The Game of Stars and Comets

by Andre Norton

  After every such visit he did something else which would have made any Portside official think he was ready for reconditioning. He would make me tie him up, wrists and feet, and put him into a sealed sleep bag. I was to keep him so for a day and a night. Again he made me swear that if he started to talk funny or fought to get loose I was to inspan and get out—leave him there there all fastened down and not come back for maybe two, three days. I had to swear I would because he was so demanding about it. Though I think I would have risked breaking that oath if I had ever had to. Luckily it never happened like he feared.

  I knew what he searched for—though we never discussed it—some answer to the riddle of the Shadow doom. It was not for the benefit of Voor at large, but because he had within him a burning desire to bring to justice, if such a thing were possible, that which had ended his stable life.

  Voorlopers are solitary men. A number, like my father, were refugees from blasted northern holdings who had survived because they were away when the doom struck. Others were misfits, loners, men who could not root themselves in any place, but were ever wandering in search of something which perhaps even they could never understand. They talked very little, their long stretches of lonely travel taking from them much of the power to communicate with their fellows, except over such elemental things as trade.

  If one chanced upon a holding at the harvest festival he might linger, watching the festivities with a detached wonder, as one might view the rites of an alien people.

  There were several who traveled in pairs but my father and I were the only two of close kinship I had knowledge of. They had no women. If they assuaged a natural hunger of the body it might be in one of the Portcity pleasure houses (even on such an undeveloped world as Voor a few of these existed, mainly for the patronage of the ship's crews). However, no woman ever rode in a trek wagon.

  Women are jealousy guarded on Voor as they are on most frontier planets. The ratio is perhaps one female to three males, for pioneer life did not generally appeal to unwed women. Those who came were already hand-fasted to some man. Remarriage came quickly to widows, and daughters were prized, even more than sons, since a man might tie to his holding some highly desirable male help could he provide a wife for one of the unattached.

  Only the healers came and went freely. Their very natures were their safeguards and they were valued so highly that, had any man raised his eyes to one covetously, he would have signed his own warrant for outlawry and quick death thereafter. Healers did wed when their powers began to wane, for those powers were at their strongest from the beginning of adolescence until they were in their third decade. Then they had their pick of husbands, for there was every hope that any daughter of such a union might inherit the gift.

  We were at trade in the northmost of the holdings—Ratterslea—and I had then grown to match my father in inches, though I was still not his match in strength, when I first heard directly of my mother. I had taken a packet of thread and needles (a favored betrothal gift on Voor) to the Headhouse where Ratter's wife received me in guest style, the tankard of fall ale and the bread-of-traveler set out on a tray she held herself, rather to my surprise, for I was no son of any holder, nor an off-worlder.

  She was tall, and in her hip-length smock of bright cloth with its many bands of embroidery to show off her skill, her breeches and boots of well-tanned gar hide, smooth as the thread I had to offer, she made a fine figure of a woman. Her hair was the color of darth leaves when the first breath of frost wind touches them—ruddy and yet gold—and it was bound about her head like those bands of ceremony worn on other worlds by great rulers—those they term "crowns."

  In her sun-browned face her eyes were a strange, vivid green and they were eyes which searched and probed, so that I, who seldom said even a word to any woman, felt very ill at ease and wondered if I had in truth washed all the road dust from me before I had dared to come.

  "Greeting, Bart s'Lorn." Her voice was rich and deep as the shade of her hair.

  I was a little startled at her words for though I was very used to being called "Bart," yet this was the first time in my memory that I had been also greeted by my full clan-family name. "s'Lorn" was strange to me—it was the first time I had heard the reference to my long dead mother.

  "Lady of the Holding," I produced my best guest courtesy, "may fortune smile upon this rooftree and your daughters be as handmaidens to that fortune. I have that which you have ordered and it is our wish that it find favor with you—"

  I held out the packet but she did not look to it. Rather still she studied me and I grew yet more uneasy and even wary, though I was sure that in no way could I have offended her or any under her roof.

  "Bart s'Lorn," she repeated the name and there was something in the tone of her voice which I was stranger to. "You are very like—male though you are. Eat, drink, bless so this house—"

  I was yet further amazed, for such a greeting is given only to a close kinsman, one who is esteemed and very welcome in either good times or bad. Since she did not take the packet from me, I placed it on a nearby table and did as she bade, even as if I had been a youngling of her own household and not near a man grown. Carefully I broke the bread-of-the-traveler into two portions. One I dipped within the tankard, end down. Though at that moment my mouth seemed dry and I was indeed far from hunger, I put the moistened portion between my lips. Steadying the tray with one capable hand, my hostess did the same with the other piece of the thin round, thus sharing food in ceremony with me.

  "Yes," she said slowly when she had swallowed that traditional mouthful, "you have very much the look of her, Voor born though you are."

  That bite of moistened bread which I had taken seemed to stick within my throat. I gulped it down hastily.

  "Lady of the Holding, you speak of s'Lorn—that name my mother bore." There were questions in plenty pushing into my mind and as yet I could not sort out which were of the greatest importance. At that moment it rushed upon me how much I had always longed to know of the past and yet had never dared to ask of my father.

  "Sister's sister she was to me." The relationship my hostess claimed was one by marriage. In some clan holdings it was as close as that of shared bloodkin. "My sister was Hagar Lorn s'Brim, and her sister—she pledged to Mac Turley s'Ban."

  I bowed. "Lady, forgive my ignorance—"

  "Which is none of your fault," she countered briskly. "All men and women know of that which came to Mac Turley s'Ban and what a wound it gave him, which has not healed even to this day. Did he not send you here, not coming himself, for he will have no speech or meeting with those who once knew him in happiness and full strength of clan." She shook her head slightly.

  "He has made of you a holdless, kinless one. Does this ride hard on you?" Again I met her eyes and felt that measure of being weighed and searched, as if she would have each thought and feeling out of me, plain before her as a reading tape is spread.

  It was my turn to stand straight and proud. Holdless and kinless I might be in her eyes, but in my own I had a place I knew at that moment I would not trade for all the land and gear which made up the wealth this prosperous holding displayed with pride.

  "I am a voorloper, lady. My father has, I think, no reason to find me less than he wishes—"

  "And you wish?"

  "Lady, I think that I could never be other than I am."

  "Well, it is true that a gar trained to the hunt cannot be harnessed to the plow—else the spirit be broke. Also perhaps the Shadow has touched also on you—"

  "The Shadow!" Even here below the Halb that word had an evil ring.

  "There are shadows and Shadows," she returned. "Enter, Bart s'Lorn, now that we have met at last, let me know more of you."

  She ushered me through the great hall where there were many about their tasks: a girl at the loom, another carding the fleecy hair of those small gars which are bred for their coats, older women busy at oven and open stove. They all looked at me with frank curiosity and appraisal an
d I put on an outward show of what I hoped equaled my father's habitual aloofness. Though I marked one girl who sat on a chair, not a stool, before the fire and who did not look at me at all, rather gazed as one who could see beyond wall and room, dreaming with open eyes. Her hands were idle and lay limp, palm up upon her knees, and her upper smock was of dull green, shorter than those generally worn, more akin to the riding dress of a traveler.

  She we passed and came into the far end of the room where there were two cushioned chairs. On one of those my hostess seated herself, waving me to the other. Straightway she began questioning me and such was the authority in her voice I found myself answering, not through polite courtesy, resenting inwardly that any so attempt to enter my life, but rather as if indeed she were bloodkin and had such a concern for me that she had a right to know such things.

  Though the holding was far from Portcity, she was plainly one well learned in many things and with a taste for some of the same ways of life my father honored. She had questions concerning him also, where we went and what we did.

  At first I tried to evade her directness, thinking that our concerns were none of hers in truth. Then she spoke to me emphatically:

  "He would not have so sent you to me, me of all this world, had he not wanted me to know this, Bart. For he understands from the old days what manner of person I am and what moves in me, even as it has made of him a rootless, roofless man. For I, too, was at Mungo's Town—though I was also gone when the Shadows came."

  In all the ways she had surprised me since our meeting, this gave me the greatest stroke of amazement. I had not known in all my years any others who had lived in that ill-omened place.

  "Shadow dead—all of them—" her face grew then near as grim as my father's could upon occasion, rounder of cheek and chin though it might be. "You alone—why—"

  "Not I alone—there was my father!" I corrected her.

  She shook her head. "He was on journey that night, he came back. You lay in the bed—not crying—rather as if you slept though your eyes were open. It has happened elsewhere. Always it is a child who lives—or sometimes an elder whose memory does not thereafter return. Tell me, what can you remember—the farthest back of all memories!"

  Her demand was sharp. It was one my father had never made, perhaps because he did not want—or dare—to do so. That he had been away from the town when the Death had come—that much I had always known.

  What did I remember? Had she not so caught me perhaps I would not have automatically obeyed her command and tried to recall my first clear memory. I had heard men, and women, too, boast that they remember this or that happening which reached back to the time when they crawled on all fours or were carried in arms. What did I remember?

  With real effort I closed my eyes, for to me memory most often presents itself in pictures as if I were running through some reading tape of my own devising. What then did I see?

  There was a hot sun blazing over my head, I could feel it even as the ground swayed, far down and away, for I was perched on the wide back of an animal which ambled peacefully along, snatching, as it went, mouthfuls of leafy brush which was high enough on either hand so it could so graze without bending its head to the ground. My two hands grasped tightly the stubby mane of the gar as I stared about at its horns. It was a wagon beast and was yoked to a fellow that also mouthed at leaf and stick with flabby, mobile lips.

  There was the yoke before me, such a yoke as I have handled many times since. So I rode in the sun and yet though I could feel the heat of that upon my head and shoulders, still I was cold, I shivered. And I was afraid. Yet what I feared so—no, my mind flinched from remembering. I could not recall.

  A man came up beside the gar, a man so tall that even that great beast did not make him seem either small or lacking in strength. He swept me from my perch as if he knew that the fear was eating at me, held me to him, so that my head lay on his shoulder and my face in hiding against his body. I clung to him with desperation.

  Though now I forced, and searched, and strove for the first time I could truly remember to recall the past, that was my first memory. I was five planet years old, on my first trek. Behind that—lay nothing.

  I was not even aware that I must have been repeating aloud the description of the picture in my mind until I heard the woman near me catch her breath.

  "Nothing farther back? Nothing of—of her?"

  Did I begin to shiver again? I was not sure. Suddenly there was someone standing beside me on the other side, and a tankard was pressed into a hand which I found I had lifted as if to ward off some blow.

  "Drink," said a soft voice and I sensed that special calming which is the healer's heritage.

  I raised the tankard and drank, but first, over its rim, I looked at the one who had brought it to me. It was the girl of the green smock, she who had sat by the fire dreaming, or seeming to dream, and who alone in that hall had, as I believed, never seen me. Now she watched me alertly as the liquid she had brought me filled my mouth and I swallowed.

  Was it sweet, or tart? Surely it was not of any ordinary brewing. I thought that somehow the taste of sun-ripened berries, of autumn ripe fruit, as well as the sharp freshness of spring water had all been caught in it, mixed with a subtlety to leave no one flavor or taste in full command. It was cool and yet it warmed. I forgot that cold which had begun to form an icy core within me. No, not forgot it perhaps, just knew that it no longer mattered, had been pushed far off so that it concerned someone else but not the me who was important, alive, and here and now.

  "You are a healer," I stumbled awkwardly, stating the obvious.

  "I am Illo." She added no clan or house ending to that single name. Some healers did indeed acknowledge no roof, no holding. Those were wanderers, serving those in need from place to place—in their own way like the lopers—yet far more involved with their fellows than we in that they cared deeply for strangers, whereas we stood aloof and could not summon such emotions even if we wished.

  "She is also shadow touched," said my kinswoman. "Have you heard of Voor's Grove?"

  All the Shadow tales were known to the lopers. "You were the girl then?" I said to her directly.

  "Drink first," she bade me, nor did she answer until I had indeed finished to the last drop what brew filled the tankard and turned it upside down in the fashion of a feaster after a toast, to show that I had honored the words spoken.

  "Yes," she said then as she held out her hand for the empty tankard. "I was of Voor's Grove, the first holding to be set in the north plains, planted and raised by Helman Voor, for whom this world was named. It may be even that I am of his blood kin," she shrugged. "Who knows? I do not remember—I cannot remember. I am Shadow touched."

  Chapter 2

  If I flinched again it was inwardly, for I held tightly to that outward calm which I patterned after my father's way of facing the problems of this world. Instead I asked now, with a boldness for which I was proud:

  "What really is Shadow touch? Of all on this world a healer must best know the answer of that."

  She wore a considering look on her face. Not, I thought, as if she were weighing whether she might trust me with any true answer, but because she was seeking to choose words which could explain something very difficult to make clear. Then she questioned in turn:

  "What are the Shadows?"

  Only it seemed that she did not expect any meaningful reply from me, for then she added:

  "Until we learn that—then how can we also open the door in here," she touched forefinger to her broad forehead, uncovered, for she wore her hair fastened tightly back as most healers do, "where must lie the explanation for this curse."

  Beside the lady of the holding she was slight, though tall. Her body was as spare as the lead wand of a loper, and had nothing about it of the ripeness of a woman bred to mother a child. Her skin was browned near dark as mine by sun and weather, and her features were a little sharp, their angularity made more apparent by the gauntness of her cheeks
. Still she carried the calm and authority of her talent in her, so in her own way she was good rival to her hostess, for I did not believe that she was rooted here.

  Now she looked at me directly again.

  "There comes a need—"

  I could make little sense of that and, when I would have asked her what she meant, she had turned swiftly and went back down the hall taking the tankard I had emptied with her. Now I glanced at my hostess.

  Between her eyes a frown line deepened. She stared after the girl a long moment before she brought her eyes back to me once again.

  "Where does Mac trek this season?" she asked abruptly.

  "We go to Dengungha." I named the mine settlement he had sought out on the map before we left Portcity. It was the farthest north now of any settlement, closest to the waste of the Tangle. Beyond it lay only ruins—the ruins of Voor, of Mungo—neither of which we had ever visited during our wanderings. Our trek wagon carried some off-world equipment for the mine—a small cargo, one which would barely pay for our supplies. I had thought it strange that we shipped so little, but my father offered no explanation, and he was not one to be questioned unless there was definite reason.