"Ayyyyaaaarrrr—"
His cheek scraped gravel as his head moved. Why was he so aware of that small discomfort amidst the haze of pain that wrapped him in? The kalcrok—he had fought a kalcrok, won free of its pit. No, that was wrong; he had faced another kalcrok on a riverbank and had fallen . . .
"Ayyyyaarrrr!"
Against his will his eyes opened. There were smoke wreaths over him, the choking fumes making him cough. That coughing wrenched his body, bringing gasps of pain. Heat came with the smoke; scorching fingers of it reaching him. Water . . . there was water . . .
Naill began to crawl until the one hand he could use plunged into that water. Then, without knowing just how, he rolled into the stream, floundering, his head under so that he choked again.
"Ayyar!"
Something pulled at him. Naill tried to fight away from that clutch, which was torture as it tightened on his arm.
"No!" He thought he shrieked that protest.
Water. . . . Naill was in the water, but his head was above it, resting on a support that moved, spun, pulled him with it first in one direction and then another. But the haze had cleared some from his head; he was able to look about him with a measure of comprehension.
His injured arm lay along a water-worn log; his right one dangled across it into the water on the other side so that his head and shoulders were above the surface of the river. And when with infinite labor he was able to turn his head, he saw he was not alone. Green-skinned face, the eyes very large, and bright, pointed ears above a hairless head.
"Ayyar?" She made of his name a question. But as yet Naill could not answer; he could only lie quiet, letting her will and the river's current decide his future. That somehow he had found Ashla, that they were in the river—that Naill knew. The rest did not matter now.
There were other creatures in that waterway. A dripping head arose beside Ashla's for a space; a clawed paw strove to cling equal with her hands. Then both vanished again without Naill's really knowing what manner of animal had striven to share their very frail hold on the future.
"Ayyar—push!" Her voice roused him again.
Smoke—or dusk? The river was dim. Before them loomed a land tongue sprouting rocks and tangles of brush. On that were beached other fugitives above the water. Some still squatted above the waterline, others moved inland. The bottom rose abruptly under Naill, and his knees scraped on that undersurface, jarring his arm so that he cried out.
They crawled up among those other refugees from the fire. There were many rocks here arching high, and they squeezed into a pocket between two such. Naill collapsed; only the boulder backing his shoulders held him up.
"Your arm—" Ashla bent over him. "Let me see."
Red hot agony was a lance reaching up into his shoulder, down into his chest. He tried to evade that torture, but her body was braced against his, her two hands cupping his chin, holding his head steady as she spoke slowly, striving to gain and hold his attention, to reach his thinking mind.
"The bone is broken. I shall try to set it. Brace yourself so—and so. . . ."
Her hands were on him, shifting him a little, his right hand put against a rock, palm flat. Dimly Naill understood, tried to do as she wanted. Then—pain to which what he had earlier felt was nothing at all! He swirled away wrapped in that pain, losing the rocks, the stable earth under him—everything!
There was a weight across his body, a throbbing in his arm. Naill raised his head. Light—growing light. . . . His eyes squinted and then he forced the lids further up. The weight on his chest was his left arm splinted and bound. And the light was that of day.
"Illylle!" She had been with him in the river; that held through the haze and pain. And now she slid down a boulder at his call. In one hand she carried a leaf-twist container from which water splashed. As she held that to his mouth, Naill drank thirstily.
"Can you walk?" Her hands were under his shoulders, trying to raise him. She spoke brusquely, her question a demand.
"There is need?" Naill was alert enough now to measure what might trigger her concern.
"There is need."
He was on his feet, a little lightheaded, but ready to move. Matter-of-factly Ashla came to him, drew his right arm across her shoulders, and started him along between the rocks.
They appeared to have come ashore in a barren waste. No green showed, and the rocks glittered in the growing light. They would have to find a refuge from the sun or be blinded until evening. But where?
"Where do we go?" Naill asked her, hoping for some concrete answer.
"Up." Her reply was ambiguous. But climb they did, and that was a chancy business, though they went slowly and the terrain was rough and broken enough to provide a kind of natural stair in places.
They finished that climb on a height facing broken lands riven by crevices out of which curled, as might tongues of green smoke, twisted spires of vegetation, more gray than green, Naill's eyes told him. And there was no promise here of a welcoming forest. Suddenly Naill stiffened against the girl's steadying arm.
"Which side of the river?" He asked that with more emphasis than he had used before.
"The north."
"This is the waste." He did not need any confirmation from Ashla. The very feel of the place caught at him as might a breath of corruption out of a long-sealed kalcrok pit. All he could see were rocks and those ravines choked with ill-shaped growth. Yet—as he had before on the road to the Mirror—he sensed a lurking, a scouting—a spying. Not on his part, or Ashla's—but something . . . out there . . .
"This is a waste," she repeated almost stolidly. "But the sun is rising. We cannot return to the river. And twice the port flyer has cruised overhead."
There were strong arguments for going to ground here, yet still they were weak ones in the face of what Naill felt as he looked out over this barren country and remembered Hoorurr's warning. They had gone undetected, unharmed, to the Mirror, and returned. But all through the latter part of that journey, Naill had known with a strange certainty that safety lay only on the ancient road between those two walls, walls that had been erected with a purpose of defense . . . against what? And that road had been so very old—could the menace it had been walled to resist still exist?
"There is no choice," Ashla continued, and Naill could feel a tremor in her arm about his shoulders. "We need not go far—and you have your sword."
Naill saw now that the belt of that weapon weighed down her shoulder. Where she had found it, or how she had kept it through their river journey, he did not know. But he believed that in this time and place that Iftin-forged weapon was small protection indeed.
However, they had no choice. Perhaps he could make the shade of the nearest of those knife-slashed crevices, go to ground under its growth to wait out the day. But that was the best he could do.
"Get me over there." He pointed to the nearest cut. "Then you go, keep close to the water and head as far west as you can before true sunrise. I do not know how far this extends—and you may be able to get out in an hour's travel."
She made no answer as she steered him ahead. What he suggested had only a small chance of success, but it was better, far better, than for her to remain here.
When Ashla did speak, it was to point out the easiest way down into the ravine, to warn against rough footing. And Naill was too engaged with battling through brush to argue with her. The stuff was brittle, oddly desiccated, as if, in spite of its appearance of life and growth, it was really dead and only preserved a semblance of what it had once been in truth.
There was an acrid smell to the snapped branches, crushed leaves, not the wholesome aroma of the forest country. As they neared the bottom of the cut, Naill saw pale, unwholesome plants close to ground level, puffy things with fleshy, tightly curled leaves.
"Here." Ashla steered him right and halted. Part of a tree trunk still possessing a look of the true forest protruded from the wall of the gully, its heart long since decayed and eaten away, but its outer shell making a kind of wooden cave, which, to Naill, offered more natural roofing than the still-living vegetation about it.
But when he put out his hand to that old bark surface, he touched not the substance of long-dead wood, but the hardness of rock. The tree was petrified.
"This will serve me," he told the girl quickly. "You must go, before the sun climbs."
She had eased him down under the curve of the stone bark. Now she settled herself beside him composedly.
"We go together—if at all."
Naill was alert to that hint of foreboding.
"If at all?"
All at once Ashla bent her head, covered her face with both hands. He was sure she was not weeping—not with running tears. But there was a kind of despair in the line of those hunched shoulders, that gesture with her hands, that held a hint of fear. Only for a moment did she sit so, and then her head came up, her hands dropped to lie on her knees. But her eyes remained closed.
"If—if it were only given me to remember—to know!" She cried out, not to him, Naill believed, but to the very circumstances of their being. "Illylle knew—so much she knew—but Ashla does not. And sometimes I cannot reach Illylle through Ashla! Naill, what do you know of Ayyar, truly know?" Her eyes opened, held his with a fierce intensity as if his answer was now the most important thing in the world, could lead to some salvation for both of them.
And it sparked in him a need to search his own mind for Ayyar and what Ayyar of the Iftin had known.
"I think"—he spoke slowly, wanting to be very sure of every limited fact, if fact could be the term for a recollection; he did know—"he was a warrior—and he was Lord of Ky-Kyc. But the meaning of that I do not remember. He was a Captain of the First Ring at Iftcan, and he battled there when the Larsh overran the Towers. He was a hunter and one who roved much in the forest. That is all I am sure of. Sometimes I pick a fruit, cross a trail, see or hear some animal or bird—and know what Ayyar knew of them. But of Ayyar I know very little."
"Enough knowledge to keep you alive in the forest, and a little, very little, more than that," she summed up.
Naill straightened. That—that made sense in a new way!
"Perhaps that was all Ayyar was meant to give me!" he burst out. "Enough forest lore to keep me alive! And all the rest—all that about the fall of Iftcan was something that was meant to be forgotten but was not!"
"If one has a recorder and must leave a message in a hurry"—Ashla caught up the tossed ball of his idea—"and the message lies in the middle of another report, then one could mark it, but still part of the report would intrude upon it."
"A recorder?" Naill was surprised that she would choose such an example to illuminate her meaning. "But were recorders used by the Believers?"
"No. But when my mother had a blood affliction and the Speaker could not pray it away, her father—Bors Keinkind—came and took her to the port to see the off-world medico. I went with her, for she was unable to care for herself. But it was too late—had we gone earlier she might have been saved." Ashla was quiet for a moment and then went on. "It was there I saw recorders and many other things . . . things to make one think—and wonder. Many times have I remembered and thought on what I saw there. But suppose this forest lore was important for survival—so you were given part of an Ayyar memory . . . and other parts of that memory also clung."
"What about Illylle? Does she also furnish you with such aid?"
"Yes—knowledge of animals, foes to dread . . . of certain plants to eat, to use in healing"—Ashla frowned—"and some that may be weapons. But—Illylle was once a person of power. She knew of the Mirror, and she had a right to stand above it and evoke—evoke what lies within its waters. I think she was in some manner a Speaker of her people, one with weapons and tools not to be seen or felt. And it is in this place that I sense that the most, because I want to hold those weapons."
"Against what?" Naill demanded.
Her frown grew. "I do not know!" Her hands went again to her head. "It is locked in here, I know it is! And it is very important that I remember what Illylle knew. There is danger here—worse danger than the flamer, or the hounds and the garth hunters. It has rested a long time—or slept—or waited with patience . . . and now—" Dropping her hands, she faced Naill with a dawning horror far back in her eyes, and her voice sank to the faintest thread as she finished that warning. "It would—feed."
Naill found himself listening, not with just his ears, but with all of him—as the hunted listen for the snuffling of a hound. Yet he knew that no animal, no man, threatened them. It was something older, far more powerful, far more complex than any life form he had known before. Was it already out there, teasing them? Or had it not yet awakened, become aware that what it so long had hungered for was now within reach?
"The White Forest!" Illylle spoke now, and Ayyar's fear flared at that name. "This is the Fringe of the White Forest!"
"Iftin sword, Iftin hand,
Iftin heart, Iftin kind.
Forged in dark, cooled by moon,
Borne by warrior who will stand
When Ring breaks and tree tower falls—
Iftin sword—Iftin brand!"
His voice trailed into silence from the rich swing of that chant, a chant that carried in its cadence the march of feet, the clash of swords, the purr of tree drums.
"Iftin sword!" she echoed, and with a swift movement drew the blade he had found at Iftsiga. " 'Forged in dark, cooled by moon!' If it were so—if it were only so!"
"That was part of Ayyar memory," Naill told her. "Do you know its meaning?"
"A little—only a little. It is a prophecy, a promise—made to an Iftin hero in the Blue Leaf day. And it was fulfilled. But that was in the Blue Leaf, and our leaf is Gray and withered." She turned the blade over and over in her hands, studying it closely. "This was a key at the Guard Way—we saw that, both of us. Perhaps it is more than a key. Perhaps it is the blade of Kymon, or akin to that blade. If so, it has a power in its own substance. Illylle, Illylle—let me know more!" That last was a cry that was close to a sob.
Naill took the sword from her. True—he had watched that green spark flare on the tip of the blade and the symbol glow in reply on the keystone of the arch. But in his hand he could see no more than a finely made weapon.
"What did Kymon do? Was he the hero of the prophecy?"
"Yes . . . it was so long ago—dim in memory. He dared the White Forest and won the Peace of the Iftcan, so that those of his blood could tower the Great Trees. And that which nourished the White Forest was bound by the Oath of Forgetting and Side-sitting. Then the Blue Leaf became the Green, and still the Oath held between Iftin and That Which Abode Apart. But when the Green Leaf was at its falling, the Iftin were fewer and That Which Abode stirred. The Oath was called aloud before Iftcan, so that the waste dared not advance. Only the Larsh—who had not sworn the Oath, because in the day of its uttering they could not mouth words—answered That Which Abode and came into Its light. And so they were established as a nation and grew the greater as the Iftin grew less.
"When the Gray Leaf budded, once more That Which Abode stirred and the Towers of Iftcan were shaken. The Oath was spoken and the Burning Light could not pass. But the Larsh, who had not given the Oath, became Its hands, Its weapons, and the Larsh were many, the Iftin so few, so very few . . . " Her hands were up before her, slightly cupped, fingers apart. Almost, Naill could see her try to hold water that trickled away to be swallowed up by thirsty earth. And in him Ayyar responded with a vast surge of anger and despair.
"Then came the end of Iftcan and the end of the Iftin. There was no more Oath-binding and That Which Abode was freed to do as It willed with Its servants—the Larsh."
"And this is the memory of Illylle?" Naill asked softly.
"This is the remembering of Illylle, though it comes to me dimly as one sees through hot bars of sunlight. Now—the Larsh. . . . Is this the Day of the Larsh, the Night of the Iftin having passed?"
"I think that perhaps the Day of the Larsh has also passed away. There is no tale of them since the first off-world ship put down on Janus a hundred planet years ago."
"The Larsh may be gone, but that which sent them has not! Old powers linger in this land!" Her voice grew stronger. "This may not be the blade that was forged by Kymon, carried by him into the great Sword-feasting of the White Forest. But within me is the knowledge that it has its power, and"—she paused, then nodded, as if she had been reassured by some voice or thought Naill could not share—"that you have a part in what is to come, a part of purpose. Now—it is well into day, and day is the time of That Which Abode. We must have rest. Give me the sword, Ayyar-Naill, and do you sleep, for in me there is a stir, and perhaps I can remember more—whereas if I sleep, I may lose—"
Her certainty was such that he could not protest. As Naill settled himself on the ground, the disconnected story she had told held in his mind—Kymon, a hero who had forced the Oath upon the Enemy, so that the trees of Iftcan could harbor his people, and the ages that that Oath had held back a burning, pitiless white light, until the Iftin grew too few—too few and too thin of blood-line, too burdened with ancient memory to maintain their fortress and their lives against the battering waves of Larsh, new-come from the beast and daring in their youthful ignorance, their fostered hate, to destroy that which they could never build, stamp out what they did not understand. Yes, Ayyar memory told him, she had the truth of that . . . Illylle-Ashla, Mirror Watcher that was.