by Andre Norton
The birdlike couple were neighbored by a stretch of sand wherein several large rocks had been assembled. On these squatted things—Jofre could not at that moment accept them as sentient beings—not emotionally—they were too much like, or rather suggested, carvings the Shagga priests used to express the forces of evil. Yet their shelled, near-insectal bodies were at ease and two of them held with foreclaws what were plainly large mugs into which from time to time they would dip a long tube tongue from between fanged jaws. Their attitude was so much like a trio of elders discoursing on a formal piece of business that Jofre was shaken.
He grasped the significance of this hall; its builders had made a conscious effort to suit not only humanoids but those of alien cultures. And for the first time it struck firmly home to him how very diverse life-forms along the star lanes must be—how utterly different, perhaps even repellent to his kind, some of those other worlds might seem, and how narrow his own life had been.
Zurzal reached the end of the corridor which ran between the “home world” sections of the lobby. Overhead this space reached to the top of the tower and was there roofed over with a yellow, partly transparent oval covering the whole of the circle through which any light outside would filter down changed into the likeness of sunshine. The Zacathan beckoned to Jofre and stepped upon a platform, which, when it held both their weights, arose, passing by two levels of balcony until it locked against the side of the third, and the railing there swung back. They were faced by the outlines of a door in the wall and Zurzal stepped forward to plant his hand flat against that. The panel moved and slid away and once more the Zacathan waved his companion forward into what was undoubtedly his own private quarters.
The glow of the lamp was very dim, but not enough to disguise the anger on the face of the man who stood facing a visitor. That he had not expected company was plain, for he wore a loose chamber robe belted with a twist of cord about him. Behind him was the pile of sleeping cushions from which a private alarm had drawn him and in the air was the faint scent of the brewing herbs intended to settle nerves and drive away the day’s cares—so much had the man called Ras Zarn taken to lowland customs.
A loose hanging curtain was pulled to one side and his unexpected and undesired visitor entered.
“There is no need—” Zarn near spat the words; at his side his hands twitched as if he wished nothing more than to make plain his resentment with a physical blow.
“There is every need,” returned the other, low-voiced. Her cloak was all concealing, but with every movement its folds loosed a second scent into the air. “I have conveyed to my Master your instructions. He returns this: None that he oaths undertakes another commission until the first oath is blood erased. He is angry that you have questioned this and tried to lay a new duty on me. Though it does not greatly matter, as the path I follow now leads off-world and I will not be here to serve as your hound. I will be star borne at sunrise.” She spoke without emotion though the other’s growing rage was almost a tangible thing.
“By the Death of Shagga—”
She had been on the point of turning to leave, now her hooded head was on her shoulder.
“Master’s oath—not Shagga—is my bond, and so it has always been. Apply to the Master for the weapon you wish, priest.”
And she was gone. He twisted his hands together as if he had them about her neck. Fools, worse than fools! Traitors if what he and others suspected was true! Now—there was nothing he could do this night, save think. And think he must.
CHAPTER 5
JOFRE SAT UNEASILY and too comfortably on one of those platform-raised cushion chairs. He was facing the outer wall of the room, which was a curve as transparent as were the divisions in the lobby below. There was a faint sprinkling of watch lights from the old town, reflections of the more brilliant illumination here. At his side, on a waist-high table, stood a drinking vessel, seeming so fragile a too quick grasp might shatter it, the green of verjuice showing through its sides.
Zurzal, having equipped himself with a drink also—which as mysteriously appeared as had the verjuice in a wall space after the Zacathan had pressed some buttons—seated himself opposite his only partly willing guest.
“You say you are not oathed.”
“I cannot be—there is no Master who will coswear with me.”
Jofre had dropped his pack by the door. It would be ready to hand when he left.
“You are issha—is there any way that you can retreat from that?”
Jofre stiffened. What games did the alien want to play? Surely fortune had not been that good to him that he could find employment so easily, even for a short time.
“I am issha.”
“I know something of the Shadow Brothers,” the Zacathan continued. “It is part of the nature of my race to learn all we can about the ways and customs of others. It is true that your services are always contracted for through a Lair Master. How much power has this Shagga priest of yours?”
Jofre considered. “In oathing the Masters alone control us. The Shagga sometimes serve as special eyes and ears, they are advisors to the Masters—”
“The Masters can overrule them then?”
“Twice in our history it has been so. But to those who disputed with the Shagga misfortune came later—they were assha lost.”
“As was your Master,” Zurzal pointed out. “Could it be that he was a target then for Shagga ill will?”
Jofre swallowed. “He did not listen to advice he thought was too conservative, too lacking in a desire to learn new.”
“So he therefore became one of the Elder Shadows.”
“How do you know what—” Jofre flared.
“I told you, I would learn all that I can. There is talk in the old city of the Brothers, perhaps some of it rumor only; but even in rumor there is a core of truth. Think, Night wanderer, your Master was not a second voice for Shagga and he is now gone. Just as you have been hunted forth from the fellowship. You are freed by the very one who would condemn you, the Shagga. You have no Master save yourself. Therefore as a self-master you may be oathed.”
Jofre swallowed. Dimly perhaps he had known a little of this but some back-looking part of him had not allowed him to put it so frankly.
“You want an oathed issha?” he asked now, trying to read the alien’s face, which provided no features he could interpret after any pattern which he knew.
Zurzal took a long drink from his glass. “After tonight do you not think that I need a bodyguard? For a while I am not even a whole man.” He set down the drink and his hand went to the sealing of his suit. With a quick jerk he had it open to the waist and back from his left shoulder and arm. For there was an arm there—or the beginning of one—a length of bone and flesh and a child-size hand.
“One of the attributes of my people,” he informed Jofre. “We can regrow a lost limb but the process takes time and it is time I do not have right now. Therefore, I need aid.”
“There are surely off-worlders who are guards—like those below—”
“They are not oathed men. You see, I know your customs, issha-trained. With an oathed man out of the Shadows I need have no fear of any treachery or carelessness. I lost this,” he moved the small arm, “because I could not be ever on guard. I need you, Night wanderer. I offer you oathed status.”
There was a pause and then the Zacathan continued. “What I wish to do here on Asborgan is only a beginning. Oath with me and it will mean the stars. You or any other in your place must have such a warning.”
The stars—then what the Master had thought was true. On other worlds there were doubtless the same feuds, the same intrigues, the same covert wars for power that the lords here played. And this Zacathan had already suffered maiming—which meant—
“You have a blood feud?” Jofre asked—such he could understand and be prepared to undertake.
“Not as those of Asborgan see it. But that is not discounting any danger, and such lies ahead. You are out set from your Brothern;
in a manner of speaking I am also. But that I shall discuss only under oath. What is your word—?”
Jofre’s right hand closed about his dagger and he drew that one long weapon left him. Holding it now between both of his palms, he went to one knee before the Zacathan.
The scaled fingers came to meet his instantly and the dagger was drawn from the sheath of flesh in which he held it.
“By the Great Oath”—so this off-worlder DID know enough of the Brothern to follow the form—“I call you out of the Shadows and into my service until my purpose is achieved or life is ended.” Zurzal reversed the dagger awkwardly with his single hand and managed to press his forefinger down on its point. Dark blood welled in a thick bead and he smeared it on the dagger and held it out for Jofre to once more clasp double-handed so that that smear of blood was imprinted on his own flesh.
“I am bound—” he said shortly, making no move to wipe that mark from his hands as he returned his weapon to his girdle.
“So done. The hour grows late. Have you eaten, sworn man? Drink up, for I have much to talk of now and time itself is snapping at my heels.”
“I have not eaten.” Jofre’s hold left a faint bloodstain on the drinking vessel. “But if time is limited, that is of no importance.”
The Zacathan’s long jaws opened in what must have been a smile. “I assure you I am not so blind to the needs of any employee. As it happens, I myself have not eaten.” He crossed back to the opening in the wall from which he had taken the drinks. A button brought up light in a square and Jofre saw marks in a series cross that.
Then the Zacathan busied himself with the lower line of buttons before that light square was gone. “They do vespar well here,” he said, “it is considered, of course, in this setting a novelty. And there are some other things I think you will find to your taste. We are not too unlike in our eating habits, we two peoples.”
As quickly as he had gone to one wall so now he turned to another and set fingers in a ridge to open another door.
“This is the fresher,” he said, “and here,” he had found another doorhold and opened that also, light streaming up even as the portal went back, “are sleeping quarters. Settle in while we wait to be served.”
Jofre merely glanced into the sleeping room. There were two bed places which looked to be as luxuriously soft as a district lord might aspire to. But the fresher drew him most.
Austere and barren to city eyes as the Lair might be, it was always meticulous clean and cleanliness was part of issha training. This tiled chamber did not resemble the bathing place he had always known but it promised a relief
The Zacathan had opened another door within that place of ease to display a cubicle and now he indicated various small levers jutting from its inner wall.
“Hot steam or water as you wish, cold, soap power spray, and air-drying hose. Make yourself free—”
Then he was gone. Jofre rummaged in his bundle and brought out much creased but clean underdrawers, and shirt. But before he tried the amenities of that strange room he made a careful inspection. There was no entrance save that through which he had come and there was certainly no place where there could be a place of concealment. Not that he had any fears of this being a trap—he was oathed and, therefore, as tied to Zurzal now as if he were one of the Zacathan’s scaled kin.
It took him a little time to master what the fresher had to offer and inwardly he marveled. No Lair Master could hope for such luxury as this and he savored the feeling of cleanliness afterwards; almost he wished he did not have to rewear his travel-stained outer clothing. But he made very sure that the stone he had found at Qaw-en-itter was again well secured in the wrapping of his sash girdle.
Zurzal was waiting in the outer room beside a larger table to which were drawn up two of the tall seats, these not so encushioned as the others. On the table itself were set out covered bowls and platters and two plates. By the side of each of those there was an array of knives and spoons and some odd-looking cutlery which ended in a set of points and which Jofre could not identify.
“It was good, lord,” he glanced over his shoulder at the now closed door of the fresher, “my thanks for your offering—”
The Zacathan had already seated himself and whipped the cover from the largest of the bowls so that steam and a smell, which made Jofre suddenly very aware how long it had been since he had last eaten, filled the air.
“I am no lord.” Zurzal was now busy ladling some of the contents of the bowl onto the plate before Jofre as the younger man slipped rather awkwardly onto that elevated seat. “I am Zurzal, I do have a title—which means nothing on most worlds other than my own. I am called a Histechnic which only means that I have completed a series of studies to the satisfaction of my elders and betters. I am Zurzal. And you?”
“The Master named me Jofre.”
“Jofre—” repeated the Zacathan, “sky given. Because of your finding, I suppose.”
Jofre was again a little shaken at Zurzal’s quick grasp of his name meaning, for that was a word of the high country and not the lowlands where a visitor might have traveled enough to learn something of the native tongues.
“Yes—” He eyed his plate now, drawing his knife to cut at the generous portion of smoking vespar which had been served him.
“Your Master made no attempt to report your finding to the port authorities?”
Jofre shook his head. “The Lairs have their own ways. He could have sent me to one of the valley lords but he did not. He was a man who kept his thoughts much to himself.”
“I have heard that the Brothers are indeed secret in their ways; it is part of the faces they turn to the world. At any rate he gave you a trade, this Master of yours.”
“He judged me issha,” Jofre said and remembered his inner pride, which he had taken precautions to hide on the day he had received the Three Weapons and the Cloak. Not that any of those had come with him on his being exiled.
He was having a hard time curbing his hunger now, making himself chew and swallow slowly. The food was diverse. As he had spoken, Zurzal had heaped on the plate before Jofre large portions from at least five of the dishes.
“You need my services—” Jofre was perhaps too abrupt in turning from his past to the immediate present but he had no wish to dwell now on what lay behind him.
“I do.”
“What lord has declared blood price against you?”
“It is no feud, as I have said, like those of your nobles. There are those who are opposing me openly, and recently I have learned that there is an even greater problem in the nature of some who want what I am working upon for their own purposes. Those you took me from tonight might well not have been seeking my life, but rather my person and what I know.”
Though earlier he had admitted hunger, Zurzal seemed more intent now on talking. He sipped from his drinking vessel, but, though he stabbed at a portion of vespar on his plate with one of the pointed pieces of cutlery, he did not yet raise it to his mouth.
“You must understand those of my stock,” he said. “To us knowledge is everything. And one of the sources of knowledge which we hope to find are records—records of the Forerunners—”
“Forerunners?” That was one term Jofre had not heard before.
“We did not come first into space. There are worlds upon worlds, some very old. It is a pattern with sentient people that they rise to a high point of civilization and then some inner lack or flaw within them saps the energy which sent them climbing and they decline, sometimes to actually disappear and be forgotten. So we are not the first rovers of the lanes; there were others before us and they left their traces here and there. There is a great reward posted for any major find which is made of such peoples—for they certainly were not all of the same stock or even the same time. Their civilizations may well have been as varied as our present ones. You saw in the lobby below life-forms which did not share a common beginning with yours. Yet all those are now citizens and equal under the galactic laws.
“Thus we have tantalizing hints on this world and that of other peoples, some we are sure were not native to the planets where they left these remains, but space rovers such as ourselves. One of my colleagues was able to find an entire planet city, stretching completely round the world which supported it, of a highly technical civilization. There are experts there now studying it under supervision.
“So many finds come by chance alone—but if there were some way that such could be traced—” There seemed to be tiny cores of light in the Zacathan’s eyes; his neck frill was rising to frame his head and shading into a green-blue.
“And there is a reward for such discoveries?” Jofre thought he understood.
“Yes—but greater than any reward is the knowledge itself!” Now Zurzal’s frill was a vivid fan.
“You are hunting such? But I have never heard of any old things on Asborgan and the Shagga priests have very ancient records. If there was knowledge, they would have sought it out.”
“No, I am not hunting Forerunners here—rather a man. I was in trace of him this evening. He may be the key to a great discovery—We have records and also we have access to special knowledge. I have a discovery I must try. At present I am not well accepted by my people; they believe that my research for the past few years has been for a very childish and no-purpose reason. I am young, as my people count years, and oftentimes the young are dismissed for thinking something can be done in a different way.
“There was a discovery made and ill-used on a world named Korwar. The results were so terrifying at the time that the man who backed that expedition saw that—or thought he saw that—the instrument used was destroyed and all the plans from which it had been manufactured were completely wiped from the records.
