"Hoorurr,"—Naill had made of the bird's call a name—"I don't think they are coming again—soon." He sat in the upper door to Iftsiga, a perch he had made his own for hours at a time while he waited for the unknown to return.
Three days—or rather nights, for the nights were now his time of action—and no sign that any Ift had climbed that ladder or made camp within the tree bole for years. Yet Naill's nose had told him that he had arrived there only hours after them that first day.
In spite of patient mental probing and attempts to communicate with the quarrin, he could not learn whether the bird had been left behind by any of his kind, or if the relation between the winged tree dweller and the footed ones had been more than a casual one of simple acquaintance. With no speech in common, the mental contact could convey only imperative ideas and needs.
But Hoorurr was company and Naill fell into the habit of talking to the bird. There was no reason to remain in Iftsiga if it was now deserted. And who had been those temporary indwellers? Other changelings such as himself—or remnants of the true Iftin who had survived, broken shadows of what they had once been?
The trouble was that Ayyar's knowledge still reached Naill only in bits and pieces, and most often widely separated and disconnected bits and pieces. Matters pertaining to the daily round of maintaining life—that information came to Naill easily. He had known just where to go within the tree to tap the water supply; he knew food supplies and how to seek them out. But all the rest—those strange memories were hazy, impossible to fit together.
Once on Janus there had been two peoples—the Iftin dwelling in trees, possessing knowledge that allowed them to shape and tend growing things so that they had a kinship of feeling, if not of blood and body, with the forest; and the Larsh, more primitive, not resembling the forest men either mentally or physically, fearing the "magic" of the tree peoples, dreading it enough to want to kill—to stamp it out—as the garthmen fought to eradicate the forest nowadays.
The Larsh were not off-world settlers, though. And the war between Iftin and Larsh had been centuries ago. Iftin had been dead a long, long time. Then why did Ayyar remember? And how had Ayyar become in part Naill Renfro—or Renfro Ayyar?
Whenever his thoughts poured into that familiar path, Naill was uneasy, sometimes treading around the tree chambers while Hoorurr clicked his bill impatiently.
"No," Naill repeated now, "they are not returning. All was stored here for a period of waiting. Those swords were in oiled covering, the rest was put away. They have gone—so I go after!"
If he could pick up the trail of those who had been here, find them, then he would know the truth! And there had been no sign that either settlers or port flyer had ventured this side of the river. He had never heard of Iftcan at the garth. Yet such a forest space with the trees already dead would have been seized upon by the settlers had they known of it. But was he too late in trying to trace the unknowns?
"Hoorurr,"—he looked straight into the bird's big eyes—"this I must do—go after them." With his mind as well as his lips, Naill strove to make his need plain, experiencing once more that weird mix-match of thought patterns.
The bird stretched wide wings, moved the injured one experimentally, and then sounded its haunting call. Hoorurr would manage, but Naill must walk this path alone; the quarrin did not intend to leave Iftcan and its chosen hunting grounds.
It was one thing to come to such a decision, another to carry it out. Naill, down from Iftsiga, the sapling ladder once more concealed as he had first found it, stood in the shadows, the difficulty of his quest brought forcibly home to him as he looked around. He did not believe that he would find those he sought still within the bounds of Iftcan, even if others of the tree towers still lived.
But now—north, south, west—which way? South were the spreading garths. He thought he could safely rule out that direction. And to the northeast was the spaceport, eastward more garths. Somehow he believed he would not discover those he sought too near any off-world place. West, where the maps said one of the narrow fingers of sea lay?
In the end he decided to let his path be set by chance—and the wind. For the wind sighing through the leaves was oddly company of a sort, a comforting voice overhead—and the wind pushed him west. He had made his first mistake in lingering so long at Iftsiga; the trace of scent which might have guided him must now be lost. Yet he still depended upon his nose to pick up hints of life in the dead forest.
Life there was—Ayyar memory identified most of it—animals, flying things, in the patches of vegetation that straggled among the bone-bare boles of the dead tree towers—more as he came to the First Ring.
Here the trees were scorched with ancient fire, eaten away as they lay toppled to the ground. And the spreading wasteland was dreary but already half covered once again by a ragged growth of rank things, things that the Iftin would neither encourage nor allow to root near their city in the old days. Naill's half knowledge took him on detours to avoid certain plants from which came a stench to twist the nostrils. And there were thorn-studded vines running lines to entrap unwary feet.
In that unwholesome mass lurked other life inimical to his species. This was a waste where Larsh destruction had begun a work of defilement, and the evil that had always waited for a chance to break the defense wall had entered in greedily, to take possession of the once clean city. The inner part of Iftcan had become a sad place; this was a filthy charnel house, and Naill hesitated to force a path in that direction. As he stood there, Ayyar memory stirred, supplied a strange emotion. He felt more than disgust . . . danger . . . a barely understood warning that something old and perilous lay there.
There remained the river. To travel along its bank should eventually bring him to the sea. Why the sea? The forest was Iftin country—not that restless water to the west. Yet . . . the wind blew him seaward.
Naill cut away from the edge of the waste to the running water, reaching the river, he believed, not far from the point where he had swum to safety. The moon made a silver ribbon, waved and broken by the current, to serve as his trail marker.
When dawn showed gray, he made himself a nest in a thicket well shaded from the sun, and lay there, lulled by the water's murmur. In that half-drowsing state, another scrap of Ayyar memory made for him a vivid picture of a boat—oared by men who wore the Iftin dress, watched shadows with Iftin eyes, bore Iftin swords—steered down between threatening rocks where water boiled, a boat, bearing Iftin warriors to the sea. This was an old trail, then, this water one.
Naill was on the trail again in the late evening when he found the camp site, coming down into a rock-enclosed hollow to stand, nostrils expanding, picking up that lingering trace of scent that the wind had not yet pushed away. He went down on his knees, studying the floor of the hollow, trying to pick out some track that would prove his guess correct.
River sand filled that stone-walled cup, and he sifted the coarse stuff through his fingers, until he uncovered a fussan pod, split open, seed gone. A pod here with no bush nearby to shed it naturally—he was right! This was the path of those he sought. As had the boatmen of his memory, they were heading seaward!
His pace became a trot when he left that camp; he was ridden by an increasing feeling of urgency, that he must catch up with the strangers, reach them soon, or it would be too late. Too late? Why? Just another of the many mysteries that had been his portion on Janus.
But Naill could not throw off that feeling, and it became so strong that he did not pause with the dawn, but kept on, trying to travel under cover. By mid-morning he was forced to admit he could not go any farther. For the forest was dwindling. Since early light the larger trees, standing fewer and farther apart, had vanished altogether. Now smaller growth and bush were common, with wide strips of grass open between them.
Naill found shelter in a shade that was neither constant nor thick enough to make him truly comfortable. His head pillowed on his arm, his body and legs aching with fatigue, he tried to rest. But that need for speed ate at him, so this time was only one of impatient waiting for the dusk.
In the twilight he went on into the open, to top a hill there and walk into a change of wind. Now the breeze was chill, salt-laden. Beyond lay ridges of smaller hills, some half sand masses. And ahead of those were curling feathers of white marking waves along a strand.
Immediately before Naill was a low scoop of land where the river emptied into the ocean. Cliffs raised walls on either hand. Naill looked to them and his hand came to his mouth.
Light! A spark of light! He could not have been mistaken—surely he could not! And why such a beacon there? A signal? Or some off-world explorers' encampment? Prudence dictated caution to temper his first wild desire to run toward that light. He waited in suspense, but there was no second spark there. Had he been mistaken, seeing what he had hoped to see?
Best go there and be sure. Naill started down the rise, slipping and sliding through the loose earth, heading for the northern cliff point. Distances must have been deceiving, or else the tricky footing in the sand hills slowed his progress. He had no way of measuring time, but he thought that at least an hour had passed and he had yet to reach the foot of the cliff where the spark had blazed. He could smell the sea in the wind, hear the pound of the waves along the shore. Otherwise he might be plodding through an empty and deserted world.
Here was the cliff. Surveying its rugged wall, Naill sighted nothing except the rock. But that offered hand holds and toe openings, and he could climb, reach the crown, make sure.
Naill pulled himself up and over, sprawled panting. He had been right! They had been here, those from Iftcan, or some like them, and a very short time ago. He rolled over on his side, too spent for the moment to rise, and saw a hollow in a pinnacle of rock that made a pointed, easily detected finger in the night sky. And in that hollow . . . !
On hands and knees he came to it, thrust his hand out to explore a plate of stone. On it were ashes yet warm enough to make him jerk back his fingers. A signal surely. . . . Set why? For whom?
The reason must lie still beyond. Naill clung to the rock and wriggled out to the very edge of the northern drop. Again he looked down into a sea basin. The cliff on which he was had a twin perhaps half a mile away, and between them the waves washed well inland, making a natural and protected harbor. A harbor which now sheltered . . .
A ship?
But that object was unlike any ship Naill had ever seen. He would rather have thought it a log, one of the gigantic logs from the old forest, bobbing up and down in the hold of the waves. There were no oars, no sails, no break in the rounded surface lying above the waterline. And this time Ayyar memory did not supply him with an explanation.
Yet he knew that that huge log did not ride in the waves without purpose. Did it hold men, men such as himself, as the tree houses of Iftcan had held and sheltered? And if so, where would it carry them now?
There was no sign of any movement, except the slow swing of the log in the waves. That signal. . . . Naill studied the drop below him, seeking a path to the water's edge. But he was forced to retreat some distance inland before he found a ledge leading to a zigzag cutting, which revealed the fact that visits to the signal post on the cliff must be regularly made. He rounded a last outshoot pinnacle and met a faint path leading to the beach.
That log, which had apparently floated without control or direction when he had watched from the cliff, was now turned end on toward the sea and was traveling out, against the toss of the waves, as if below the water surface some propelling agent moved.
"No!" Naill cried that aloud, ran stumbling through the sand to the water's edge, where a wave foamed about his ankles. There was nothing to be seen save the log. And that was moving with a purpose, under command, he did not doubt. It was already passing between the outer hooks of the cliffs, fast turning into only a black blot on the water.
Too late—he had come too late!
Slowly he retreated out of the wash of the foam, and it was then that he saw those other marks, indentations one could not truly call footprints, a cluster of them where the sand had been widely distributed . . . the embarkation point?
Since the tracks were all that remained, he studied them. They marked, he believed, the end of a fairly well-defined trail leading back into the interior of the continent. One source of answer to his collection of mysteries, the log—which was more than a log—was now beyond his pursuit. But this trail, did it lead from Iftcan? Or from some other and more enlightening beginning? It was recent, made within hours, and it was the only trace the strangers had left him.
Naill turned his back on the sea, where the log was now only a black point, and began to walk along the trail of those who had manned that peculiar vessel.
Much later he lay on a mat of leaves against the trunk of a tree, peering through a screen of brush at what he had least expected to discover. At the end of the trail he had traced, through two nights, well away from the seashore, across the river again, and southward he had found more settlers' Fringe lands. During the past hour he had been skirting the ragged edges of a garth—not Kosburg's, too far west for that, and it was smaller, a newer beginning for some less well-established settler.
The strangers he scouted after had come here from the northeast—perhaps straight from Iftcan. And they had spent some time slipping in and around the outer edges of the clearing to the south and west, as if they were on the hunt for something—or someone. He had discovered one place where at least two encamped for some time—perhaps through a day or more. Had they been spying on the activity about the garth? Planning a raid? They had certainly taken every precaution to keep their presence a secret.
Now he had come to the focal point of their explorations. They had scouted, they had spied, and then they had finished here—finished what? Naill only knew that from this place led the return trail to the seashore. So here their mission had been either accomplished or abandoned.
It was early morning, leaving him very little time to make his own search before having to retire to the tree hollow where those others had waited out the sunlight hours before him. He could hear the sounds of awakening life at the garth several fields' lengths away—the howl of a hound, the chittering complaint of a phas disturbed against its will. If the garthmaster was a pusher, his field laborers might be hurried out before dawn to start their day's work here.
There was one glimmering of an idea that had ridden Naill for the past half hour. He had begun to believe that what he sought here was buried: a cache set skillfully and with cunning to be discovered by someone from the garth, treasure trove—not remaining hidden from vanished years in the past, but from days earlier. And if his guess was the truth, he believed he knew now where to look for its confirmation.
He scrambled around a log, began a careful search of the ground. But what he sought was not located near the fallen trees waiting to be branch-stripped and hauled away. It had been placed in the midst of a tangle of wild berry bushes. The swollen, yellow fruited brambles had been carefully rearranged to hide turned earth, but there was a gleam of metal artfully exposed to catch the eye.
And the berries—Naill recognized those, too. They were sweet, entrancing to anyone who was thirsty. The bait was excellently planned. Any man working here would be drawn to strip a handful of the fruit during a rest period, perhaps to pick more to share with his fellows, pick enough to uncover that piece of metal, and then . . .
Naill twitched the bramble back into place. A call from the garth moved him to haste in his withdrawal. He had been right; they were already heading for clearing work, early as it was. And if they brought hounds with them . . . !
He slipped among the bushes and ran, hoping that the workers were not accompanied by dogs, believing he could outwit any settler who tried heavy-footedly to follow his trail. Minutes later he was at the hiding place the trappers had established, listening intently to the growing noise of a phas-drawn roller bumping over the fields in the direction of the clearing, near which the bramble hung.
Trappers—he was certain of that now—trappers who had left a baited trap! He had been caught in such a trap. Now he was able to fit one more piece into his broken picture. The tube he had hidden, held, wanted for his own—and the Green Sick. Was one born of the other? That could be. Those who sinned by concealing or handling the treasure were punished speedily for that sin—cause and effect, which was closer to the truth than the settlers knew for sure.
But the purpose of this elaborate scheme still eluded him. By some alien means—and Naill was now certain his illness was no natural ailment, unless it could be a Janusan disease induced and controlled by will—he had become a different person, strange to his former self, not only physically but mentally, too.
Traps—trappers—the log ship—Iftcan—Ayyar. . . . Naill's head ached dully. It was as if inside his skull there was a stirring, a battering against some tightly bolted door . . . some hidden part of him fighting for freedom. He caught the reek of man scent, of animal odor. But there was no tonguing from a hound. For the period of the day he must keep under cover.
As much as his senses flinched from the alien activities of the garth, Naill knew that he would remain—if not in this special hideout, then nearby—until he witnessed the springing of the trap, learned what did follow its discovery.