Sander's slumber was full of dreams in which dead men arose to face him with broken weapons in their slack hands. He roused now and again, sweating, hardly sure of what was dream and what reality. He could then hear sometimes a soft growl deep in Rhin's throat, as if the koyot scented something dangerous. Yet the voice and the light were surely gone.
By the first hint of dawn Sander was ready to move on. This seemed to him a haunted land. Perhaps the unburied dead of the town oppressed his spirit. The sooner he was well away from such an ill-omened place, the better. However, he made a quick survey of the ground where the night before that half-seen beast had reared up in the light.
That truly had been no dream, for there were paw marks deep-set in the soil, pads and claws in clear impression. Beyond, he discovered a single other print, small and distinct, unmistakably human. Rhin sniffed at the tracks and again growled. It was plain from the swing of the koyot's head that he little liked what his own special senses reported. Another reason to be on their way.
Sander did not even wait to eat. He swung up on the riding pad, and Rhin trotted off at a pace that soon carried them well into the tough grass of the lowlands, parallel with the sea. The passing of the koyot stirred into life some birds, and Sander uncoiled his sling, made ready a pebble, brought down two of those fugitives. Once away, where he could light a fire, there would be food.
He headed directly for the distant line of forest, misliking the feeling of nakedness that he had in the open, a sensation the plains bred youth had never experienced before. As he rode, he tried to see traces of the path the voice had taken. But, save for the tracks near his improvised camp, Sander found nothing that would suggest he and Rhin were not alone.
Resolutely, he kept from glancing back at the now-distant village. Perhaps his visitor had returned there, since it was plain from the words they had exchanged that the unknown had been in search of those who had despoiled the town. What had the stranger named it? Padford. Sander repeated the word aloud. It was as strange as the accent of the other's speech.
Sander knew so little of the land beyond the Mob's own range. That such villages existed he had picked up from the Traders' guarded accounts. But the herdspeople of the wide lands in the west had no personal knowledge of them. He wished now that he had made a closer examination of the dead. It seemed to him, trying to recall those glimpses of the bodies, that they had been unusually dark of skin, even darker than he was himself, and that their hair had been of a uniform black. Among his own people, who were an even brown in skin color, hair color varied from light reddish gold to dark brown.
The Rememberers told strange tale, saying that before the Dark Time, men did not always share the same skin color or features. Their tales carried other unbelievable statements also—that men could fly like birds and traveled in boats that went under the surface of the water and not over it. So one could not believe every remnant of the supposed old knowledge they cherished.
Rhin abruptly halted, startling Sander out of his thoughts. The koyot gave a sudden shake of body, which was his warning that he must be free of his rider to confront something. Sander slid off as Rhin whirled about to face their back trail, his lips wrinkled to show his formidable fangs, the growl in his throat rising to a snarl.
Sander thrust his sling into his belt, whipped free his thrower, making sure there was a dart set within the firing groove. There were no stones to back them here. They had been caught in the open.
Plain to see were two shapes humping along with a curious up and down movement, at a speed Rhin could only equal by short bursts of determined flight. A third figure on two legs ran behind, like a hunter urging on hounds, though the two forerunners bore no likeness to any of the small dogs the Mob knew. Sander dropped to one knee, steadying the dart thrower. His heart beat faster. Those animals, whatever they might be, were remarkably agile, continually twisting and turning, yet always advancing. To sight a dart on one was almost impossible.
"Aeeeeheee!"
The cry came as sharp as the scream of a seabird, while the running figure behind the first two flung up both arms as if urging on its furred companions. It was that runner who must be his target, Sander decided.
"Aeeeeheee!"
The foremost of the animals halted and rose on its haunches to stare at the smith. A moment later its mate froze likewise. But Sander did not relax his grip of the dart thrower. The distance, he judged, was still a fraction too far for a telling shot. Rhin snarled continually. The koyot was already on the defensive, prepared for attack. It would seem that Rhin regarded these as formidable opponents.
The human companion of the pair drew level with them, so the three moved together toward Sander and the koyot. But they no longer ran. Sander rose to his feet, his weapon at the ready.
He stared at one of the strangest sights he had ever seen. The newcomer was plainly a woman, as her scant body covering revealed. Like the villagers, she had very dark skin, and her only clothing was a piece of scarlet cloth wound from armpit to knee. Around her neck rested a massive chain of soft, hand-worked gold, which held pendant a disc set with gemstones in an intricate pattern. Her dark hair had been combed and somehow stiffened, to stand out about her face like a halo of black. On her forehead was a tattooed design, much like the one Sander himself wore. But while his was the proud badge of a smith's hammer, hers was a whirl he could not read.
She wore boots that reached nearly to her knees, not as well-fashioned as the leatherwork of his own people, and a belt twisted of gold and silver wire from which hung, on hooks, a number of small cloth bags in different colors. Now she walked proudly, as if she were one to whom others paid deference, like a clan-mother, each hand resting on the head of one of the animals.
These were of the same breed, Sander believed, but they differed greatly in coloring and size. The larger one was creamy fawn in color. The smaller was dark brown with black feet and tail. Their long tails lashed back and forth as they came. It was plain to Sander that they did not have the same confidence in his harmlessness as their mistress did, for they were ready to do battle. Only her will kept them in check.
Some distance away she stopped, her dark eyes surveying him coolly. The animals once more reared on their haunches to flank her, the lighter-colored one's head now topping hers.
"Where do you go, smith?" she asked imperiously. By the sound of her voice, he knew that this was his questioner of the night before.
"What matters that to you?" He was stung by her tone. What right had she to demand any answer from him in this fashion?
"The seeing tells me that our paths now run together." Her eyes were very bright. They caught his gaze. He did not like her calm assumption that he was some tribesman under her command.
"I do not know what a seeing may be." With determined effort he broke that linkage of eyes. "What I seek is my own affair."
She frowned as if she had not believed he could withstand her control any more readily than the hissing beasts by her side. That she had tried to control him in some unknown manner he was now certain.
"What you seek," she returned, a sharper note in her voice, "is the knowledge of the Before Men. That is what I must also find, that my people may be avenged. I am Fanyi, one who talks with spirits. And these be Kai and Kayi who are one with me where there is need. My protection lay over Padford, but it was necessary for me to go to meet the Great Moon. And while I was gone"—she made a slight gesture with her hand—"my people were slain, my faith to them broken. This should not be!" Her lips drew back in a snarl as marked as Rhin's. "The blood debt is mine, but for its paying I must draw upon the Before Ones. I ask you, smith, have you knowledge of the place you seek?"
He longed to say yes, but there was something in her gaze, which, though he would not allow it to bind him, compelled the truth.
"I am Sander. I seek one of the Before cities. Such may lie to the north along the sea—"
"A Traders' tale perhaps?" She laughed and there was a note of scorn in that sound, angering him. "Traders' tales are not to be depended upon, smith. These seek always to deceive, not revealing what they deem their own hunting grounds. However, for once, this is partly right. To the north—and the east—there lies a great place of the Before Men. I am a Shaman—to us remains some of the ancient knowledge. There is a place—"
"To the northeast," Sander continued, "lies the sea. Perhaps your city is now buried under waves."
She shook her head. "I think not. The sea has eaten deep into the land in some places; in others it has drained from ancient beds, leaving land long hidden once more revealed. But," she shrugged, "of that we cannot be sure until we see. You seek, I seek—but in the end our quest is not too divided. I want knowledge of one kind, you of another, is this not the truth?"
"Yes."
"Well enough. I have powers, smith. Perhaps more potent than you carry in your hands." She glanced at the weapon he held. "But to fare forth into the wilderness alone, that is folly when we are traveling in the same direction. Therefore, I say to you—let us journey together. I will share my certain knowledge of where the Before Place lies."
He hesitated. But he believed that for some reason she was in earnest. Why she made such an offer he could not quite understand. She might have been reading his thoughts, for now she added:
"Did I not say that I had had a seeing? I know little of your people, smith, but have you none among you who can foretell, who can sometimes see that which has not yet happened but which will certainly come to pass?"
"We have the Rememberers. But they dream of the past, not the future. The Traders—they have said that they have heard of those who foresee not backsee."
"Backsee?" Fanyi seemed startled. "What do they backsee, these Shamans of yours?"
"Some of the Before things, but only small pieces," Sander had to admit. "We came into this land after the Dark Time, and what they tell of is another part, now sea covered. Mostly they remember our own Mob and a past that is ours alone."
"That is a loss. Think what might be done if your backseers could uncover the lost things. But it is much the same with us who foresee—we can do such for only a short way. Thus, I know that we shall journey together, but little more than that."
She spoke with such authority that Sander found himself unable to utter any objection, though he was suspicious of her self-confidence. Obviously this Fanyi believed she was conferring some honor upon him by so deciding. Yet there was sense in what she said—he had been traveling blindly. If she indeed had some clue to a definite lost city, he would be far better served to agree to her guidance than to simply wander on blindly.
"Very well." He now looked at her beasts. "But do those agree also? They seem to me to be less certain of the wisdom of our joining forces than you are."
For the first time he saw her lips curve into a smile. "My friends become theirs. And what of your furred one, Sander-smith?" She nodded to Rhin.
Sander turned to the koyot. He exercised no such control on Rhin as the girl apparently did over her companions, nor could he. There was a form of communication between man and koyot, but it was tenuous. He was not sure himself just how deep it ran, nor how well it would work in all circumstances. Rhin was willing to share his travels and was an efficient warner against enemies. But whether the koyot would accept close companionship for days with the strange beasts, Sander had no way of telling.
Fanyi shifted her gaze slightly to meet the eyes of the taller of her furred ones. After their stare had locked and held for a long moment the creature dropped to forefeet and was gone at its backhumping gait, disappearing into the tall grass. Its companion remained quietly where it was, but Fanyi came forward now to turn the same intent gaze up into Rhin's bright eyes. Sander fidgeted, again more than a little irritated at the girl. What right had she to impose her will on his koyot, for that was what she was doing he was sure.
Again she might have read his rebellious thought, for she spoke:
"I do not rule these other ones, smith. It is enough that they learn that we can live together after a fashion, neither imposing wills upon another. My fishers know that if I halt their actions by a will-thought, it is only with good reason. And there are times when I accept their desire as quickly as they do mine. We are not master-slave. No—we are comrade with comrade. That is the way it should be with all life forms. So does the Power teach us who are born to serve Its purposes. Yes, your koyot will accept us, for he knows we mean no harm to one another."
The fisher who had disappeared was returning. Clamped in its jaws was the end of a bundle that it bumped and tugged along the ground until it could be dropped at Fanyi's feet. She loosened lashings to draw forth a square of drab cloth, which had a hole in the center. Through this she thrust her head and then belted the loose folds about her with a woven strip, hiding her scarlet garment and her adornments under the dim gray overtunic.
The rest of her equipment for the trip was in two separate bags, their strings knotted together. Sander took them from her when she would have slung them across her shoulder and arranged them with his own bags on Rhin. He could not ride while she walked, and the two of them would be too great a weight for the koyot.
Fanyi whistled, sending the fishers bounding away, ranging ahead. For the first time Sander relaxed a little. Those creatures must form an effective scouting force, if Fanyi depended upon them.
"How far do we go?" he asked, finding that she matched strides with apparently little effort.
"That I do not know. My people do—did—" she corrected herself, "not travel far. They were fisherfolk, and they worked the fields along the river. We had Traders come from the north—and more lately from the south. From the south," she repeated and her tone was bleak. "Yes, now I think that those came before the raid to sniff out how helpless we were. If I had not been afar—"
"But what could you have done?" Sander was honestly puzzled. She seemed to believe that her presence, or the lack of it, had sealed the fate of the village. He could not believe that.
She glanced toward him, clearly astounded at his question.
"I am one with Power. It is my thought-holding that walled my people in safety. There was no danger that came to them that I, or Kai or Kayi, could not sniff out and give warning of. Just as I knew, even though I sought with open heart and mind the will of the Great Moon, when death came to those who believed in me! Their blood lies on my hands, that I must avenge—for upon me rests the burden of this deed."
"And how can you avenge them? Do you know those who came raiding?"
"At the proper time I shall cast the stones." Her hand went to the breast of her drab overgarment. "Then their names shall be made clear. But first I must find in the Before Place such a weapon as shall make those who delighted in slaughter wish that they had never been born!" A cruel cast twisted her generous lips and the grimness of her face chilled Sander.
He himself had never felt such great anger—even against Ibbets—as to death-wish another. When the White Ones had struck he had been only a child, too young to be affected by the battle, even though his mother had been one of its victims. His whole being had been focused on learning what he could do with his hands. To him, weapons were only matters of fine workmanship. He rarely thought beyond their fashioning to the uses they would eventually serve.
Although what he had seen in the destroyed village had sickened and revolted him, it had not touched his inner being. For those dead were strangers, none close to him. Had he discovered one of the enemy left behind through some chance he would have fought, yes, but mainly to save his own life. The flame that he saw burning in Fanyi, the implacable drive for vengeance, he could not quite understand. Perhaps if it had been his people who had been so handled, he would have felt differently.
"What weapons do you believe might be stored in a Before Place?"
"Who knows? The old tales are many. They say that once men slew with fire and thunder, not with steel or dart. It may be that such stories are only tales. But knowledge is a weapon in itself and such a weapon I have been born to use."
That Sander could accept. He discovered that he had unconsciously quickened pace a little, as if the very thought that such a storehouse of the Before Days might exist had urged him to speed. But they dared not, he was certain, count on too much. The churning of the earth during the Dark Time had changed the whole of the land. Could they be sure that anything from Before endured?
When he mentioned this, Fanyi nodded. "That is true. But still the Traders have their sources. And so there must be something remaining. I have this—" Both hands were now clasping her breast where the pendant lay hidden. "I am of a clan-line of Shamans. From mother to daughter, time and again past reckoning, has descended our learning. There are secrets that can be understood only when one is in the presence of that which hides them. What I wear is in itself a secret. Only I can read its message when I hold it in my hand. For no other will this charm work. I seek with it a certain wall—"
"And this wall lies northeast—"
"Just so. Long have I wanted to search for it. But my duty was to my people. Their ills, both of mind and body, were mine to ease. Now it is that same duty which drives me at last—so that I may repay blood for blood."
Her face became such a secretive mask that Sander ventured no more questions. So they journeyed in silence, the fishers playing scout, Rhin trotting at his shoulder.
At noon they halted, and Sander made a small fire while Fanyi stirred together some of the meal he had taken from the village, and moistened it with water from his leather bottle. She spread the resulting paste on a small metal griddle that she took from one of her own bags and set to bake before the fire. In a few minutes she deftly swept off a sheet of near-bread. Sander roasted the birds he had brought down while Rhin, stripped of riding pad and burdens, went hunting on his own. Fanyi said her fishers would do the same.
The fare was better than the dried fish he had eaten the night before. Fanyi held the water bottle to her ear and shook it vigorously.
"Water," she said. "That we shall need by nightfall."
Sander laughed. "Rhin shall find it. His breed does that very well. I have seen them dig into a bare streambed and uncover what no man would believe existed below. They come from a parched land—"
"Yours?"
Sander shook his head. "Not now, though it used to be. The Rememberers say we were all from the south and west. When the sea came in, all fled before it, even though mountains spewed fire from their bellies. Some men lived, and later Rhin's people came. They were small once, it is said. But who knows now—so much is told of the Before Time."
"Perhaps there are records." Fanyi licked grease from her fingertips, imparting to that gesture a certain fastidiousness.
"Marks like this—" She plucked a long grass steam and with its tip drew lines in the dust.
Sander studied her pattern. He thought he could see a certain resemblance to similar lines that Traders made on bleached skins when his father had described kinds of metal he wanted them to bring up on their next trip.
"See—this means my name." She pointed out the marks she had made. "F-A-N-Y-I— That I can write. And certain other words. Though," she added with truthfulness, "the meaning of all I do not know. But it was part of my learning because it is of my Power."
He nodded. The smith words were part of his learning, along with the work of his hands. The metal did not run nor harden nor work unless one chanted the right words—all men knew that. Which was why a smith allowed only his apprentice to be with him during certain parts of his labor—lest those without the right learn the work-words of his art.
"Even if you find such marks," Sander asked, "what if they cannot be read?"
She frowned. "That would be a mystery one must master, even as one learns the healing art and how the moon works upon men and women, how to call the fish, or speak with animals and birds. It is one of the Shaman learning."
Sander stood up to summon Rhin with a whistle. Shaman learning did not greatly interest him. And whether smith mysteries had ever been reduced to such markings—that he would not believe unless he saw them before his eyes. They were still a goodly distance from the forest, and he had little liking to camp out in the open another night.
He stamped out the last coals of their small cooking fire, kicking earth over the ashes carefully as any plainsman would. The fear of grass fires in the open was one danger that was more real in his mind than such raids as had been made on the village. He had seen the results of such devastation and known the horror of finding two clansmen who had been caught in such and died in the red fury no man could escape.
They plodded on. The fishers were not in sight, though Rhin had returned promptly at Sander's call to assume pad and bags. But Fanyi seemed unconcerned at the absence of her animals. Perhaps they always traveled so.
It was close unto evening when the trees loomed ahead behind a screen of brush. Sander came to a stop, for the first time doubting the wisdom of his choice. It looked very dark and forbidding under that spread of green that was already beginning to be touched by the flames of fall. Perhaps it would be best to stay in the open for tonight and enter in the morning, rather than blunder into such a gloomy unknown in the dusk.
"Where are Kai and Kayi?" he asked the girl.
She had been squatting on her heels and now she glanced up. "They go about their own concerns. I do not rule them, as I have said. This woodland," she pointed ahead with an uplift of her chin, "would be to their liking. They are not usually creatures of the open—but have a taste for trees."
Well, if that was the way of it, what did it matter to him? Still, the more Sander looked into that darkness ahead the less he wanted to enter it with only failing daylight to guide him.
"We will stay here for the night," he said, then worried if she would refuse his guidance.
"If you wish," was all she answered, as she got to her feet to lift her bags from Rhin's back.