The storm that had raged in the forest as Naill won free from the kalcrok pit did not quickly blow itself out. His wounds tended with the same salve that he had used on Hoorurr's seared wing, he managed the climb into Iftsiga and lay there on the mats as the living wood of the chamber walls about him throbbed and sang with the fury of the gale.
Once there was a crash, heavier than the roll of thunder, and the whole of Iftsiga quivered in sympathy until Naill feared that an earthquake shock had threatened the rooting of the citadel. He guessed that one of the long-dead tree towers had been struck by lightning and wind-toppled.
There was no way to mark the passing of time, no period of sun alternating with the welcome cool of night. Hoorurr shifted from chamber to chamber, closing his wings to clamber down or up through the ladder hole, visiting Naill, or withdrawing restlessly again. The quarrin was unhappy, resenting the imprisonment forced upon him by the storm.
Then Naill awoke to silence, aware as he tentatively stretched his legs that the healing wounds no longer smarted, that he could move with a measure of comfort. And the pound of the wind was stilled, the tree silent, no longer pressed or battered.
He replaced his torn and soiled clothing with fresh from the stores; swung up and out on the entrance branch to look out over the forest in the fading, pale, watery sunlight. The storm had indeed wrought changes. Those trees that had shown bone-gray among the shorter green of new growth had been shattered. Smoke curled from charred and smoldering trunks. To the west where that wasteland of evil stretched, there was a drifting murk, as if fire burned thereabouts.
From this perch Naill could see across the river through the storm-torn gaps of foliage. There was a new chill in the air. He had landed on Janus—how many weeks ago? Now as he tried to count that tale of planet-spent days, first in his head, and then childishly on his fingers, he found too many discrepancies. But he had been brought to Kosburg's in late mid-summer. The days were now chilling into the fall season. And he knew from what he had heard at the garth that when winter gripped this land, it could be sere and bitter.
Yet—Ayyar memories again—there had been other winters long ago when men had not been bound to shelter against storm blasts and leaves lingered, if more heavily silvered, until new opening buds pushed them free in the spring. But that had been before the death of Iftcan.
Now the garths must be preparing for the cold season. And this past gale had brought with it the first whispers of the autumn change. Naill was glad for the cloak about him when the wind reached exploring fingers to the branch on which he sat. Winter—the leaves gone, the forest naked . . . then if there was a hunt, any fugitive would have far less of a chance. Had it been approaching winter that had sent the strangers from Iftcan to the sea?
He bit on that, savored what it might mean, as he might bite doubtfully on a newly discovered fruit—to find it sour. One could remain here in Iftsiga. But winter was the season in which the garths burned off the Fringe. Fire so set was never controlled as far as its spreading in the forest was concerned. The farther the flames ate into the woodlands, the better the settlers like it. And the dead trees about here would make one great torch of the whole dead city.
Somewhere to the west, nearer the sea . . . Naill considered that move thoughtfully. And in so going west, he could swing by the frontier garth—see what had happened there to Ashla. Tonight—no, perhaps a day's more rest . . . then with his wounds less sore, he could move fast and quietly.
That night he hunted with Hoorurr, the bird dropping noiselessly to buffet a borfund with beating wings and slashing talons until Naill's sword brought an end to the bewildered animal's life. The man kindled a small fire among stones, toasted lean flavorsome meat over the flames on sharpened sticks, and found the taste good after his long diet of bread from the strangers' stores, the berries and seed pods of the forest. This had been done many times, Ayyar memory told him—this was the old free life of the Iftinkind.
The third night after the end of the storm, Naill sorted carefully through the supplies in the tree chamber and made up a journey pack, which must serve him if he did not or could not return over a period that might run into weeks. Another change of clothing, including skin boots, the bread stuff, a pouch of healing ointment, a knife he found. During that search for supplies, he opened and investigated every box and chest in the upper chamber—but he did not touch those of the treasure room below.
There was a reluctance in him now to have anything to do with those objects. Almost he could believe the settlers' conviction that danger clung to the caches, and he had no desire to test that theory further. As he stood at the foot of Iftsiga before setting out, Naill was struck by a sudden feeling of peril, so intense only determined effort of will set him moving.
As he went, Hoorurr winged down the forest aisle over his head, uttering a querulous, complaining cry. From quarrin to man a distorted message sped . . . danger! Naill paused, alert, looking up to the bird now perched over head.
"Where?" His lips shaped the same word his mind formed.
But the concept that answered him was too fragmentary, too alien, to provide any real answer. Only that the danger was not immediate, only that it was old, old maybe as Iftcan itself.
"Fire? Settlers?" Naill pushed his demand for knowledge.
Neither. No, this was something else. Then he got an answer that was sharper, clearer. From the west came the threat—out of the splotch of the wastes. Keep away, well out of that. Old ills dwelt there, which might spread again were they to awake. Awake? How? What? But Hoorurr provided no understandable reply.
"All right!" Naill agreed. "I go this way." He tried to mind-picture a southwestern route, back along the river, to the garth where he had seen Ashla.
Hoorurr's orb eyes regarded him measuringly. Now there was no flicker of thought from the bird. He might be considering Naill's reply, turning it over in his mind to compare with a conclusion of his own.
"Do you go, too?" Naill asked. To have the keen-eyed, winged hunter with him would mean doubled security. He had no doubt the quarrin's senses were far keener than his own.
Hoorurr's feather-tufted head turned on round shoulders. The quarrin faced west—that west against which he had just warned. Now his wings mantled as if he were about to launch at some prey—or some enemy—and he hissed, not cried aloud. That hiss was filled with cold venom and rage. He was a figure of pure defiance.
For it was defiance! Hoorurr was posturing against something to be feared. Again Naill tried desperately to reach the quarrin's mind, to learn, to share in what information was locked in that feather-topped skull.
With his wings folded neatly against body again, talons scraped along the branch as Hoorurr sidled to a point directly above Naill's head. The quarrin gave voice once more, this time with no hiss, but a clacking of beak the man had come to learn was a signal of assent.
They found the river high, the rocks necklaced with foam. Debris loosened by the storm rafted down with the current. To Hoorurr the crossing was no problem. He flapped over to a tree on the opposite bank. Naill moved along the shore, studying the lie of the rocks and calculating the possibility of using them as stepping stones.
Once there had been a bridge there, its arches long since tumbled and riven apart by numerous floods. Perhaps only Ayyar memory could have moved Naill's eyes now to pick up those points, align them, and see what way to take. A chancy path with the rocks wet, the water awash over at least two.
Settling his pack to balance evenly, he took a running leap. Somehow he made it—though he was shaking with more than the chill of water spray when he reached the far bank and sank to his knees, a little weak and a great deal amazed at the success of his efforts. On this side of the river the storm rack was as evident. And, not having Hoorurr's advantage, Naill had to make wide detours to avoid the tangles where trees—not as huge as those of Iftcan, but still large enough to amaze off-worlders—had gone down, taking their lesser brethren with them. There was a wide path of such wreckage cutting across the shortest route to the garth, and the hour was past dawn before Naill worked his way through that to take shelter for the day.
When did he become conscious of that thin, wailing plaint? The sun was no longer watery. Its rays beat into the opening left by the storm winds' fury, prisoning him in a half cave beneath upturned roots. And the sounds of the daytime dwellers of the woods were all about him. Small creatures had come into the new open space to root about in the disturbed soil.
But this sound . . . Naill lay with his head on his pack listening, giving it the same attention that he had afforded Hoorurr's warning. No, this was no animal cry—no bird call! Low, continuous, wearing on the ears—and coming from some distance.
How long before he was able to associate that in his mind with pain? Some creature trapped in the snarl of wind-tossed wood, pinned between trunk and earth, or mangled and left to suffer? Naill sat up, hunched together, his head turning southward as hearing traced that sound. Sometimes it sank until it was scarcely audible; again its keening wail rose, broke, until he was sure he could almost distinguish words! A lost settler?
Naill crawled to the outer opening of his burrow, tried to shade his eyes well enough to see through the shattering brightness of the sun. He could just make out a mass of green several hundred yards away that the destructive path of the whirlwind had spared rather than flattened.
From there . . . or from beyond? Out in the open he would be as good as blind. But if he could work his way on to that other strip of standing wood, he might be able to make some progress. And the call—if call it was—pulled him, would not let him settle back into his hole.
Naill pursed his lips, imitated Hoorurr's hoot as he had learned to do in summons. The answering beak snap came from where the quarrin roosted in the upturned root mass over Naill's head.
"See—what—calls." The man thought that out, aimed the order at the bird. "See what calls."
Hoorurr snapped angrily, protesting. But he gave a hop to the next tree trunk and walked along it. His gray-white feathers made a blinding dazzle in the sun as he took off with a flap of wings. The quarrin preferred the night, but he could move better than Naill by day.
Naill tried to mark the shortest distance across that open space to the trees beyond. And always came that crying.
He shouldered his pack and moved out, squinting as he tried to avoid pitfalls underfoot. With one twist of his ankle that wrenched a half-healed wound the kalcrok had dealt and that left him limping, he made it across the open.
That crying—it did hold words, slurred together, undistinguishable, but words. And it came from a point that could not be too far from the garth fields. What had happened? Had the holding been swept by one of the devastating winds, its people driven into the forest they dreaded?
"One . . . alone . . . not right . . ."
Hoorurr's message came from up ahead. One alone—but what "not right" meant was a puzzle. Hurt—trapped? Naill plunged on. He came to the edge of a glade—and understood.
The broken and forsaken hut Kosburg had shown the newcomers as a warning, its moldering ruins shunned by everyone on the garth—here was another such, hardly more than a lean-to of brush. Hoorurr perched on the highest point of its flimsy roof.
Naill made a second rush across the open and stooped to enter the place. The voice had fallen to a muttering. He smelled the fetid odor of sickness, and his foot struck against an earthen water jar, which rolled away empty.
She had no mask, no hood now, and her sack robe was torn so that her restlessly moving hands and her arms were bare. The pallid skin was splotched with great blotches of green, and masses of loose hair had fallen away from her ever-turning head. Her eyes were open, fixed on the brush of the roof covering, but they did not see that—or anything about her, Naill judged.
He slipped his arm under her, raising her rolling head, steadying it against his own shoulder while he moistened her cracked lips from the water bottle he had filled at the river.
She licked her lips and made a faint sucking sound, so he let her drink more. Under his touch her skin was fire-hot, and she was plainly deep in the fever of the Green Sick. He settled her down once more and looked about the hut. The girl lay on a pile of torn and earth-stained bags, which must have been used for the storing of grain earlier. A plate was by the door, with some crusts on it and a mash of bruised fruit over which insects now crawled. Naill sent that spinning out with a grim ejaculation. Food—water—a bed of sorts! But what more could a sinner hope for?
In spite of the changes of the sickness, he knew her for Ashla. And Ashla must be a proven sinner by the rules of her own people.
Naill's expression was a half snarl as he glanced momentarily in the direction of the garth from which she must have been expelled as soon as they recognized the illness that had struck her down. But he had survived and, he suspected, so had others—perhaps many of them. There was no reason to believe it would be different for Ashla.
"Water—" Her hands groped out as if searching for the container she had long since emptied.
Naill helped her drink for the second time, and then wiped her face and hands with moistened grass. She sighed.
"Green—green fire . . ."
At first he thought she spoke of her illness, remembering his own delirium. Then Naill saw her hands were spanning apart, and he recalled how she had stood that day holding the beauty of the alien necklace before her in just the same fashion.
"Cool green of Iftcan . . ."
He caught those words eagerly. Iftcan! Did Ashla, deep in the clutch of the fever, now also house a changeling memory, know what had never been a part of the garth or of her own settler history?
On impulse Naill took her two hot hands into his, holding them tightly against her small attempts to pull free.
"Iftcan," he repeated softly. "In the forest—cool forest. . . . Iftcan stands—in the forest."
The restless turning of Ashla's head slowed. Her eyes were closed, and suddenly from beneath those lids tears gathered, made silken tracks down her sunken, splotched cheeks.
"Iftcan is dead!" Her voice was firmer, held an authority that surprised him.
"It is not—not all of it," he assured her softly. "Iftsiga stands, living still. Cool—green—the forest lives. Think of the forest, Ashla!"
Frown lines appeared over her closed eyes. The heavy brows that had given her face harshness were gone now, as was most of her hair. Naill wondered how close she was to the complete change. Her ears—yes, they were definitely pointed, larger than natural for the human kind.
Now her hands tightened on his, rather than trying to pull free.
"The forest—but I am not Ashla." Again that note of firmness, of decision. "I am Illylle—Illylle!" Some of that confidence trailed away.
"Illylle," Naill repeated. "And I am Ayyar—of the Iftin."
But if she could still hear his voice, his words meant nothing to her now. More of the tears ran down her cheeks from beneath her lowered eyelids. And her lips shaped a small, soft moaning, not unlike the crying that had drawn him there.
Water—he needed more water. But to return to the river . . . the journey was too long to be made in daylight. Naill shaped a thought for Hoorurr, hoping the bird might guide him to some forest spring.
"In the leaves—above," came an answer Naill did not understand until he freed himself from Ashla's hold and crawled into the glade about the hut. The quarrin fluttered from the roof, reached a tree branch well overhead, and moved along it toward a cluster of differently shaped leaves the man had not noticed before—some form of parasite growing there.
The center portion of those drifting stem-branches was a large rounded growth, not unlike a bowl fastened levelly on the branch of the supporting tree. Naill climbed, worked his way out, and did indeed find a source of water—two full cups or more held in that tough fiber basin—and he filled his water bottle from its bounty.
He was in the hut again sponging Ashla's face, when a sharp gasp brought him half around to see a figure in the doorway. Masked and hooded, but small—small as one of the girl children who had accompanied Ashla to pick berries days earlier. The newcomer held a basket before her, and now she backed away—raising that as if to use it as a frail barrier against some expected attack.
"No—no—please!" It was a shrill, frightened wail, rising fast to a scream that held no words at all. "Go—go away!"
She flung the basket at him, a water bottle spinning from it to strike against his arm. Then she stooped and caught up a clod of earth, letting fly without aim.
"Let Ashla be—let her be!" Once more she screamed.
Behind Naill, Ashla herself stirred. A hand caught at his shoulder, as, without apparently seeing him, she dragged herself up on the bed of sacking.
"Samera—" Her voice was a hoarse croak, but in it was recognition, a sane awareness.
The child froze, the eyes frantic where they were framed by the mask holes. Then she screamed again, this time touching a terror that was beyond words.
She fell, twisted about, and scrambled away on all fours, still screaming, the terror in those cries so great that Naill was kept from any move after her.
"Samera! Samera!" Ashla swayed forward, tried to crawl after the little girl. Naill caught her shoulders, drew her back against him in spite of her weak struggles. Now he partially understood Samera's horror. The change in Ashla was almost complete; he steadied a woman who was now as much a changeling as himself. Ashla had truly become Illylle of the Iftin and a monster in the sight of those of her own kind.