That Kaboss had expelled him so easily from the village without referring to the Planman made Sander uneasy. As he rode on, he pondered what appeared too quick a change of attitude. The woman had certainly made clear her own feelings—which suggested that perhaps the Traders themselves had encountered just such a brain-touching invasion as Sander had met. They knew the meaning of "cold iron," which had been for a long time a legend. Sander had never known it to be invoked among his own people. Perhaps this circlet would have awakened questions had he worn it while with the Mob, but here the trader-woman had instantly named it for what it was—a protection against the unseen.
But the Planman had been so emphatic that he remain with Kaboss.
Had the old Trader been slightly too emphatic on that point? Sander's thoughts coasted away in another direction. Suppose the Traders suspected that it was not chance wandering that headed Sander and Fanyi in this direction. Being constituted as they were to think first of the discovery of hidden treasure, they would readily accept a suggestion that these trespassers had some such search in view. But, rather than try to force a secret from them, the easier way to discovery would be to loose both on some pretext and then trail them.
Sander did not doubt in the least that the Trader hounds could scent with the same efficiency and expediency as Rhin. Already men might be mounting, to skulk behind.
There was, however, the matter of the White Ones. Would their invasion be feared enough so that the Planman dare not detach any of their fighting force to hunt down Sander and the girl? The smith had nothing but guesses to add together, but he thought that the sum of them was enough.
For himself, he saw no need for secrecy. If there was any knowledge to be had, why should it not be open to all comers? He would not deny the Traders their share. But what if it were the White Ones who came after them? Sander shook his head firmly as he rode, though there was no one to witness. No, he wanted no enemy to benefit by anything Fanyi might uncover.
Rhin was plainly following a trail that was open and fresh-set. For the first time Sander considered Fanyi's attitude. She had made no attempt to wait for him. Did she value his possible aid in her quest so little that she had shrugged him off? He felt a pulse of anger at that. It was as if he were inferior, one who was of no use to her now. Perhaps the pendant had given her some secret sign that she was close enough to her goal to make his company no longer necessary. He resented the idea he might have been used and then so easily discarded.
Half believing this, he did not urge Rhin on, hot as the trail was. The fishers were too-formidable opponents. And if he had been only a temporary convenience as far as Fanyi was concerned, there was no reason to think the girl would not use the animals against him. They had no kin ties—she and he.
Now and then he glanced back at the dark blot of the Trader village. There was certainly no stir there yet. However, that did not mean that he was not under observation. They might want him well ahead before they began their hound-mounted pursuit.
There was no cover in this part of the valley. The village was situated closer to the heights on one side, while to the north curled the river. Rhin trotted toward the water, sniffing now and again at the ground. The night was frosty-clear. Sander huddled into his fur overjacket, drawing the hood, which usually lay between his shoulders, up over his head, pulling tight its drawstring.
He was tired, and his arms and shoulders ached dully from the unaccustomed labor of the afternoon when he had exerted his best efforts to impress Kaboss with his skill. Before that had been the tension and fatigue of their struggle through the heights with the alarms along the way.
Sander knew that he could not fight off sleep too long. Even as he rode his head nodded until he would snap fully awake again. How could Fanyi have gone so steadily, though of course she had not labored at a forge for part of the day past.
Rhin reached the river bank and paused, nosing the ground a few paces right and then left. Finally the koyot barked, and Sander realized that those he followed must have taken to the water here, though he wondered at Fanyi's recklessness since she knew that this flood in the lower regions was occupied by the amphibians.
Did the trail here go west or north? Sander tried to push aside the heavy weariness of his body and mind to decide. Ever since they had reached the land from the sea-desert, the pendant had pointed continually west. He could not believe that the direction had now changed so abruptly.
Therefore, Fanyi and the fishers had taken to the water in a simple move to confuse any hounds set behind them. If he prospected up stream, he might come across the trail where they had issued forth again. Only the point of emergence could be on the other side of the stream; if so, he would have only half a chance to find it.
With knee pressure he urged Rhin west, paralleling the river. There was a moon tonight. But it was on the wane and its light was limited.
As he rode in and out among a growth of brush, Sander suddenly jerked entirely awake. That band he had set about his head—it was warm! No, hot! And getting hotter! His hands went up to jerk it off, and then he hesitated. That was what the unknown wanted. Cold iron. No, hot iron, iron that could blister and sear. The pain was to force him to rid himself of his defense.
It was iron heated in a strong blast of air-fed flames. Impossible for it to be this way in the chill of the night. It could not be! Sander began the chant of the smith's work-words. The band about his head burned like a white-hot brand, only that was what the other wanted him to think! Somehow Sander realized that. So the heat was only an illusion—a dream—that was sent to rob him of his first protection.
If this torment was only a dream—then that heat did not really exist. Determinedly, he kept his hands down, fought against the agony of the branding. This—was—not—real!
Now Sander singsonged aloud the smith's chant. He had not believed in Fanyi's boasted powers. But he had to believe that this existed, or he would not feel it. Yet he stubbornly told his shrinking, hurting body, it is not true! There was no fire, no forge, therefore there was no heat in the thing he wore. Cold iron—cold iron—
Those two words became mixed with the others he spoke. Cold iron!
He was not quite sure when the heat began to ebb. For by that time he was only half-conscious, clinging to one thought alone, that the iron was truly cold.
Within his overjacket, his coarse wool shift was plastered to his body by the sweat of pain. He wobbled so that he could not have stayed on Rhin had he not seized with both hands upon the koyot's hide where it lay in loose rolls about the animal's neck. The iron was cold!
Rhin stopped—or had the koyot been halted for long moments while Sander fought his battle for survival? The smith did not know. Only, he realized, he was slipping from the saddle pad. On hands and knees, he dragged himself under the down-looping branches of a pine, sinking deep into a drift of ancient needles. There he huddled, passing quickly into exhausted sleep from that unimaginable battle.
Sander's sleep was dreamless, and when he awoke, a shaft of sunlight flashed on the stretch of river he glimpsed between two bushes. His first memory was of the strange attack. Quickly he slipped off the band, his fingers searching his skin for the tenderness of a burn. But there was no mark there. Soberly, he once more put on the band of wire. Perhaps, if he had allowed belief to settle in his mind, he would have been scarred. It was still hard for him to accept the fact that such things could happen.
Yet who knew what marvels the Before People had controlled? Fanyi's pendant was more than Sander had ever imagined could exist. There was Fanyi's father—that stranger she had never seen—the man who was not a Trader, but one who, of his own will, traveled to seek out new knowledge of the world. Sander knew of no other man who was so moved. A Mob crossed plains lands because of the needs of the herds on which their wealth was based. The Traders made their long treks for gain. But a man who roved merely to see what lay on the other side of a hill or beyond a valley, such Sander could not yet understand.
Rhin! Sander stared around. The koyot was not sharing his sleeping place as they always did when on the trail together. There were no paw prints in the needle carpet. And Rhin must still be burdened with all of Sander's gear. Cautiously, the smith edged down the river bank, onto a stretch of coarse gravel. He knelt, threw back his hood to splash chill water over his face. The shock of it brought him completely awake.
Because he had no other choice, Sander loosed the whistle the koyot would answer if within voice range. But, though he listened, there was no yelp, no matter how distant. Only one thing remained, lying on the pine needles—the knot of iron he had made for the koyot. Caught in it was a tuft of yellowish fur, as if Rhin, in some agony like to his own, had pawed it free.
Had Rhin run before the hounds of the Traders? One hound the koyot could have met fang to fang. However, if those of the village had loosed their pack in full, it could well be that the koyot had fled before a collection of enemies he dare not face by himself.
If so, why had Sander not been captured by the Traders? His hiding place under the pine was certainly not so secure a one as to be overlooked by any of their hounds.
Had Rhin gone on a hunt of his own? Perhaps, but deep inside, Sander doubted that. The smith drew up his hood once more and lashed it tight. He had his dart thrower, his belt long-knife—and little else save the clothes he wore, which by now, his nose told him, should be discarded for fresher ones. His gear, tools, food—all else had vanished with the koyot.
Sander had no intention of returning to the Trader village. He might lack the koyot's nose for a guide, but he had a strong feeling that westward lay the answer. Also such a trail carried him away from that haunted land where both the amphibians—he warily glanced at the river, striving to sight any suspicious disturbance of the water—and the White Ones could lay ambush.
Sander drank deep, striving so to somewhat satisfy the hunger he felt by filling his empty stomach with water, then climbed the low bank. There was no sign of any trail, so he strove to keep the river in sight in order to make sure he was not wandering heedlessly. Now and again he gave his summoning whistle, hoping against hope that the koyot would either return or answer.
As the sun grew warmer, Sander unlaced his hood. Being a plainsborn man, he did not like this wooded country, thinly set though these trees were. He remembered, with shame for his own heedlessness, how back by Padford he had thought that the forest could provide shelter. Now he knew what the tree-shadowed land really held.
So he strode along, thrower in hand, dart set in the groove ready for firing, his hearing strained to catch the least sound. A light wind shifted leaves from the trees, and once or twice Sander caught the call of a bird. But he might have been the only man crossing a deserted country—until he sighted a streak of mud where a clump of sod had been pushed aside.
There, in the clay, was half of a handprint—a small one. Once his eyes were so alerted, he discovered other indications that here Fanyi must have emerged from the water, slipped on the clay, and thrown out a hand to support herself. That she had made no attempt to hide such traces argued to Sander that for some reason the girl had not feared any pursuit this far from the village. Or else she was now in such a hurry that haste meant more than concealment.
Realizing that she could not be too far ahead, he searched for other signs of her passing and found a few—a broken branch tip, a twisted stem, a smear of leaves scuffed up from last year's carpet. The trail angled away from the verge of the stream, heading more to the south where trees grew thicker on upward-sloping ground.
Sander passed through young woods onto the surface of an ancient road. There was no trace here of the wreckage that stretched behind. Perhaps in this small pocket of the earth there had been less havoc wrought during the Dark Time. The road, to be sure, had breaks in its surface and was drifted over by soil in which grass and weeds, now fall-dried, rooted. But it was an easy path. In that soil Sander read not only of the passing of Fanyi and her fishers, but imposed over those in two places was an unmistakable paw print which could only belong to Rhin! That the koyot had deserted him to follow the others shook Sander.
He knew that Fanyi exerted a greater measure of control over the fishers, or perhaps one might say she was able to communicate more fully with them, than he did with Rhin. But he would never have believed that the Shaman could have such influence with the koyot as to deliberately draw the animal away from Sander himself. Unless, he corrected himself, she saw in this action one way of defeating pursuit.
To discover that Rhin must have been tolled away only made stronger his own determination to hunt Fanyi down. He plodded ahead, not with speed, but grimly, not now to be turned from the way.
Those he followed had kept to the old road, going openly, as far as he could judge from their tracks, as if they had no reason to expect pursuit. The road began to climb more steeply on a grade that nearly equaled the stark heights behind.
Sander was hungry, but that no longer mattered. Though once, when he came across a place where nuts were being gathered avidly by bustling squirrels, he picked enough of the tough-shelled harvest to nearly fill his hood. He paused to crack a few nuts and munched as he went. Although they tasted good, they were hardly as satisfying as the stew he had eaten in Kaboss's house, a meal that seemed now like some long-past dream.
Reaching the crest of the slope, the smith could look ahead down a long descent. A light haze hung in the air, yet he did not sniff smoke, only saw that tendrils were clouding the distance. However, there was no mistaking what did lie directly ahead and to which the old road ran. Here once more were ruins, yet these had not been reduced to mere mounds of rubble lacking any sign that said they had once housed men. Nor were these battered fragments flattened by a storm like the ones he had viewed yesterday. No, there was enough form left here and there to reveal distinct structures. It seemed to Sander that, even as he studied the ruins, an odd haze began to descend upon them, ever thickening to hide more and more of the structures.
That this must be the place Fanyi had sought, of that he was convinced. He lengthened his stride, trotted down the broken road with a desire to reach the ruins as soon as possible. His aching legs, his empty middle, as well as the westward-reaching sun told him that the day was fast waning.
As soon as he approached the ruins closely, he could see that the road was choked in places by barriers of fallen stone, and no attempt had been made to clear them. In fact, he spotted several large chunks of metal undisturbed, and wonder grew in him. This certainly was within easy range of the Trader village. Why had they not come mining here?
The very fact that such treasure lay in the open roused his caution. Sander hesitated, searching the ground for tracks of those he had followed. When he saw nothing, he retraced his own steps until the claw marks of one of the fishers—Kai's by the size of it—drew him to the right. There a second road opened, narrower than the other, which turned north sharply, heading away from the main mass of the ruins.
Trees and bushes narrowed in, reducing the surface to perhaps a quarter of its original expanse, so the way was hardly wider than a foot path. But pressed into the leaf mold and soil there were tracks, clear and deep, openly left to be traced. Fanyi, the fishers, and Rhin. Sander could not tell whether the koyot had already joined the girl or was still simply following her.
The roadway curved twice, then ended in an expanse of pavement that reminded Sander of that on which the Trader house had been built back in the lost island city. There were three buildings, or the remains of them, bounding three sides of the square, the road having led into the fourth. Their windows watched him with hollow eyes that opened on emptiness.
Sander took one step out onto that surface and swayed, falling forward to his knees. The pain in his head, shooting inward from the iron band, was so excruciating that he could feel nothing but its agony, he could not think at all. Instinct alone made him throw himself backward. Then he lay gasping from the shock of the pain, though it was now gone as suddenly as it had struck.
Some time later he squatted on his heels at the mouth of the road to study the scene before him, thoroughly baffled. He had fought through tough brush and around trees, making an outer circuit of the place, only to discover that it was surrounded by an invisible barrier that could react to his "cold iron" viciously and instantly, dared he attempt to approach past a certain point.
No legend from the Rememberer's vast store, no tale of any Trader, mentioned such an experience as this. There was, as far as he could see, no movement, within that protected area. Yet Fanyi, the fishers, and Rhin had certainly come this way.
After intent study he had noted several tracks across the disputed space where he dared not venture without being literally swept from his feet by a force generating sheer agony in his head. So he had proof that they were here. But why he could not follow—?
Sander believed he need only remove his self-wrought protection and step out. But an inner core of caution argued against any such act. To surrender to the unknown so completely was not in his nature.
Though he had tried the same trick he had used on the trail, striving to make his mind dismiss the onslaught of the pain attack, that did not work here. This force was infinitely greater, and perhaps his own power to withstand it had been sapped somewhat during the first bout.
Go—he had to go on, that he knew. But he could not, wearing the band. His choice was as simple as that. Nevertheless, his dogged desire to find out what lay behind all this would not let him retreat. Slowly, with a feeling that he was surrendering to an enemy, Sander worked the wire circlet loose, stowing it in the front of his outer fur jacket beside the knot he had made for Rhin.
Rising to his feet, he approached the open, moving with the caution of a scout in unknown territory, his weapon ready to hand. Still, he was convinced that what he might find here could not be brought down by any dart, no matter how well aimed.
Out he went, stopping where he had been struck down before. For a moment there was nothing—nothing at all. And then—
Sander stiffened, set his teeth. That thought—the thought that was not his! Now he had no escape, for it held him enmeshed as securely as had the web of the forest men. Against his will, his most fervent desire, he marched forward, straight toward the middle of the three buildings.
Was this the answer to Rhin's desertion, to the open trail he had followed? Had Fanyi and all three of the animals been so compulsively drawn in the same fashion?
Sander wavered as he went, his will battling against his body in a way he would never have believed possible. Was this a taste of the "power" Fanyi had so often spoken of? But he could not believe that the girl he knew generated this.
He was not being compelled toward the tottering walls of the building after all. Rather, he was being pointed directly at an opening in the pavement on one side. He could see that this was not part of the original building, for the edging of the cut, though fashioned from blocks of stone, was very rough and crudely made in comparison to the rest of the structures.
The thought of going underground gave him an additional spurt of strength to battle the will controlling him, but not enough to break its hold. Nor could he raise his hand to the iron circlet he had so recklessly put aside.
Sander reached the crude-faced opening. He could see the end of a ladder, and his body, enslaved by that other's will, swung over and began to descend. This must have been a tight fit for Rhin. But undoubtedly the koyot had come this way, for Sander caught the acrid scent of the animal's body in the enclosed space.
This burrow was not dark, so there was no need for torches, as Sander saw when he reached the bottom of the ladder and looked down a corridor. There were cracks across the plain white walls, but none had split open. Set at intervals along those walls were rods giving forth a glow of light. Not all of them were burning; several were twisted and befogged. But enough were in action to give full sight.
Save for those bars of light, there was nothing else along the hall, not the break of a single door, while the way appeared to stretch on and on. Only, part way down its length, that same haze that had half veiled and distorted his view of the city hung again, so he could not be sure what lay behind it.
He was given no time to pause, for again his feet moved him forward, passing between the first two bars of light, heading forward. When he screwed his head around as far as he could to look back some moments later, Sander discovered that the distorting haze had closed in behind him even more thickly, so he could no longer see the ladder at all.
The corridor was wide enough for half a dozen men at least to march abreast and high enough so that Rhin would not have had to crawl on his belly to traverse it. The walls had a slick coating that looked shiny in the subdued light. But the floor, made of small, closely fitted red blocks, was not slippery.
Sander breathed in air that was fresh, carrying no such taint as had that of the tunnel under the city. Now and then he was sure he could detect a faint current against his cheek.
Then the way ended in a cross hall, wide and well lighted in the same fashion. This ran both right and left, its sources hidden by the haze in either direction.
No decision was allowed to Sander here either. His path was already decided for him. Mechanically, he swung left and walked steadily ahead.