by Andre Norton
The furred one the Lady Maelen had been nursing in her arms suddenly came to life again, and she sat it down on the rock where recently the jam had perched. It leaped once more into the nearest clump of spike-armed bush and began working its way back to the ship. Bojor sniffed and moved a fraction from where he had been crouched upon his haunches.
Once more there was a distant dot in the sky, and the far-off troubling of the air. A flitter – was it the same one? – was returning. Parree caught Toggor and stuffed him again inside his shirt so he would not lose track of the smux during any quick move.
That craft made a wide circle about the sky-pointing ship, but this time there came no shouted message from the sky. It circled twice, and Farree could see that it bore no insignia. This flitter must be from the Guild, though the boldness of such an enterprise in the open light of day bothered him. It argued confidence on the part of those inside, and confidence on the part of the Guild meant arms and men ready to withstand any attack.
The third circling was much closer in, and finally the flitter set down at almost the same place that the guard ship had earlier chosen. Three men descended from the cabin. All were armed and moved cautiously, retreating toward the ramp of the ship backwards, facing the cliffs as intently as if they already knew that there were three sentries on duty there. Three? No, more if one counted Yazz, who still crouched in shelter with Lord-One Krip, and Bojor – as well as the furred one in hiding now.
Once reaching the ramp one of the men darted up it, his two fellows keeping guard. Then the second, and finally the third. Were they there to search the ship as the guards had done, or were they ready to raise?
Neither of the Thassa had moved. Parree, feeling more and more like a child or one of the animals who could be roused by command but did not have a voice in any plan, twisted from one side to the other trying to keep those two in sight.
Farree could not tell the time as it passed. He expected every moment to see the ramp rise, the ship take off. Surely that was what had brought this party here. But there was no change. At last movement showed at the side lock and down ran the three men, sprinting for the flitter as if pursued by the bartle or some even more threatening beast.
"They have discovered the persona." Lord-One Krip's message came with a faint suggestion of laughter. "It would require a full production yard to breach that control lock."
"It would seem that they have also seen more than they like," Lady Maelen answered. "Sadi projected well even when there were mind locks against her. She showed them one five times her own size and all teeth and talons at ready! She makes an excellent guard. And if they used those weapons of theirs, it was to no account."
Illusion? Farree wondered and was instantly answered.
"Illusion and not from one of us. Sadi projected what would frighten her, and she did it on a mental length which apparently their shields are not set to handle. See!"
The last of the men had barely reached the ground with a flying leap from the ramp when there appeared behind them, filling the full of the hatch door, a beast such as Farree had never seen before. It was larger, leaner in bulk than the bartle. Its head was split halfway along with a mouth which sprouted two rows of fangs, spittle dripping from them as if in anticipation of sinking home in frail flesh. The forefeet which projected now onto the ramp were taloned with great claws that looked as if they might rend apart the very envelope of the ship's hull.
All three of the men were firing lasers, but the shaggy coat of the apparition absorbed the worst of that attack easily and took no hurt from one of the most formidable weapons known to the space ways. One of the men broke and ran faster, quickly followed by he who had stood beside him. Only the third retreated in good order, still firing uselessly as he went.
The huge menacing form at the head of the ramp pulled back so that only the head with that murderous threat of fangs still protruded. There was a wait which Farree ticked off to himself – twenty-five in whispered counting. Then the flitter arose and began circling the pillar of the ship once again as if Seeking another way in. Parree almost believed that they might, should there be some opening, drop a man even as he had been hoisted up from the top of the tower in the ruins.
But it would seem that there was no other way of penetrating the ship, and the flitter was not armed with anything other than the weapons that had already been used to no purpose.
Finally it winged away eastward. The massive head winked out of being. Then the small furred creature Maelen had earlier held and caressed came racing down the ramp and across the land toward the Lady's rock.
"Well done!" Lord-One Krip called that aloud as if the small beast could hear and understand. The Lady Maelen stooped and caught the guard up in her arms for a second holding and caressing.
She set the animal down on the rock before her, stroking its upraised head.
"Sadi will watch with Yazz," she said, "and with the old one here." She reached over to scratch behind Bojor's ears. The big animal stretched his neck to the farthest so that she could reach behind his jaw also. "I think that we had better take thought to what lies northward – to that which has drawn the interest of those others so much that they have already made three trips in search of it." Her hand swung to point in the direction where the jam had first appeared. "Nor do we know what brought the Guild here in the first place. That we ourselves have returned to Yiktor could not have been foreseen when they settled in. For that was done at a much earlier time than our coming. Thassa memory is long – but is it long enough when there was also a will to do away with something that was future danger? The Elders of another day may have even memory-wiped our stock lest some be tempted to return and use something which was not right for us."
That they considered the animals guard enough for the ship seemed strange to Farree, but nothing or very little which the Thassa did could he compare with the actions of those he knew from the Limits days. He trudged back through the canyon to where the temporary settlement of the rest of these aliens was – Aliens? He was the alien here, even more divided from the rest than he had been from most of the Limits dwellers.
Yet he discovered, though he could not see that he contributed anything to their aid or defense, both the Lord-One Krip and the Lady Maelen took it as a matter of course that he was to be one of the party pointed north. They began the journey at moonrise, with the glow of the third ring making the plain almost day bright.
With them went a third Thassa, one Maskay, who, Farree gathered, had roamed much in that direction and had contact with the wildlife hereabouts. It was difficult to tell age with these people, but Farree thought him perhaps a generation older than his other two companions. And the Lady Maelen appeared to look to him to set the direction and the pace.
They halted before the rings were quite faded by the coming of the grayish predawn light to encamp on the top of a small rise where a trio of wind-twisted trees gave shelter. There was a seep of water at the bottom of that knoll, though it quickly funneled away in this arid land. This seemed to be one of the landmarks Maskay knew well.
He stood under the downswing of one of the wide branches and pointed on northward.
"It is another night's journey if we take to plains pace, and then come the hills. That is a dry land and the spring at Two Prong is of bitter water. Only the jam can live in those heights."
"Yet you have been there. Kinsman," the Lady Maelen said.
"When I was young and foolish, I went many places that were strange. And little or nothing did I learn from such wayfaring," he returned with a smile.
"Yet the jam live there and like all living things they must have food and water – and —"
"Hush! And under cover. Down with you!" Lord-One Krip swung out his arm and caught Maelen's waist, pulling her down, while Maskay jerked back under the tree.
It was very plain to hear now—the thrum of the flitter. Through the last haze of the third ring it bore across the sky. Farree waited for it to hover above them, to sense
by some off-worlder equipment that they were here. But it passed overhead well up in the sky and kept on to the north, exactly as if the pilot had a definite goal in view.
"Guild!"
"Are you sure?" demanded Lady Maelen of Lord-One Krip.
"There is a difference in the beat. That craft is not made for short patrols but is a long-range flitter – for exploration."
"It flies" – Maskay put into words Farree's thought – "as if those aboard it know where they would land and also as if they must be there in a hurry."
"True. I wonder if they have found what they seek. If so it is best we make the same discovery and as soon as possible."
Farree tried to stretch his head a little and then stopped, warned by the pain in his back. His whole body ached from the pace they had kept and he was not sure he could go on – not without more rest. Yet he was also sure he was not going to be left behind.
Chapter 15.
Once more Farree lay in hiding above a machine that was not of Yiktor: a flitter at rest on a ledge thrust forward from a mountainside like a great shelf. He could see the shadow of a head within the bubble of the top cover, but the door was also open, and he knew others had gone forth.
Through the ring-lighted air above dived and soared at least two of the jarn, providing eyes for the Lady Maelen, who lay full length on the lip of a second ledge across the narrow valley. So aptly balanced were those two outcroppings that one could well believe them the work of some intelligence, taming the mountain ways by a bridge that had long since vanished.
There was a noticeable trail upward on the opposite side, beginning not far away from the flitter, angling along the side of the cliff toward its high summit. They had sighted nothing moving up that path, but the jarns had reported that earlier those from the flitter had taken that way.
There was a similar trail on this side of the gulf also, and they had explored it via the jarns – to pace it themselves would have been to offer the flitter a clear sight of them. It did not reach clear to the full heights on this side but ended abruptly in a straight cliff wall that had no sign of any opening. And Maskay had set out a half day ago to hunt farther to the westward, setting the length of a night for his explorations.
Farree found himself drowsing in spite of the need for sentry go. They had hurried after the sky craft when it had been sighted yesterday, but he had found it hard going with his shorter legs and the weight of his hump. Though he would not have voiced any complaint even if they tried to wring it out of him, now his body was one ache, and he felt as if he could not force himself to any further effort at all.
The barren lands which surrounded the heart of the Thassa country had given way to coarse grass and woods scattered here and there. Here in the mountains was growth also, wind-gnarled trees for the most part, growing in pockets. Far above there was the bluish-white shadow of snow early fallen or late thawed – it could be either.
One of the jams drifted across the gap between them and the flitter to hunker down on the rocks that concealed the Lady Maelen. That the creature was reporting, perhaps from Maskay, Farree was sure, and a moment later the mind touch aroused him.
"There is nothing above save a road which is now encased in ice. It seems that those look in the wrong direction for their treasure. It may well lie on this side." She passed along the report and her own interpretation.
"But the way here leads nowhere – only to barren rock," he dared to protest wearily.
"What seems barren rock," she corrected.
Illusions again? He would not deny that the ancients of her race might have set such to cover their trail. But how to make sure of that?
"I go, before those others and Maskay return." It was Lord-One Krip who, answered.
"You could be seen – "
"If I walk, yes. But if I creep ..."
Farree had hunched around to face that trail. Perhaps it had originally been cut into the stone on purpose to give fair footing, perhaps it had been so worn below the surface about it by countless feet over a period of uncountable years, but it was plain that it was now a trough. The hunchback looked to Lord-One Krip. His body was slender, but even if he moved on hands and knees he certainly would show up to any watching this side of the cliff. Though he shrank from what he was impulsively agreeing to do, Farree cut in: "To creep is what I have done most of my life. Dust me well with the soil." He was already scraping up his own handfuls and smearing it across the backs of his legs and across his hips, leaving the tenderness of his hump to the last. "I can make it best."
The Lady Maelen turned her head and looked at him as one who is weighing one thought against the other. Then slowly she nodded.
"There is something in what you say, Farree."
He had so wanted her to refuse instead of accept that once more that old cord of bitterness awoke in him. They were willing to use him even as they used the jam, the bartle, any and all of the life on this world. The rainbow of the rising third ring swept over him and it seemed to bring with it a soothing. Even his painful hump felt a touch of coolness – which could not be the truth, as since when had a radiance of light had substance?
Farree shucked off his belt bag and tossed some more of the gravelly soil on his back, biting his lip against the tenderness of the hump, the small flashes of pain he felt when anything touched it now.
He crawled on his belly until the upward slope of that path faced him. Then he asked the question that he should have voiced earlier.
"If there is illusion, how may it be broken?"
"Try to pierce it," she answered him. "Illusion can distort sight but not touch – unless the one who tries to break it is totally under control."
Fair enough, he thought. His deluded eyes would at least serve him until he reached the solid wall at the top – or the wall that only appeared solid. He began to crawl, the rock harsh against his hands, panting a little with the effort of keeping as flat as he could in the depression of the way.
He went slowly, with many pauses, hoping that if the one with the flitter had any long-seeing glass trained on this side it would show only a portion of his hump – a rock bedded against rocks.
Sotrath climbed above the horizon and the three rings were clearly defined, the elusive third spreading glory over all the land. Flecks of glitter answered from the stone under him, the wall ahead.
On and on he went and then froze and flattened himself to the stone as a warning reached him from below.
"The others are returning."
He was tempted to look for himself, but there remained the matter of time. The Guild men could well try this side of the cliff now, having been baffled on the other. So he strove to speed up his crawl and yet not reveal that anything moved there. He lay during one of his periods of stillness, his pointed chin resting on his crooked arm as he looked ahead. To his relief it seemed that the wall was not too far above. Now he felt the pinch of claw on his shoulder and remembered that Toggor had not been left behind. Could the smux be sent ahead to prospect for an opening? Did an illusion fashioned to deceive the eyes of his species also confuse animals? He did not know, but the knowledge that the smux was still with him was a warming one.
The path up which he hunched his way was leveling out. Yes, he could see the wall before him. The path, if path it really was, ended abruptly at its foot. He was out on a level space. Putting up a hand he chirped to Toggor, and the smux obediently climbed into his palm and turned toward the stone. He lowered it.
On Farree inched until he was within touching distance of the wall. For a moment he hesitated. To his eyes it was so firm a barrier that he could not believe it was illusion only.
He put out his hand and his palm met solid substance. But it would be necessary for him to test it fully from one border of the sunken roadway to the other.
Edging along, he began at the outer side, Toggor clawing along beside his hand. Not here – nor here – nor – He stopped with a gasp of astonishment and fear. Before he touched the fourth time,
Toggor was gone. One moment he had been there brushing the side of Farree's hand and the next he had disappeared!
Frantically the hunchback struck the wall at the same point where he was sure the smux had vanished. There was a solid surface right enough, but there was also a crack through which he could feel a slight stir of cold air. Quickly he traced that crack. It ran only for a short distance, but where it ended there was a second crack, this ascending vertically. He returned and felt his way back, found another vertical crack. There was certainly a sealed opening, perhaps a door. He thumped it, hoping for some give in it. There was none. Perhaps he was too near the ground to move it, or perhaps it was sealed past any of their forcing!
He lay with his head close to the crack and tried to search out Toggor with the mind touch. The return was very faint, as if the smux answered from some great distance, but at least he was alive and within, though Farree would not have believed that crack wide enough to admit him.
Still lying with his head against the wall, he mind sent his discovery to the Lady Maelen. The rainbow of the third ring washed over him, brightening those flecks of glitter in the rock. In fact, as he glanced up the wall against which he now lay, he could see that the speckles were drawing together to form a dim pattern, or perhaps awaking one which had been deliberately set there generations ago.
"I come." That was the Lady Maelen.
Farree turned his head a little and saw her, lying belly fast to the stone, as he had, and pulling herself forward a few inches at a time. Even so, it was not long until she took his place by the unseen door as he edged back to give her room.
Her hands went out in a wider sweep than his could equal and then she nodded.
