A winter sun was sullen red over Janus. Its bleak rays lit up the Forest that was being destroyed. Flame bit, grinding machines tore life from soil-deep roots. Quivering branches clicked together a warning that reached into Iftcan-of-the-trees, the city that once had been.
And in the heart of a mighty tree, Iftsiga, the last of the Great Crowns that still leafed and had sap blood, the in-dwellers it sheltered stirred from the depths of hibernation.
Larsh! Out of memory nearly as old as Iftsiga itself came that name. Death by the beast men. Out, brothers, defend Iftcan with sword and heart! Face the Larsh—
Ayyar struggled wildly with the covering over him, forced open unwilling eyes. It was dark here in the core of the giant tree. The summer festoons of lorgas, the light-larvae, were missing. Like all else they slept, snug in the crevices of the sheltering bark. But it was no longer quiet. About him like a wall was a trembling, a throbbing. And though Ayyar could not truly remember having heard it before, he recognized the alarm of the Forest Citadel.
"Awake! Danger comes!" Every throb of that great pulse beat through him. But it was so hard to move. The lethargy that had gripped him and his kin in the fall, that had brought them to shelter and sleep, had not lifted gradually as nature intended. Ayyar was not yet ready to face the new life of spring. Painfully he crawled from his nest of mats.
"Jarvas? Rizak?" His voice was hoarse and rusty as he called to those sharing this chamber. The force of the warning grew stronger, urging him to—flight!
Flight—not battle— That from Iftsiga, the stronghold that even the ancient Enemy could not reduce? Had the great tree not been seeded in the legendary time of the Blue Leaf, been grown to shelter the race of Iftin in the day of the Green, and of the Gray of the last disaster, outlasting the wrath of the Larsh, preserved to help awaken the Iftin anew? This was Iftsiga, the Eternal—yet the warning was—
"Flee! Flee!"
Ayyar crept to the nearest wall of the tree, put his shaking hands on that living surface. Now it was warm beneath his cold flesh, as if its life arose to fever pitch.
"Jarvas?" He clawed his way up, swaying. There was movement in the other two bed places.
"The Larsh?" That question from the gloom on his right.
"Not so. Remember, the day of the Larsh is past."
Once again his memory had to be welded—for he bore the memories of two different men, as did all those now within Iftsiga. In an earlier time, he had been Naill Renfro, an off-world labor slave. Ayyar's lips drew into a snarl in reaction to that memory. As Naill he had found a treasure within the woodland. And because he had dug it up, the dreaded Green Sick had struck him down.
From that terrible illness he had emerged as an Ift, green-skinned, hairless, forest-attuned, provided with the tattered memory of Ayyar, Captain of the Outer Guard in the last days of Iftcan. And as Ayyar-Naill he had found others like himself—Ashla of Himmer's garth or settlement, who became Illylle, one-time priestess of the Mirror, Jarvas-Pate, Lokatath-Derek, Rizak-Monro, Kelemark-Torry.
Over the South Sea were still others who had earlier undergone the same change. But they were such a very few, for not all off-worlders were to be drawn into the net of the buried treasures set by the first Iftin-kind at their dying; only those who had the right temperament. And none of the changelings were truly whole. In them was an uneasy balance; one past set against the other. So was he now sometimes Ayyar, sometimes Naill, though for longer periods now Naill slept and he could draw upon the knowledge of Ayyar.
"There is death abroad." Ayyar spoke now. "The warning—"
"True. And the time of sleep not yet done." Jarvas answered him. "But we must have the awakening draught—"
In the gloom Jarvas crawled on hands and knees to the opposite wall, his hands fumbling with what was set into the living fabric of the tree.
"Ah—Iftsiga denies us not!" His cry was one of wonder and hope.
Ayyar lurched across the chamber. Jarvas drank from the spout set in the wall, not waiting for a cup, but catching the sweep sap in his hands, sucking it avidly from his palms. Ayyar followed his example.
The chill in him vanished, warmth sped along his veins, spread through his body. He could move easily, and his mind cleared.
"What is it?" Rizak crept up to drink in turn.
"Death—death to Iftsiga!" Jarvas stood tall. "Listen!"
The murmur, the crackle of branch against branch, was a struggle of the ancient tree to communicate with the Iftins—or the half-Iftins—now within it.
Jarvas swung around. "From the east it comes!"
To the east lay the clearings of the garths, the settlements that were black death blots in the Forest. There, too, were the buildings of the port where off-world spacers set down.
"Why—what?" Rizak turned, refreshed from his sap drink. "They do not clear land in winter, and this is not yet spring."
"We shall find the answer only by seeking it," Jarvas replied. "Iftsiga would not wake us, except in extremity. This is grave danger—"
"The others—" Ayyar went to the ladder which led both down and up in the center of the chamber, linking all levels of the tree tower.
"Jarvas? Ayyar?" A soft call from below, even as he set foot on the ladder rungs. He looked down into a face turned up to his.
"Haste, oh, make haste!" Illylle's voice arose. "We must haste!" She moved before him, descending to yet another level where many small chests stood stacked against the walls.
There were the others, Kelemark and Lokatath, pulling at those boxes, moving in frantic haste to drag them to the ladder which led on down, deep into the earth and root chambers of Iftsiga.
"The seeds!" Illylle lifted one of the chests. "We must save the seeds!"
With her words a sharp urgency struck Ayyar also. Every one of those chests contained seed for the regrowth of the Iftin. In them were the treasure traps to draw new changelings into their company. Should anything destroy these chests their dream of a new nation would die. Yes, above all, the seeds must be saved.
"Where?"
His night-oriented sight had grown keen since the sap-drink, and he could read the sorrow on Illylle's face.
"Into the root chambers—"
Dreadful indeed must be the peril! To use the root chambers meant that Iftsiga had no hope of survival. How could Illylle be sure—yet she was.
"The seeds—" She turned to summon Jarvas and Rizak now on the ladder.
Jarvas nodded decisively. "The root chambers." He did not ask, he ordered.
So they toiled, using their new-born strength, stripping Iftsiga of the meaning it had held as the Citadel during ages more than Ift or man could reckon, carrying those precious chests, each with a sleeping memory and Ift personality, to the farthest limit of the long roots and, in doing so, killing the tree that had been the refuge and shelter of their race. And ever, as they worked so feverishly, the warnings heightened; the need for speed enveloped them, so that they ran, pushed, carried as they cleared one chamber, two, three, a fourth—
Then they were done, and Jarvas and Illylle, working together, sealed the cramped ways through which they had crawled and pushed their burdens, using the substance of the tree, with earth and certain words to bind with power.
Then they came up into the entrance chamber from which they could emerge upon a limb and let down a ladder to the ground. There they gathered supplies to make packs. Jarvas took command.
"Iftsiga dies; by what means we shall learn. But in its dying, may it also fight against those who destroy it. Thus—"
He and Illylle went, one to each wall, laying their hands against the tree's now shuddering surface, to speak almost as one:
"Let your spirit not depart gladly, Great One,
But harshly to those who come.
Of all the days, may this be the worst
For those who ill use you.
Die in battle; make of your branches swords,
Of your twigs needles to tear,
Of your sap poison to burn,
Of your trunk a crushing weight.
Die as you have lived, Ift-friend, Ift-protector,
That your seedlings may spring anew.
This be our promise, Iftsiga—
Your seed shall sprout with ours.
Ift-blood, sap-blood, shall be as one.
Ift to tree, tree to Ift!"
Around them the tree swayed; a sound came from trunk and branch that was not a groan but rather the growl of beast aroused.
Then Jarvas gave his orders. "We must know the enemy, whence he comes, what he strives to do here. Scouts to east and north! And you, Sower of the Seed"—to Illylle he gave the old title—"to that which is our help, to the Mirror, that mayhap you can call upon what lies there to our aid—"
She shook her head slowly. "Once I did so, yes, but twice perhaps not. Illylle is not wholly Illylle. I have too many memories not rooted in Ift. But what I can do, I shall. And"—she faced them—"brothers, let not death choose you. Ill-faced may be our stars, but still are we the new seeds, do not forget that!"
It was night, the time of the Iftin, as they came into the open. Around them was a flow of movement. Peecfrens slid swiftly along branches, leaping in bounds from one limb to another, their fur silver in the moonlight. Borfunds grunted and snorted below. Flying things sought the air. All the Forest dwellers were on the move. Most of them had roused from hibernation, but they were alert. None of them need Iftin fear. But other things, deadly enemies, might also be on the move.
"Hooo-ruurrru—"
It was a welcome cry that was also a querulous complaint. A large bird settled beside the Iftin, turning its tufted head to survey them sleepily, sullenly. The quarrin was an old hunting companion. Ayyar opened his mind to its thoughts.
"Break—tear—kill!" Red savagery answered him.
"Who?"
"Things that crawl! Hunt the false ones! Kill, kill, always kill!"
"Why—?"
The quarrin hissed, was gone on wide-spread wings.
"Things that crawl," Rizak repeated. "Earth-grubbers?" Out of his off-world past he made tentative identification.
Machines could alter the face of any planet, given the time and the determination of human will. But such machines were few on Janus. This world of trees had been settled by the Sky Lovers, a dour religious sect who worked with their hands and with the aid of animals, refusing to allow machines anywhere but at the port site. Earth-grubbers were not for Janus. Unless, since the Iftin had sought their winter sleep, some powerful change had been wrought in the world they wished to reclaim as their own.
"The port lies northeast," Kelemark said. "But why would they be using machines? The forces there keep within their own boundaries. And—in the winter—the Settlers would not be hunting 'monsters.'"
No, the Settlers on the garths would not stir after those they called "monsters" and who enticed hunters into the Forest.
"The garthmen would not use machines." Lokatath spoke positively. He had been one of them before the Green Sick change.
"Guessing will not provide us with the truth," Ayyar-Naill returned. He had been a soldier; his answer was action.
"Do not play your life too boldly," Illylle called after him.
He smiled at her. "I have been knocking on the door of death since I first walked this world. But I do not throw aside a sword when I go to face the kalcrok," he said, naming the most fearsome of the Forest enemies.
"Split up," Jarvas said as they moved through the frosted vegetation. "Then return to the Way to the Mirror. I think that is our safeguard."
They became a part of the Forest, each to find his own path north and east. Fewer animals passed now; some moving sluggishly as if their awaking from hibernation had been so recent they had not had a chance to drink sap.
Ayyar's nostrils expanded, cataloguing scents, wary for the stink of kalcrok. There was the stench of man to beware of also—for man to an Iftin was an offense, carrying with him the smell of the death he dealt to Forest life—and perhaps they must now quest also for the odor of machines.
Kalcrok he did not scent. But man—yes—there was the taint of man on the air, to be easily trailed. He passed two of the Great Crowns, but these were bone-white, long since dead—probably from the time the Larsh stormed Iftcan. Ayyar had been one of the defenders, but no small spark of memory remained past his first standing to arms. Had that first Ayyar "died" during that attack? They had no knowledge of how the personalities they now wore had been set within the treasure traps and then transferred by the Green Sick to off-world men and women. But Ayyar had been a captain of the city guard in the old days and now it would seem that Ayyar-Naill must play the same role.
The smell of man now mingled with an even worse stench as a pre-dawn wind puffed about him. It was the smell of burning, such as the garthmen did to clear their lands.
Dawn was near. Ayyar reached into an inner pocket of his green-brown-silver tunic. Kelemark, who had once been the medico known as Torry Ladion, had devised a daytime aid for light-dazzled Iftin eyes, goggles made of several layers of dried leaves. So equipped they could travel in all but the brightest sunlight.
That thick stench of burning could mask the odor of men. He must now depend upon sight. Around him the saplings, the brush, were leafless. Patches of blue-tinted snow lay in shadows. The air warmed as tendrils of smoke wove ribbons of mist from smoldering mats of blackened fibers. He looked through a shriveled screen into widespread desolation and again his lips were a-snarl.
When they had gone to sleep, the river had divided the remnants of Iftcan from the land of the garths. But now burnt paths stretched well back into the Forest. Each ran spear straight from a heat beam. This was no garth work, but that of machines. Why? The officials at the port had no reason to clear land, in fact they were forbidden to.
Ayyar flitted along the edge of the ash-powdered strip, now and then covering nose and mouth with his hand as he passed some noisome pocket. The beaming had not been at random, but laid down with definite purpose. It was plainly meant as an assault against the whole of the Forest.
He now fronted open charred ground on which stood a machine, a dark box squatting sullenly on treads to take it across rough and broken ground. Farther off was an earth-grubber, its snout at present raised and motionless, but behind it lay soil, gouged and ravaged.
Dawn was very bright to Iftin eyes. Even with the goggles on Ayyar squinted. Beyond the machines was a hemisphere, as if the tortured soil had breathed forth a stained, dun-colored bubble. A camp!
Again this was no garthman's shelter, but the kind the port men brought with them. Ayyar called upon Naill memory as he searched for any official symbol that might identify the camp.
After the discovery of Janus the planet had been given to the Karbon Combine for exploitation, almost a hundred years ago. But they had done little with it. Then a galactic struggle, which had torn apart old alliances, devastated worlds, and made of Naill Renfro one of the homeless wanderers, had given the Sky Lovers a chance to buy out the Karbon interest, since the Combine had gone bankrupt. The war had given a death blow to many thrusts of space expansion and cut back for a time mankind's outward flow. Janus, with its wide, thickly forested continents, its narrow seas, its lack of any outstanding natural riches, had been easily relinquished to those who wanted it as a homeland.
Once it was assigned to the garthdwellers, off-world powers would have no reason to meddle with the planet. Their jurisdiction extended no farther than the port. Yet now they were carrying on a systematic battle against the Forest.
There was no symbol on the bubble-tent, or on the other two smaller ones nearer the river. Ayyar settled himself to wait and watch. He knew the danger of over-confidence; yet he was sure that no man in that camp, or any garth of the tree-hating Settlers, could match an Ift in woodcraft. The dogs of the garths were to be feared, but here he did not smell dog.
The light grew stronger. He glanced back now and then at the Forest. The dead Great Crowns were bones. Around their huge trunks, roots spread out in high buttresses, taller by far than his head, dark caverns between their walls. In the old days one beat upon those, and the call would be repeated, so that in moments signals ran from one end of Iftcan to the other. But if one sounded such an alarm today, who was to answer? Unless troubled ghosts would gather, unable to defend their graves. Scraps of Ayyar memory stirred.
"Take into your hand a dead warrior's sword and beware, lest his spirit come to claim it—and you!"
Naill had such a sword. It lay smooth and straight against him now, its hilt ready to his hand, its baldric across his shoulder. Naill had taken the sword, so he was Ayyar, to be claimed by Ayyar's battles.
There was movement at the nearer of the bubble shelters. A man came out. It was no garthman—he wore no brush of beard, nor their sad-dull, coarse clothing. He had on the uniform of port security. Then this was an official expedition. What had happened during Iftin slumber?
Ayyar measured by eye the distance to the machines, to the camp. The ground was far too clear to risk any advance on his part. And that physical and mental change that had so forcibly altered Naill into Ayyar had also planted deep in him a revulsion toward his former species. Even to plan close contact with them made him giddy with waves of sickness.
Yet the only means of learning the truth was to get within listening distance of those men. And once they manned the machines he would not dare to linger—there was too good a chance of being caught by the sweep of a heat beam.
More men came out of the sleeping quarters. Two wore guards' uniforms, the others the clothing of port workmen. But, Ayyar noted, they all went armed. Not with the stunners that were the usual planet side weapons—but with blasters, only issued on inhabited worlds under the most imperiled conditions! That was another reason to keep well out of range. Iftin swords were not equal to blasters.
The men went into another bubble—mess, probably. Then Ayyar heard the hum of a flitter. He froze under his change-color cloak. It was coming from the port and would set down not too far from his place of concealment.
Two men dropped from its cabin door. They walked, not to the camp, but to the beamer, one of them sighting along the dead paths it had cleared.
"—take us months to char this off. There is a whole continent to clear!"
He who did the sighting glanced over his shoulder. "We cannot wait for off-world help. You saw the Smatchz garth. And that was the third. As long as they have these forests for cover, we cannot track them."
"But what are they?"
The other shrugged. "Ask me after we catch one. As far as their word is concerned they are green devils. I"—he hesitated, running one hand along the ray tube almost caressingly—"was on Fenris and Lanthor during the war—and the Smatchz garth was worse than anything there. We face the hardest kind of war, hit and run attacks where the enemy has all the advantage. The only way to drive those green demons out is to blast away their cover!"
"Well, the sooner we get to it then . . ."
They turned back to the camp. Ayyar watched them stop a little way from the shelters. There was a shimmer in the air; they stepped forward, once more the shimmer—but it was behind them. A force field! The camp was ringed by a force field! Which meant that those inside that barrier were guarded against some greatly feared danger.
Green demons from the forest? Ayyar glanced down at his own slender hand, at its green flesh. Could they have meant Iftin? No, that could not be. The only Iftin, except for those wintering across the South Sea, were those who had sheltered in Iftsiga. The "green demons" could not be Iftin—but then who or what?