Ashla's eyes closed; her head lolled forward as Naill lowered her on the bed place. Samera's cries still sounded, fainter now. That clamor—would it draw others from the garth? He sat back on his heels. The girl was changed enough to arouse fear and aversion, as was seen in the child's actions. The Believers did not kill—that was their creed. But he had been hunted away from Kosburg's garth by hounds that knew no law. And Samera could touch off such a hunt here and now.
He could leave, could easily be away before the hunt was up. But Ashla—to the settlers he owed nothing. However, she was no longer a garth woman; she was one of his own kind. Could he rouse her enough to get her away?
"Illylle!" Once more Naill caught her hands, moved by some hope as he called to the Iftin part of her. "Illylle—the Larsh come! We must home to Iftcan!"
Slowly and emphatically he repeated those words, close to her ear. Her eyes half opened; from under the droop of those swollen lids she looked up, appeared to see him. There was no fear nor repulsion in her gaze, only recognition of a sort, as if he were what she had expected.
"Iftcan?" Her lips shaped the word rather than repeated it aloud.
"Iftcan!" Naill promised. "Come!"
To his surprise and relief, when he tried to raise her, she was more than able to get to her feet. If Illylle possessed Ashla's half-alien body now, she had the power they needed. But Naill kept his arm about her shoulders, steering her out of the hut, catching up his pack as he went.
She cried out and covered her eyes with her hands when they came into the open.
"Aiiiii—there is pain!" Her voice had a different intonation.
"Do not look," he cautioned, "but come!" Naill half led, half supported her across the glade of the hut and into the forest beyond. At the same time he aimed a thought at Hoorurr.
"Watch—see if those come after!" He heard the whirr of wings as the quarrin took off.
Whatever spirit or determination supported Ashla, it continued to hold, kept her tottering on. In fact her steps grew firmer as she seemed to recover balance and energy. How long did they have? Would Samera's outburst bring hunters behind them? Naill clung to the memory that Kosburg's people had told stories of "monsters" but never of capturing one—they were never followed far into the fastness of the forest they were reputed to haunt.
If he could get Ashla to the river, and beyond that barrier, he did not believe that anyone would follow them into Iftcan. The woodland they were now traversing was speedily pierced, even at their wavering pace, and now they had before them the opening the wind had slashed. To guide and pull the tranced girl through that under the sun . . . Naill doubted he could do it.
Though he listened, he had not yet heard any hound yap. And Samera's cries had been ended for long precious moments. Perhaps the child had been visiting the glade hut in secret, against the orders of the garthmaster. If so, perhaps her terror would not override the other and longer-held fear of household punishment.
"Close your eyes, Illylle," Naill ordered. "Here the sun is bright."
He had slung the pack thongs over his left shoulder; his right arm was about her fever-hot body in support. Now he squinted his own eyes into narrowed slits as he tried to steer them a course in and out among the tumble of storm-scythed growth. Here and there some broken canopy of withering leaves provided temporary sanctuary where they could halt and drink. And Naill could ease his eyes by swabbing a dampened cloth across the closed lids. He feared to pause too long, to allow his companion to slip to the ground, lest he could not urge her up and on again. But she walked more strongly, caught up in another world from which she seemed to draw energy. Her muttered words told him that she was now matching those dreams that had haunted his own fevered flight to Iftcan—now she was Illylle.
The sacking robe, hanging in tatters about her thighs and knees, continued to catch on broken branch stubs or in tangles of vine. She jerked out of Naill's hold, when he tried to pull her free from the third such noosing, and unfastened the belt and the lacings at the throat, dropping it to lie in a dingy circle about her scratched and dusty feet.
"Bad!" She kicked at the roll of cloth. "Ahh. . . ." She stretched her arms up and out. A short, thin undergarment clung to her body.
Their struggles through the rough brush had rid her of the last straggling locks of hair, and under the sun the green pigmentation of her skin was complete. Before, judged by off-world standards, she had had no beauty, nothing but youth. Now, once you accepted the skin tint, the bare skull, the tall, pointed ears—why, she was fair!
Naill blinked from more than the excess of light. How deeply was Illylle now rooted in Ashla? Would she be horrified, frightened, when she learned what had happened to her—as he had been when he had first seen Ayyar's reflection in the pool?
A hound gave tongue and was answered by a leash fellow. Naill caught at her hand.
"Come!"
Her eyes flickered at him without any true awareness. She tried to pull free from his hold, shaking her head.
"The Larsh!" Naill traded on those alien memories. And it worked. She ran, heading straight for the next patch of woods, while he limped after past the tree roots where he had sheltered earlier. His twisted ankle hurt, and the half-healed wound in his calf throbbed as if a band of fire had been linked there. But the cool of the wood now cloaked them.
Perhaps Naill was a little lightheaded, too, or the Ayyar memory grew stronger, for he felt that behind them snuffed and ran . . . not the hounds from the garth . . . but things that were not yet men, only held the rough outward seeming of men. He felt that he must reach Iftcan before the Larsh gathered for the final test of strength against strength, life against life.
There was a flurry of wings overhead. Hoorurr had come, and the thought that reached from quarrin to Iftin was a drawing cord. Naill stumbled into the green world as if he plunged from a fire-haunted desert into the body of the sea.
"Throbyn . . . Throbyn . . . !"
Naill's head turned as the cry acted like a sharp slap across his sweating face to arouse him. Ashla was backed against a tree trunk, her nostrils expanded as she drew deep breaths. In these shadows her eyes had a luminescence. But once more there were tears on her cheeks, and she smeared the back of her hand across them with the gesture of a small child who has whimpered out her hurt to meet no comfort.
"Throbyn?"
"Illylle!" Naill took a step toward her.
"You are not Throbyn!" Her accusation was sharp. Then, before he could reach her, she was gone, flitting down the tree aisles.
Kalcrok pit, faintness born of her fever, a fall—all the dangers she could meet there alone sent him limping on. Would the same homing memory that had led him to Iftcan guide her north? The river . . . it was in flood! If she dared a crossing there unheedingly . . . !
"Hoorurr!" He appealed to the quarrin and watched, with only a very small lightening of his concern, the white wings beat after the vanished girl, leaving him to hobble after.
His pack, caught in the undergrowth, was a delaying irritant, but he dared not, or could not, bring himself to abandon it and the supplies. So, juggling it into a better position on his shoulder, Naill struck a crooked lope, which did not favor his injured leg as much as it needed. Whenever he drew a deeper breath than a gasp, there was a stab of pain beneath his lower ribs, and he thought longingly of the river as a spent swimmer might watch the nearest shore.
"Here!" Hoorurr's call—came from the west.
Trouble of some kind. Naill risked further hurt to leap a fallen tree, and struck left. The kalcrok trap—where did it lie? Even with its dreadful maker dead, the pit itself was a threat to the unwary. Had Ashla fallen there?
But Naill found her lying in a small dell by a spring, where drooping branches cut off the direct rays of the sun. She was crouched together, her arms about her knees, her head down upon them, her body shaken by shudders.
"Illylle?" Naill halted, called softly, not wanting to send her into another headlong flight.
At the sound of his voice her body stiffened, the line of her bent shoulders went rigid. But she did not lift her head or move.
"Illylle?" He took a step and then a second into the dell, not quite sure whether he could keep on his feet.
Now her head did come up—slowly. He could see her face. Her eyes were closed so tight that her features seemed twisted. Her mouth worked as if she screamed, yet she made no sound save the rasp of breath whistling in and out of her distended nostrils.
The pool! Now he knew what had shocked her into this almost mindless state of fear. As he had met Ayyar, so had she in this place seen Illylle's countenance for her own. Going down on his knees, Naill cupped his hands together and caught up a scoop of water, cold on his heated flesh. This he threw straight into her convulsed face.
Her eyes opened. First they held in a rigid stare as if she saw nothing but what had frozen her into close-locked fear—then that broke as she looked at him. And the increase of terror in her eyes, in her face, was frightening to watch. She squirmed away from Naill, her mouth still writhing out soundless screams. There could be no reasoning with her at this moment; she was beyond the wall shock had erected, deep in a place where sane speech could not reach her.
Naill threw himself forward, locked his hands around her thin wrists. She thrashed about under his weight, but he pinned her fast. The quickest and best way to deal with her might be to knock her out completely—but he doubted if he could. She was almost as tall as he, and her body had been hardened and strengthened by labor. Thin as she was, he could not carry her the rest of the way to the river.
Somehow he got a lashing of vine about her wrists and leaned away, panting, to consider the next move. How far was the river? Naill tried to place landmarks about him. And then he heard the hounds again—faint, to be sure, but with an exultant note in their cry. They had picked up the fugitives' trail, knew the scent was fresh. He hoped they were still leashed.
There was no heading directly for Iftcan. Even if Ashla came out of her present state of shock, and was eager and willing to make that journey with him, he doubted if they could recross the stream there. And if she must remain a desperate prisoner, it was worse than useless to try.
Westward there was a portion of the river he had passed on his way to the sea. Where the bed widened, the waters, even when storm-fed, would run more shallow. But—that fronted the waste that Hoorurr had warned against.
They could cross there, keep close to the riverbank, and so avoid all but the fringe of that waste—or turn completely west to the sea and abandon the seeking of Iftcan. That, Naill decided, was the wisest course.
Ashla huddled down, her bound hands pressed tightly against her, her eyes wide and wild as she watched his every move. But she no longer tried to scream. If he could only bring Illylle memory to the surface of her mind again!
"Illylle!" Naill did not try to touch her, made no move toward the shaking girl. "You are Illylle of the Iftin," he said slowly.
Her head shook from side to side, denying that.
"You are Illylle—I am Ayyar," he continued doggedly. "They hunt us—we must go—to the forest—to Iftcan."
Now her mouth worked spasmodically. But he did not believe it was a scream that could not win free. She made a small choking sound, and her tongue swept across her lips. Then she lunged, past him, to the side of the pool, hanging over the water and staring down at her reflection there. From mirror to man she glanced up, down, up. Apparently she was satisfying herself that there was a resemblance between what she saw in the water and Naill.
"I—am—not—" She choked again, her wailing appeal breaking through her hostility.
"You are Illylle," he responded. "You have been ill, with the fever, and you have had ill dreams."
"This is a dream!" she caught him up.
Naill shook his head. "This is real. That"—he waved a hand southward—"is the dream. Now—listen!"
The baying reached their ears.
"Hounds!" She identified that sound correctly, glanced apprehensively over her shoulder. "But why?"
"Because we are of the Iftin, of the forest. We must go!"
Naill shouldered the pack, caught up the end of vine dangling from the binding on her wrists. Briefly he wondered why it was so important that he take her with him, away from her kin. Only they weren't her kin any longer, that hunting party coursing "monsters" with their hounds. They were changelings together, he and she, their loneliness so halved. He had known loneliness in the Dipple when Malani had fallen ill and strayed so often into her chosen dream escape. But the loneliness he had known when Ayyar claimed him had been the worst of all.
"Come!" That was an order. When he saw that she could not easily rise, he drew her up to him. She shrank in his hold, her face a little averted as if to escape looking directly at him. What if she never accepted the change?
Naill started on, pulling at the vine tie. She came with him, her eyes half closed, her mouth set. But she held to his pace; she did not drag back.
"You are hurt—there is blood . . ."
Naill was startled at her first words. He had stains above the boot top on his bad leg, but they were already stiff and drying.
"I was caught in a kalcrok pit." He answered with the truth, wondering if Illylle memory could supply the rest.
"That is an evil creature, living partly underground," he added. "The wound was healing. I fell and opened it again."
"This kalcrok—you killed it?" Her question was simple, such as a child might ask. "With the big knife?" Her bound hands gestured toward the sword in the sheath of his sword belt.
"With the sword," Naill corrected absently. "Yes, I killed it—because I was lucky."
"You have lived here always—in the forest?"
"No." Naill took the chance to drive home the idea of the fate they shared. "I was a laborer—on a garth—and I found a treasure."
"A treasure," she interrupted, still in that childish tone. "Green and pretty—so very pretty!" She had her hands up, trying to pull them apart as if holding the necklace once more. "I had one too—green—like the woods."
"Yes," Naill conceded, "a treasure such as you found. Then—then I had the Green Sick—and afterward I was Ayyar, though I am also Naill Renfro." Could he make her understand, he wondered.
"I am Ashla Himmer. But you called me by another name."
"You are Illylle—or in part you are Illylle."
"Illylle." She repeated the name softly. "That is pretty. But I sinned! I sinned or I would not now be a monster!"
Naill took a chance. He stopped short and turned to face her.
"Look at me, Illylle!" he commanded. "Look well—think. Do you see a monster? Do you truly see a monster?"
At first it appeared that she might answer that with a ready affirmative. But as his gaze continued to hold hers, steady and with all the demand he could put into it, she hesitated. Frankly she inspected him from bare-skulled head to mud-stained boots and back again.
"No—" she said slowly. "You are different—but you are not a monster, only different."
"And you are different, Illylle, but you are not a monster. You are not ugly. For an Iftin you are fair—not ugly, just different."
"Not a monster—not ugly—for an Iftin, fair." She repeated that wonderingly. "Please"—she held out her bound hands—"loose me. I shall not run, you who are Ayyar and also a sinner named Naill Renfro."
He slit the vines and threw them away. Her acceptance had come more quickly and more completely than he had dared hope a short time before.
"Tell me—do we go now to a city, a city of trees? I think I remember those tree towers. But how can I?" she asked, disturbed.
"Iftcan. Yes, there is such a city, but much of it is now dead," Naill told her. "What you remember is from long ago."
"But how—and why?" She asked his own questions of him.
"How—I can guess in part. Why"—Naill shrugged—"that I do not know. But what I have discovered is this." As they went he told her of what he had found in Iftsiga, of the treasure buried at her own holding, and of all he had learned or suspected.
"So—those who sin by taking the forbidden things"—she summed it up in her own way—"they are punished—by becoming as we. And so the Forest Devil does tempt us, even as the Speaker has always said."
"But is that so?" Naill countered. "Is this truly punishment, Illylle? Do you hate the forest and are you unhappy here as you would be if this was a punishment?" He was arguing awkwardly, perhaps, but he was sure he must alter her rationalization of the Believers' creed and her application of it to their own problem. If she believed that the forest was a punishment for the damned, then for her it might be just that.
"The Speaker said—" she began, and then paused, plainly facing some thought, perhaps not new to her but one of which she was still wary. She stopped short and put out her hand to the tree beside which she stood. It was an odd gesture she made, as if her warm flesh curved about a loved and beautiful possession. "This—this is not evil!" she cried aloud. "And the city of trees, of which I dreamed, that is not evil! But good—very good! To Ashla there was evil—to Illylle good! For Illylle there is no Speaker, no one to say this is bad when it is good! So"—she was smiling now, looking at Naill with a light in her eyes, on her face, the light of one making a discovery of a new and joyful freedom—"so now I am Illylle for whom the world is good and not filled with sin—always so many, many sins, so many sins where the Rule holds the listing."
Naill laughed involuntarily, and a moment later she echoed him. It was as if some of that feeling of joy had winged between them. At that moment Naill felt no weariness, no pain. He wanted to run—to cry aloud in this new feeling of freedom and delight.
But behind, the hounds bayed, and striking deeply into his mind came a warning from Hoorurr.
"They come faster, forest brother—go!"
Naill caught at Illylle's hand and started on at the best pace he could muster.