"Tell me—why do you do this?" Slim in the forest dress, Ashla was almost one with the twilight shadows as she halted briefly between two drooping-branched trees. So much had she bent to Naill's will that they had gone west for a space instead of directly south, that they might approach the Himmer garth from that direction, thus taking what precautions they could against any sentries along the Fringe.
"Why do you seek Samera?" Naill countered.
"She is my sister. For her I am responsible."
"You are Ift, I am Ift—in that much we are now kin."
"Not blood kin," she protested. "You can go on to the sea, find those others who you spoke of. This is no work of yours."
"Can I?" Naill asked deliberately. "Am I sure there are others of the Iftin after all? What proof have I? Some tracks, too loosely set to be sure of more than that something walked erect through sand and on earth; a signal on a cliff already burned to ash when I reached it; sight of a log floating out to sea. . . . No, I have seen no Iftin—I have only guessed and pieced together a story, and what I guessed may be very wrong."
He heard her breath catch, saw her head turn toward him.
"But there have been others with the Green Sick—others left such as we."
"How many?" he pressed.
Ashla shook her head. "I do not know. The illness was a punishment sent to sinners. No garth wished to publish the guilt of its people aloud. We would hear whispers of this one and that struck down. But of my own knowledge I do not know of more than five."
"Five—from this district alone?"
"From the south Fringe line—and that was in five years."
"A steady drain—but why?" He repeated the old question. "I wonder. . . . How many in all the years since a first off-world landing was made here? And are all those now . . . Iftin?"
"You are free to search and see," Ashla pointed out swiftly.
"I am not free. I stay with the Ift I have found. But in return I ask one promise."
Her chin lifted. "With Samera there, I promise nothing!"
"Then just listen. If you find that what you wish is impossible—that you cannot reach her, or that she will not come—then will you go without lingering?"
"You are so very sure she will not come with me. Why?"
"I cannot make you understand with words—you will see for yourself."
"She will come—if I can reach her!" Ashla's confidence was unshaken. "The dusk is now full. May we not go now?"
Hoorurr had vanished when they had taken the road to the Mirror two days earlier. Naill wished for the quarrin now. With the bird scouting before them, an invasion of the garth would not have seemed quite so foolhardy. But lacking Hoorurr, they must depend upon their own eyes, ears, noses.
He had earlier forced one concession from Ashla; that she would follow his orders in the woods until they reached the fields. And the girl kept that promise faithfully, obeying his commands and copying as well as she could his woodscraft. There was no moon showing tonight, and the softness of coming rain was again in the air.
"The cold may close in early this year," Ashla observed as they crouched together in a thicket. "When there are many severe rainstorms earlier, that is so."
"How early can it come?"
"Perhaps within twenty days now, a sleetstorm, after that others, each worse. . . ."
Naill shelved that future worry for the action at hand. "Listen!" His hand on her shoulder was a signal for quiet. The yap of a hound . . . they heard it clearly.
"From the garth," she whispered.
Naill's tension did not ease. One dog might be at the homestead; that did not mean that others were not patrolling the fields, accompanying a human guard. He said as much.
"No. To those the forest at night is a place of terrors. And Himmer is a cautious man; he will have all in the holding, the gates barred."
"But you plan to enter there." Naill thrust home the folly of her proposed move.
For the first time since she had made her decision at the foot of the Mirror stairway, Ashla's resolution showed a small crack. "But . . . I must." What began hesitantly ended in the firmness of a vow.
"Where in the house would Samera be?" Naill recalled his own expedition at Kosburg's when he had looked upon beings with whom he no longer had any common ground.
"All the little girls—they sleep together in the loft. It has two windows." Ashla sat back on her heels, plainly attempting to visualize what she described. "Ah—" She turned to him eagerly. "First there is the covered shed where there are two phas colts. And from the roof of that, it would be easy to reach the window. Then I can call Samera—"
"And if she sees you?"
After a moment of silence her answer came, a small ragged note disturbing her former confidence. "You mean—she will fear me—cry out as she did at the hut? But perhaps it was you she feared then. Me—I am Ashla who loves her! She would not fear me! And also, it is dark in the loft; they have no light there. She will hear my voice, and of that she will not be afraid."
Perhaps there was some logic in that argument. And—short of dragging Ashla away bodily, which he could not do—there was nothing left but to yield to her desire and do the best he could to take all precautions possible.
They circled farther to the south in order to move into the wind. There was only one wan light showing at the garth now—the night lantern in the yard. As far as they could judge, the inhabitants of the household were safe abed. The field crossings were made in rushes that took them from the shadow safety of one wall to the next. Then they were close to the stake barrier about the buildings.
Naill's nose wrinkled against the smell of the garth and its people. Just as the human scent of Kosburg's larger holding had awakened revolt in him, so did the odor of this place. And this time the impact of his olfactory senses was even sharper. He heard a small gasp from his companion, saw her run her hand vigorously under her nose.
"That"—Naill tried to drive the truth home—"is the smell of off-worlders!"
"But we—we are—" She was shaken, bewildered.
"We are of the Iftin, who do not kill trees or live encased in dead things! Now do you begin to believe that we are we—and they are they?"
"Samera can be like us also!" she said obstinately. But Naill thought that she eyed the bulk of the buildings before her a new way—certainly not as one returning to a familiar place.
The phas shed was set against the stake wall, or they would never have made the entry. A running leap took Naill within grasping distance of the top. Once up, he lowered his sword belt to aid Ashla's climb. Below them they could hear the stir of the animals, a snorting from one of the beasts. Ashla lay flat on the roof and crooned softly, a soothing rise and fall of small notes. The snorting stopped.
"They will be quiet," she whispered. "I fed them their mash, they know my voice. And—there is the loft window!"
Still on her hands and knees, she scuttled across the shed roof and crouched beneath the opening. Then she arose slowly to look inside. Her survey took so long that Naill wondered if the dark baffled her sight, better than human though it was. Then, even as she had quieted the phas colts, so she signaled again—a small hissing of whisper, the separate words of which did not even reach as far as his own post. Three times she spoke. Naill caught a glimpse of movement within. The windowpane swung out and a child stood there, her arms reaching for Ashla.
Only, when Ashla's hands went out in return, the child shrank back and Naill heard her frightened cry.
"No—no—not Ashla—a demon! A demon is here!" Her screams were as wild as they had been in the forest clearing. Naill moved, crossing the roof with a wild thing's leap to catch at Ashla, force her back with him to the wall drop.
"Over!" He threw rather than let her climb, following in an instant. There were other sounds in the garth. Just as his expedition to Kosburg's had aroused that other holding, so were Samera's screams doing here—and now the hounds' bay drowned out her cries.
"Run!" Naill caught Ashla's hand, and they were well on their way across the first field before he was conscious that she was not dragging back, that her flight was as quick and sure as his. But she was sobbing as she fled.
"Not—not—" She fought to get out words Naill believed he already knew. "Not Ashla," she choked out. "Never Ashla again!"
His own revolt against Terrankind had been complete, but he had had no ties with anyone at Kosburg's beyond a kind of passive companionship. How much harder this must be for someone who had to learn that even close blood ties no longer held between settler-born and Iftin. Would the shock be as great this time as it had been when she had faced Illylle in the forest pool?
The main thing was to get away, back into the shelter of the woods. The garthmen might bring the hounds out in the fields, patrol for the rest of the night in the open, but that they would venture far into the forest he doubted. And he intended to be as far to the westward as possible before the coming of dawn.
"You spoke the truth," Ashla said as Naill swung her down a gully, pushed her along that cut. "That was Samera and we—we were no longer sisters. She—she feared me, and when I looked upon her, it was as if she were someone I had known long ago but for whom I no longer felt in my heart. Why?"
"Ask that of those who set the treasure traps," Naill retorted. "I do not know why they must have their changelings—but changelings we are now. We have no longer any contact with off-worlders."
"It was so with you?"
"Yes. I tried to go back to Kosburg's when I recovered from the fever, after I was changed. When I saw them . . . I knew there was no going back."
"No going back," she repeated forlornly. "But where do we go?"
"West—to the sea."
"Perhaps that is as good a place as any," she agreed mechanically. And she did not speak again as they plunged deeper into the wood.
They kept on past the dawn, since the day was cloudy. Though no rain fell, yet there was a mist in the air and this turned chill, so they were glad of the hooded cloaks. Wearing these, they melted so into the general green-silver-brown of the forest, Naill thought any trailer without hounds would pass them directly without noticing.
The river had taken a bend to the north, and they had not yet reached its bank when Naill learned he had underestimated the enemy to an extent that might mean their deaths. A flyer's hum grew loud and with it the crackle of unleashed energy. Rising smoke and fumes marked the beat of a flamer whip wielded from on high! The pilot was cruising hardly above treetop level, using a portable flamer on the shorter forest growth of the river bottoms.
In spite of the dampness of the mist, the recent rains, no vegetation could resist that. And a fire so begun would burn until a storm of hurricane proportions would be required to quench it. No longer depending upon their own hunting methods, the garthmen must have appealed to the port officials for aid. If he and Ashla could be thus herded into the open by the river, they would be easy prey.
The ruthlessness of that flame lash was enough to panic a fugitive. Naill forced his fear under control.
"What is it?" The girl's attention was for the way they had come, the smoke, the sound of crashing trees as the ray ripped the wild.
"They have a flyer and are using a flamer from it." Naill reported the truth.
"Flyer . . . flamer . . ." She was bewildered. "But those are Worldly weapons—no garthman would use them."
"No—so they must have called the port officials."
"How could they? The Believers do not allow com units in any garth—those also are Worldly."
"Then the port police were already out—for some reason."
There had been that other flyer hunting over the river when he had first made his way to Iftcan. But that was days ago. Why would they still be patrolling the wild? Hoorurr had been wing-shot by a hunting party in the forest. Had that party failed to return? Such a mishap could explain some of this.
Nor did it matter how they had come; the fact that they were methodically lashing the forest with their destructive weapon was the danger. And about the Iftin fugitives other creatures were taking flight. A small pack of borfunds burst through brush, running beside Naill and Ashla for several feet before they plunged again into a thicket. Birds fluttered from tree to tree, and other things swung or winged from branches, moving north before the fire.
"What—" Ashla halted, stripped off the cloak to roll it over one shoulder so it would not impede her flight. "The river—we head for the water?"
Naill longed to agree that that was their salvation. But he could not be sure—not with the flyer above. Oddly, he never thought of attempting communication with the pilot of that craft. The mutual repudiation between changeling and settler had been so complete that he had no hope of any understanding from the off-world officials of the port. The river it would have to be.
They made for that, pushing their weary bodies to the limit of physical endurance. Luckily, the flyer pilot was engrossed in laying a crisscross pattern of fire. Ashla stumbled, nearly went down, her breath coming in huge, tearing gasps.
"Can—not—" she choked out.
"Can!" Naill cried with a confidence he did not feel. His ankle was paining again. But ahead was the river. As he pulled her to her feet, he held her so and demanded: "Can you swim?"
She shook her head. A shaggy animal hardly smaller than a phas lumbered past them, its heavy shoulder fur actually brushing against Naill's arm. The man began to run again, pulling the girl with him, in the wake of the animal, which blasted an open path straight through the underbrush.
Somehow they made a bank ten feet or so above the waterline. The shaggy animal had gone over, to half wade, half swim into the deeper part of the stream where other life splashed. All were heading downriver in a wild and vocal mixture of life forms Naill found largely strange. The forest for miles must have emptied its population into the dubious safety of that strip of water.
"We can't go in there!" Ashla clung to Naill, watching the struggle below with wide and terrified eyes.
Naill glanced across the river. The murk that hung over the waste was there stronger, thicker. In it he could see gleams of red he was sure marked flames. Even if they could win over there, passing among the battling animals, they would not be able to go ashore. In the water, a chance—over there, no.
"We have to!" he shouted in her ear, propelling her to the rim of the drop. "There—" he pointed to a piece of driftwood bobbing between two rocks, at any moment ready to be plucked out of its half mooring. "Get your arms over that. It will keep your head above water."
But they were to have no time for a careful descent of the bank, a chance to choose the method of their water entry. A garble from behind, the whiff of an only too familiar odor—Nail whirled half around, his outflung arms striking Ashla full in the back, to send her over the lip of the drop.
In the dark of the trap pit he had seen a kalcrok as it normally appeared to its victims. Here Naill faced a half-grown specimen of the same horrible species running in the open. The silky hair growth on its back shell was scorched away; it must have lingered in its den until the last possible moment, perhaps having had to break through a flame wall to escape. The pain of those burns must feed its natural ferocity into madness.
Naill used his cloak as a flail, beating at the head of the creature. The cloth was torn from his hold, and he stumbled back, over the cliff. He had one moment of knowing that he was falling.
Then he landed in a pocket of sandy gravel, his left arm under him, with enough force to drive the breath out of his lungs in an explosive puff, and he lay there dazed. From the ground above sounded a snarl spiraling up into yowl. Sand and soil sifted over the edge, but the kalcrok did not leap after him.
Shaken and weak, Naill got to one knee. Ashla . . . where was Ashla? A barrier of rocks rose between him and the small cove where that floating length of drift had lain. He thought his forearm must be broken. But he crawled sidewise along the stones to look for the girl.
There was a place of disturbed earth, marks leading to the lapping water. But those could have also been made by one of the animals. And the drift piece still bobbed by the water-washed rocks. No sign of her! Suppose she had hit her head, slid helplessly on into the stream?
Naill crept to the water's edge, but before he had a chance to look, a mass of reddish fur, torn and running with a brighter red from gaping wounds, rolled down from above. A fanged jowl dropped to emit one of those snarling yowls as the creature hit water, floundered, and then was washed on to sway limply against the very piece of drift which was to have supported Ashla.
There was just enough strength left in Naill to make him crawl on, away from that small cove. The dim hope that the girl might have gone so, instead of into the water, kept him going. Then came the sound of a motor hum. A remnant of self-preservation flattened him down on the earth. Naill lay there, whimpering a little as the waves of pain flowed from his arm, pulsed through his body—until he hardly cared that at any moment the flamer ray could hiss across him.
Inside him grew a full and sullen hatred for that off-worlder flyer—for all the species who killed trees, burned the land. These—these were of the Larsh breed! Should he live, by some miracle, should he come out of this fire hunt—then there would be a harrowing of these new Larsh, such a sword-feasting as the ancients had never seen! He was Ayyar and this was Iftin land—while still he lived, it was Iftin!
Pain. . . . The flamer? No, that would have finished him. And the flyer had passed over. For this small space—this very small space of time—an Ift had won, if the mere preserving of one's life was a victory.