"I thought"—Ashla's tongue caressed her lips—"that I would long for nothing as much as I wished for water. But now I find hunger can also be a pain. And one cannot eat crystal. Is there no end to this stream or this place?"
"It looks as if we are coming to something now." Naill had been striving to pierce the foggy mist, and the vague outline he had seen through its swirls appeared to remain firm in spite of the coming and going of that tenuous curtain.
What lay before them was a wall of crystal, stretching, as far as they could tell, clear across the valley. And the water guide which had led them there poured in a rush through a conduit in that wall far too small to provide an entrance to whatever space lay beyond. Ashla dropped down limply.
"I cannot go back. I am sorry, but I cannot go back." She said that simply, her sober tone underlining her surrender to this last blow.
"Not back!" Naill went directly to the wall. The crystal was not smooth but studded with irregularities, pocked with hollows. This could be climbed—not by a one-handed man, perhaps, but Ashla might do it. "Not back," he reiterated firmly, "but over! This is as rough as a ladder."
She was drawn by his confidence to approach the wall. Then she glanced at him.
"And you? Do you sprout wings to bear you over?"
"No—but there is this." Naill unslung the sword shoulder belt. "If you get to the top, hook this about one of those large projections. Then I will have a hand hold to bring me up in turn."
Ashla regarded first the wall and then Naill doubtfully. He strove to break through her hesitancy.
"We must do it now, while we still have a measure of strength in us. Or do you wish to remain here bewailing our fate until hunger is a finish?"
To his surprise Ashla smiled at that, a joyless grimace stretching her gaunt face.
"As you point out, warrior, struggle is always better than surrender. I shall climb."
Privately Naill was not sure that even with the aid of the belt he could make it. But this was their only chance. Judging by his own swimming head and weakened body, he was certain she was right; they could not now retrace their road down the valley.
Ashla climbed slowly and with caution, testing each hold before she entrusted her full weight to it. It seemed to Naill that the minutes of that climb lengthened into hours. Then her head and shoulders topped the edge of the wall and she was able to see over. Seconds later, her face alight and eager, she looked down at him.
"We were right! Here is true forest! We were right!"
Her report provided him with a last spurt of strength, enough to give him the necessary energy to reach the perch on which she now clung, her hands and the dangling belt at his service. Then they steadied one another as they gazed out over a section of welcoming gray-green, full of beckoning shadows. This was not Iftcan—it was not even the forest upon which the settlers preyed—but it was far closer to it than any land they had seen since they had entered the waste by the river.
Naill was not wholly conscious of anything save that green. Then the sudden rigidity of Ashla's body against his own broke his absorption.
The girl's head stretched forward on her shoulders. Her pointed ears flared wide from her skull, and her eyes were fixed in a probing stare on the forest before them.
"What is it?" Naill's first surge of relief was erased by a thrust of alarm. He heard nothing, saw not even a leaf tremble in that waiting woodland. "Tell me—what is it?"
But he was too late. Ashla had already moved, swinging over the barrier on the far side, descending by a series of reckless holds and half falls that frightened him. Then, without a single backward glance—as if he had ceased to exist for her—she ran on across the small strip of powdered crystal sand to the trees and disappeared among them as if a green mouth had gulped her in.
"Ashla! Illylle!" Naill's voice rang hollowly, a lonesome sound deadened and swallowed into a thin echo by some sonic property of this place. He dared not move as fast as she had. His descent was slow and clumsy, but at last he did reach the ground.
From this level the greenery ahead had a solid, forbidding look. Naill studied what he could see of it. Here, too, the mists trailed, one moment hiding, the next revealing a section. But this was true forest growth, he thought. And—Ashla had already gone that way. He strode over the small traces left by her running feet on the sand.
Outwardly this was the same forest as that beyond the crystal growth to the east. His ears now picked up the small muted sounds of insects and other life within its hold. Muted—that was it! This place was shadowed, reduced, in a fashion Naill could not define, from the life of the other woods he had walked.
His hunter's eyes followed the signs of Ashla's headlong passage—snapped twigs, torn leaves, the print of her boots in the soil. She must have burst on as if striving to reach some goal with no care for any obstacles in between. Why? Just another of those endless questions that were a part of this world.
Naill used the sword to beat and cut himself passage in the same direction the girl had taken. Then the point of that blade struck into the open, and he followed it—into a clearing.
Two—three—four of them, counting the one who faced Ashla. Four green-skinned, large-eared—changelings? Or Iftin of the true blood? They were all men, clad in ragged remains of the same forest dress as Naill had found in Iftsiga. Two of them wore shoulder-belted swords like his own. One had a wooden spear headed with a crystal point. Naill took that in, in a quick evaluation of the company.
Then the man before Ashla drew his full regard and, studying him, Naill forgot the rest.
The stranger was perhaps by an inch or so the tallest of the group, but he was not otherwise physically outstanding. It was . . . Naill tried to be objective, tried to understand why, when looking at this ragged, quiet man, he was moved to respect, ready to surrender some of his independence and will. There was only a moment of such desire before Naill fought it down.
"Who are you?" The man spoke and Naill was about to reply when he realized the question was not addressed to him but to Ashla.
"Illylle—and you are Jarvas." She spoke with conviction, almost impatiently as one who found such a question stupid and unnecessary.
The man's hand came up in a gesture of warning, as if to ward off her words. "I am Pate Sissions."
"You are Jarvas—Mirrormaster!"
He moved then, swiftly. His hand clapped over her mouth, his right arm crushed her into captivity. Naill leaped out with ready sword.
Ashla fought wildly against her captor's hold, useless as that was. They staggered together and Naill hesitated, afraid to strike Ashla. That hesitation was his own undoing. His instinct warned a fraction of a second too late. The wooden butt of the spear struck against the side of his head, sending him down.
Cool . . . green. . . . He lay on moss in Iftcan, and above him boughs made the autumn wind sing. Tonight there would be the Festival of Leaf Farewell and he would go into the Court of the Maidens for the choosing.
Maidens—one maiden . . . a thin face, wan, always a little tired and sad, Ashla—no, Illylle! Illylle—Ashla, name balanced name. Ashla was Illylle, Illylle Ashla.
"So—it is thus, little sister. Here we are as we were—and so we must remain until we win forth."
Words out of the air. Naill made no sense of them. But he heard in answer, "I am Ashla—of the garths, then."
"You are Ashla always—here. Do not forget it. And I am Pate, and this is Monro, and Derek, and Torry. And your impetuous young friend is Naill. We are off-worlders and settlers—no more, never any more than that."
"But we are not. Just a look at us would seal that truth."
"We are totally alien to this Power. It is the mind, the memory that mind holds, not the physical form that matters to it. Now It is doubtful, still uncertain concerning our identity. Once It learns the truth—"
"I understand."
Naill knew that he did not. But he forced open his eyes, turned his head. He lay on a mat of leaves under a rough lean-to, looking out at a small fire around which sat the four men and Ashla. The man beside her turned his head, his eyes found Naill. He arose lithely and came to kneel beside the other.
"How do you feel?"
"Who are you?" Naill countered.
"I am Pate Sissions—First-In Scout of Survey. And"—his hand gestured to the company by the fire—"that is Haf Monro, astropilot of the Thorstone."
Distant memory stirred in Naill. Thorstone—a long-lost cruiser by that name . . . what was the story?
"Derek Versters of Versters' Garth, and Ladim Torry, medico of the Karbon Combine."
Karbon Combine? But the Karbon people had been off Janus for almost a full generation! Yet the outwardly green-skinned Ift whom Sissions had so introduced appeared to be a man still in his first youth. First-In Scout, astropilot, garthman, Karbon medico—a wide range of occupations on Janus, covering perhaps the full length of time the planet had been known to Survey.
"You are all"—Naill broke out the word he had first heard back at Kosburg's—"changelings!"
Sissions' big-eared head swung slowly from left to right in a gesture of negation made more impressive by the very length of that movement.
"We are off-worlders—from different times and worlds—who came to Janus for different reasons. That is what we are—and will be—here. And you are?"
"Naill Renfro—bought laborer."
"Good enough. Continue to remember that, Naill Renfro, and we shall deal easily together. Sorry we had to knock you out—there was not time to reason with you."
"Where is this place? And how did you get here?" Naill pulled himself up to rest on the elbow of his right arm. His head was thick and ached dully, but he was not so dimwitted now as not to realize that there was a method in Sissions' speech, that he had been warned against some very real danger.
"As to this place—well, it is a prison of sorts." Sissions sat down cross-legged. "We are not sure ourselves as to the reason for our detention here. Except that it means trouble. How did we get here? Well, we came in various ways at different times. Monro and I were hunting a friend who had come in this direction and vanished. We were picked up—"
"By an animated space suit?" Naill cut in.
"By a walking space suit," Sissions agreed. "We found Torry here already—he was first in residence. They caught him near the river where he tried to take a shortcut west. And Derek—Derek came later with a companion who chose to leave."
"You can leave?" Naill demanded in surprise.
"You can leave, provided you are intent upon committing suicide. An agile man with a great amount of determination and no sense can climb to the White Forest. Whether he can get through there . . ." Sissions shrugged.
"So you just sit around and wait for what is going to happen?" Naill's amazement grew. His whole reading of this man suggested that such a spineless course was so alien to his nature that Naill could not believe Sissions was in earnest.
"So we wait," Sissions assured him. "We wait, and we remember who and what we are."
Again that inflection of warning. Naill sat all the way up. They were watching him with a kind of detached inspection, as if waiting for him to make some move by which they would then be influenced into an important judgment and appraisal.
"How long do we wait?"
"We do not know. Perhaps until the opposition moves so we can learn who—or what—It really is. Or until we find our own solution. Now—" Sissions picked up a small bowl, handed it to Naill. Through the substance of the container he felt the warmth of the contents. Eagerly he savored and then gulped the stew.
"Light coming." Torry stood up, the crystal-pointed spear in his hand. "Best back to the burrow." He came to Naill and together with Sissions assisted him to his feet.
"Where are we going?"
"Out of the sun," the former medico told him shortly. "In the day period here we're as good as blind. To be caught in the open is bad."
"To be caught in the White Forest in the sun," Sissions added, "that's the end. And we've not been able to work out any way of crossing that in one night's time. That is the lock on our prison cell, Renfro."
Naill could see the right in that reasoning. The crystal forest in the moonlight had been hard enough to face. Its brilliance under direct sunshine would burn out their night-oriented sight.
"There was one of our kind up there when we came in—we saw his reflection on a tree," he reported.
"Halsfad!" Derek pushed closer. "Where? How near the edge of the forest was he? Pate—maybe he was able to make it after all!"
"We could not tell," Naill replied. "The reflections must be deceiving."
Sissions agreed. "Could have been from any direction. And even if he reached the edge of the forest before sunup—what then?"
What then indeed? The miles of baked and empty rockland ahead with no shelter—Naill though of that. Yes, it made an effective prison for all of them. And desperate flight was not the answer; he understood Sissions the better now.
"Home." Monro had been in advance. Now he stood before a dark hole, folding back a curtain woven of plaited leaves. Ashla crept after him, and they followed one by one until they were all within the shelter.
Its skeleton was a tree with huge exposed roots, roots that extended out of the bole well above their heads as might branches, but running down to the earth, rather than horizontally, so that the center trunk appeared to be supported by a fringe of props. In and out through that grid of exposed roots leaves had been woven, lengths of dried vine, and pieces of bark, to form a structure with the living tree as its center.
Ashla went directly to that trunk and set both of her palms flat against its bark.
"Iftin wall, Iftin roof,
Wood lives, wood—"
Even as he had jumped her in the clearing, so was Sissions upon her again, his hand across her lips with the force of a slap.
She raised hers from the tree to twist and tear at his fingers until she had freed her mouth.
"You have forgotten too much!" That was Illylle speaking now with all the force of command she had shown at those times when the Iftin took precedence over the Terran in her. "This is Iftscar—from the true seed. It will not betray us. Though why it should grow in the White Land . . . ah!" She nodded, not at them, but at some thought or memory. "When Kymon journeyed forth, with him went a pouch blessed by the Counters of the Seed, and they gave him of their powers. So—here fell a nut of Iftscar, and through the long time of the True Leaves it has grown. Look into your memory, Jarvas, Mirrormaster that was—you have been too timid by half!"
She turned in his hold, her hands now rising to cup over his eyes. At first Sissions moved under her touch as if to push her away. Then he stiffened, straightened, and slowly—very slowly—his own hands went out to rest against the tree trunk as hers had done before him. Ashla stepped aside and left him so.
"Iftscar!" She flung up her arms in a gesture of welcome. "We shelter here. In the Leaf of the Gray we claim what you have to give us."
"Pate—Pate!" Monro would have dropped hand on Sissions' shoulder, but the girl fended him off.
"Let be! He takes the strength he should have drunk long ago. He forgot when he should have remembered! Let be—you have not the Seeing!"
Sissions' hands fell from the tree trunk. He turned, his eyes wide. Then he blinked and came back from some immeasurable distance.
It was to Ashla he spoke: "I am indeed a fool. There may yet be a key we have not tried, already set in our hands."
"If you had not the right memory then you were wise not to hunt lost keys. Is it not with all of you as it is with Naill and with me—that you possess only parts of memories, but not the full recall of your Iftin selves?"
"Yes."
"And so you fear—and wisely—what you do not control nor know. I believe, Mirrormaster, that such caution is not folly but wisdom."
"Perhaps two memories knitted well together may supply us with the key to this prison!" Sissions held out both hands to her, and hers fell palm down on his.
Naill watched them with a strange lost feeling. Ayyar—who had been Ayyar after all? A fighting man who at the last testing had gone down to defeat. A warrior who dared not use the Mirror of Thanth, but had fled from its challenge. And Naill Renfro—a slave laborer from the Dipple. Neither part of him had been a man of victory or strength—perhaps the whole was less . . .
"Many memories"—Ashla's eyes went from man to man—"but maybe too different. To weave a power there must be unity. We can but try, you who were Jarvas."
"What's going on?" Monro demanded sharply.
"We may have been too cautious." Sissions was again the off-worlder in speech and idiom. "This tree house gives us immunity to certain forces here. Now"—his glance caught them, held them, demanded—"we shall try pooling our Iftin memories, and from such a harvest perhaps we can glean what we need—to tip the scales of fortune on our side."
"But you said—" Derek began and frowned at Ashla. "She appears able to change your mind quickly enough."
"We have never been able to decide whether we have these Iftin memories by plan—or by chance. Perhaps we'll never know the truth of that. But today—for the first time—two of us who had certain powers in our Iftin identities have met. If we can join those powers, draw other knowledge from the rest of you"—Sissions' head was high, his eagerness was in his voice, mirrored on his face—"this can lead us to freedom! We can only try—but are you willing to join?"
There was a hesitancy, but one by one they gave their assent.