Dare to Go A-Hunting ft-4

by Andre Norton

  At their feet was Atra, so removed from the others of her race; they were clustered in a burst of color apart from the center of the cave chamber, their wings folded, their attention on the three they did not approach.

  Well to the other side of Fragon's chosen seat stood the Beast Mask, but for the first time Farree saw that mask thrown back, to lie along the shoulders as a limp hood. The features so disclosed were not entirely unlike those of the Darda, save that the skin was dark—greyish—like unto Fragon's, and this was no skull head. That dark skin was puffed and so distended on the cheeks that the eyes seemed very small and near hidden by the rolls of the unpleasant-looking flesh. There was no hair on the puffy ball of the head. Male or female? Farree could not be sure. He felt an instant disgust and beyond that—fear. This one was as powerful as Fragon in his or her own way.

  The other Darda, Vestrum, and his flutist were missing. However, even as Farree stepped into the crystal lighting, so did Zoror enter from another angle. He laid down the power conductor which he had carried up the slopes and, doing so, noticed Farree first, beckoning to him. Of Vorlund there was no sign; perhaps his mission to their own ship was not yet finished.

  Atra opened her eyes, meeting Farree's with a strong compelling stare as if she had been waiting for him. Farree paused. She edged away from Maelen and Selrena, to cross the cavern toward Farree and the Zacanthan. Her torn and filthy clothing had long since been changed for a short robe of creamy white, girdled with a mesh belt of silver into which had been set small gems of green-blue. A circlet of the same material held her hair in place at the nape of her slender neck.

  Farree noted that in her coming to him she made a short detour which took her away from close contact with the other winglings, those whose wings pulsed, rose or blue or yellow. Nor did he escape picking up a flash of thought—just as he had found himself aloof from their company so, it would seem, she, too, had been placed in exile. That she had been released from any enemy mind bond, he was sure, or she would not have been here. However, the shadow of what had been done to her, and through her unto others, still wrapped her in.

  There was a small flare of anger in Farree. He moved out from beside the Zacanthan and held out both his hands in a welcome he had not consciously meant until that moment. Her delicate hands, still dark with bruises and rent by seams of scratches, lay palm downward for a moment, resting on his, and into his mind sang words.

  "Welcome. Greater that the Seven Deeds of Malfor has been yours! We thought that the days of the Thrice Named were gone." For the first time she glanced away, her eyes sweeping over those of the company which were the closest. "Tallen can we of the Langrone claim, and Asdir, Tullusa, and Rond. You have joined a high and fair company, kinsman!"

  At those names, very faint and broken memories stirred in him. He shook his head.

  "You do me too much honor, kinswoman. It was not my own powers that I used." His hands dropped from hers and went to his belt to indicate what the smiths and Vorlund had made for him. "The Langrone—" He hesitated. What would it be to her that that word did not mean kin to him—that it was but a name?

  "A name, yes." The words were in his mind. "And perhaps only a name—for the clan is gone. See?" She nodded towards the winglings in their ranks. Then her hand went up and smoothed the edge of one of her own wings and he caught her meaning. That color was not to be seen among the others gathered here, save in his own pinions.

  "Lanquar and Lis, Lystal and Loyn." When she beamed him those names he knew them even as he would have known something long set in his mind. "But Langrone have no more to answer, unless those by the Far Rim scattered in time. And of those how many were there?" She held up one hand between them and extended the very slender fingers, once and then again.

  In his mind he saw what she had willed—a threatening mountain, rock bare and radiating from it a gloom which was a leaden weight upon the heart. If any of the kin had been driven or had fled despairingly there—

  "They have not answered the call—"

  Farree was startled by that other mind voice breaking in almost harshly upon his thoughts. It was a wingling who wore red-white wings, and he had left his own people to come to them. Farree could sense no congratulation, nothing but a forbidding chill in his words.

  "If they come not at the Great Summons, then they are either dead or overshadowed by thought far and faint. You have no true kin, Glasrant."

  "So do you wish it!" flashed Atra. "Who closed the upper flight to Amassa when she was heavy with child? Who sent forth the Doom Singers in that hour?"

  "What had to be done, was done. Sometimes one dies for many—"

  "That I have heard before." This roused Farree. "Was it not that very thought which this kin-sister"—his hand touched Atra's shoulder and almost he gasped, for that touch had united him with a source of warmth he had not known could exist: it had nothing of the burn of fire but was rather a caressing, a healing—"Was it not that same thought which held you all," he began again, "when this sister lay in the hands of Them?"

  "As bait—" the other returned. "Better she had taken up the fire metal and wreathed around—"

  Farree moved. He stood between Atra now and the chief of Lystal, another scrap of memory supplying him with a use for that name.

  "Do you speak now, Qua, for all?" he asked, narrow-eyed. Though he still felt apart from these who appeared so like himself, he was also aroused that they seemed so uneager to welcome him either. That denial angered him even more. Granted that he was mind blind, so he could not remember when he had been gathered close into the circle of kinship, warmed and sustained by this whole world. Yet that was a loss which he pushed aside. Nor could he fit into any other clan!

  But that was it, he knew suddenly. There were the Lanquar and Lis, Lystal and Lyon– He saw them standing there. However, save for Qua, none had approached, nor was there any welcome mind send from them. Only Atra—

  His hand slid down her arm to the wrist and there his fingers closed as if it were a matter of utmost importance that he keep her here. As it had been on the ship when he had depended on Vorlund's device, here was it now—she only was his anchorage and that which he had sought could be found only with and by her.

  "I speak—" Qua hesitated and there was a shadow of a frown on his handsome face; his folded wings stirred a fraction as if he would expand them and so employ all the stature he could command. "Yes, I speak for all. You have both been within the shadow, the very hold of Them. They have blinded and bound you—therefore shall we not always wonder whether there can be any trust placed with you henceforth?"

  "You speak well, Qua." Atra smiled coldly. "Have you in truth matched words with Slitha of Lis, Usern of Lystal, and Cambar of the Loyn?"

  All the gathering of winglings was watching them now. Farree knew that those others had been following all which was said by mind touch. There was a stir among them at Atra's naming of names. Again his remnants of memory gave him what he needed. He did not wait for Qua to answer that, but instead took the lead for himself.

  "If you speak with one voice for all, Qua," he returned, "then put your fears to rest. This is not the first time Langrone has stood alone. Valfor bore green wings—and went to his brave ending because of that. However, we intend no ending. Langrone lives, under the ancient rule, as long as either of us flies—" He drew Atra a little closer. "If you covet our Two Plains and the river land, then take it, Qua. We shall not dispute you for them. But neither shall we be forgotten when the Great Summons goes forth at Year's Ending.

  Remember that, Qua!" Farree now looked beyond the Lanquar to the others who were waiting. "And you, Slitha,"—he looked toward a slender wingling with a queen's proud stance and wings of gold—"and Usern,"—blue wings quivered as his thought struck home—"and Cambar." The pinions of that leader were grey shading to white and he was much darker of countenance, thicker of body, than the others.

  "Remember!" Atra's reinforcement of his speech was more than a warning, it was an or
der.

  Qua stared at the girl and then he smiled as coldly as she had done earlier. "There is now a common enemy; we fly no direction but that." He, too, might be only giving a reminder, but Farree was certain that there was also a warning to be read there.

  "As Glasrant has already done!" she flashed. What more the spokesman for the winglings might have said was never uttered, for Maelen opened her eyes, and the skin tightly covering the eye caverns in Fragon's face quivered and also showed a slit break.

  "It is done!" Both voice and thought came from Maelen. "Their beacon has been quenched, and even more, many of those traps and defenses set up by Them are gone. And the dream holds those two we need to make trouble for each other in thrall!"

  Selrena spoke to the unmasked one.

  "Loose your followers now, Sorwin!"

  The robed one raised both hands to mouth and with them shaped a hollow like a horn. The puffed cheeks expanded even more and from that horn there pulsed a cry which echoed through Farree's head. It had savagery in it, a lust and a hunger which was like a call of doom. Groundlings growled and left with a rush and a slapping of huge bare feet, and after them came a following of things whose very bodies, swinging and swaying, seemed to alter as they went—and always the forms they wore, forms which slipped from one to another and then another, were those of the blackest terrors any night might know. Ironically it was true that those who were fashioned as entirely threatening to each other marched now against a single enemy.

  They were gone, and it seemed to Farree that the whole of the crystal cavern was the lighter for their going. He wondered what harm they might wreak on the invaders, for many of those who had swept on seemed hardly more solid than a cloud of that haze which could spring into being at command of the Darda.

  The Zacanthan moved for the first time, turning his sharp-jawed head to watch their going. Farree knew that Zoror was filing in his head all which chanced here. What names would he give to those who had just gone? How many more were there that had long ago been listed in the records he thought he knew so well?

  However, if there was an exit of a force there was also an entrance. Farree heard the now-familiar tinkle of flute notes. So heralded came Vestrum. Gone was the clothing he had worn before. In its place he wore silver fashioned in small supple rings so that it moved even at his breathing. He carried a length of crystal rod which was headed by a hilt much like that of the sword which was never far from Fragon's hands. The flutist scampered back and forth as might an eager hound only waiting to be dispatched against some quarry, while the two women who walked a pace of so behind had laid aside their filmy robes and flower ribbons. They, too, wore chain mail and on the out-held right wrist of each there sat a flying lizard, smaller than that which had accompanied Farree on his first trip across this land, but manifestly of the same breed.

  Neither was this all of the party, for Vorlund followed but a little behind the Darda and, with him, two of the giant folk, bending heads as they strode ponderously, striving to avoid and painful meeting with down-pointing crystals.

  Vestrum spoke, but he did not seem to address any particular one of them but rather the whole company, from Fragon to the smallest of the winglings.

  "This one"—he indicated Vorlund, but as if there was nothing in truth between them but what might be a distant enmity—"has done as he swore that he would—he has launched forth his messenger."

  "And you, Vestrum, how has it been with you?" Selrena was the first to break the silence on the tail of that message.

  "I made sure that there was no treachery in what was wrought!" returned the Darda coldly. Now his eye caught on Farree for the first time, and with a lightning-swift gesture the hiked rod swung up, its end aimed for Farree's head. Along the length of that sped a dot of rainbow light. More memory moved in Farree. He took two steps forward and his bandaged hand swung up, his fingers caught and held the end of the rod. It was chill, seeming to generate a cold which bit into his flesh, but he did not loose it for ten long-drawn breaths. Then his hand dropped and he met the measuring stare of Vestrum with as level and probing a gaze.

  Was there a faint trace of disappointment in the Darda's tight held eye to eye measurement? Farree could not be sure, he only held a suspicion.

  "Well and now, Vestrum." This time it was Atra who broke thought silence just as the capering flutist settled down at the Darda's feet and made the instrument it carried give forth a trill of notes. "Do you believe? Or is it your claim next that Glasrant has power to hide the cast of all his thoughts from you?"

  "Have done!" For the first time Farree saw Fragon rise to his feet. Standing, he was near as tall as he was spare, almost shoulder to shoulder with the giants who had come with Vorlund. "What may have been in these two—it is gone. This night Glasrant has done what Valfor in his day might have lifted hand to—save that, mighty as our Elders were in their own time, they had not the knowledge of Them. We have been given that which we have not held to us since the days of incoming upon this world. We have lived, we have built, we dwindle, we earth dwell or keep jealous council with one race, even one kin, only our kind. We have lost much and now we are too old and few even to defend ourselves against Them. How many more times must their star ships come—each adding death to death? They are as many as a hundred times the number of sand grains now under our feet. There will always be more to come and less of us at their going, If they go, for their signal was set to guide others this time. Look to your delving in the ancient knowledge, Vestrum. What discoveries have you made? Small things, things of half life– Can you bring forth that which is no larger than your hand but can rock a star ship?"

  The trickle of notes from the flute ascended higher and higher—until they sounded almost like a cry for help. The Darda in his coat of mail stood frowning, his two hands sliding back and forth along his hiked rod.

  "And you, Sorwin." Fragon thrust his head a bit forward, his now widely open eyes seeking out the unmasked one. "Well for you—yes, that has been your thought for a long time. Your groundlings and your wraiths—they have little to fear from Them. You and yours think to go into such hiding that no off-world mind or body can scoop you forth! We already know that is less true than you would like. And I say to you that They have always sought knowledge, more and more of it along paths which we do not or cannot follow. We can summon a storm, set against them the land itself. Only we cannot hold—there are too few of us and we are too wearied with time. What other secrets have They uncovered? Do not think you can lie safe hidden."

  Sorwin did not reply but Fragon was plainly not through. He gestured with one hand while with the other he still kept his fingers in tight hold on the hilt of the skull-piercing sword. It was a summons and one they had no thought to disobey.

  The Zacanthan came, and Maelen, and Vorlund, edged by his giant helpers, and Farree reluctantly dropped his hold on Atra's hand to stand with the other three. Fragon moved again, down from his dusky throne. He came to wait on a level for their coming to him.

  They did not approach him too closely for he was now swinging the sword back and forth and the skull was smoothing out a patch of the sand. When that seemed leveled to his liking, the Dark Darda fumbled at the breast of his hazy robe and tossed out upon the patch of readied sand a ball of the same clouded crystal as Farree had taken up in Vestrum's chamber, though this did not break when it landed. Instead light spread from it. Then it was as if they were all a-wing, looking down upon a scene of constant, almost frenzied change. The star ship no longer stood tall but was canted, and its nose was oddly concave at one side. Hail and wind beat at both the ship and the ground about it. The wreck of the shelters flapped forward and back in the wind. Of any men there were no sign.

  Then there appeared to burst out of the troubled air itself a flight of such winged snakes as those Farree had seen before. Only these were four, six times the size of those, and they whirled in a mad circle about the canted ship, one after another in turn darting down to skim the wreckage on th
e ground.

  Then night and storm vanished, and with them the disabled ship and what was left of the shelters. What they were looking at now was a stream swollen with storm water, and it was day. A knot of men gathered on the bank of that stream. Several were on their knees digging into the soil with their bare hands. One jerked free from dark clay a swinging length of shining metal. The one nearest him snatched at it. Their mouths were open and they might have been shouting at one another. In moments a frenzy seemed to grip them all, and then there was the flash of a laser which itself banished the scene.

  "These will not trouble us again—" Vestrum's thought came, and there was satisfaction in it and triumph.

  "There will be others." Selrena broke that thread of satisfaction. "Always there will be others! It is as Fragon has said, they are as many as the grains of sand. Short-lived they are but they breed and breed and among us the young are very few. Long have we fled before them—now we stand with our backs to tall mountains and even the star roads are lost to us. We are already dead though still we struggle—"

  "That is not quite the truth."

  They all turned to look to Vorlund.

  "You have wrought with your own strengths." He gestured to the ball now lying quietly on the sand, no longer beaming forth pictures. "We have wrought with ours. Not only as we have done these days and nights just passed, but for the future. You have been long apart—do not believe that now you are standing alone. You have your rites and customs, your laws and punishments for the breaking of them. There are also laws and punishments beyond this world. You believe that I have brought from our ship that which will serve you now. Yes, in truth that is so. Only we have more to offer—"

  "Look you at us!" The command came with clear force from Maelen. She held out a hand and it was taken by the Zacanthan. In turn his other hand went to close upon one of Vorlund's while the spacer's second hand was with Farree in hold. "As you differ to the eye and yet decide on a single purpose, so it is with us among the stars. There are those darklings whom you know as enemies: not as many as your sand grains are they. And there are powers known to us which can destroy them, can bring you a defense that no ship of theirs can crack."