds by the Law of Triple Danger. In such times the warriors are independent of the Eyes. That, too, is custom.”

  D’Eyree, by great effort, bit back an exclamation. D’Fani was the fanatic, the believer in the old dark ways the people had set aside—D’Fani who talked of the Feeding -- If D’Fani gained followers enough what might happen?

  “They meet now, the warriors.” D’Atey moved a little closer, her eyes still searching D’Eyree’s face for some sign of concern. “D’Fani speaks to them. Also the Voice of the Peak—“

  “The Voice of the Peak,” D’Eyree interrupted her, “has not uttered for as many years as you have been hatched, D’Atey. D’Rubin himself could not make it answer when he worked upon its inner parts this past year. The ancients had their secrets and we have lost them.”

  “Not so many as we t
hought were lost. And perhaps it was because we sought other paths, less hard ones, weaker ones. But D’Tor has found a way to make the Voice utter. He follows his brother in seeking the wisdom of the old ways. Rumor says now our future will be shortened if we do not find a way to rebreed the Lurla. D’Huna failed with three of them during the storm.”

  Three? She had failed to spur three! But there had been four that resisted D’Eyree. And D’Huna had resigned the Eyes. Thus it would follow that she must also -- But what had D’Atey earlier hinted at? She must know more.

  “You spoke of D’Huna serving better.” She hated to ask a question of D’Atey; there was a gloating about the other which fed her own inner fear. “What mean you by that?”

  “If the Voice foretells another storm, then D’Fani will have a powerful voice in the council. Are the Eyes not vowed for their lifetime to the service of Nornoch? How better can they serve, once their power over the Lurla has waned, than to provide strength for the Lurla to procreate in greater abundance? Once the Feeding was custom. It is only the weaklings of these latter days who want it set aside—“

  This time D’Eyree could not control her slight hiss of breath, though she writhed inwardly a second later when she saw the flash of triumph in D’Atey’s eyes.

  “The Feeding was of the old days, when the people followed dark customs. There is the Pledge of D’Gan that we be no longer barbarians of the dark. Have we risen from the muck to choose once more to live in it?”

  “D’Fani believes that our weakness in listening to D’Gan and his like has doomed us. How find you the Lurla, Eyes Wearer? Are they as strong, as obedient to your orders as they have always been?”

  D’Eyree forced a smile. “Ask that of Nornoch, D’Atey. Has a tower tumbled? Have the walls cracked in any storm?”

  “Not this time perhaps. But if the Voice says there will be a second storm, a third—“ Now D’Atey smiled. “I think after D’Huna’s report, D’Fani will have many listening to him. He may even call for a trial of power, D’Eyree. Think you well on that.”