by Andre Norton
"Go!" Togger's urging was sharp enough nearly to touch another level of mind send.
Though he might be journeying from one trap into another Farree did not hesitate, but turned to pull the girl through the curtain. She was plucking at the transparent substance which covered her wings, without achieving any freedom. Grabbing her hand Farree propelled her toward that disc of darkness. The hunched figure arose to full height, proving as tall as Farree if one did not count the arch of wings overhead. From the glimpse Farree caught of him this was like the leader of that pack which had been traveling underground to attack Bojor. He longed for the strange rod he had lost when he had been captured, for any weapon to hand. From the shadow came a grate of what might be laughter but did not sound like honest mirth.
"Gonna get outta here, wingling? You gonna try up through that?" The underground dweller flung a hand high to indicate the sky, though the light was such that Farree could not tell how many of the flyers were still engaged. To rise into the midst of that Farree knew would be the same if not worse than going back into the shelter to wait spiritlessly whatever fate the enemy planned. He tried to see deeper into the hole, distrusting its size when he had to count on the folding of his wings.
Again that cackle of laughter while mind speech accompanied it. "Not winging will you be this time, wingling! Nor she neither, 'less she puts those flappers of hers down."
The girl was pulling once more at the edge of the transparent covering which held her wings pressed as tightly together as hands palm against palm.
There was little of the night left, Farree noted. Instead a distant greying of black sky suggested that dawn was close upon them. They must waste no time.
Though his hands were stiff and painful after his ordeal with the chain, Farree tried to help her tear off that covering. Then he caught up Togger. There might not be any more venom—nor could the smux have used it here—but his foreclaws still had their sawlike inner surfaces and these Farree put to use, holding Togger while the smux moved to open a hole in that tightly fastened length. Once that was breached it was easy enough to strip off the stuff in lengths, hurling it away from them.
"Make it quick, winglings!" The underground dweller had popped down into the hole but his mind speech still reached them. "We ain't gonna wait around for any of them Big Folk to come-a-lookin'. Get in here with you!"
Farree dropped Togger back with Yazz and steadied the girl beside him. He still dared not try mind send—with her; Yazz and Togger "talked" in another level of communication, at the very edge of what he could pick up. Maelen was better at communication with all those she called "those little people in fur," but his long connection with Togger made Farree able to pick up the smux easily enough. The fact that somehow the people of this ship were able to force the girl to talk to their purposes kept him from attempting other channels—though the send of the earth dwellers appeared much like Togger's on a lower level.
He touched the girl's nearest wing even though the pain in his now very stiff fingers made that a difficult gesture, pushing gently at the edge to attempt the suggestion that she fold them back. Perhaps she picked up the earth dweller's order, she was flexing her wings, stiff from their long imprisonment, though she jerked and shook as if every move caused her pain. But at length she got them as furled as Farree had brought down his and, as she was ready to enter the hole, he held her by the wrists to lower her. Yazz and Togger had already gone in.
There was something of a drop; Farree had to lie belly down until he felt her come to a stop and her fingers moved to free themselves. Then he swung over hurriedly, having to let himself fall until he plopped down on earth and smelled the sour and musty odor which seemed to hang in these underground ways. There was a dull light some distance away towards his left and Togger's send reached him again:
"Come—"
The passage was none too large and it must have been recently dug, for his wings, as tightly folded as they were, brushed clods of earth from both overhead and from the walls, until he feared that the whole way might collapse on him. The light was not stationary but ran ahead as he followed and he guessed it to be some kind of a mobile torch in the hands of one of their party.
Then he passed by a hollow in the side of the tunnel and heard a whisper of stir there. He chilled. Though he was nor sure how he could be so sure of it, he was certain that in that hollow, well within reach of him as he pushed hurriedly past, were the furred, leggy creatures who had opened the other way in order to attack Bojor in the valley of his ship.
There was a rustling behind and he called on his sense as strongly as he could. Yes, it was the burrow lurkers, but they were not trailing him as he had feared, rather scuttling back toward the hole which led to the camp. Surely they would be a surprise to any who would come after them, but also they might now be engaged in filling the entrance to this escape route.
Farree quickened his pace as best he could, his arm up and ahead of him to feel out anything which might catch on his wings. But he did not touch any of the tubers which had hung from the roof in that other way.
Twice the passage took an abrupt turn, and on the second one he caught up with the rest of the party, hardly more than shadows in the very weak light which came from a crooked stick carried by the one who had overseen all this rescue. His head, in that dim light, looked nearly too large for his body, and his forearms and legs, which were incompletely covered by dull grey-brown, skintight clothing, were nearer stick thin. The rest of his body was haired with coarse black and thick clumps of bristles. His nose was nearly a snout, for his mouth was very large and he had no visible chin. In some ways he looked rather like the animal-masked one Farree had seen in his dream. His ears were pointed and placed well up a naked skull, the ends of them curved over a little. Farree, who had seen many strange wayfarers during his days in the Limits and a-travel thereafter, thought that his ugliness well passed the common.
Having once made the escapees free of this secret way he paid no more attention to them, but stamped ahead flatfootedly, leaving them to follow or not as they would.
The girl was behind Yazz, and she kept hold on Yazz's waving tail as if she needed touch with some creature less disagreeable than their guide. There was no room here to push up closer, so Farree continued to bring up the rear. They passed walls now where the soil rained down and there were streaks of moisture showing. The earth dweller hastened by those spots and they had to hurry, Farree very uneasy at those signs of possible disintegration.
One more turn and their path was much brighter. Unconsciously they all speeded up once more toward that and so they came out into a place so different from the cramped ways down which they had come that Farree stopped short, once he was through a break in the wall, just to stare about him.
Chapter Sixteen
The light was as brilliant as the full day's shine but not steady. As the lasers had flashed in the air earlier, here also shot shafts of rainbow glitter. He might have been back in that crystal castle of his first dreaming.
Only here the crystals were untamed. They had not been quarried or shaped by any will save their own. Great, sharp-pointed spikes stood taller than Farree, sprouting from the rock as if they had grown like trees. Some were as clear as mountain water save that they cut the light into rainbows. Others were footed in color—amethyst, clear yellow, smoke-silver. In the midst of this vast cave or hall there were many of grey but these were murky, not silver, resembling the ball, the Globe of Ummar, which had splintered.
These alone showed that they had been worked upon for a purpose. They were packed together, flat sides uppermost, a wall of high points at the back of a level stretch on which someone was seated.
The earth dweller who had led them here forged ahead, but those he had guided remained just within the entrance of this place of colored light, dazzled by its brilliance. Their guide shambled on, to stand at the foot of the piled crystals which had been fitted to serve as a seat—or a throne—
He bowed low
and then looked up into a face—
Not a face, Farree thought, the chill once more upon him, but rather a countenance close to a skull, even if there was yellowish skin laid across the thrusting bone. The eye holes were not empty; there were tightly drawn lids across their sharp edges. And the skin on the two hands resting on flanking crystals was deeply wrinkled, showing long nails, curved beyond the ends of the fingers as might claws, all emblazoned by a bright scarlet which the play of the crystal light could not disguise.
The rest of the figure was muffled in a grey robe which did not look as if it were of material substance, but rather as if an armful of haze had been pulled about a skeleton body. Between the knees of the enthroned one was the massive hilt of a sword and at the hidden feet lay a skull, this one far larger than that of any man Farree had ever seen. Struck well into the dome of bone was the point of the sword—the device which had been so plainly displayed in the castle where Selrena had had her lurking place.
At the same time he noted that, Farree was aware of what might be the first stroke of a very strange battle—the throb of an invading mind send.
"Glasrant." That one word pierced his head as the sword pierced the skull before the seated one. There was a stirring, a pushing—such pain as he could not have imagined before strove to split his head open. Through the tears gathering in his eyes and running down his cheeks Farree saw that those tightly drawn eyelids were no longer flat and closed. Somehow they had vanished and, as he staggered forward to answer an unvoiced command his gaze was caught and tight held by what lay in the dark pits so uncovered: cores of flame, red, yellow, near white-hot– They reached into his head, hunted, sought, appraised, dropped aside as without value, summoned what the mist-robed one wanted and formed that into something which could think, and thinking, hear again.
"You were dead," observed the robed one.
"I was not dead." Farree felt as if some other had taken over his body, his mind. "Your earth grubbers were not thorough, Fragon. Then there was Malor—you were not well served, Fragon."
He kept his feet by sheer will; there was a burning hell of released thought and memory, which strove to carve more room that it might fill its proper place again.
"Ah, yes, Malor. One must often be reduced to using tools which are flawed." Now the skeleton's red-nailed hands met and bore down on the sword hilt. If that gesture measured some emotion it was not echoed on the skin-and-bone face in which only the fire of the eyes was alive.
"So Malor did not gain by his treachery?" There was a face in Farree's mind—sculptured to resemble his own, so much so he might have been the other's son—or brother?
"For a season he profited," Fragon said indifferently. "As a quas fruit he had that much. Then there was a naming and challenge; he thought himself invincible. The learning otherwise took but a short space. Quaffer had the better of a yield flight."
"And what then happened to Quaffer?" Farree asked as in his mind a second face formed, one for which he held no liking.
"Quaffer was a fool!" That answer had not come from the dead-alive Darda on his smoky crystal throne, but from one Farree had forgotten, the girl.
She must have followed him, for now she drew level with him, her eyes also on the Dark Darda.
"Quaffer was a fool." Agreement rang in Farree's mind.
"Fools and knaves, they rise like scum on a meat pot when it is set boiling. Quaffer made a pact with those of the Cursed Ones who had discovered this world. It was he who bought their aid with an offering—you, Glasrant. They sought you the world around. After that star ship rose from the earth, Quaffer swore you dead of the Cursed Ones' malice when the Bright Lady and the Sword Lord threatened him with a coat of iron.
"Yes, youngling, there was a blooding of many shields and a tramping of feet after that. For that the Cursed Ones would return, as was their fashion, all knew; and this time it had been sworn by Light and Dark, Night and Day, Sun and Moon, that we of the Folk, Darda, Winglings, Hodlins, Wisser, Thorm, and Wend, would swear a pact to hold, though there be bad blood 'twixt clan and clan, folk and folk. Still that would be forgot until our time of the last trial would come. Thus we have wrought what we could since the Cursed Ones did come again. Now you appear, Glasrant, and from a star ship with Cursed Ones—" There was a pause.
Farree found himself thinking of Maelen and Vorlund, of Zoror, and of what they had meant to him since his escape from the Limits. His other memories, those that almost vicious unlocking had doomed him to, he pushed away.
Fragon leaned forward a little, his hands on the sword hilt supporting him.
"They know—" He shaped those two words as if he chewed upon something which he found as bitter as the poison of Togger's claws. "These know!"
It was the girl who swung half around to stare at Farree. Her fine greenish skin did not disguise a flush, even as her anger burned him along the send between them.
"You—" she began when Fragon's heavier and clearer send cut over to drown hers out.
"No, Atra, Glasrant has not played your role. You who have been the Cursed Ones' bait can lay no such guilt on him."
Her flush grew deeper and then faded, leaving her cheeks so pallid that Farree guessed she was deep stricken. Then her head drooped and all touch with her was gone.
However, Fragon was not yet done with her. "So, sky dancer, you wish to deal a blow with what you believe to be truth but cannot face such yourself? It seems that Glasrant has found something anew—that there are those of the Cursed Kind which court our trust. The one who is scaled, even as the wisser, the two might be Darda, they have brought you here. But the treasure they have come seeking is not to be ripped from our earth, strained from our rivers, lakes, and seas; instead it is found within skulls!" The hilt of the sword moved in his hands and appeared to dig even farther into the skull.
"There is a very old saying which has come out of the far mists of even our time, which is very long as the Cursed Ones reckon it. And that is—we who share an enemy may stand together without hindrance, even though not all of us are of one race, one species. These who have come with you, Glasrant, perhaps are part of some such a pact."
The girl's head rose again. "Those from the stars all carry the curse."
"Say you so? Now let us see." On the rack of bones which under the mist robe marked his shoulders Fragon's head swung a fraction; he was looking beyond her to the opposite side of the carven hall.
Selrena strode between the up-pointing crystals. There was a reddened line along her arm, and on the tight silvery garment, which covered near all her body except for her arms, were blotches of dull black. Behind her came two others, a little taller than she, one the man Vestrum, who had faced Farree in the room of the crystals, and the other that cloaked one who wore a bristle-rooted mask—the face hiding the one of Farree's dream.
Behind these three there was a gathering of others, each keeping with those of a like kind. Here was a winged lord who had wings of red, and those whose pinions were as dusky as twilight on a starless night. Behind the masked one shambled creatures such as the earth dweller who had brought them here, and others varying in size; four at least were tall enough that they had continually to duck to escape from striking down-pointing crystals. Vestrum had two of the small flutists capering behind him, piping as if to set all dancing, and three ladies, tall as Selrena, their flowing hair red-gold, and their robes girdled and looped with wreaths of flowers no wider than ribbons.
"You called." It was the Beast Mask's harsh voice which rang out, as he was the first by a few steps to find a place before the crystal throne. And he made no obeisance to Fragon, though those of his hideous and motley following all bowed to the Dark One.
"And you have chosen to come." Fragon did not speak– he thought that. However, it would seem that Beast Mask did not choose to follow that form of communication, for he spoke again. Farree did not feel it queer that he could understand. He was assured by Fragon's very presence, by his own, that here he had once a place,
and tatters of memory which might never reweave gave him power he had not yet tried to understand.
"You are free—" Selrena spoke, not to Farree but directly to the girl. "There is"—she held the fingers on her right hand wide and came up to Atra, setting her hand so on the crown of the winged girl's head—"is, however, something of Them about you." Her fingers burrowed into the girl's matted hair and Atra gave a small cry of pain, wavering where she stood. Farree turned, caught and held her. Out of her hair Selrena had drawn what looked like a very loosely woven cap of thin wire. It was held tight knotted and she had to tear it free, each tug of her fingers bringing a gasp from Atra. Selrena threw it from her with the gesture of one who had held foulness.
It struck the pavement and Fragon studied it for a long moment. He nodded to the earth dweller who had been their guide. The creature aimed a kick with one of his outsize feet, setting the circlet spinning until it brought up against one of the smoky crystals which helped to support Fragon's throne. There was a flash of light bright enough to be seen even in this place of many lights. Nothing was left of the cap but a wad of smoking metal.
"Ahhhhh—" Atra's hands threaded through her hair back and forth. She might have been seeking some other bond which held her. Her wings expanded, brushing Farree back and away. They swelled and small silvery designs were visible along them as they moved. Head held high she looked to Selrena.
"Thanks to you, Lady. What debt does Langrone now owe you—or is there still any Langrone kin to offer such? I saw many fall to the mutilating knife and their blood guilt rests on me—for some I called to their torment, being captive to Them!"
"True enough." Beast Mask faced her, and there was nothing but coldness in his or her harsh voice. "There is more than one debt, Daughter of Langrone, since it was Noper here who had you go forth—"
