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HISTORY is not only a collection of facts; it is a spider’s web of ifs. If Napoleon had not lost the Battle of Waterloo, if the American colonies had lost the Revolution, if the South and not the North had won the Civil War . . . The procession of such ifs is endless, exciting the imagination and spurring endless speculation. Sometimes the all important turning point can be compressed into a single small action—the death of one man, a seemingly casual decision.

And if the larger history of a nation, or a world, depends upon so many chance ifs, so also does the personal history of each and every one of us. Because we are five minutes late or ten minutes early for an appointment, because we catch one bus but miss another, our life is completely changed.

There exists a fascinating theory that two worlds branch from every bit of destiny action. Hence, there are far reaching bands of parallel worlds, born of many historical choices. Thus, if some means of communication could be devised a man might travel, not backwards or forwards in time, but across it to visit, for example, a contemporary world which resulted from a successful Viking colonization of the North American continent, or one in which William the Conqueror never ruled England.

Since this game can be envisioned on Earth, then why could it not also hold on other planets out in the galaxy when men of our breed .go pioneering there?

Imagine a world on which a Terran ship or fleet of ships lands. The space-weary voyagers, mutated physically by the effects of their wandering, greet solid soil thankfully. There is a native race, primitive to the point of barbarism. There is so much the Terrans have to give, so without realizing their crime, they meddle. As the generations come and go they begin to realize that each race must have its own fight for civilization, that gifts too easily obtained are injuries, that its own destiny is the birthright of each world.

So, regretfully, the “Gods” from the stars know that they have already woefully harmed where they meant only good, that to save what may be salvaged they must go. However, in here are those of the half-blood, a mingling of Terran and native breed, and there are those among the Terrans themselves who do not want the stars, the endless new searching for a hospitable world on which there is no intelligent native life.

Thus the old idea of parallel worlds awakes anew and some dream wistfully of this same planet where some quirk of history or the past decided against the rise of native life—the empty world they want and yet the familiar one they love and are bound to by many ties.

Next would begin a search for a pathway across the many if worlds, a gate to open to such exploring. And there would be many worlds—even some in which their own landing and their labors had taken a darker and more forbidding turn, a world on which they might even meet themselves as they would lie when walking another lane of history and influenced by another past.

These Terrans centuries ahead of us, armed with technical knowledge we can only imagine, might venture forth across time of an alien world, which could lead to just such a chronicle of action beyond a Star Gate. . . .

I
INHERITANCE

THIS HAD BEEN a queer “cold” season so far. No snow, even on the upper reaches of the peaks, no drifts to stopper the high passes, warm winds over the fields of brittle stubble, though most of the silver-green leaves of the copses had been brought to earth by those same winds. Instead of cold they had experienced a general drying-out to kill the vigorous life of wood and pasturage. And the weather was only a part of the strangeness that had settled over Gorth—at least those parts of Gorth where men beat paths—since the Star Lords had withdrawn.

The Star Lords, with their power, had raised the Gorthians above the beasts of the forests and had thrown over them their protection, as the lord of any holding could now extend the certainty of life to one outlawed and running from sword battle. But now that the Star Lords had gone—what would follow for Gorth?

Kincar s’Rud paused beneath the flapping mordskin banner of Styr’s Holding to direct a long, measuring glance along the hill line. His cloak, sewn cunningly from strips of soft suard fur brought back from his solitary upland hunts, was molded about him now by the force of that unseasonably warm wind, as he stood exposed on the summit of the watch tower alert to any movement across the blue-earthed fields of the Holding. Kincar was no giant to boast inches rivaling a Star Lord’s, but he was well muscled for his years and could and had surpassed his warrior tutors in sword play. Now he absently flexed one of his narrow, six-fingered hands on the rough stone parapet, while the banner crackled its stiff folds over his head.

He had volunteered for this post at midday, for no other reason than to escape the sly prodding of Jord—Jord who affected to believe that the withdrawal of the Star Lords meant a new and brighter day for the men of Gorth. What kind of day? Kincar’s eyes—blue-green, set obliquely in his young face—narrowed as he traced that thought to the vague suspicion behind it.

He, Kincar s’Rud, was son of the Hold Daughter and so ruler by blood as soon as Wurd s’Jastard went into the Company of the Three. But if he was alive to walk this Holding, then Jord would be master here. Through the years since he had been brought from the city to this distant mountain Holding, Kincar had overheard enough, pieced-together bits of information, until he knew what he would have to face when Wurd did depart into the shadows.

Jord had his followers—men whom he had gathered together during his trading journeys—who were tied to him by bonds of personal loyalty and not by clan reckoning. And he appeared able to smell out advantages for himself. Why else had he come down the long trail two days ago, heading a motley caravan? Ostensibly it was to bring the latest news of the Star Lords’ departure, but it was strange that Wurd had just taken to his bed in what could only be that ancient man’s last bout with the old wound that had been draining his strength for years..

Would Jord attempt to force sword battle on Kincar for the Holding? His constant oblique remarks had suggested that. Yet outwardly to provoke such a quarrel when Jord himself was the next heir after Kincar was to court outlawing as Jord well knew. And Jord was too shrewd to throw away his future for the mere satisfaction of removing Kincar. There was something else, some other reason beneath Jord’s preoccupation with the Lords’ withdrawal, behind his comments on the life to come, that made Kincar uneasy. Jord never moved until he was sure of his backing. Now he hardly attempted to veil his triumph.

Kincar could not remember his mother, unless a very dim dream of muted colors, flower scent, and the sound of soft weeping in a shadowed night were to be named Anora, Hold Daughter s’Styr. But he could never reconcile in his mind the fact that Anora and Jord had been brother and sister. And certainly Jord had given him often to believe that whatever lay between them, hate had been its base.

Though he had been born in Terranna, the city of the Star Lords, Kincar had been brought to the Holding when he was so young that he could not remember anything of that journey. Nor had he ever seen the plains beyond the mountain ring again. Now he did not want to. With the Star Lords departed, who would wish to visit the echoing desolation of their city or look upon the empty stretches where their Star ships once stood? It would be walking into the resting place of the long dead who were jealous when their sleep was disturbed.

He did not understand the reason of their going. The aliens had done so much for Gorth—why now did they set off once more in their ships? Oh, he had heard the blasphemous whisperings current among those who followed Jord, that the Star Lords denied to Gorth’s natives their great “secrets—the life eternal with which they were blessed and the knowledge of strange weapons. He had also heard rumors that among the Lords themselves there had been quarreling, that some had wished to give these gifts to Gorth, while the others chose to withhold them, and that those who would give had gathered a fighting tail of Gorthians to rebel. But since the Lords had withdrawn, what could they now rebel against—the open sky? Perhaps in the hour of their leaving the Lords had set a curse upon this rebellious world.

Though the wind about him continued warm, Kincar shivered. Among his people were those with the in-seeing, the power to drive out certain kinds of sickness by the use of hand and will. How much greater must be such powers among the Star Lords! Great enough to lay a spell upon a whole world so that the cold came not? And later would there follow any season of growing things once more? Again he shivered.

“Daughter’s Son!”

Kincar had been so occupied with his own imaginings that his hand went to the hilt of his sword as he whirled, shocked alert by that hail, to see Regen’s helmed head emerge from the tower trapdoor. But Wurd’s guardsman did not climb any farther.

“Daughter’s Son, the Styr would have speech with you.”

“The Styr—he is—?” But he did not need to complete that question; the answer was to be read plainly in Regen’s eyes.

Although Wurd had taken to his bed days ago, Kincar had not really believed that the end was so near. The old chief had ailed before, had been close enough to the Great Forest to hear the sighing of the wind in its branches, yet he had come back to hold Styr in his slender fist. One could not picture the Holding without Wurd.

Kincar paused in the hall outside the door of the Lord’s chamber only long enough to tug off his helm and drop his cape. Then, with his drawn sword gripped by the blade so that he could proffer the hilt to his overlord, he went in.

In spite of the warmth there was a fire on the hearth. Its heat reached the bed on which was piled a heap of coverings woven from fur strips. They made a kind of cocoon about the shrunken figure propped into a sitting position. Wurd’s face was blue-white against the dark furs, but his eyes were steady and he was able to raise a claw finger to the sword hilt in greeting.

“Daughter’s Son.” His voice was only a faint whisper of sound, less alive than his eyes. It died away in a silence as if Wurd must gather and hoard strength to force each word out between his bloodless lips. But he raised again that claw finger in a gesture to Regen, and the guard moved to lift the lid of a chest that had been drawn forward to a new position beside the bed.

Under Wurd’s eyes Regen took out three bundles, stripping off coverings to display a short-sleeved shirt of scales fashioned of metal with the iridescent sheen of a reptile’s skin, a sheathed sword, and, last of all, a woven surcoat with a device, new to Kincar, worked upon the breast. He thought that he was familiar with Wurd’s war gear, having been set to the polishing of it many times in his younger days. But none of these had he ever seen before, though their workmanship was that of an artist in metal, and he thought that their like could not be equaled save perhaps in the armories of the Star Lords.

Shirt, sword, and surcoat were laid across the foot of the bed, and Wurd blinked at them.

“Daughter’s Son”—again that wavering claw pointed— “take up your heritage—“

Kincar reached for that wonder of a shirt. But behind his excitement at the gift, he was wary. There was something in Wurd’s ceremonious presentation that bothered him.

“I thank you, Styr,” he was beginning, a little uncertainly, when that hand waved him impatiently to silence.

“Daughter’s Son—take up—your—whole heritage—“ The words came in painful gasps.

Kincar’s grasp of the shirt tightened. Surely that could not mean what he thought! By all the laws of Gorth, he, Hold Daughter’s Son, had a greater heritage than a scale shirt, a sword, and a surcoat, fine as these were!

Regen moved, picking up the surcoat, stretching it wide before his eyes so that the device set there in colorful pattern was plain to read. He gasped in amazement—those jagged streaks of bolt lightning with the star set between! Kincar moistened lips suddenly dry. That device—it was—it was—

Wurd’s shrunken mouth shaped a shadow smile. “Daughter’s Son,” he whispered, “Star Lord’s son—your inheritance!”

The scale shirt slithered through Kincar’s loosened grip to clink on the floor. Stricken, he turned to Regen, hoping for reassurance. But the guard was nodding.

“It is true, Daughter’s Son. You are partly of the Star Lords’ blood and bone. Not only that, but you must join with their clan—for the word has come to us that the rebels would search out such as you and deal with them in an evil way—“

“Outlawry—?” Kincar could not yet believe in what he heard.

Regen shook his head. “Not outlawry, Daughter’s Son. But there is one here within Styr’s walls who will do rebel will on you. You must go before Styr is departed, be out of lord’s reach before he becomes Styr—“

“But I am Daughter’s Son!”

“Those within these walls have full knowledge of your blood,” Regen continued slowly. “And there are some who will follow you in drawing sword if you raise the mord banner. But there are others who want none of the Star blood in this Holding. It may be brother against brother, father against son, should you claim to be Styr.”

That was like coming up with bruising force against a wall when one was running a race. Kincar looked to Wurd for support, but the old lord’s still bright eyes held the same uncompromising message.

“Where shall I go?” he asked simply. “The Star Lords have left.”

“Not—so—“ Wurd’s whisper came. “Ships have gone— but some remain— You shall join them. Regen—“ He waved a finger at the guard and closed his eyes.

The other moved quickly. Almost before he knew what was happening, Kincar felt the man’s hands on him, stripping off ring mail, the jerkin under it. He was reclad in the scaled shirt, over it the surcoat with its betraying insignia. Then Regen belted on the new sword.

“Your cloak, Daughter’s Son. Now down the inner stair. Cim awaits you in the courtyard.”

Wurd spoke for the last time, though he did not again open his eyes, and the words were the merest trickle of sound. “Map—and the Fortune of the Three with you— Daughter’s Son! You would have held Styr well—it is a great pity. Go—while I still hold breath in me!”

Before Kincar could protest or take a formal farewell, Regen hurried him from the room and down the private stair to the courtyard. The mount that he had trapped in the autumn drive pens two years previously and knew to be a steady goer, heavy enough for good work in the press of a fight, and with an extra stamina for long travel on thin rations, stood with riding pad strapped about its middle, saddlebags across its broad haunches.

Cim was not a beautiful larng, no sleek-coated, nervous highbred. His narrow head whipped about so all four of the eyes set high in his skull could survey Kincar with his usual brooding measurement. His cold-season wool was growing in patches about the long thin neck and shoulders, its cream-white dabbed with spots of the same rusty red as the hide underneath. No, Cim was no beauty, and he was uncertain of temper, but to Kincar’s mind he was the pick of the Holding’s mount pens.

But Cim was not the only thing in Styr Hold that he could claim as his own. As Kincar settled on the larng’s pad and gathered up the ear reins, he whistled, a single high, lilting note. He was answered from the hatchery on the smaller tower. On ribbed leather wings, supporting a body that was one-third head with gaping, toothed jaws and huge, intelligent red eyes, the mord—a smaller edition of those vicious haunters of the mountain tops, lacking none of their ferocious spirit—circled once over her master’s head and then flapped off. Vorken would hover over him for the rest of the day, pursuing her own concerns but alert to his summoning.

“The road to the north—“ Regen spoke hurriedly, his hands raised as if he would literally push Kincar out of the courtyard. “The map is in the left bag, Daughter’s Son. Take the Mord Claw Pass. We are blessed by the Three that storms have not yet choked it. But you have only a short time—“

“Regen!” Kincar was at last able to break the odd feeling, which had possessed him during these last few minutes, of being in a dream. “Do you swear by Clan Right that this is a good thing?”

The guard’s eyes met his with honesty—honesty and a concern there was no attempt to disguise. “Daughter’s Son, by Clan Right, I tell you this is the only way, unless you would go into the Forest dragging half your men after you in blood. Jord is determined to have Styr. Had you been only Daughter’s Son, not half of Star blood, none would have followed him. But that is not so. There are those here who will draw blade at your bidding, and there are those who look to Jord. Between you, if you so strive, you will split Styr Holding like a rotten fruit, and the outlaws will eat us up before the coming of green things again. Go claim a greater heritage than Styr, Daughter’s Son. It is your right.”

For the last time he gave Kincar full salute, and the younger man, realizing that he spoke the truth, set Cirn into a lumbering trot with a twitch of the ear reins. But his hurt struck so deep that he did not once turn to look back at the squat half-fortress, half-castle with the cluster of fieldmen’s dwellings about its walls.

The wind was at his back as he took the northeast track, which would bring him up to Mord Claw Pass and the way to the interior plains. As far as he knew, he was heading into the broken, aimless life of an outlaw, with the best future he could hope for one in service as a guardsman under some lord who wanted to enlist extra swords for a foray.

Could Wurd’s talk of a remaining Star ship—of his joining with the Star Lords—be true? He had half forgotten it since leaving the old man. Kincar fumbled with the left saddlebag and brought out a roll of writing bark. He had been trained to read block characters, for part of his duties at Styr was to keep records. But such reading was not a quick task, and he let Cim pick his own route along the road as he puzzled over the two lines with the small accompanying drawing.

Why—it was clear enough! Those of the half-blood who wished to join the Star Lords had been summoned. And the map was not unfamiliar—it covered a portion of the countryside he had been set to memorize a year or so earlier. Then Wurd had still been able to ride and had carried on the tutelage of the Hold’s heir, taking him as far as the passes and pointing out in the wastes below where gatherings of outlaws might exist and where a canny chief of a Holding might well look for future trouble. The map was the heart of such a section, a district of ill omen, rumored to be the abode of the Old Ones, those shapes of darkness driven into foul hiding by the Star Lords upon their arrival in Gorth.

The Star Lords! Kincar’s hand went to the device on his surcoat. He had a sudden odd longing to look upon the reflection of his own face in some chamber mirror. Would his new knowledge make any change in what would be pictured there?

To his eyes he had no physical difference from the other youths of Styr. Yet, by all accounts, the Star Lords were giants, their skin not ivory-white as his own but a rich brown, as if they had been hewn from a rare wood. No, if this wild tale were really true, he could have nothing of his sire in face or body. Under his helm his hair curled tight to his skull in small rings of blue-gray. Through the years it would darken to the black of an old man. But it was rumored that the Star Lords also had hair growing upon their bodies— and his skin was smooth. Away from Styr who would know his alien blood? He could discard the surcoat, turn free guardsman—maybe in time raise a following tail and gain a holding of his own by legal sword battle.

But, while he made and discarded half-a-dozen such plans, Kincar continued to ride along the path that would take him over the Mord’s Claw and into the wasteland shown on the map. He could not have told why, for something within him shrank from the acceptance of his inheritance. While he revered the Star Lords and had hotly resented Jord’s sneers, it was a very different thing to be of off-world blood oneself. And he did not like it.

The day had been half over when he quit Styr. And he did not halt for a rest, knowing that Regen must have fed Cim well. When the track they followed dwindled into a forking trail, he came upon Vorken sitting in the middle of the open space, fanning her wings as she squatted upon the still-warm body of a small wood-suard. He was heading into a country where game might be scarce, and wood-suard was tender eating. Kincar dismounted, cleaned the beast with his hunting knife, giving Vorken the tidbits she hungered for, and slung the body up behind his pad. It would do for the last meal of the day.

Their way up was a winding one. It was a caravan track, only used in times of war when the more western routes were preyed upon by guardsmen. And he was sure that it had not been traveled this season at all—the wastes beyond having too ill a name.

When the slope grew too steep, he dismounted, letting Cim pick a path where the mount’s clawed feet found good hold. He scrambled along through scrub brush, which caught at his cloak or the crest of fringed mord skin on his helm. And he knew he was lucky that the season was so warm he did not have to fight snow as well, though here the nip of the wind was keen. Vorken took to hovering closer, alighting now and then on some rock a little ahead of her companions’ slow advance to whistle her plaintive call and be reassured by Kincar’s answer. A mord, once trained to man’s friendship, had a craving for his presence, which kept it tractable even in the wilds where it could easily elude any hunter.

It was close to sunset when the vegetation, dried and leafless, was all behind them and they were among the rocks near to the pass. Kincar looked back for the first time. It was easy, far too easy, in the clear air, to sight Styr Holding. But—he caught a quick breath as he saw that the banner was gone from the watchtower! Wurd had been right—the lordship had passed from one hand to the next this day. Wurd s’Jastard was no longer Styr. And for Kincar s’Rud there could be no return now. Jord was in command—Jord s’Wurd was now Styr!

II
THE BATTLE OF THE WASTE

AN OVERHANG of rock gave Kincar shelter for the night. He had crossed the highest point of Mord Claw Pass and come down a short distance to the beginning of the timber line before the daylight faded. But- he had no wish to push on into the wilderness beyond during the dark hours. Though the mountain shut off some of the wind, it was far colder here than in the valley of the Holding, and he set about building a traveler’s small fire in the lee of the rocks while Vorken settled down upon the pad he had stripped from. Cim and watched him intently, spreading her wings uneasily now and again as she listened to sounds from the stunted bushes and trees below them.

With Vorken’s ears at his service, and Cim’s alertness to other animals, Kincar needed to do no sentry duty. Neither would leave ths fireside, and either or both would give him swift warning of danger. He was in more peril from wandering outlaws than he could be from any animal or flying thing. The giant sa-mords of the heights were not night hunters, and any suard large enough to provide a real threat would be timid of fire.

He cut up the meat Vorken had provided, sharpening a stick on which to impale chunks for roasting. And in the saddlebags he found the hard journey cakes of wayfarers, which packed into their stone solidity enough nourishment to keep a man going for days through a foodless wilderness. Regen was an old campaigner, and now that Kincar had time to check the contents of the bags, he appreciated the thought and experience that had gone into their packing. Food in the most concentrated forms known to men who hunted or raided through waste country, a fishing line with hooks, a drag blanket folded small, its wet-repelling surface ample protection against all but the worst storms, a set of small tools for the righting of riding gear and armor, and, last of all, a small packet wound with a fastening of tough skin that Kincar tackled with interest. Judging by the care with which it had been wrapped, he was sure it must contain some treasure, but when the object was at last bared to view in the firelight, Kincar was puzzled. He was sure he had never seen it before—an oval stone, dull green, smoothed as though by countless years of water action rather than by the tools of men. But there was a hole in the narrower end, and through this hung a chain of metal. Plainly it was intended to be worn.

Tentatively Kincar shook it loose from the hide covering and cupped it in his palm. A moment later he almost dropped it, for as it lay upon his flesh, its dullness took on a faint glow, and it grew warm as though it held a life of its own. Kincar sucked in his breath and his fingers tightened over it in a jealous fist.

“Lor, Loi, Lys,” he whispered reverently, and it seemed to him that with every speaking of one of the Names, the stone he held pulsed warmly.

But how had Regen—or was this a lost heritage from Wurd? No one within Styr Hold had ever dreamed that a Tie had lain in its lord’s keeping. Kincar was overwhelmed by this last evidence of Wurd’s trust in him. Jord might have the Holding, but not the guardianship of a Tie. That was his! The trust—and perhaps someday— He stared bemused at the fire. Someday—if he were worthy—if he proved to be the one Wurd hoped he might be, he might even use its power! With a child’s wondering eyes, Kincar studied the stone, trying to imagine the marvel of that. No man could do so until the hour when the power moved him. It was enough that a Tie was his to guard.

With shaking fingers he got the chain about his throat, installed the stone safely against his skin under coarse shirt, jerkin, and scale armor. But it seemed that some measure of heat still clung to the hand that had held it. And when he raised his fingers to look at them more closely, he was aware of a faint, spicy fragrance. Vorken gave one of her chirps and shot forth her huge head, drawing her toothed beak across his palm, and Cim’s head bobbed down as if the larng, too, was drawn by the enchantment of the Tie.

It was a very great honor to be a guardian, but it was also dangerous. The Tie could weave two kinds of magic, one for and one against mankind. And there were those who would readily plant a sword point in him to gain what he wore now—if it was suspected to be in his possession. Regen had given him aid and danger tied together in one small stone, but Kincar accepted it gladly.

Without worry, knowing that he could depend upon Vorken for a warning, he curled up with cloak and blanket about him to sleep away the hours of the dark. And when he roused from a confused dream, it was to a soft chittering beside his ear. Vorken was a warm weight on his chest. Outlined against the coals of the dying fire, he saw the black blot of her head turn from side to side. When he moved and she knew he was truly awake, Vorken scuttled away, using the tearing claws of her four feet to scramble to the top of a rock —making ready to launch into the air if need be. Her form of defense was always a slashing attack aimed at the head and eyes of the enemy.

Kincar felt for his sword hilt as she stared into the dark. There was no sound from Cim, which meant that Vorken’s more acute hearing had given them time to prepare. What she warned against might well be far down the mountainside. The fire was almost dead, and Kincar made no effort to feed it into new life. His senses, trained during long wilderness hunts, told him that dawn was not far off.

He did not try to go out of the pocket in which they had camped. Vorken still gave soft warnings from her post. But, since her night sight was excellent, and she had not taken to the air, Kincar was certain the intruder that had disturbed her was coming no nearer. The sky was gray. He could pick out the boulders sheltering them. Now he set about padding Cim, lashing on saddlebags, though he did not mount as they edged out of the hollow. Vorken took to the air on scout. Cim’s claws scraped on the rocks, but within a few feet the trail began and they walked in thick dust. Kincar chewed on a mouthful of journeycake, giving the major portion of the round to Cim. That must do to break their fast, until they were sure they were safe.

The trail came out after a steep descent upon the lip of an even more abrupt drop. But Kincar did not move on. Crouching there, he brought Cim up with a sharp tug at the ear reins, hoping that neither had been sighted by the party below.

His first thought—that he spied upon a traders’ caravan was disproved in his second survey of the camp. There were six larngs, all riding stock—no burden bearers among them. And there were six riders on the bank of the small ice-bordered stream. The larngs bore the marks of hard going, their flanks were flat to the bones, and their cold-season wool hung in draggled patches as if they had been forced through thorn thickets.

But Kincar was astonished by the riders, for three of the figures seated on the bank were women, one hardly more than a child. Women in the wastelands! Of course the outlaws raided the holdings and took women to build up their clans. But these were plainly not captives, and their traveling cloaks were fine garments of tetee wool such as Hold Daughters had. They were on good terms with the men, and their light voices were pitched as if they spoke at ease with clan brothers.

What was such a party doing here? They were not out for a day’s hunting, for each larng bore traveling bags, plump to seam-bursting. Kincar longed to see their faces, but each wore the conventional travel mask under a well-wound turban of veil. For a moment he had a wild suspicion— This was the waste where the Star Lords had ordered their people to assemble. But there was no mistaking the pale skin’of the nearest warrior. He was of Gorthian breed, no being from outer space.

As Kincar hesitated, uncertain as to whether he should hail the others, there was a startling scream from Vorken and then the deep, braying roar of a hand drum.

Those below were on their feet as if jerked up by ropes laid about them. The women, tossed by their escorts into the riding pads of the waiting larngs, galloped off, one man with them, while the other two warriors reined in their mounts with one hand, holding swords free with the other. There was the sound of a running larng, and a war mount burst out of a screen of brush. Kincar, already up on Cim, paused to stare at the newcomer.

His larng was a giant of that breed—it had to be—for the man who bestrode him was also a giant. His wide shoulders were covered with a silvery stuff that drew light even in the gray of early morning. Both of the waiting warriors rode over to take a stand beside him, all three wheeling to await some attack.

Kincar found the zigzag trail down the cliffside. Recklessly he did not dismount but kept the larng to the best speed possible, as loose stones and gravel rolled under Cim’s scrabbling claws. The path took one of its sudden turns, and he caught sight of a battle raging in that river clearing.

Men in the tatters and rusty mail of outlaws, some on foot, a few riding gaunt larngs, leaped out of the brush, a wave to engulf the three who waited. But those three met the wave with licking blades. There was a confused shouting, the scream of a dying man. Cim’s forefeet were on the last turn and Kincar leaned forward, whistling into his mount’s ear that particular call that sent the larng into the proper battle rage.

They burst through the stream in a spatter of high-dashed water, were up the opposite bank and racing toward the melee. Vorken, seeing that Kincar was on the move, planed down to stab at an unsuspecting face, sending the man rolling screaming on the ground as her bill and claws got home. Cim, as he had been schooled, reared, using his forefeet on the dismounted men, while Kincar clung to the riding pad with one hand and swung his sword to good purpose with the other. There were a few wild minutes, and then the roar of the hand drum once again. A man at whom Kincar had aimed a stabbing thrust broke and ran for shelter into the brush. And when Kincar looked about for another enemy, he found that, except for the bodies on the ground and the three men who had been attacked, the pocket meadow was clear.

One of the warriors dismounted to wipe his blade on the grass before sending it home in its sheath.

“Those scouts have now had their fangs drawn, Lord Dillan-“

The man who had just sheathed his sword laughed, a harsh sound lacking mirth. He speedily contradicted his fellow.

“For the moment only, Jonathal. Were they of the common breed one such lesson would suffice. But these have a leader who will not let us away in peace as long as blades can be raised against us.”

The giant in the silver clothing looked beyond his own men to study Kincar, a frown line showing between his brows, though little else was to be seen of his features because of the traveling mask across cheek and chin. Something in that close scrutiny brought Kincar’s head up. A thrill of defiance ran through him.

“Who are you?” The question was shot at him as quick as a sword stab and as sharply.

“Kincar s’Rud,” he replied, with none of the ceremonious embellishment he should use by forms of holding courtesy.

“—s’Rud—“ the other repeated, but his tongue gave an odd twist to the name so that it came out with an intonation Kincar had never heard before. “And your sign?” he pressed.

Kincar had tossed aside his cloak. He twisted a little on the riding pad so that the other could see the device worked so boldly on his surcoat—that device that even yet did not seem right for him to wear.

“—s’Rud—“ the giant said again. “And your mother?”

“Anora, Hold Daughter of Styr.”

All three of them were staring at him now, the warriors appraisingly. However, he must have satisfied the big man, for now the lord held his hand, palm empty, over his head in the conventional salute of friendship. “Welcome to our road, Kincar s’Rud. You, too, have come at the summoning?”

But Kincar was still wary. “I seek a place in the waste—“ The strange lord nodded. “As do we. And, since the time grows very short, we must ride in haste. We are now hunted men on Gorth.”

They might be satisfied with his identification, but he had had none from them. “I ride with—?” Kincar prompted.

The silver clad lord answered. “I am Dillan, and these are Jonathal s’Kinston and Vulth s’Marc. We are all wearers of the lightning flash and followers of strange stars.”

His own kind, the mixed blood. Kincar studied them curipusly. The two guardsmen, at first glance, seemed no different from well-born holding men. And, though they showed Lord Dillan a certain deference, it was that of clansman to close kin and not underling to hold chief.

The physical difference between Lord Dillan and the others was so marked that the longer Cim picked his way behind the leader’s mount, the more Kincar came to suspect that he now rode in company with no half-blood but with one of the fabulous Star Lords in person. His great height, the very timbre of his voice, betrayed an alien origin, even though his helm and face mask and the tight silver clothing , concealed most of his body and features. Yet neither Jonathal nor Vulth acted as if their leader was semidivine. They displayed none of the awe that kept Kincar silent and a little apart. Perhaps they had lived all their lives in the shadow of the Star-born and knew no wonder at their powers. Yet in the battle the Lord Dillan had not slain his enemies with shooting bolts of fire, as legend said he might do, but used a blade, longer and heavier than the usual to be sure, but still a sword much the same as that now girded to Kincar’s own belt. And when he spoke, it was of common things, the endurance of a larng, the coming of full day, matters that any man riding in company might comment upon.

Vorken whistled her warning from above their heads, and all of them glanced aloft to where she skimmed, wings stretched, gliding on the unseen currents.

“You are well served, Kincar,” the Lord Dillan addressed him for the first time since they had left the meadow. “That is a fine mord.”

“Aye, a battle bird of price!” Vulth chimed in. “She is quick with her beak where there is need. Of your training?” he ended politely.

Kincar warmed. “I picked her from the egg. She has had two years of coursing. The best of Styr’s hatchery for five seasons at least.”

Those whose presence Vorkens’ scream had heralded now came into view ahead. The three women on their weary larngs, their escort trailing a length behind with an eye to the rear. He flung up his arm in welcome at the sight of their party and pulled aside to wait, but the women took no heed, keeping on at the best pace their larngs would rise to.

“You have drawn teeth?” the warrior hailed them.

“We have drawn teeth,” Vulth replied with grim satisfaction. “They will press us again, but there are now fewer to answer the drum.”

As if his words had been a signal, again that ominous roll of sound struck their ears from the back trail. But it was muffled by distance. The hunters had dropped well behind their quarry. Lord Dillan pushed his mount ahead to fall in with the women. They exchanged words in a low voice, and one of the women pointed in a westwardly direction. The Star Lord nodded and brought his larng to one side, letting the women pass. With a wave of his hand he sent their guard pounding in their wake, while the remaining four slackened speed once more—to provide a rear guard.

Kincar saw with woodswise eyes that they were following a marked trail that had been in recent use, its dust churned by larng claws in ragged lines. Lord Dillan must have noted his examination, for he said, “We are the last of the ingathering. We have come from Gnarth.”

From half the continent away! No wonder their mounts showed bones through thin flesh and the women rode with the droop of weariness in their cloaked shoulders. But certainly they had not been hunted along all that distance? To underscore that thought, the hunt drum rolled again—this time closer. Vorken sounded her war call, but when Kincar did not wheel to face the enemy, she circled over their heads in widening curves, spiraling up into the new day, her keen eyes on the ground, her attention ready for any move from Kincar that would send her once more in a vicious dive against his foes.

The clumps of leafless brush that had narrowed their path since they left the river banks dwindled into patches of small twisted scrub, arid as dried bones in the now waterless land. And the blue earth under foot was pied with patches of silver sand. They were plainly heading into one of the true deserts of the waste. Yet the spoor of those before them was plain to read, and those with whom Kincar now rode appeared certain ,of the route.

A sun arose, bringing with it the sickly, warmish wind that was so out of season. And, with the wind, the sand came in thin clouds to plague them. Kincar improvised a mask. He was inured to the usual wind grit that bothered city dwellers traveling, but this was something else. Cim closed two of his eyes and veiled the others with his transparent inner eyelids but showed no other signs of discomfort as he trotted along. Vorken soared above the worst of the eddies.

Outcrops of rock, carved by wind and the tempest-borne sand grains into weird sculptures, rose along the trail, as if they were the ruins of some long-sacked holding. And the track wound about among these pillars and towers until Kin-car found himself losing his sense of direction, the more so since he could not pick landmarks ahead through the quick flurries of wind and sand.

He was reduced to following Lord Dillan blindly, and only confidence in that leader kept him in control of a growing uneasiness. He was hungry, and water—the thought of water—was a minor torture. They must have been traveling for hours.. How much longer would they shuttle on across this barren waste?

Kincar dragged on the reins, forcing Cim to rear up. The roll of the drum had sounded in his very ear! Yet Vorken had given no warning! Then he heard Vulth’s voice, muffled by the mask.

“It is the echo, youngling! They stamp yet far behind us— not now have they outflanked our path. But loose your blade in its sheath; it will drink again before sundown—if we find us a proper battleground.”

III
NO SHIP-BUT—

THE WEIRD echoes of the drum made Kincar edgy. To have it blast from one side and then the other grated on his nerves, and he longed to draw his sword and ride with the blade bafed across his knee, ready for attack. But those with whom he rode made no such preparations, and he was ashamed so to betray his own uneasiness.

At the same time he speculated concerning their goal. A sky ship berthsd here? Among all the rumors that dealt with the secrets of the wastelands, there had never been one that hinted at such a thing. Those ships at which all of Gorth had marveled had been in the great landing place outside the gates of the now forsaken Terranna. And they were gone, through the pale rose of Gorth’s sky, never to return. Had one ship been set here, apart from its kind? When, from time to time, there came short breaks in the force of the grit storm, Kincar held his head high, trying to catch a glimpse of the shaft of metal of a sky ship, which would dwarf all about it.

But, though they bored steadily into the desert land, using the track winding among the pillars, there was no sign—save that same faint road—that man had ever gone that way before. The pillars were growing fewer, and, now that they did not hem in the road, there was the danger of going astray in the fog of wind-driven sand. Lord Dillan slackened pace, sometimes halting altogether for a moment or two, one hand close to his chest, his head bent over it, as if he consulted a talisman. And after each such move he altered their course to the right or left.

Then, as quickly as it had arisen, the wind died, the sand lay once more in dust-fine drifts, and the land about them was clear to the view. They were on an upslope, and far ahead Kincar sighted moving dots of figures, which must be the women and their guard. Those bobbed to the skyline and then were suddenly gone. They might have been sucked down in the sand. A downgrade lay beyond, Kincar surmised, and a steep one or they would not have vanished so quickly.

Jonathal brought his larng up beside Cim, wiping the matted dust from his mouth mask with the back of his hand before he commented thickly, “That was a dry course! And I’ve never relished a fight without a cold draft to sweeten the -throat—“

“A fight?” Kincar had not heard the drum for a time. He had hoped that the storm had shaken their pursuers from the trail.

“They must attack now.” Jonathal shrugged. “This is the last throw of tablets in the game. Once we are over that ridge”—he jerked a thumb at the rise—“they will have lost. We are the last of our kind. With us through, the gate will close—“

Kincar did not understand that reference to the gate, but he understood very well the scream from Vorken’s long throat, her skimming dive that carried her black shadow back over the sand dunes toward the pillar-studded land from which they had just emerged. And now, at last, he drew his sword, rolling his cloak about his left arm as a shield, ready to snap it into an opponent’s face if the need arose.

Figures slipped from pillar to pillar, silent, dark, misshapen. Kincar watched that sly, noiseless advance, set his mouth hard. For five years or more he had ridden in holding spear-festings aimed against outlaws, and once he had served in a real foray against Crom’s Hold. In the last two testings, in spite of his youth, he had taken out Styr’s banner as Wurd’s deputy. He had known such warfare since his small boy’s hand had first been fitted to an even smaller sword hilt under Regen’s patient teaching. But this was some-thing else—he was sensitive to a change, wary under a threat he did not understand.

Vorken wheeled back above him, shrilling her battle cry, but not attacking since he had not advanced. Cim shifted foot under him. They must feel it, too, this difference, this odd threat that promised worse than slash of sword, thrust of footman’s spear, clash of mounted man against his kind.

His sword dangling from his wrist cord, Kincar brought up nis right hand to jerk off his dust mask, drawing in more freely the air for which his lungs felt a sudden need. Jonathal was on his left, sitting at ease on the pad of his gaunt larng, a smile curving his mouth as he watched the pillars with a sentry’s eye. On the right Vulth was making a careful business of adjusting his cloak about his arm, testing each fold as he laid it ready. But Lord Dillan, his one hand laced in larng reins, his other still held to his breast, had not drawn his weapon at all or shed his travel mask. Above the strip of silver stuff that matched his garments, his odd light eyes were on the pillars and what moved in their shadows.

“Ride slowly,” he bade them. “We do not fight unless they push us to it—“

“They will not let us away out of their jaws,” warned Vulth.

“Perhaps they will—unless he who leads them gives the order—“ Lord Dillan did not relax his watchfulness or turn his larng after them as the other three followed his orders and headed on.

Kincar was last, reluctant to leave. And at that moment Vorken went into action on her own. Whether the mord misconstrued Cim’s movement as an advance, or whether her natural wildness sent her in, Kincar was never to know. But she gave vent to one last whistle and snapped down in a glide toward the nearest pillar.

He did not see the bolt that caught her in mid-air. No one could have sighted the silent, swift stroke. But, as Vorken shrieked in pain, one of her wings collapsed, and she hurtled down toward the sand. Without pausing to think, Kincar sent Cim skimming back to where Vorken lay, beating her good wing in a vain attempt to win aloft again. Her cries were growing hoarser in her pain and rage, and she was hurling spurts of sand into the air with her four feet as she dug fruitlessly with her claws.

Kincar was off Cim. He hit the ground already running, his cloak whipping out to net the frenzied mord. To take her up barehanded was to court deep tears from claws and beak. Somehow he scooped up cloak and struggling creature, cradling her tight against his chest while she snapped and kicked in fury.

There was a shout of triumph from the pillars; a shaggy wave came out of hiding, heading straight for Kincar. He retreated, watchful. His sword was ready, but Vorken’s struggles hampered its free use. He was facing spear points, clubs, in the hands of lithe-moving footmen, and in that moment he realized that the uneasiness he knew was truly fear. The openness of their attack was so removed from their usual methods of battle that it alarmed him as much as the stench from their unwashed bodies made his empty stomach churn.

He gave the cry to summon Cim. But, though the larng obediently trotted to his side, Kincar could not scramble up on the pad, not with the still-fighting Vorken pressed against him. Yet he would not abandon the mord.

“Yaaaaa—“ The shout of the outlaws echoed about him in a worse tumult than the beat of the drum. And behind the footmen, better clad and-armed, mounted men were joining in the rush to ride him down.

Then a larng dashed between him and that advance, the sand fountaining about mount and rider. Vulth thrust and raised a dripping blade for a second stroke. More men boiled from the pillars to get at them both.

With the fraction of breathing space, Kincar had gotten up on Cim, his sword banging from its wrist cord. He let the reins hang. The larng was well enough trained to need no guidance during a fight. The mount was snarling, pawing at the sand, and he reared when he felt Kincar’s weight on the pad, clawing down one of the spearmen.

Vorken must be half stifled. She had ceased to struggle, and Kincar was grateful for that as he fell to such sword work as would cut a path for Vulth’s withdrawal.

A voice shouted incomprehensible words. Lord Dillan replied in the same tongue with a single bitten-off sentence. His blade was out, and he rode beside Jonathal as if they were the two arms of a single warrior. The outlaws broke, snarling like the beasts they were, and ran, but the mounted men behind them were of a different breed. Jonathal’s larng snorted and spun around despite the efforts of its rider to control it. Then it fell with the slack-legged force of an already dead animal and Jonathal was crushed under it, only the soft sand saving him from mortal injury.

Kincar brought Cim up to split the skull of the bareheaded outlaw who had his point at Jonathal’s throat as the other fought to pull free of the larng. Then, above the hum of the drum and the cries of the fighting men, there struck a peel as shrill as Vorken’s calls. Up over the rise, toward which they had been headed, boiled a group of riders. There were only five of them when Kincar could at last sort them out, but somehow the fury of their charge magnified their numbers into double that score.

They swept past the four, scooping up the outlaws and bearing them along by the force with which they struck into the melee. But they did not pursue past the line of the pillars, wheeling there so shortly as to make their larngs rear and totter on their hind legs. Then they pounded back. One paused to let Jonathal scramble up behind him before they went on, drawing the others with them, over the ridge and down into a deep cup of valley, a bare valley that lay like a giant pockmark in the desert waste.

As they swept across the crest, Kincar reeled, his knees almost losing their grip on the riding pad. The sensation of bursting through an unseen barrier was part of that shock. But with it, and worse, had come a thrill of white-hot ‘pain. So sure was he that some chance-thrown spear had found its target in his body that he stared stupidly down to where he still clasped the muffled Vorken, expecting to see metal protruding from his breast and wondering vaguely how he had survived a blow of such force. But there was no spear point showing, and, as he straightened again, he knew that he had not been hit. Only—what of that stab of agony, the pulse of heat and pain that he still knew beneath scale coat and underjerkin?

The Tie! For some reason beyond his knowing, its unique properties had been aroused in that second when he had topped the ridge. The why of it he could not guess, and he dared ask no questions. Those who were guardian of a Tie in the Name of the Three held that honor secretly, a-secrecy accepted without complaint as one accepted the other burdens and rights such a duty laid upon one. He did not dare to touch the place above his heart where that throb beat as if in promise of worse to come.

In the heart of the valley was a camp—a hasty affair of small shelters put together with blankets and cloaks. These were not being speedily dismantled, men throwing rolls and bundles on the backs of larngs. Beyond the camp stood something else, as different from the primitive shelters as one of the Star ships might be from a trader’s wain.

Two pillars of bright blue metal had been based in piles or rocks, the supporting stones being fused into a stability no storm could shake. They were erected some five feet apart, and suspended between them was a shimmering web of some stuff Kincar could not name. It was bright; it glittered with racing lines of rainbow fire that ran ceaselessly crisscross over it—yet it had so little real body that one could see through it to the opposite wall of the valley.

Kincar shifted Vorken’s weight upon his arm and regarded this new marvel intently. He had come here expecting to discover a Star ship. He had found a web strung between metal poles. What had his trust in his chance-met companions drawn him into? As far as he could see, they were now trapped. The outlaws need only make one last rush to wipe them out—for there were no more than six men waiting here.

Of those six, four were wearing the silver dress of Lord Dillan, and they were of the same giant stature. They had put off their travelers’ masks, and he could see the alien darkness of their hard faces, the features of which lacked the mobility of those he had known all his life. One of them now raised his hand in a salute, which Lord Dillan answered. Then that other lord took in his big hands the leading lines of three of the waiting larngs and moved toward the shimmering web. As they watched, he stepped between the supporting pillars.

There was no discernible break in the web. For a moment the rainbow lines rushed in to outline the figure of the Star Lord—then those colors fled again to the far corners of the screen. But the Star Lord and the larngs he had led—were gone! They did not reappear on the opposite side, and Kin-car blinked at the wavy sight of the rocks beyond where no one—no thing—walked at all!

Vorken gave a faint chirrup in his arms; the tip of her beak pushed forth from the wrappings that netted her. Cim blew noisily, clearing the sand grit from his wide nostrils. But at that moment Kincar could neither have spoken nor moved.

It would appear that the tales of the Star Lords’ magic, the wildest tales of all—at which sensible men had laughed indulgently—were true! He had just seen a Star Lord walk into nothingness, which perhaps a Star Lord might safely do—but what of the rest of them?

‘Tis the gate, youngling!” Vulth’s knee brushed against Kincar’s as the other rode beside him. “The gate to give us a new world.”

The explanation meant exactly nothing to Kincar. A ship that went out to the stars—aye, that could he understand. He was no ignorant fieldman to believe that the sky over one’s head was merely the great Shield of Lor held up between men and a terrible outer darkness without end. And he knew well that the Star Lords had come from another world much like Gorth. But they had come in ships where a man could live, the fabric of which all curious ones could feel with their two hands. How could one seek another world by walking through a veil of shimmering stuff?

His hand flattened over the Tie and his lips moved in the Three Names of Power. This was a magic that the Star Lords had not— a magic native to Gorth. And at this moment it was far better to cling to such a talisman than trust to a veil that took men out of sight in an instant.

It was apparent that Vulth knew what to expect and that this wonder was no magic in his eyes. Cim picked his way through the draggle of tents in the wake of Vulth’s mount, but Kincar neither urged him on nor tried to restrain him. Now one of the half-bloods had taken the lead ropes of two more laden larngs. And, as had the Star Lord before him, he went forward with the confidence of one walking a city street into the web where the colors haloed him for an instant of flaming glory before he vanished, the animals after him.

Then it was that Vulth turned and caught Cim’s dangling reins. He smiled reassuringly at Kincar.

“This is a venture better than any foray— past even the Foray of Hlaf’s Dun, youngling. Past even sky voyaging—“

Kincar, clutching Vorken with one hand, the other resting above the branding heat of the Tie, made no protest when the warrior sent his larng straight on toward the screen gateway. He was aware only dimly of sharp glances from Star Lords who stood nearby, for his full attention was on the web. He could not throw aside the thought that he was about to be engulfed in a trap of some kind beyond his imagining. He braced his body stiffly against the inward shrinking of his nerves, against the impulse that would have sent him pounding away not only from the gate but from those who controlled such a device.

Vulth vanished into nothingness; Cim’s head was gone. Kincar was drowning in a sea of color. And on his breast the Tie burned with a force that seemed to char through flesh to his heart. He bit back a whimper of pain and opened dazzled eyes upon a world of gray stone— a world in which life itself seemed alien, intruding, a world of— no, not the dead, for there had never been life here at all— but a world that had never known the impress of a living thing. How he sensed that, Kincar could not have told— perhaps such knowledge came through the Tie.

He straightened painfully, conscious of a party crowded on the stretch of rock plain. But he did not see Vulth’s eyes upon him, the odd shadow on the older Gorthian’s face as he witnessed Kincar’s obvious distress. Nor did Kincar follow when the other dropped Cim’s reins and rode on to join the group waiting by a second portal a half mile farther on.

There was a second portal—the same blue metal poles supporting another rainbow web. Only, before this one was a box contrivance where the Star Lords were clustered. One of their number knelt before that box, his hands resting upon it, a tenseness in his position arguing that he was engaged in some act of the utmost importance.

Cim wandered along, his head drooping. Kincar drew a slow and painful breath. The hurt of the Tie had eased a little. Only when he was directly in touch with the Star Lords’ magic was it so great an agony. If they were to pass through another such gate, could he stand it? He tried to fix his thoughts upon the Three. The Tie was Theirs, the right to bear it had been set upon him by Them—surely they would aid Their servant now—

He tried to watch those about him, gain some hint of what this was that they must do. There were women here, laden supply larngs, a full caravan of travelers. But in all, the party numbered less than thirty, and only six of those in sight were Star Lords—all the rest must be of the half-blood strain.

There was clearly.clan feeling among them, the easy meeting of kinsman with kinsman. Only he felt set apart, torn from all he had known. If only he could know what was happening, where these gates led, what lay before them now! Of one thing he was growing increasingly sure—they were headed into an exile that would be permanent.

A Star Lord burst through the first gate. He ran toward his fellows. Those gathered by the box looked up, their faces strained and bleak. If he bore a warning, they had too little time to act upon it, for through the first gate poured a jumble of mounts and men, swinging bloody steel, and two of them rode double.

The Star Lord at the box moved his hand, bringing down his palm with a smacking force. There was a ripple of green on the second web; the hue became blue, then purple-red as it moved.

Lord Dillan reeled through the first gate. Only two steps beyond it, he staggered about and brought up his hand. What he held Kincar could not see, but from his fist there sprang a spear of light that burned bright in the gloom of that gray world. It struck full upon the first web. The stuff curled, wrinkled, and was consumed as a cobweb fallen into a flame. Between the posts one could see only the barren rocks.

But those who had waited here were now in a hurry to be gone, as if the destruction of that one web was not enough to save them from their enemies. Kincar was caught up in line, and he dared not protest, setting his power of endurance to meet what might chance at his second passage through the magic gates.

It came as an agony worse and deeper than either of the earlier two attacks. He thought he must have cried out, but no one near him took note—perhaps they were too intent upon escape. He was conscious that the sky above was no longer gray but a familiar rose, that Cim’s feet crackled through dried field grass. And Vorken stirred in his arm, crying peevishly.

He looked about him dazedly. This was not the wasteland. He saw a roll of wide plain, the rounded mounts of foothills in the distance, and above, the loom of mountains. A chill wind puffed into his face, bringing with it icy particles of snow, and more white flakes were swirling down in an ever thickening fall.

IV
NEW-FOUND WORLD

KINCAR SHIVERED. Dare he free Vorken from her wrappings in order to bring the cloak about them both? Injured and frightened as she was, the mord might well rend him—for there was a vast, sinewy power in the small body he pressed so tightly against his own. And the burning torment on his breast had sucked from him both strength and inclination to struggle.

So intent was Kincar upon his own problem that the growing clamor about him meant very little. He gathered, only half-consciously, that the Star Lords had been forced by a sudden attack on the outer gateway into action that might prove highly dangerous. And there was a dispute that ended only with the destruction of the second gate, the one that had brought them into this range of open, rolling land. For better or worse, they were now committed to this place, wherever it might be.

Kincar hunched over Vorken, squeaking to her softly in his closest imitation of her own voicings, cautiously loosening the cloak. To his great relief she did not respond with an instant thrust of stiff legs armed with dagger talons. And when he dared to drag the folds entirely away, she crouched, staring up at him, almost as if her fierce nature had for once been cowed by the events of the past hours. She reached out with her forefeet and took firm hold on the breast of his surcoat as she might cling to the bare bole of some tree she had selected for a roost.

Kincar shrugged the cloak about them both, though his movements were slow because of the trickles, of pain that ran from the Tie across his shoulders and along the nerves of his arms. It was good that he need not draw sword now. He doubted if he could raise the weight of the blade.

But he did examine Vorken’s injured wing, finding across its leathery surface a finger-breath of raw brand, a burn. She ‘allowed him only a moment’s inspection and then turned her head and licked at the hurt with her tongue, meeting his further attempt at examination with a warning hiss. And he was forced to allow her to tend her hurt in her own way, only glad that she was content to ride under his cloak without protest.

The Star Lords were marshalling them into line. This open country in a gathering snowstorm was no place for a camp, and they were heading through the swirls toward the foothills where some form of shelter could be expected. To Kin-car’s eyes the country was oddly deserted. This was too good crop land not to be included in some holding—yet there was no sign of wall, no view of field fort, as far as he could see. By some magic the Star Lords must have brought them into a section of Gorth where there were no holds at all. He was very certain they were on Gorth. The sky above them was pale rose, the grass, dried in clumps and edging out of the already covering snow in ragged bunches, was that he had always known. Aye, this was somewhere on Gorth—but where?

At a shout he brought Cim into the line of march. There were no familiar faces near him. And he was too tired, too plagued by the Tie, to try to seek out Jonathal, or Vulth, too shy to look for Lord Dillan in that company.

Luckily the snow did not take on the proportions of a blizzard. Tired, hungry, cold as they were, they could keep one another in sight. But there was little talk along that line. They rode with the suppressed eagerness of those who have been long hunted and who now seek a sanctuary, intent upon winning to such a goal. As the foothills came into clearer view, a pair of scouts broke from the main party and galloped ahead, separating to search the high ground in two directions.

Cim was only plodding. He had not eaten since they had left the pass camp—had that only been this morning? He must be allowed rest, food, and that very soon. Kincar was debating a withdrawal out of line, to give the larng some journeycake, when one of the scouts came pounding back at a dead run. The excited gabble of his report was loud, though his words were not clear. Some sort of superior shelter had been located—it was ready for them. And, as if to underline their need for just such as that, the wind moaned across the empty land and brought with it a thicker flurry of snow, while heavy clouds scudded in the sky. A blizzard was not far off.

The wind might be a broom the way they were swept by it into a narrow valley. But the gloom of the dying day could not hide—hide or belittle—what awaited them there. Kincar had seen many marvels since he had ridden out of Styr. And this was not the least of them.

Here was a hold such as a lord of limitless acres might dream of building. Its square towers bit into the reaches of the sky; its walls had the same solidity as the gorge rock in which it was set. And it spanned the narrow valley from side to side, as if, massive as it was, it served as gate as well as fortress.

In the hollow of a doorway—a doorway so wide that at least three burden larngs might enter it abreast—stood one of the Star Lords, in his hands a core of yellow-red light blazing as a beacon to draw them on through the murk of the snow. But above, in that dark bulk of tower and wall, there was no other light—only shadows and a brooding silence, which seized upon and swallowed up the muted sounds of their own progress down the valley. Kincar knew that this fortress was a dead, long-deserted pile.

As it was deserted, so was it subtly different from the hold forts he had known, not only because of its size, but also because of some alterations of line. Those who had erected this had not first practiced on the building of such as Styr— they had had other models. Then Kincar thought he under-Stood. This was some hidden hold of the Star Lord. It probably guarded the field on which their last ship stood. He knew that their city of Terranna had been far different from the native holds. And that business of the gates had yet to be made clear. But this then was the goal toward which they had headed. He slid down from Cim, cradling Vorken in his arrn. Under him the ground was unsteady, and he was forced to snatch at the riding pad with his other hand to keep his balance.

Still holdling to Cim, Kincar went on slowly until the doorway arched above him and he was in a passage lighted by one of the Star Lords’ flares. There was no side opening in that passage, and it brought him into a courtyard, ringed in with hold walls, into which some snow was shifting down-though the major part of the storm was kept off by those same walls. Here two more flares showed a stall section under a roof, a structure that could only be a mount pen, and Kincar, through habit, headed for it.

Perhaps it was the effect of the Tie that made him move as if in a foggy dream. Mechanically he went through duties that had been drilled into him in childhood, but his sense of curiosity and his awareness of others about him were oddly dulled. It might have been that only Cim, Vorken, and he were alive in that place.

Cim entered one of the stalls readily enough. There was no blanketing hay for its flooring, and Kincar’s boots grated on stone flagstones. As he loosened his cloak, Vorken struggled free of his grip and fluttered her good wing, sputtering her distress, until he lifted her to where she could cling to the top of a stall division, a poor substitute for her roost in the hatchery, but it appeared to satisfy her for the present.

Then he stripped Cim of pad and bags. With an undershirt from his scant wardrobe, he began to rub down the snow-wet flanks, press the excess moisture from shoulder and neck wool, until Cim bubbled contentedly. But with every movement of his hands and arms Kincar’s fatigue grew so that he was obliged to lean for long moments against the wall of the stall panting. He kept doggedly to his task, ending by feeding the larng crumbled journeycake in his cupped hands and holding up to Vorken a strip of dried meat from his provisions.

Cim folded long legs in the curiously awkward stance of a larng needing rest. And the coarse crumbs of journeycake were still On Kincar’s tongue as he fell rather than lay down beside the mount. He reached for his cloak and pulled it up, and then he remembered nothing at all—for a dream world engulfed him utterly and he was finally lost in a darkness without visible end.

Pain—dull and not biting as he had known it—still centered on his breast. Kincar tried to raise his hand to ease it, and a sharper nip caught one of his fingers, completely arousing him. A toothed bill above his chin, red eyes staring into his, a whistling complaint—Vorken crouched on him. His head rested on one of Cim’s forelegs and the heat of the larng’s body kept him warm. But his breath puffed a frosty cloud in the air.

Someone must have closed the door of the stall pens. He was looking now at ancient wood, eaten by insects, splintered by time—but still stout enough to be a portal. Vorken, having seen him fully awake, walked down his body and, trailing her hurt wing, crossed to sit on the bags, and demanded to be fed from their contents.

Some of that strange fog that had dulled his mind since he had dared the web gates had been lost in slumber, but Kincar still moved stiffly as he stretched and went to answer the mord’s demands.

Though the outer door of the building was in poor condition, as trails of snow shifting under it and through its cracks testified, the structure itself was in as good repair as if it had been hewn from the mountainside. He marveled at those huge blocks of stone that made up the outer walls, laid so truly one upon the other that the cracks at their joining were hardly visible. The lord who had raised this hold must have been able to command master workers in stone, or else this was more of the Star Lords’ unending magic. For all Gorth knew, those from off-world could command the elements and tame the winds, if it was to their desire. Terranna had been a marvel. The only point that puzzled Kincar now was the aura of age that clung to this fortress.

Of course Gorthian time was a matter of little moment to the Star Lords with their almost eternal life. They could die in battle right enough, or from some illness. But otherwise they did not show signs of age until their years had equaled five, even six life spans of the natives—three hundred years was not unknown for men who in that time displayed no outer marks of age at all. And among them before the withdrawal there had still been some who had landed on Gorth almost five hundred years earlier.

But, though they had such a length-of-life span, they did not produce many sons or daughters to follow them. That had been first whispered and then said boldly abroad. And when they took Gorthian mates, the issue of such marriages were also few—two children to a marriage at the most. So their numbers had remained nearly the same as when they had first landed their sky ships, a limited number of births balancing deaths by battle or misadventure.

If they were responsible for the building of this hold it must have been erected soon after they reached Gorth, Kincar was certain of that. This type of stone exposed to the open air darkened with the passage of time. But he could not remember, save in the scattered stones of a very old shrine, such discoloration as these walls displayed. Yet history had never placed the Star Lords far from their initial landing point of Terranna. And where was this?

His thoughts were interrupted by Vorken’s demand, which arose from a hissed whisper to ear-punishing squawks, punctuated by the flapping of her good wing. As he went down on his knees to burrow in the bag that contained his food, the door to the courtyard opened with a protesting scrape, letting in a blast of frigid air and a measure of daylight.

There was a chorus of grunts and sniffles from the larngs in the lin& of stalls, impatient for feeding and watering. Both men who entered carried buckets slopping over at their brims. In spite of Vorken’s protests Kincar got to his feet. And the first man uttered a surprised exclamation as he caught sight of the young man—just as Kincar himself was mildly astonished to see that the other was one of the silverclad Star Lords setting about a pen task normally left to a fieldman, and no concern of a swordwearer.

“And who are you?”

“Kincar s’Rud.” Vorken, completely losing her temper, snapped at his hand, and he tossed her a meat stick from the bag.

“And soon to be an icicle by the look of you,” commented the Star Lord. “Did you spend the night here?”

Kincar could not understand his surprise. Of course he had spent the night with Cim. Where else did a warrior sleep on the trail but with his larng? The stone was hard, aye, but a warrior did not notice such discomfort—he must be prepared to accept as a matter of course far worse.

The half-Gorthian with the Star Lord set down his two buckets and chuckled. “Lord Bardon, he but follows custom. In enemy territory one does not separate willingly from one’s mount. Is that not so, youngling? But this is not enemy territory now. Tend to your beast and then in with you to the hall. There is no need to freeze in the line of duty.” Then he added with the bluff good humor of a captain of guardsmen to a new recruit, “I am Lorpor s’Jax, and this is the Lord Bardon out of Hamil.”

Hamil—another far distant district in the west. Indeed this in-gathering had caught up those from odd corners of the world. Having fed Vorken, Kincar fell to and helped the others care for the line of larngs. The animals, used to sparse feeding during the cold months, were given slightly larger rations of journeycake because of their recent hard usage. But most of them were already settling into a half-doze that carried them through the short days of snow-time, unless their services were needed. Cim’s upper eyes were fast closed when Kincar returned to his stall to collect bags and Vorken, and his lower ones regarded his master with a dull lack of interest.

Vorken allowed herself to be picked up, but scrambled out of his arm to cling to his shoulder, balancing there a little uncertainly, her injured wing trailing down his back. Lorpor inspected the burn on the leathery skin and whistled softly.

“Best show her to the Lady Asgar—she has healing knowledge. Perhaps she can cure that so this one may fly again. A good mord—of your own training?”

~ “Aye. From the shell. She was the best of the hatchery at Styr.”

Lorpor had fallen into step with him as they crossed the snow-drifted courtyard toward the middle portion of the hold. And now Lord Bardon shortened pace so that they caught up with him.

“You came in with Dillan?” he asked Kincar abruptly. “Aye, Lord. But I was not of his following. I am from Styr Hold in the mountains—“ Kincar volunteered no more information. He found Lord Bardon’s sharpness disconcerting—hinting that he had no right to be there. Yet Lord Dillan had received him readily, so perhaps this brusqueness of speech was peculiar to Lord Bardon. Never .having been among those of the pure Star blood, Kincar could only watch, listen, and try to adapt to their customs. But he felt no ease in their presence as did the other half-bloods such as Jonathal, Vulth, and Lorpor. In fact, that ease of manner between them and the Star Lords in turn made him oddly wary of them. And for the first time he wondered about his father. Why had he, Kincar, been sent away from Terranna, back to Styr, when still a baby?

True, it was the custom that Hold Daughter’s Son lived where he was heir. But neither was such a boy kept so great a stranger to his father’s clan and kindred. Kincar had always thought of his father as dead—but— His boot sole slipped on a patch of snow, and Vorken hissed a warning in his ear. What if his father still lived? What if he was to be found among the lords of this company? For some reason Kincar, at that moment, would rather have faced a ring of swords barehanded than ask information concerning the “Rud” whose name he had always borne.

“Styr Holding—“ Lord Bardon repeated that as though trying to recall some memory. “And your mother was—?”

“Anora, Hold Daughter,” Kincar returned shortly. Let this Lord know that he was not of the common sort.

“Hold Daughter’s Son!” If that had not registered with Lord Bardon, it did with Lorpor. His glance at Kincar held puzzlement. “Yet—“ •

“Being half-blood,” Kincar explained against his will, “I could not raise Styr Banner. There was Jord s’Wurd, Hold Daughter’s brother, to dispute.”

Lorpor nodded. “With the trouble hot about us, that would be true. And to set brother fighting brother is an evil thing. You did well to seek another future, Hold Daughter’s Son.”

But Lord Bardon made no comment, merely lengthened his pace and was gone. Lorpor drew Kincar through a doorway into a hold hall that was twice the size of any he had ever seen. Huge fireplaces at either end gave a measure of heat, not from any pile of well-seasoned logs, but from small boxes set on their hearths to radiate warmth—some more Star magic. Riding pads were stacked to furnish seats, huddles of traveling bags and cloaks marked the occupancy of individuals or families, and there was a babble of sound through which the deeper voices of the Star Lords made an underthread of far-off thunder.

“Leave your bags here”— Lorpor pointed to a place on the pads—“and bring your mord to the Lady Asgar.”

Kincar shed his cloak in the heat of the chamber before Lorpor guided him out of the main room of the hold into a side chamber, which jutted out like a small circular cell. The half-blood halted at a cloak hung curtainwise and called.

“Lorpor, with one who has need of healing skill, my lady.”

“Let him enter and speedily,” came the answer, and Kin-car stepped through to face a woman.

She wore the short divided skirt of a traveler, but she had put aside all head and shoulder wrappings, except for a gold and green shawl caught over her plain green bodice. It was her face that startled Kincar close to forgetting all manners, for this was the first Star Lady he had ever seen.

In place of the long braids of a Gorthian woman, her hair was cropped almost as short as his own, and it lay in waves of gold as bright as the threads of her shawl, doubly bright about the creamy brown of her skin. The eyes she turned toward him were very dark, under level brows, and Kincar could not have guessed at her age, except that, he did not believe her to be a young maid.

She saw at once the purpose of Kincar’s visit and held out her hands to Vorken, giving a chirruping cry. Knowing the mord’s usual response to any touch, Kincar tried to ward her off. But Vorken surprised him by climbing down along his arm and reaching her long neck, her hideous head, to those brown hands.

“Do not fear, boy.” The Lady Asgar smiled at him. “She will not savage me. What is her name?” “Vorken.”

“Ah—for the Demon of the Heights! Doubtless it suits her. Come, Vorken, let us see to this hurt of yours.”

The mord gave a short leap, beating her good wing to the lady’s grasp.

She carried the mord over to the full light of the window, examining the drooping wing without laying hand upon it. “A blaster burn. But luckily only the edge of the ray caught. It can be restored—“

She held Vorken close to the wall, and the mord, as if obeying some unspoken order, caught at hollows in the store with all four of her feet, clinging there while the Lady Asgar went to some bags and brought forth a tube of metal. This she pointed at Vorken’s hurt and held it so for a long second. What she did or why Kincar did not know. What he was acutely conscious of was the Tie, again awakened to angry life against his flesh. And, perhaps because this was the fourth time he had known such torment, he reeled back against the wall, unknowing that his face was a haggard mask, that Lorpor was watching him with a surprise close to horror. Only dimly did he feel an arm flung about his shoulders, was only half aware of being brought back against a sturdy support that kept him on his feet, while the Lady Asgar spun around, her astonishment altering to deep concern.

V
A QUESTION OF BIRTHRIGHT

ONLY for a moment did Kincar remain so steadied, and then, the stab of the Tie less, he pulled away, glancing up to see that it was Lord Dillan whose hands still rested on his shoulders. The rigid brown mask, which, to his untutored eyes, served all the Star Lords for a face, had a new expression. And Dillan’s voice, when he spoke, was warm with concern

“What is it, Kincar?”

But the young man freed himself with a last twist and stood, one hand at the breast of his scaled shirt, schooling his body, his nerves under control. He who carried a Tie was honored above his fellows, as well as burdened, but his guardianship was not for the knowledge of others—certainly not for the outland-born Star men. So he fronted all three of them with the same wariness he would face a company of strangers in a time of clan feud when enemy was not yet sorted from friend.

When he made no answer, Lord Dillan spoke to the woman.

“What happened?” He used the common speech, purposely Kincar suspected. Kincar himself wanted nothing more than to be out of that room and away from their prying eyes.

“I used the atomar on the mord—it has a ray-burned wing.”

“The atomar,” Lord Dillan repeated, his attention once more fixed on Kincar, as if by his will he could force the truth from the young man.

“He fears the Star machines—“ That was a newcomer speaking, and there was contempt in his voice. Vulth stood in the door, eying Kincar as he would some wood creature brought in by a hunter. “It was so that he flinched upon passing the gates— as well I saw. Doubtless at his hold they held to the old belief in night demons and howling terrors—“

Kincar was ready with a hot retort to that, but he did not give it voice. A good enough explanation for his behavior if they had to have one, one that made him less of a man, that was true, but it was better to shrink in the regard of these (though that in its way carried a hurt also) than to reveal what he carried.

A brown hand closed about the wrist of his sword hand, keeping him where he was, and the Lady Asgar was beside him. Something in her manner must have relayed an order to both Vulth and Lorpor, for, after glancing from her now impassive face to that of the Lord Dillan, they went out, Vulth unhooking the upturned corner of the cloak door and letting it fall to give the remaining three privacy.

Kincar tried to follow, but that hand still gripped his wrist. Short of forcibly twisting free, he could not leave. But when the Lady Asgar spoke, he lost his desire to do so.

“The Tie of the Three is a heavy weight for the bearing—“

His hand flattened convulsively against that weight. Mechanically he gave the proper response.

“To the bearer it is no weight, it is a lightener of loads, a shortener of ways, a brightener of both day and night.”

Now her hand dropped away. “So did I think!” Swiftly her fingers sketched a certain sign between them in the air, and he stared at ber wonderingly.

“But”— that was half protest, half unbelief— “you are wholly of the Star Blood. You do not tread the Rod of the Three!”

“To each race there are certain beliefs granted.” She spoke as she would to a child under instruction. “We, too, have our powers— though they may not take the same form for our worshiping. But all who follow Powers of Light give faith and belief where it should be. I, who am counted as a wise woman among my people, share in part the learning of the Three. Could I give you these signs were that not so?” Again she cut the air with brown fingers— those ten fingers so alien to his own twelve. “But, Kincar, this you must know for your own protection. Some forces which we bend to our use can in turn make a Tie serve as a transmitter, should one be within the range of their influence. And the greater the volume of that force, the greater its focus upon the Tie. To cross the web—“ She shook her head. “You must bear wounds now as deep as if a sword had struck you down. Those must be treated before evil comes of them.”

“As you treated Vorken?”

She shook her head. “That force would only add to your torment. The healing of Gorth, not the healing of Star lore, must be brought to your flesh. But that healing is also mine. Will you suffer my tending?”

He could accept her knowledge; she had given him good proof of what she knew. But Lord Dillan? She might be reading his thoughts, for now she smiled and said, “Did you not know that Lord Dillan is also a healer—of our clan? Though his healing reaches out into twisted minds instead of serving lamed bodies. He has taken the Inner Path, been a disciple of the Forest, with the Seven Feasts and the Six Fasts behind him these many years.”

“I was a man of Gormal s’Varn.” Lord Dillan spoke for the first time. “Though that is indeed now many years behind us—“

Gormal s’Varn! The leader on the Path who had lived many years before Wurd’s grandmother! Again that oppressive feeling of the past that clung to these walls and was also a part of the Star people lapped about him. But in that moment he surrendered his will to the two, given confidence by their learning.

It was the Lord Dillan who aided him with the buckles of his scale shirt, helped him draw off the jerkin and soft shirt under it, while the Lady brought out from her bags small jars, two ,of which she opened, spreading a rich fragrance of dried summer flowers and grasses in the cold, too ancient air of the place.

The Tie swung free, but at the point where it had been cradled tight to his flesh, there was a deep scored mark of angry red, a brand of burning as deep as if white-hot metal had been held there to his torment. The Lady Asgar produced a skeleton of leaf, which lay like a cobweb across her palm. On this with infinite care she spread creams from her pots, first dipping from one and then the other, blending the oils into the wisp of thing she held, working with the care of an artist applying the last touches of color to some masterpiece. Vorken climbed down the wall and crawled to her feet. The mord’s head swayed to and fro on her long neck as she savored the scents that came from the pots. And now and again she gave a beseeching chirrup.

Lady Asgar laughed at the mord’s excitement. “Not for you, winged one.” But the mord continued to crouch before her with hungry eyes upraised.

The web-leaf with its healing salves was applied to Kin-car’s breast, adhering there as tightly as if it were another layer of skin. But neither Lord Dillan nor the Lady touched the Tie. But she studied it carefully and asked, “Are you a Looker, Kincar?”

He made haste to deny any such power. “I am nothing, Lady, save Kincar s’Rud, who was once Hold Daughter’s Son to Styr and am now a landless man. This came to me from Wurd who was Styr. And it came secretly. I found it among my gear when I was quit of the Holding. I have no power of its bestowing, and I think that Wurd gave it me because by right I was Styr and only ill chance took my inheritance—“

But Lord Dillan shook his head slowly, and Kincar could read the dissent on the Lady’s more expressive face.

“A Tie does not pass by chance, Kincar, you know that. If Styr was a guardian, then his was the need to select the one who came later, and the man he chose would not be fitted by birth or kinship, but by what lay within him. Also the Tie is always given secretly, lest evilly disposed ones intercept it and corrupt its use to their own purposes. You may not yet have the powers, but who can say that you will not—“

It was the Lady who interrupted. She stood rubbing her finger tips slowly together and so dispensing a flowery scent to the cold room. “The Tie is of the Gorth we know. I wonder whether it will function in this Gorth also—“

Kincar had picked up his swordbelt. The plaster had not only soothed the burn, he was feeling more vigorous than he had since he had passed through the web gates. “The Gorth we know—this Gorth—“ Those two phrases rang oddly. As he hooked the belt about him, he puzzled over their meaning. “This is Gorth?” he ventured.

And he was relieved when Lord Dillan nodded. But then the Star-born continued bewilderingly, “This is Gorth, but not the Gorth into which you were born, Kincar. Nor is it the Gorth we would have chosen to enter. It is a Gorth strange to us and one in which we are friendless and alone.”

“You mean—by your magic, Lord, we have been transported over the bitter water seas to the far side of the world?” The Lady Asgar sat down on one of the riding pads, and straightway the mord climbed into her lap. She sat there, allowing Vorken to nuzzle her scented hands, and -now and then stroking the mord’s grotesque head.

“We have been transported, aye, Kincar. But not across the seas. Explain to him, Dillan, for as he joined us so late, he will know nothing of what we have done, and we must all face what comes to us with understanding.”

“It is this way.” Unconsciously Lord Dillan began with the phrase of a song-smith, but his frowning seriousness said that this was no account of fancy. “When it came time that we must go out of Gorth—“

There Kincar found the courage to ask a question that had puzzled him since the news of the Star Lords’ withdrawal had come to Styr. “But, why, Lord, was it necessary for you to go from Gorth? Aye, men of ill will have raised their voices. But we never heard such talk until the Lords first said they were going. You have brought the people of Gorth up from forest-dwelling barbarians. Why do you leave them without the shield of your protection when you have so much to give them? Your magic—could it not be shared?” Again both of them shook their heads. “Instead of being a protection to Gorth, we may have been its bane, Kincar. When a man-child stumbles about the hall, still unsteady on his feet, do you set in his baby hands a war sword and leave him to his own devices? Or, worse still, do you give him such a weapon and strive to teach him how to use it before his thoughts are formed to know good from ill? In our own world we are an old, old people with a long and dusty trail of years between us and the beginnings of our history. We are the warriors of mature years, though still with many failings in judgment, and in Gorth we have put sharp swords into the hands of little children. We thought we were aiding Gorth to a better life wherein man could have many things he had not. So we taught and wrought with our hands and spread out the fruits of our learning for the plucking of those who wished. But, as children, they were attracted by the hard bright things, the metal which could be forged into blades, the mind-turning which could set one man against another. Had we not landed upon Gorth, had we not meddled, perhaps it would be a happier world, a greater world—“ “Or there could have remained just beasts,” Kincar said. “That is an argument-answer which has come readily these past years,” the Lady Asgar answered. “But it is a too ready one. And we have it on our hearts that we may have guided children’s feet into false paths. Aie, sadness, sadness—“ The words of her own tongue came from her, slow and heavy as tears, and Lord Dillan took up the tale once more.

“So there grew three groups among us. There were those who said that, though it was very late, perhaps even now if we withdrew from Gorth the memory of us, the skills we had taught, would gradually become overlaid by time in the minds of men, and that Gorth could build a world of her own—twisted by some of the gifts we had so rashly given— but still returning to her own heritage, re-fashioned in a way native to her. Then there were those, luckily a very few, who were of a different mind. There will always be bom, in every race and species of man, Kincar, certain individuals who have a thirst for power. To them an alien race, should it not be as advanced as they, exists only to serve them. Among us these few were not satisfied with things as they were, but for a different reason.

They desired full rulership over Gorth, wanted the men of Gorth as servants and slaves. And secretly they began to circulate stories among those landless men, the outlaws, who were willing to form a fighting tail for any lord who would bring them much loot and rich living. Those of them that we could, we brought to justice secretly.” His mouth was a thin line and the force of his will was almost a tangible thing as he spoke. “Thus they, pushed us into hurried decisions. The major portion of our company voted to take to the ships, to go out once more into space seeking another world, one where there was no native race we might corrupt by contact. But-“

And here the Lady broke in as if this section of the tale was more c|osely hers.

“But there were others of us, Kincar, who, though we were not of mixed blood, had taken Gorth to our hearts. And when we came to think of raising from her, we could not bear it. So we sought another path of flight. And two men who had been working for many years—lifetimes—on a problem in research thought that they had the solution. It is a difficult one to explain, but it offered us a way to leave the Gorth of troubles for another Gorth in which we might live as we wished. And we labored to turn their theory into fact. This you must tell of, Dillan, since you were one of those men.” She smiled at the Star Lord.

He squatted on his heels, and with his forefinger drew lines on the dusty floor as he talked.

“This has been a theory among our people for a very long time, but until this past year there has been no proof of it in fact. To explain it— Well, Kincar, think upon this. Are there not times in a man’s life when he has a decision to make which is of major importance in shaping his future? You had the choice of joining with us, or of remaining at Styr to fight for your rights. Thus, at that moment before you rode from that Hold, you had two roads—two separate futures— and probably very different ones.”

Kincar murmured assent.

“Then this is true, as we have proven. There now exist two different Gorths for you—one in which you stand here with us, one in which you held to Styr.”

“But how could that be?” Kincar’s protest was quick. “I stand here—I do not battle against Jord in Styr—or lie dead from his sword!”

“This ‘you’ stands here—the other ‘you is in Styr.”

Kincar blinked, distrusting this new thought. Multiple “yous”—or “I’s”—all acting separately, leading different lives? How could Kincar s’Rud be so split? Once more the Lady Asgar came to his rescue.

“The Kincar who chose to remain in Styr,” she said softly, “would not be the Kincar who came through the gates in our company, for, by his very decision, he made himself a different person in a different world. He is not you, nor have you now any part in him—for that world is gone.”

Lord Dillan studied the lines he had drawn. “But as it is with men, so it is also with nations and with worlds. There are times when they come to points of separation, and from those points their future takes two roads. And thus, Kincar, there are many Gorths, each formed by some decision of history, lying as these bands, one beside the other, but each following its own path—“

Kincar stared down at those faint marks. Many Gorths, existing one beside the other but each stemming from some crossroads in the past? His imagination caught fire, though still he could not quite believe.

“Then,” he said slowly, trying to find the right words, “there’is a Gorth into which the Star Lords never came, in which the wild men of the forest still live as do the animals? And perhaps a Gorth from which the Star Lords chose not to withdraw?”

Lord Dillan smiled; he had an eager look. “That is so. Also there are Gorths—or at least one Gorth, we hope—in which the native race never came into being at all. It is that Gorth we sought when we came through the gates.”

“But which we were not given the time to find,” Lady Asgar murmured. “This fortress proves that.”

“Had we not been hunted there at the end, had we had but a day—or maybe only an hour more—we might have found it. Still, with the knowledge we have brought with us, we can open the gates once again—just give us a fraction of time.”

But even Kincar was able to sense that behind those brave words Lord Dillan was not so sure. And he asked a question.

“Where are we now? Who built this fort? It is not of any fashion that I know. I thought it to be a hidden hold of the Star Lords.”

“No, it is none of ours. But it will give us good shelter for a necessary space. Had we only been granted more time—!”

“At least”—Lady Asgar put Vorken gently on the floor and got to her feet—“your destruction of the gates brought one advantage. If it did not serve us very well, it served Gorth—since Herk came to his end in that blast.”

Lord Dillan sat back. “Aye, Herk is safely dead. And those he gathered as a following will quickly melt away, their own jealousies and passions driving them apart. He was the last of the rebels, so Gorth is now free to seek its own destiny, while we may seek ours in another direction.”

He stood up, and now he smiled at Kincar with a warmth and true welcome. “We are but a handful, yet this is our venture and we shall have the proving of it to the end. Let us seek out the materials we need and we shall have a new gate with time enough to choose which world it will open to us.”

“Lord!” Vulth relooped the door curtain. “The gate box has been reassembled—“

“So!” Dillan was away without farewells, but the Lady Asgar put out a hand to stop Kincar when he would have gone after.

“It is not so easy.” She was grave. Behind her serenity she was considering some problem. “The time before we can build another gate may be a long one.”

“In Gorth—the old Gorth,” Kincar commented, “the Lords had all the magic supplies of Terranna to aid them in such a building. They have been forced to destroy some of that. Can they find such magic here?”

She stood very still. “You bear with you that which must give you ever the clear sight. Aye, that is the stone within our fruit—perhaps for us a gate may not rise again. Dillan will try to rebuild, for that is his life. But his efforts may come to nothing. I would know more of this Gorth—for our own protection I would know. How far back in time was the turning which cleaved our Gorth from this one? Who built this hold and why did they forsake it? Are we in a world emptied by disaster—or one only too well peopled? That we must learn—and speedily.”

He thought he could guess at what she hinted. “I have not the Sight,” he reminded her.

“Nay. But you are closet to Gorth than those of full Star blood. And you wear that which may bind you closer still. If the Sight comes to you, do not deny it, speak aloud—to me or to Lord Dillan. It is in my mind that Herk forced a bad choice upon us and ill shall come here. See, I have not the Sight, either, yet foreboding grows upon one. And you?”

Kincar shook his head. He could not pretend to a sensitivity he did not have, and, privately, neither wanted nor thought he would ever develop. So far the only effect that the Tie had had on him was physical. He could play guardian, but he was willing to relinquish even that task when the time came that he could pass the talisman to one of the proper temperament to make full use of its powers. Wurd had never been a farseer nor seer, yet he had held the Tie in his time. Guardianship did not always accompany use.

He marveled at the tale he had heard of worlds beside worlds. But had he no premonitions and he wanted none. He would give thanks for his healing, for Vorken’s, but he was not ready to join forces with the Lady Asgar in that way. And she must have guessed that, for she smiled wearily and did not try to detain him longer.

VI
LEGEND COME ALIVE

THE GALE was brisk, but there was no more snow, and the wind had scoured away the early fall, save where the powdery stuff clung in pockets between trees and rocks. Vorken swung on a high branch, her large head seeming to shake disparagingly above the surrounding countryside as she kept watch. If any creature stirred there, she would mark its path.

Kincar leaned against the bole of the large tree, surveying the domain that their fortress guarded. It was indeed a holding of which any great lord could well be proud. Beyond the narrow neck of the entrance valley, which the hold spanned from wall to wall—an efficient cork to front any enemy—the land opened out into a vast valley ringed about with heights. There might be passes over those mountains, trails out of the valley that did not pass the hold, but so far the newcomers had not discovered them. And all indications pointed to the assumption that the valley of the hold was the only practical entry into the open ground beyond.

From this distance up one of the flanking mountainsides, one could trace the boundaries of old fields, see the straggle of tree stumps, fallen branches, and a few still sturdy trunks marking an orchard. Aye, it had been a rich land, well able to provide a rich living for the hold—once.

But now no harvests from those fields or orchards lay— except as powdery dust—in the storerooms of the fortress. Men must hunt, prowling the wooded slopes of the heights in search of game. So far the results had been disappointing. Oh, now and again one would chance upon a suard or some forest fowl. But they were thin, poor creatures.

This was the first day Kincar had deemed Vorken healed enough to take afield, and he was pinning his hopes upon her aid in a profitable hunt. But, though she had soared and searched in her usual manner, she had sighted nothing. And her rests, during which she clung to some roost well out of his reach, muttering peevishly to herself, grew longer and closer together. The mord might turn sullen with such constant disappointment and refuse to go on unless some success came soon.

With a forlorn hope of flushing a wild fowl, Kincar started ahead, thrusting through any promising stretch of shelter brush. A few scratches and a more intimate, and unwelcome, acquaintance with local vegetation was his only reward. However, he kept to the task.

He heard the stream before he found it—the tinkle of free running water. Then he saw, rising from the narrow cutting in the hillside, misty white tails that might be breath puffed from a giant’s lungs.

To his surprise there was no edging of ice on the shore line, and it was from the surface of the water those smoky lines rose. Intent upon the phenomenon, he cautiously slid down the steep slope. There was a disagreeable smell, as well as steam, about him—a strong, acrid odor that made his eyes water as a warm puff drove into his face, setting him coughing. Very warily Kincar put out an investigating finger. The water was not clear, but a reddish-brown, and it was hot enough to sting. He raised the wet finger to his nose and sniffed a fetid smell he could not give name to.

Eager to see from where it sprang, he traced back along the cut until he found the place where the discolored water bubbled out of the mountain’s crust. Yet that was not a spring, but a round hole, water worn and stained red-brown, an exit from some depths beyond. Kincar could perceive no immediate use for his find, but, in spite of the odor, the warmth of the water was welcome in the chill, and he lingered, holding hands ill-protected by their clumsy wrappings into the steam.

He was watching the brown swirls of the water, without close attention, loathe to climb back into the cold, when an object bobbed to the surface of the oily flood, struck against a stone, and would have been swept on had Kincar not grabbed for it. He snapped out a pair of pungent words as he scooped it out, for here the water was far hotter than it had been downstream. But he held the prize safely—the thing that had come out of the mountain.

It had begun as a chip of wood, buoyant and fresh enough to possess still the pale yellow color of newly cut zemdol. But it was no longer just a chip. Someone had used it for idle shaping such as he had often seen a man do in Styr, to try out a new knife, or for the pleasure of working with his hands through dull hours in the cold season. The chip now had the rough but unmistakable likeness of a suard. There were the curling horns worn in the warm seasons, lost in the cold, the powerful back legs, the slender, delicate forefeet— a suard carved by one who not only had an artist’s skill in his fingers but a good knowledge of suards!

Yet it had bobbed out of the heart of the mountain! And it was not of the fugitives’ making, that he was sure of. Where had the builders of the fortress retreated—underground? Kincar was on his feet, searching the wall of rock and earth from which the stream bubbled, striving to see on its surface some indication that there was an entrance here, that someone who was a hunter of suards and had tried out his knife upon a fresh chip of zemdol had a dwelling therein.

They had all puzzled over the history of the hold. There had been no signs that it had been stormed and sacked, no visible remains of those who had reared its massive walls for their protection, tilled the fields beyond; And the Star Lords said that such a place could not have been taken easily, not even by the weapons of which they alone possessed the secret. They were inclined to believe that some plague had struck down the valley dwellers without warning. Except of that there was no evidence either. All the rooms, from nooks in the watchtowers to eerie hollows hacked out of the rock under those same towers’ foundations, probably intended for dark purposes the present explorers did not care to imagine, were bare of anything save dust. If the people of the valley had gone to plague tombs, they had carefully taken with them all their material possessions.

Kincar turned the chip over. This was evidence of other life in the mountain land, though he could not be sure how far from its source the water had carried it. But he was inclined to believe that the temperature of the flood, far higher here than it was downstream, suggested a beginning not too far inside the mountain. And it might be at that birth spring that the carver had lost his work.

The desire in Kincar to get to the root of the mystery was strong. But no one was going to move those tons of earth and rock. So at last, having put the chip in his belt pouch, he climbed out of the cut, which held the hot stream, into the frostiness of the upper air, where the wind bit doubly sharp because of his respite in the warmth.

He whistled to Vorken, and her answer came from farther down the slope. As he worked his way along, he saw her take to the air again in an ascending spiral, and he brought out the weapon Lord Dillan had entrusted to him, to be used only if they were sure of a kill. One held the tube balanced— so—and pressed the forefinger on a stud. Then ensued a death that was noiseless, an unseen ray that killed, leaving no mark at all upon the body of the slain. Kincar did not like it; to him it was evil when compared to the honest weight of sword or spear. But in a time when a kill meant food—or life—it was best.

Vorken no longer cried, her circles for altitude were bringing her up level with the peaks. Plainly she was in sight of her quarry. Kincar waited where he was to mark her swoop —there was too good a chance of warning the prey if he went on right now.

The mord brought her wings together with a snap he could hear plainly through the dry, cold air. Now she was at strike, her four feet with claws well extended beneath her as she came, air hissing from her open bill. There was a high scream as she vanished behind treetops, and Kincar ran.

He heard the beat of thumping feet through the brush and crouched. A suard, its eyes wide with terror, burst between two saplings, and Kincar used the strange weapon as he had been instructed. The animal crumpled in upon itself in mid-leap, its try at escape ending in a roll against a bush. Kincar ran up—there were no claw marks on it. This could not have been Vorken’s prey. Had they had the excellent good luck of finding a small party of the animals? Sometimes the suard, usually solitary creatures, banded together, especially in a section where there was poor feeding. Rudimentary intelligence had taught the animals that concentrated strength brought down small trees whose bark proved cold season food.

Kincar paused only to bleed the suard he had killed, and then he sped on—to discover his guess had been right. A tree, its roots dug about, had been pushed to the ground and a goodly part of the tender upper bark shredded away. A second suard lay on the scene of the feast, Vorken’s claws hooked in its deep fur. She welcomed Kincar with a scream, demanding to be fed, to have the part of the kill rightfully hers. He set about the gory task of butchering.

The suard Vorken had brought down was prepared for packing back to the hold and the mord was eating greedily before Kincar moved to the other kill. As a trained hunter, he walked silently to the place where the second body lay—so silently that he surprised another at work. As he caught sight of the figure hunched above the suard on the bloodied snow, saw those hands busy at the same task he had just performed, he froze. This was no partner from the hold. Unless one of the children has slipped away to trail him—

Then the other turned to strip back a flap of furred hide. This was not a child in spite of the small body, the hands half the size of his own, which worked with the quick sureness of long experience. The face beneath the overhang of the fur hood was that of a man in his late youth, a broad face bearing the lines of bleak living. But when the stranger got to his feet to walk about the suard, his head could not have reached a finger width above Kincar’s shoulder. As he himself was to the Star Lords, so was this one to him. The compact body, muffled as it was with furs and thick clothing, showed no signs of malformation—the manikin was well proportioned and carried himself as might a trained warrior.

But had the other been as tall as Lord Dillan himself, Kincar would have jumped him now. To see this dwarfish creature calmly about the business of butchering the suard he had killed, preempting meat so badly needed in the hold, was like waving a bit of fresh liver before an uncaged mord and daring it to snap. Kincar sheathed his Star weapon and crossed the open space in one flying leap, his hands settling as he had aimed on the thief’s shoulders. But what happened an instant after that was not part of his plan at all.

The stranger might have the size of a lad not yet half grown, but in that slight body was a strength that rivaled Kincar’s. Startled as he must have been, he reacted automatically as one trained in unarmed combat. His shoulders shrugged, he wriggled, and, to Kincar’s overwhelming astonishment and dazed unbelief, he found himself on the ground while the other stood over him, a knife blade stained with suard blood held at striking distance from his throat.

“Lie still, lowland rat”— the words were oddly accented but Kincar could understand them—“or you will speedily have two mouths—the second of my making!”

“Big talk, stealer of another man’s meat!” Kincar glared back with what dignity he could muster from his position on the ground. “Have you never learned that only a hunter skins his own kill?”

“Your kill?” The manikin laughed. “Show me the wound with which you dealt that death, my brave-talking hunter, and I shall deliver you the meat.”

“There are other ways of killing than by sword or spear.”

The manikin’s lips flattened against his teeth, drawing a little apart in a snarl.

“Aye, lowlander.” He spoke more softly still, almost caressingly. “There are such ways of killing. But your sort have them not-only the ‘gods’ kill so.” But he spat after mouthing the word “gods” as a man might spit upon the name of a blood enemy. “And no ‘god’ would give a slave his power stick! You are naught but an outlaw who should be turned in for the price set upon him—to be used for the amusement of the ‘gods’ after their accursed way.”

There had been outlaws in the Gorth of Kincar’s birth. He could readily accept the idea that such men lived here also. But these “gods” were something else altogether. However, his immediate problem was to get safely out of the range of that knife, and his swift overthrow had given him a healthy respect for the one who now held it.

“I am no outlaw. I am a hunter. My mord flushed the suard in their feeding ground. One shfe slew, the other I killed as it fled. If you would have proof of that, look behind those bushes yonder where you will find the other made ready for packing. Or, better yet—“ He whistled and the blade descended until he felt the chill touch of the metal on his throat.

“You were warned—“ The manikin was beginning when Vorken swooped upon him. Only the overhang of his hood saved his face. As it was, the mord hooked claws in his jerkin and beat him about the head with her wings. Kincar rolled away and got to his feet before he called the mord off her victim. And ready in his hand now was the death rod of the Star Lords.

Vorken flapped up to a tree limb, her red eyes holding upon the manikin. But he lay on the ground, his attention all for the weapon Kincar had aimed at him. And his expression was the bleak one of a man facing inevitable death.

“Who are you, wearing the body of a slave, carrying the death of a ‘god’?” he demanded. “Why do you trouble the hills?”

Now that Kincar had his captive, he did not quite know what to do with him. To take a prisoner down to the hold, there to spy out their few numbers, their many lacks, would be folly indeed. On the other hand, to turn the man loose on the mountain, perhaps to arouse his own people, that was worse than folly. But to kill as a matter of expediency alone, that was an act Kincar could not commit.

Vorken stirred, uttering her warning, and a moment later they heard a musical whistle, unlike the shrilling of the mord. Kincar answered eagerly with the rest of the bar. The figure who tramped through drifted snow to join them did not come with Kincar’s light hunter’s tread. And at the sight of the silver clothing the manikin froze as a suard youngling might freeze under the shadow of a mord’s wings—seeing raw death above it with no possible escape.

Lord Bardon, leading one of the pack larngs, came to a halt, the animal’s head bobbing over his shoulder, the luck of the rest of the hunting party to be read in the small bundle lashed to its back. He surveyed the scene with open surprise.

“What have we here, Kincar?”

“A thief of another hunter’s kill!” snapped the other. “Also a teller of tales. What else he may be, I have no knowl-edge.”

The manikin’s face was twisted with hate, whitened with something deeper than fear, a dull despair. But he made no answer, though his glance swung from the Star Lord to Kincar as if the last sight he expected to wonder over was such a friendly relationship between the two.

“Who are you?” Lord Bardon came directly to the point, and then added—as if to himself—“and what are you, my small friend?”

But the manikin remained stubbornly silent. There was about him now the air of one about to be put to some torture, determined to endure to the end that he might not betray a weighty secret.

“He has a tongue.” Kincar’s exasperation broke out. “He was free enough with it before your coming, Lord—with all his talk of ‘gods’ and ‘slaves’! But what he is or- where he springs from I do not know. Vorken brought down a suard— a second, fleeing, I killed with the silent death. While I butchered Vorken’s kill, he was busy here. And so I discovered him thieving—“

For the first time since Lord Bardon had appeared on the scene the manikin spoke.

“Aye, and but for that mord of yours, you’d have been meat, too, lowland dirt!”

“Perhaps so.” Kincar gave credit where it was due. “He is a warrior, Lord, overturning me with some trick of fighting when I closed with him. But Vorken came, and I was free to use this—a threat he appeared to understand”—he held out the death tube—“though how that can be is a mystery—“ Lord Bardon’s eyes were like light metal, cold, with a deadly luster in his dark face. “So he recognized a ray blaster. Now that is most interesting. I think it is important that he comes with us for a quiet talk together—“

The manikin had drawn his feet under him. Now he exploded for the nearest cover with the speed of a spear throw. Only this time Kincar was prepared. He crashed against the captive, bringing them both to the frozen ground with the force of that tackle. And when he levered himself up, the other lay so quiet that Kincar was for an instant or so very much afraid.

But the prisoner was only stunned, the rough handling leaving him tractable enough to be stowed away on the larng along with the meat. So encumbered they started back to the hold, making only one short side trip to look at the steam stream Kincar had chanced upon. Lord Bardon examined the carved chip and then looked to the trussed captive on the larng.

“Perhaps our friend here can tell us more concerning this. He is well clad, at home in these ranges, yet we have seen no other steading or hold. If they dwell within instead of without the mountains, that would explain it. But he is a breed new to me. How say you, Kincar; is he a dwarf of Gorthian breed?”

“I do not know, Lord. He seems not to be in any way misshapen, but rather as if it is natural with his kind to be of that size—just as I do not equal you in inches. There is in my mind one thing—the old song of Garthal s’Dar—“ He began the chant of a native song-smith:

“In the morning light went Garthal Sword in hand, his cloak about his arm. A white shield for his arm, And he raised his blade against the inner men, Forcing their chieftain into battle, Forcing them to give him -freedom of their ways, That he might come upon his blood enemy And cross metal with him Who had raised the scornful laughter In the Hold of Grum at the Midyear feasting—“

“The inner men,” he repeated. “They were long and long ago—if they ever lived at all—for many of the old songs, Lord, are born from the minds of men and song-smiths and not out of deeds which really happened. But these ‘inner men’ were of the mountains, and they were small of body but large of deed, a warrior race of power. Or so Garthal found them—“

“And there are other tales of ‘inner men’?”

Kincar grinned. “Such tales as one tells a youngling who would have his own way against the wisdom of his elders, warnings that should he not mend his ways the ‘little men’ will come in the dark hours and spirit him away to their hidden holds beneath the earth—from which no man ventures forth again,”

“Aye,” mused the Star Lord, “But in such tales there lingers a spark of truth at times. Perhaps the ‘inner men,’ who have vanished from the Gorth we knew, are not gone from here, and we have laid hands upon one. At any rate he will supply us with much which we should know for our own safety.”

“I do not think this one will talk merely because we bid him.”

“He shall tell us all he knows, which is of interest to us.”

Kincar measured the greater bulk of the Star Lord. In his brown hands the manikin would be a girl child’s puppet to be sure. Yet the half-blood shrank from the grim picture his imagination produced. To slay a man cleanly in battle was one thing. To mishandle a helpless captive was something far different—a thing he did not want to consider. But again it was as if the Star Lord had the trick of reading minds, for the other looked down at him with a hint of smile in his eyes, though there was no softening of the straight line of lip and jaw.

“We do not tear secrets from men with fire and knife, youngling—or follow outlaw tricks for the loosening of tongues!”

Kincar flushed. “Forgive, Lord, the ways of your people are as yet strange to me. I was reared in a hold of the mountains, not in Terranna. What do I know of Star Lord life?”

“True enough. But not ‘your people,’ Kincar, but ‘my people.’ We are one in this as in all else, boy. You have an inheritance from us as well as from Styr—always remember that. Now let us bring this song-smith’s hero into Dillan and the Lady Asgar and see what they can make of him to our future profit.”

STAR LORD ways for extracting information from unwilling captives were indeed strange to Kincar, for questions were not asked at all. Instead their prisoner was given a seat before one of the heat boxes in the great hall of the old hold and left to meditate, though there were always those who watched him without appearing to do so.

After the first few minutes of lowering suspicion, the captive watched them openly in return, and his complete mystification was plain to read on his face. Something in their ways or bearing was too odd for him to comprehend. He stared wide-eyed at Lord Jon who was patiently teaching his half-Gorthian son the finer points of sword play before a fond and proud audience of the boy’s mother and sister. They were both busy with their needles at the mending of under-tunics—while the younger brother watched with envious attention of one ready and willing to change places with the other boy at any moment.

And when the Lady Asgar came up behind Kincar and put a hand on his shoulder to gain his notice, the prisoner, seeing that friendly gesture, shrank in upon himself as if fearing some terrible outburst in return.

“This is a new thing you have found for us, younger brother,” she said. “Dillan is coming, though he is loathe to leave his calculations. So this is one you think might be straight out of the saga of Garthal the Two-sworded?”

“It is in my mind, Lady, that he is close to the song-smiths’ recording of the ‘inner men.’”

Vorken fluttered down from her chosen perch high in the roof to claw beseechingly at the Lady’s cloak. Asgar laughed at the mord. “Now then, Vorken, would you have me in tatters because of your impatience? Being of the female kind yourself, you should know better than to tear clothing that can not easily be replaced. Ha—up with you then, if that is how it must be.” She stooped, and the mord sprang to her arm, climbing to her shoulder where she rubbed her head caressingly against the Lady’s and chirruped in her ear.

“You have done very well this day, Vorken,” Asgar continued as if the mord could understand every word she said. “More than your part. Now be patient, winged one, we have other business to hand.”

But when she came to stand directly before the prisoner, the manikin crouched low, drawing in upon himself as if he would turn his body into a ball under the blows of a punishing lash. Nor would he lift his head to see eye to eye with the lady. His whole position suggested one awaiting death— and no easy passing at that. And it was in such contrast to the spirit with which he had faced Kincar that the latter was puzzled.

“So—what have we here?” Lord Dillan came to them, giving Kincar an approving pat upon the back as he passed. “This is your meat thief, boy?”

“He is more,” remarked the Lady. “But there is a second mystery here. Why are we so fearsome to hrhi?”

“Aye.” Lord Dillan reached down and, with a hand gentle enough but with a force that could not be denied, brought up the manikin’s head so that he could see his face. The captive’s eyes were squeezed shut. “Look upon us, stranger. We are not your enemies—unless you wish it so—“

That must have pricked like a sword point upon a raw wound. The eyes snapped open, but none of them were prepared for the black hate mirrored in their depths.

“Aye,” the manikin snarled, “the ‘gods,’ are never enemies —they wish the good of us all. Hear me, ‘gods,’ I give you homage!” He slipped from the pad to the floor, kneeling before the Star Lord. “You may slay me after your own evil fashion, ‘gods,’ but Ospik will not beg for his lifel”

It was the Lady who spoke first. “There are no gods here, Ospik, nor do we have a liking for such titles even in jest. Why do you name us so?”

His broad mouth shaped a sneer he could not prevent, and his inner hatred fought against remnants of self-preservation. “How else should I name you—save as you have taught Gorth? You are the ‘gods’ from the far stars. Though what you do here in this ruin is beyond the imagining of a simple hunter. What you do here and with them—!” He pointed to Kincar, to the family of Lord Jon busy with their own concerns just out of earshot.

“Why should not kinsmen be together?” questioned the Lady softly.

“Kinsmen!” Ospik repeated the word incredulously. “But the young warrior is a lowlander, a Gorthian, and you are one of the ‘gods’! There is no kinship between slave and master. To even think of such a blood-tie is red death for the slave!”

Lord Dillan’s eyes had grown bleak and cold as he listened, and the hand that had continued to rest on Kincar’s shoulder in the greeting of a comrade tightened its hold, crushing the scales of the younger man’s shirt down on the flesh beneath as he stood steady under it. Only the Lady Asgar continued her inquiry with untroubled serenity.

“You are very wrong, Ospik. All those within this hold share a common heritage, at least in part. Those who seem to you Gorthian have also Star blood. Jon, whom you have been watching, is now schooling his eldest son—and that is his wife, his daughter, and his younger son—a large family for us. This is Kincar s’Rud.” She indicated Kincar. “And Rud, his father, was brother to Dillan who stands before you. No slaves, no masters—kinsmen.”

“Lord Rud’s son!” Ospik’s teeth showed in an animal snarl, and he gazed at Kincar as if he would spring full at the young man’s throat in the mord’s muderous attack. “Lord Rud with a slave son! Ho, that is fine hearing! So he has defiled himself has he—the great Rud himself has broken the first law of his kind? Good hearing—good hearing! Though no one shall ever hear it from my telling—“ His head moved from side to side like the head of a cornered animal. ‘

Kincar was bewildered, but he clung to the parts he understood. So Lord Dillan was close kin—somehow that was a thought to give warmth, a warmth as steady as if it arose from a heat box. But the manikin’s talk of a Lord Rud who had broken the first law? How did Ospik know his father? Asgar spoke first.

“Rud, brother of Dillan, is dead, Ospik. He was killed almost twenty warm seasons ago when he went into a bitter water storm to save seamen trapped on a reef by the floundering of their ship—“

Ospik stared at her, and then he spat. “I am no addle-wit ‘—not yet.” Again his shoulders hunched under that unseen whip. “Lord Rud rules at U-Sippar, as he has since the memory of man. No ‘god’ would raise his shortest finger for the saving of a Gorthian out of the bitter water!”

The Lady Asgar caught her breath. “What have we found?” she demanded, clasping her hands together until the knuckles were hard knobs. “Into what kind of a Gorth have we come, Dillan?”

“To the one of our worst fears, it would seem,” he made answer grimly. “The one which we perceived only palely and have always dreaded.”

She gasped. “No, chance would not be so cruel!”

“Chance? Do you .think that there is chance in this, Asgar? I would say it is part of a large design beyond our knowledge. We have striven to undo one wrong our kind wrought on Gorth. Here is another and far greater one. Shall we always be faced by the results of our troubling?”

Ospik had been looking from one to the other, glancing back at Lord Jon, at the others busy about their chosen tasks in the hall. Now he got to his feet, his hand outstretched to the two before him, his fingers curled about one another in a curious pattern.

“You are no ‘gods’!” he accused shrilly. “You are demons who have taken on their seeming. By Lor, Loi, Lys, I bid you be as you really are.”

Kincar answered that invocation with one of his own. “By Lor, Loi, and Lys, I tell you, Ospik, that these are Star Lords, though perhaps not of the kind you know. Could a demon remain while I say this?” And he repeated the sacred Three Lines in the older tongue he had been taught, feeling as he said them an answering warmth from the talisman he wore.

Ospik was shaken. “I do not understand,” he said weakly. And Kincar would have echoed that, but he had sense enough to turn to Lord Dillan for an explanation,

“Ospik, we are truly of the Star blood.” The Star Lord’s words had the impact of truth. “But we are not those whom you know. We have come from another Gorth, And in spirit we are opposed to the Lords of this world—or at least I would think it so from what you have told us.”

“The ‘gods’ have done much here,” Ospik returned, “but never for the good of Gorth. I do not know what mazed story you would tell me now—“

Later Kincar sat in the ring of warriors, half-blood and Star Lord gathered together, listening to Lord Dillan.

“That is the way of it! In this Gorth our kind brought a worse fate than the one we were fleeing from. Here our breed landed in arrogance and seized the country, making the natives slaves. All our wisdom was used to hold Gorth with a mailed fist. Only a few bands who have escaped to the wastes—or are native to those sections as are Ospik’s people are free. This is the evil Gorth that ours might have been.” “We are a handful against many.” Lord Jon spoke musingly. “Yet this is in a manner our ill—“

“Aye, a handful. And this I say—which is only good war wisdom—we must make no moves until we know more of what lies here.” That was Lord Bardon. He alone among the Star Lords in the hold had been born in the Star ships before the landing on Gorth. He had chosen to remain with this party because he had Gorthian children and grandchildren a daughter sat in the circle of women to the left, two boys of her bearing were among the children.

Kincar was only half listening, being more set upon estimating the fighting strength of their party. Fifty in all had essayed the adventure of the gates. Twenty of these were women and young maids, ten were children. Of the remaining males eight were Star Lords, ranging from Lord Bardon to the young Lord Jon—Sim, Dillan, Rodric, Tomm, Joe, and Frans. It was difficult to know their ages, but none of them had the appearance of a Gorthian past his fortieth summer. The mysterious change that had come upon their kind during the voyage across the void had set its seal heavy upon them.

The twelve swordsmen of half-blood were all young, but all tested fighting men, and Lord Jon’s eldest son could soon be numbered among them. A good tough force—with such behind him no man would hesitate to foray. And the Star Lords had their own methods of fighting. Aye, had he been faced with an attack on a hold, Kincar would not have hesitated to raise his banner for a spear-festing.

But they were not going up against any hold or Gorthian force, they were to front Star Lords, twisted, vengeful Star Lords who used all of their secret learning to hold the rule of this world. And that was a very different thing. None of them here were so unblooded in war as to vote for a spear-festing before the full strength of the enemy could be ascertained.

However, they had won Ospik’s support. The mountaineer, at first without comprehension, was at last forced to accept the evidence given him. Now he was eager for an alliance between his people and the hold party. It had been hard for him to think of Star Lords as friends, but once he could believe- that comradeship possible, his agreement was wholehearted. And it was decided that he must return to his own hidden stronghold and promote a meeting between his Cavern Master and the others.

Before nightfall Ospik was on his way. But Kincar had a private puzzle of his own keeping him silent. He was in Cim’s stall, spreading dried grass he had brought to bed down the larng, when a brighter gleam of light by the door told him he was no longer alone. Lord Dillan noted with a nod of approval his efforts to make his mount comfortable.

“That is a good larng.” There was a hesitancy in that opening. The Star Lord had come to speak on a subject far removed from the care of mounts, and Kincar sensed it.

“He is Cim.” Kincar ran his hands caressingly about the pointed ears of the kneeling beast, stroking the callous spots where the reins rested. “I found him in the trapping pens, and he has been mine only since then.”

Inside he was as shyly hesitant as Lord Dillan. Since that hour in Wurd’s death chamber, when the tightly ordered existence that had always been his world had broken apart, when all security had been reft from him, he had tried to push aside the truth. It had been easier to accept exile from Styr, the prospect of outlawry, than to believe that he was not wholly Gorthian.

Now he did not want to face the fact that his father had been a man such as Dillan—perhaps resembling Dillan closely, since they had been brothers. Why—because he was afraid of the Star Lords? Or was it that he resented the mixture of blood that had taken from him the sure, ordered life of Styr? He never felt at ease in their company as did Jonathal, Vulth, and the others who had associated with the aliens from birth.

Perhaps his reluctance to acknowledge his mixed bloods was fostered by the fact that of all of them here in the hold, he alone had no outward marks of non-Gorthian heritage. Some of the others were taller than natives, others had eyes of a strange color, hair, features— And at a moment such as this, when he was forced to realize his bond with off-world kin, his first and strongest reaction was a wariness, the wariness of a man compelled to imposture ‘and foreseeing exposure.

Dillan set the lamp he carried on the floor and leaned back against the stall partition, his fingers hooked in his belt.

“Rud’s son,” he said quietly, giving the proper name the same unfamiliar turn of pronunciation he had given it at their first meeting.

“You do not see him in me!” blurted out Kincar.

“Not outwardly.” When Dillan agreed so readily, Kincar had a pinch of nameless discontent. “But in other ways—“

Kincar voiced the question that had been in his mind all afternoon.

“Ospik says that a Lord Rud rules this district for the Star Lords. Yet how can that be? For if the Lord Rud who was my father is dead these many years—“ Another Lord-maybe a son of full Star blood?”

Dillan shook his head. “I think not. This is a tangle we had not thought to find. Perhaps in this Gorth there are counterparts of us—the selves we would have been had chance, or fate, or the grand design taken another road. But that would be a monstrous thing, and we would indeed be caught up in a nightmare!”

“How could a man face himself in battle?” Kincar had followed that thought to its logical end.

“That is what we must discover, youngling. Let it suffice that the Rud who rules here is not he who fathered you— nor could he be—“

“Aye, Ospik made it plain that in this Gorth Star Lord and native do not mate—“

“It is not that only.” Dillan brushed the comment aside impatiently. “Nay, it is that the Rud who, by his way of life, his temperament, is content with things as they are in this world is not the Rud of our world. They would have no common meeting point at all. Rud was born in our Gorth three years after the landing of our ships, thus being my elder by a full twenty of warm seasons, the son of another mother. He had four ladies to wife—two of Star blood, two of Gorthian inheritance. Anora of Styr was his last, and she outlived him by less than a full year. He left behind him two sons and a daughter of full blood—they departed on one of the ships— and one of half-blood, you. But of you we were ignorant until Wurd sent us a message three months ago when he foresaw what might be your fate under Jord’s enmity. He had kept you apart from us, wishing to make you wholly Gorthian that you might serve Styr the better, so that you have none of the common memories that might help you to adjust now. But Rud, your father, was rightly one to stand sword-proud, and glad we are that his blood lives on among usl”

“But you are of Rud’s blood.”

“Aye. But I am not as Rud. He was a warrior born, a man of action. And in a world of action that means much.” Dillan smiled a little wearily. “I am a man of my hands, one who would build things I see in dreams. The sword I can use, but also do I most readily lay it aside. Rud was a mord on the hunt, ever questing for adventure. He was a sword-smith rather than a song-smith. But it is hard to describe Rud to one who knew him not, even when that one is .his son.” He sighed and picked up the lamp once more. “Let it rest that the Rud we knew was worth our allegiance—aye, our love. And keep that ever in your mind should fate force us to foray against this other Rud who holds false wardship in this Gorth-“

He lingered at the door of the stall. “You have made Cim • comfortable. Come back to the hall now—we hold warrior-council in which each swordsman has a voice.”

They ate in company, sharing the fruits of hunting and portions of their dwindling supplies with scrupulous accuracy. A hungry mord, Kincar recalled, was always the best hunter. No one here went so filled that he could not move mord-swift in attack. He chewed a mouthful of suard meat deliberately, savoring its fat-richness to the fullest extent.

The war council had come to a decision. They would hunt for the present, work to stock the hold with what supplies they could garner, perhaps trade with the inner men for extra foodstuffs. For the moment they would not venture forth from the valley guarded by the hold. They were far, Ospik had assured them, from the lowlands where the Star Lords of this Gorth kept control, where the might of strange weapons held slaves in hard bondage. But the thought o£ those who were their counterparts using such perverted power had driven the Lords into a brooding silence. And Kincar suspected that even were Lord Dillan to produce another gate, a new road to still another Gorth, he might not discover any among his peers willing to use it yet. They felt a responsibility for this world, a guilt for what the false lords did here.

Now they mounted a sentry in each of the watchtowers on the hold, marked out patrol paths for the morrow, divided duties between hunting and scouting among all the company, so_that a man would alternate in each type of service.

When the meal was done, the Lady Asgar came to Kincar, in her hands one of the small singing-string boards of a traveling song-smith.

“Kincar, it is said that you have in song memory the saga of Garthal and his meeting with the ‘inner men.’ Since we have this day proven a part of that story to be no tale but the truth, do you now let us hear all of Garthal’s spear-festing and the Foray of Loc-Hold.”

He took the frame of the singing-strings on his knee shyly. Though he had played song-smith in Styr Hold, he had never thought to do so in such company as this. But “Garthal’s Foray” was a song not too well known nowadays, though it had been a favorite of Wurd’s and Kirtcar had had good lessoning in its long swinging stanzas. Now he struck the two notes and began the rising chant—the tale of how Garthal went forth as a holdless man and came to Loc-Hold, and how he was later cheated of his fight-due so that he fled to the mountains with anger in his heart. Those about him, Lorpor, Vulth, Lord Jon, Jonathal, drew their swords and kept time with the sweet ting of blade against blade, while eyes shone in the lamplight and there were the voices of women bringing in the hum of undersong. Not since he had ridden out of Styr had Kincar known that sense of belonging.

VIII
FIRST FORAY

THEY HAD their meeting with the chief of the “inner men;” He came warily and armed, with a covering guard who prudently prepared an ambush. All of these precautions proved to the men from the hold the deep-seated distrust of, and hatred held for, the alien rulers of the plains by the native Gorthians. But at the conclusion of their council, the chief had been forced to admit that there were now two kinds of Star Lords in his land, and the later-come variety were not the wrathful “gods” he had always known. He did not go so far as to reveal any of the details of his own keep, though he did agree to a measure of trade—to supply dried fruits and coarse meal for one of the inexhaustible star torches.

The “inner men” were by long training fire workers in metal. They produced, for the admiration of the hold, coats of ring mail, fine, deceivingly light in weight—but, unfortunately, fashioned only to fit the small bodies of their own race, as were their beautifully balanced swords, which were too light and too short of hand grip for the newcomers. Lord Bardon, surveying these regretfully, went on to other plans. And the next day when he was in the hunting field with Kin-car, he suggested that Vorken be set about the business of marking down game, while the younger man aid him in a different search.

“A sapling?” puzzled Kincar. “For a new kind of spear shaft, maybe? But such as we seek now would be too slender, would break at the first thrust which had any power behind it.”

“Not a spear. It is intended for another weapon, one from the older days on the Star world from which our fathers came. It was a favorite there of primitive men, but it was so well used that the old tales say it gave him an advantage over warriors clad in mail.”

At the end of the day they returned to the hold with a good selection of different varieties of tough yet resilient wood lengths lashed upon the larng-burden of meat for the pot. Vorken, not being under obligation to consider the worth of saplings, had proved a more alert hunter than the men.

Since Lord Bardon had only hazy memory to guide him in the manufacture of the new weapon, they spoiled many lengths of wood, choosing others badly. However, at the end of three days they produced crude bows. Arrows followed. They learned, mainly by mistakes, the art of proper heading and feathering. Now three quarters of the population of the hold had taken a hand in the work, and the hall after the fall of night was a fletcher’s workroom.

They discovered that the pull of the bows depended upon the strength of an individual—that the mighty six-foot shaft that served Lord Bardon could not even be strung by any half-blood, while Kincar—with a smaller and lighter weapon —could hit the mark in the trials just as accurately and speedily, though perhaps with not the great penetrating force of the Star Lord.

Oddly enough, only Lord Bardon, Lord Jon, and Lord Frans among the full-bloods showed any proficiency with the bow, and there was much good-humored banter aimed at their fellows who were unable to turn marksmen by will alone.

“Too long at machines,” Lord Bardon observed as Dillan’s arrow went woefully wide of the mark for the third time in succession. “This is no matter of pushing a button; it needs true skill.”

Lord Dillan laughed and tossed the bow to its owner. “A skill not in my hand or eye it is certain. But we cannot say that of our brothers.” For, as the full-bloods found it something to be laboriously learned, the half-bloods took to archery with a readiness that suggested that the Three must have given them the gift at birth, to lay dormant waiting this moment. From practice at a stationary mark set up in the courtyard, they advanced to hunting, and the rewards came in an upshoot of meat supplies and the growing pile of suard skins to be plaited into cloaks and robes against the chill of the storm winds.

The cold weather had closed in upon them with true harshness. There was one period when they were pent for five days within the hold, the snow-filled blasts sealing the outer world from them. Any plans for scouting into the lowlands must wait upon more clement days.

Lord Dillan and his assistants had to set aside their work on the machine intended to open a gate upon another Gorth. Too many essential elements had been destroyed with the other gates. And, in spite of their questioning of the inner men’s smiths and metal miners, some of those could not be rediscovered even in the crude state of unworked ore. They did not speak of this within the hold, though it was generally known. Instead, men began to plan ahead for a lengthy stay there. Talk arose of working the fields in the deserted valley. Surely land that once had supported a large community would provide a living for their own limited numbers.

At last came a lull between storms, when the sun was dazzlingly reflected from the crusted snow and the trees cast wide blue shadows across the ground. It was a day when the crisp air bit at the lungs as a man inhaled, but at the same time set him longing to be out in the open.

Kincar stood on the crown of one watchtower, with Vorken marching back and forth along the waist-high parapet before him, stretching wide her wings and giving harsh voice to her own private challenge. This was the season when the mords of the hatcheries took mates, and Vorken was lonely as she had never been. It would seem that in this Gorth her kind were either uncommon or had never evolved from the large and vicious menaces of the mountain heights.

She was so restless that Kincar was worried. Should she go out in search of her kind, she might well never return. Yet he knew that if he tried to restrain her by caging, her restlessness would develop into a wild mania centered only upon escape, and she might beat herself to death against the walls of her prison. In order to keep her, he must leave her free, holding to the hope that she would come back at some time of her own choosing.

With another eerie cry, she gave a leap that carried her up and out, climbing in a tight spiral until he could not see her at all. He beat his cold-numbed hands against his thighs, striding back and forth to keep his feet free from the frost-deadening chill as he waited. But there was no Vorken planing down wind, no shrilling whistle. It was as if the mord had gone out through some hole in the sky.

“She is gone?” Snow crunched under Lord Bardon’s boots. “I thought the wild fever must be on her when I saw her this morning.”

“I couldn’t cage her,” Kincar argued in his own defense. “Without a hatchery she would have gone mad in a cage.”

“True enough. And, though we have not sighted any of her breed “here, boy, that is no reason to think that they do not exist. Perhaps in the lowlands she will discover a hold with a hatchery.”

That was poor comfort, but it was the only hope he had to hold to. And he knew that in setting her free he had saved her life.

“To lay bonds upon any unwilling living thing, whether it be man or beast, is evil.” Lord Bardon rested his hands upon the parapet and stood looking down the cleft of the entrance valley toward the plains. If all they had heard was true, there lay a bondage far worse than the alliance between trained mord and hunter. “Service must be rooted in the need to form part of a pattern. In that way it is security of mind—if not always of body. Vorken serves you in some ways, and you in exchange give .her the returns she wants. At present she must be left free for what is important to her, as is right. And now, Kincar,” he glanced down with a smile, “I have a service to offer you. After many delays our friends of the inner mountain have decided that they may offer us a measure of trust. They have sent a message that they will show us a sheltered and secret way to look upon one of the main highways of the lower country and assess the traffic that passes there.”

“In this weather?”

“It would seem that the cold season does not hit so heavily in the plains as it does here. Also the Lords of the lowlands have their reasons for keeping the lines of communication open. Where men live in distrust and fear, speedy travel is oftentimes a necessity. But, at any rate, we shall be able to see more than we do from here. And if you wish, you may ride with us.”

The party from the hold was a small one. Ospik and one of his fellows, Tosi, served as guides. Behind them rode Lord Bardon, his huge bow slung over his shoulder to point a warning finger into the sky, Lord Frans, Jonathal, and Kincar. They were mounted on larngs who protested with muttering grumbles against being urged into the cold, and they led one of the burden breed to carry provisions and additional robes, lest they be storm-stayed out of shelter.

Ospik’s trail led to the side of the mountain near which Kincar had charted the warm rill, and then it zigzagged crookedly back and forth in a dried watercourse where many rock piles made the footing so chancy they dismounted and led their beasts. The path, if so it could be termed, ended in a screen of brush before the mountain wall. But that screen was not what it appeared, for they pushed through it into a dark opening that might have been a deep running crevice.

But, as they advanced and Lord Bardon triggered a torch to light them, Kincar marked the signs of the tools that had turned a fault of nature into a passage for men. However much it had been wrought to provide a way through the mountain caverns, it was not one much used by the community of in dwellers. As they threaded their way along it into a cave that fanned far out into deep darkness, their light bringing to life sparkles of answering fire from crystals on the walls, and then to another narrow passage and more caverns opening into one another, they met no one else,” heard no sounds save the murmur of water—and those arising hollowly from their own footfalls. The whole mountain range, Kincar marveled, must be honeycombed with cave, crevice, and cavern, and the indwellers had made use of them to their own advantage.

Once they edged perilously over a narrow span set in place to cross a steaming hot flood, their heavier bodies and the bulk of the larngs going one at a time over a bridge made for manikins, choking and coughing as they passed from the fumes of the boiling water. And once or twice they caught a whiff of carrion reek, a distant rustle, as if some nightmare creature had crawled aside from their way, unable to dispute the light of the torch.

Time had no meaning here. They might have spent only hours, or a full day in the depths. Twice they halted to rest and eat, both times in grottoes of prismatic crystal, cupped in a circle of fire-hearted jewels, with the lace-tracery, formed by countless centuries of drip, making palace screens and drapery. It was a world Kincar had never conceived of being, and he explored with Jonathal, each pointing out to, the other some particular wonder before or above. Fountains frozen before their spray streamed away, a tree, a fruit-heavy vine, they were all to be found. And in company with those were creatures out of a song-smith’s dreams—fair, grotesque, horrible.

Ospik laughed at their surprise, but kindly. “These are to be found many places elsewhere.” A pride of possession colored his words. “And many far better. There is our Hall of Meeting—“

“Jewels in the wall!” Jonathal touched a flashing point on a copy of a tree limb.

Their guide shook his head. “Jewels, aye, are to be found. But none of these are real gems, only bits of rock crystal. Take them away from the cavern and you will have nothing remarkable.”

“But—“ Kincar burst out—“to think of this buried under the earthl”

Lord Frans smiled. He had not moved about, but sat cross-legged, his back against the haunches of his resting larng. However, he had been studying what lay about them with some measure of the same eagerness.

“It is the earth which formed this, Kincar. And, as Ospik has said, tear this out of its present setting and the magic would be gone from it. It is indeed a wonder worth traveling far to see.” He drew a small tablet from his belt pouch and with a stelo made a swift sketch of the frozen vine.

When they went on from that last cavern of crystal, the way was again dark, the walls crannied. Kincar forgot his amazement in a growing tension. He glanced now and again over his shoulder. Though he never saw anything but the familiar outline of Cim and, behind the mount, a glimpse of Lord Frans, yet he was plagued with a sense of being watched, a feeling that if he could only turn quick enough he v would see something else—and not a good thing.

His hand was at his breast, flattened above the Tie lying there. That touch was not to assure the safety of the talisman but to reassure himself—as if from the Tie he drew a feeling of security against that invisible lurking thing.

The passage now sloped upward, so that they climbed. Tool marks on the walls spoke of the labor that had gone into the opening of this way, but it was a narrow one, so that they went one after the other, and some outcrops of rock in the roof forced both Star Lords and larngs to stoop, the stone brushing the crests on the others’ helms.

After one last steep ascent they came into a cave, wide, but with a small opening through which had entered a drifting point of snow and beyond which they could hear the whistling wind of the outer world.

Ospik trotted to this door and stood there, sniffing as might some burrow creature suspicious of the freedom beyond. “Wind up—but no storm,” he reported with assurance. “By sunup you will have a fine perch from which to go a-spying. But that is some hours off, so take your ease.”

Tosi had already gone to a section well out of line with the cave mouth. And he busied himself there pulling from a crevice a supply of dry and seasoned wood, some light and white as old bones, which he kindled by a coal carried in a small earthenware box, making a fire they crouched about. At last, wrapped in their fur cloaks, the larngs forming a wall of animal heat to reflect the fire, they dozed away what was left of the night.

The cavemouth faced northeast, so that the dawn light was partly theirs, making a warning of gray when Kincar was shaken gently awake by Jonathal. He rubbed smarting eyes and swallowed bites from the journeycake pushed into his hand. They left their mounts in the cave, Tosi volunteering as larng tender. Then the four from the hold, with Ospik still as guide, went out upon a broad ledge and found themselves on a mord’s perch above a valley.

There was snow here, sculptured by the wind. But in one strip it had been beaten down, rnushed with dark streaks of soil into a grimy path. And it must have required a goodly amount of travel to and fro to leave such well-defined traces. Yet the surrounding country was wild, with no other evidences of civilization.

, “Your road to the plains,” Ospik pointed out. “For those who use it, you must wait, Lords. Those who travel it do only by daylight.”

So they drew lots for the post of lookout, and the rest went back to the shelter of the cave. Kincar, having the first watch, amused himself with the laying out of an ambush plan, such as Regen might have done. This was a proper place for such armed as they were with the bows. For man-to-man combat after the old fashion it would not have served so well. Here on the ledge one could stand and pick off all lead men in a first surprise, leaving any force below without an officer to rally about.

The snow deadened sound, and a cortege came into view with a sudden appearance, which shamed Kincar out of his notion of himself as a seasoned warrior. His warning hiss brought out the others to creep across the ledge.

Kincar, used to traders’ caravans with their lumbering goods wains, or the quick trot of mounted warriors, watched the present party amazed. There were men mounted on larngs to be sure, Gorthians—though there were differences in arms and clothing to be observed. Yet behind that first clot of riders came something else. Two burden larngs clumped along about ten feet apart, and linking the first to the second was a chain of metal. From this issued at spaced intervals—in pairs—other chains, smaller. And each of those— there were four pair of them—ended in collars, the collars clamped about the throats of stumbling, reeling, moaning figures.

A second pair of larngs so linked, towing more prisoners, came into view. One of the captives fell, was dragged along the ground. A rider trotted up, and a whip swung with the intention of maximum pain to the fallen. But, in spite of the blows rained upon him, the fallen one did not stir. There was a shout, and the larngs halted while the riders held a conference.

“Who are those?” Lord Frans demanded hotly of Ospik.

The mountain dweller regarded them slyly from the corners of his eyes.

“Outlaws or slaves—ones who fled from the plains and are not being returned to their homes. The lucky ones die before they reach there.”

The rider who had used the whip now slid from his pad and unhooked the collar of the captive. Her jerked the body aside, then kicked, and the limp form rolled into a ditch.

There was no need for spoken agreement, for any order, among the four on the ledge. Bow strings came back in unison, twanged as four hands reached for the second arrow, eyes already on a new mark.

A scream, a hoarse, startled cry, the clash of metal against metal as a sword was drawn. But four of the slave guards were down, and one of the chained captives had seized upon the whip, using its stout butt to twist at his prisoning bonds.

It was a slaughter rather than a battle. And the archers proved the worth of their weapons over and over again, shooting larngs so that the riders could not flee. Ospik leaned perilously close to the rim of the ledge watching the deaths below with glistening, hungry eyes.

Twice the guards turned on their captives to kill. And both times they died before their blows went home. In the end only those chained to the dead burden larngs were still alive. Ospik spoke first.

“Now that was a mighty killing, Lords—a mord feeding as shall be remembered long. But it will also bring boiling out those to hunt us down in turn.”

Lord Bardon shrugged. “Is there a path down from this sky perch of yours, Ospik? We needs must see what can be done for those wretches below.”

“If your head is clear, you can take it!” The mountaineer dropped over the lip of the ledge, hung for a moment by his hands, and then went from one hold to another as if he were a wall insect. The others followed him, much more slowly, and with—at least on Kincar’s part—some misgivings.

IX
VOLUNTEER

THEY CAME OUT of the brush into the open space bordering the road.

“When the prisoners are loose,” ordered Lord Bardon, “collect what arrows you can.”

“Now that is, indeed wisdom, Lord.” Ospik gave tribute. “Let the wild beasts feast here, and no one can say clearly what was the manner of these men’s death.”

Jonathal had plunged ahead and was prowling about among the todies of the guards, examining their belts. Now he called and held up a locking rod. But, as they all started toward the chained ones, the man who had worked vainly with whip butt to break his way free gave a wailing cry and crouched, his eyes wild with hate. The whip lash sang out, striking Lord Frans’s arm. Lord Bardon jerked his companion out of lash range.

“We should have thought. Take cover, Frans! To these we are the devils they fear the most!”

Jonathal used the lock-rod on the chain, freeing it first from the dead larngs. The half-dazed captives went into action, pulling it back between them, slipping their collar chains out of its hold. They were still paired by the collars, but they were no longer fastened between the slain animals.

For the most part they hunched in the snow, blinking stupidly, their spurt of energy exhausted in that one act, save for the whip wielder who got to his feet and faced his Gorthian rescuers with a spark of spirit. His face was swollen, with angry cuts under smears of dried blood. He might have been of any age, but he handled himself as might a trained warrior, and his head was up. Broken and bruised he was in body, perhaps, but not in spirit.

“What do you?” the words came haltingly, mumbled, as puffed and torn lips moved over broken teeth.

Jonathal wrenched a cloak from one of the dead guards and threw it around a shivering woman before he answered.

“We make you free.”

The man turned his battered face so that his one open eye went from Jonathal to Kincar. Apparently all intelligence and curiosity had not been ground out of him by ill treatment. But neither was he willing or able to accept them readily as friends. Kincar gave the best proof of peaceful intentions he could think of, pulling a sword from the scabbard of the nearest guard and holding it out, hilt foremost.

That one unswollen eye widened in disbelief, and then a hand shot out, clawed about the hilt, and spun it out of Kincar’s lax hold. The man panted as if he raced up the mountain.

“That is the way of it,” Jonathal approved. “Get free, get a blade in your hands. And it is up swords and out at them!”

But Kincar believed that the captive did not hea’r that at all. He was too busy using the hard knob on the sword hilt to pry at his chains. Most of the others were apathetic, and all bore such marks of ill usage, men and women alike, that Kincar fought a rising nausea as he worked at the stubborn collars. Then Jonathal chanced upon some trick of their locking, and after that they tossed them aside. A few of the released made for, the bodies of the guards, raiding for provision bags. And Kincar and Jonathal, much as they disliked the task, had to struggle with the weak creatures to see a fair sharing out of the food.

Kincar was on his knees beside a woman, trying to coax her to taste the coarse meal bread she held in her hand and stared at with a pitiful blankness as if she could not connect it with food, when the man to whom he had given the sword came up. He now wore a guard’s armor jerkin and a helmet, and he was sucking a strip of dried meat, unable to attack it with his teeth. But he carried the sword, unsheathed in his other hand. And he watched Kincar warily.

“Who are you?” he mumbled, but in that muffled voice there was the snap of command. “Why did you do this?” The bare blade gestured at the littered road, where the dead were being stripped for the advantage of the living.

“We are those who are enemies to any rule which sets men in chains.” Kincar chose his words carefully. “If you would know more, come to our leader—“

“With the point of this resting between your shoulders will I come.” The blade caught the light of the rising sun.

“Well enough.” Kincar pulled a robe about the woman and stood up. “My hands are open, hold captain.” He gave the man the title that seemed to match his manner.

Without looking to see if he did follow, Kincar walked to the screen of bushes were the Star Lords had taken cover. But another had sought that same way before him. As Kincar thrust aside leafless limbs, he saw Lord Bardon and Lord Frans with Ospik, who was passing across arrows he had collected. Only, the three intent upon that reckoning were not alone there. One of the guards had survived the attack, not only survived it but had traced the source of that sudden death.

Perhaps the surprise of seeing who had led it—Star Lords—had kept him quiet at first. But now he crouched behind Lord Bardon, concentrated fury plain to read on his sleek face, a slender needle-knife ready in his hand. And Kincar, knowing very well how that murderous weapon was used by an expert, threw himself forward.

He struck the lurking guard waist high, but he did not carry him to the ground as he had planned. The fellow wriggled in his grasp, loose enough to strike down at Kincar with the knife intended for Lord Bardon’s throat. Kincar’s hand closed about that swooping wrist just in time, halting the blow when the point was almost into his flesh, kicking out to upset the other’s balance. Fire scored down the side of his underchin; then the blade caught in the top of his scale coat and snapped. Before the jagged end of the blade could reach his eyes as the other struck, they were torn apart by a grip neither could hope to break. The hands that had pulled Kincar loose released their hold.

“He got you, boy!”

Blood dripped on Kincar’s chest, trickling down over his surcoat. Then Lord Bardon’s fingers under his chin forced his head up and to one side as the other assessed the damage.

“A scratch only, thanks be!” the Star Lord exploded a moment later. “We’ll get a pack on that to stop bleeding and you’ll live, youngling—“ There was relief close to laughter in his voice. But when he spoke again, his voice was ice hard. “Put that one in storage, Frans. He can answer some useful questions. And”—engaged in pushing Kincar back against the face of the cliff so he could get at his wound, Lord Bardon sighted the ex-slave who had followed the younger man—“where did you spring from?”

“He was one of the prisoners.” Kincar got out that much of an explanation before Lord Bardon’s fingers, busy with a dressing, pressed him into silence.

“And he would like to see the color of our blood,” suggested Lord Frans. He had trussed the guard efficiently, leaving him lying at the foot of the rise. Now he stood empty-handed facing the newcomer.

But if the man had come with swift death for his overlords in his mind, he did not move to attack now. To read any expression on his torn and battered face was impossible, but he stood watching Lord Bardon’s hasty work with bandage pack, his eye flitting now and again to the cursing prisoner, his late guard. When he spoke, it was to ask the same question he had earlier made to Kincar.

“Who are you?” Then he made his bewilderment clear in a rush of words. “You wear the guise of the Black Ones, yet you have slain their loyal men, released us who are condemned slaves. Now you tend the wound of a lowlander as if he were a kinsman. And the guard, who is one of your followers, dealing death and torment at your command, lies in bonds. I ask again, who are you?”

“Let us say that we are those who have been sent to put an end to trouble in this land. Though we bear the outward seeming of your rulers, we are not of their kind. Can you believe that?”

“Lord, I have witnessed three great marvels this day. I have seen the despoiling of a slave train; I have seen men of my race and Dark Ones move with a common purpose as kinsmen, with a care for one another as true battle comrades have. And I have seen one set in rule over us laid in bonds by you. Can one who has seen such deeds as these not-believe? And now that I have looked upon you fairly, I can testify that you are not as the Dark Ones—though you wear their bodies. By Lor, Loi, and Lys—“ he went to one knee and held out his sword, hilt extended to Lord Bardon—“I am your man—I who swore by the Forest Altars never to render service to any outland lord.”

Lord Bardon touched the sword hilt, but he did not take it into his hand, and the other’s eye shone. He was accepted by fealty and not as a bondsman, and Lord Bardon’s knowledge of that ceremony impressed him still more deeply.

He was on his feet once more, the sword slammed smartly into sheath.

“I await orders, Lord—“

That reminded Lord Frans of the problem to hand. “We can’t just turn these people loose on the countryside. They would die or be scooped up by another patrol.”

“What about it, Ospik,” Lord Bardon asked the mountaineer. “Will your chief suffer us to take such a party through the ways?”

Ospik plucked at his lower lip. “You have struck a smart blow at the ‘gods,’ outlander. But, suppose those are taken again, they will blat out all they know and speedily. All men talk when the ‘gods’ will it. We have kept our land because its secrets were not known—“

“Once they are in the valley of the hold, Ospik, I do not think they will fall prey again.”

Ospik nodded. “There is that to consider. But I have not the final word; I can but be a messenger. Come you with me and speak to our chief yourself.”

“And in the meantime? What if there is another body of guards along this way?” asked Lord Bardon.

“As to that—get these back into the shelter of a side gulch here. It is a place you can easily defend if the need arises, and it is out of sight.”

So they brought the released prisoners, the possessions of the guards, anything that might be of use to the captives, into a small side valley Ospik showed them. Archers on the heights above might well hold that camp against a strong attack. And they remained there as Bardon went back with Ospik into the mountain ways.

The shock of the captives’ sudden change in fortune was beginning to wear away, and a handful of the men bestirred themselves, under the command of the man Lord Bardon had enlisted, to shepherd the less alert of their fellows and arm themselves from the spoil of battle. Seeing that their leader appeared to have matters well in hand, the three from the hold remained aloof, save when physical help was needed. But when the temporary camp was in some sort of order, the leader came to them, saluting Lord Frans with upheld palm.

“We are at your command, Lord. Though perhaps you do well not to walk among us until those know you better for what you are. For their fear and hate for those you resemble—in outward form—runs high, and it is seldom that we have a chance to approach a Dark One within sword distance. Someone, with dulled wits and a good reason, might well attempt to try your deathlessness with metal—“

“But you do not think as do they?”

“Nay, Lord. I am Kapal, once Band-leader to free men of the wastes—until I was trapped and collar-tamed (or so they thought) by the Hands of the Dark Ones. We have fought, and hid, and fought again ever since the Dark Ones sent to enforce their rule upon the fringes of the Barren Lands. Mostly we die, our blades in hand, cut down in battle. We are very few now. When they took Quaar, they left but a handful of posts, and these can be overrun one by one, as they will do. We die, but we die free! Only”— his eye flickered from Lord Frans to the tall bow the Star man carried— “mayhap with weapons such as • these to kill silently and at good distance, men need not die so hopelessly any more.”

“It may be so. We shall see—“

Kapal manifestly took that as a promise of a brighter future. “Let me out into the Barren Lands, Lord, with such a hope to voice, and I shall bring you a hundred hands of good men to ride beneath your bannerl I can be gone within the hour if you wish.”

“Not so. It is not given to me to have the ordering of this matter, Kapal. And what of these?” Lord Frans pointed to the late captives. “Are any among them minded to raise blade against their late masters?”

“Perhaps they are so minded,” Kapal admitted. “But most of them are broken in spirit. Two, mayhap three of them could rally to a battle call. The rest—“ He shrugged. “They have worn the collar chain too long.”

“So do I think also. But what if they are given a measure of safety, a stretch of land where they may rest without fear, will they sow seed and reap, hunt meat, and work thus for a community that does not ask sword service in return?”

“That they might well do, Lord. If you know of such a place— safe from the Dark Ones’ raids. But then you must have come from . there!” He glanced from Lord Frans to Kincar and Jonathal. “It is plain to see that these, your guardsmen, have never known the bite of chain or whip, and yet they wear not a Hand’s brand upon them—“

“A Hand’s brand—?”

“Aye, lord. Those who are one in spirit with the Dark Ones bear their seal for all men’s seeing. Look you!”

He crossed to the prisoner. The former guard spat filth, but Kapal stooped to fasten fingers in the other’s hair, holding ‘up his head and pointing to a mark just above and between the other’s brows. Set deep in the skin was the brand left by hot metal, a small, threefold figure familiar to Kincar, Jonathal—but reversed And at that blasphemy both of the half-bloods raised fingers in the blessed sign to repudiate such vileness. Kapal saw their gesture, and when Lord Frans echoed it, he burst forth:

“The Three—you give service to the Forest Ones, Lord?”

“I give service to a belief of my own, of which the Three are another manifestation, Kapal. Good thoughts and beliefs have the respect of any man, whether they be his own by birth, or native to his friends and kinsman. But here, I think, a certain symbol has been deliberately used vilely—“

“That is true, Lord. For those who serve the Dark Ones with their full will allow themselves to be marked thus, and take pride in it—so that all others may see it and fear them. But there are those who do not fear, rather do they hate!” He loosened his hold, and the prisoner’s head fell back to the ground.

“It follows a very old pattern.” Lord Frans spoke more to himself than to those about him. “Sneer at and degrade what might be a banner of hope to the slave. Aye, an old, old pattern. It is a ripe time for the breaking of such patterns!”

They were never to know what argument Lord Bardon used successfully with the ruler of the inner mountain in behalf of the rescued slaves. But in the late afternoon he returned with the message that they might use the passages to take the company to the hold valley. It was a long, slow trip. And they had left two heaped piles of stones to mark graves in the gulch. The woman Kincar had tried to coax into eating was gone, and with her an old man whose wits wandered so that none of his companions in misfortune knew his name or where he had been taken.

More than a day was spent on that journey, for they had to rest many times, the larngs carrying the weakest when the passages permitted riding. The men Kapal had indicated as being worth recruiting for spear-festing formed a unit under the wasteland leader, accepting his commands readily, and they alone of the rescued were interested in their strange surroundings.

The prisoner stayed in the hands of the hold party, his safety was only assured with them. But, as they penetrated deeper into the winding ways undergrond, his defiance seeped out of him and he was willing enough to stay very close to his captors, tagging either Kincar or Jonathal as if he were a battle comrade.

At the fifth rest period Lord Bardon called Kincar to him. “By Ospik’s reckoning we are now not too far from the entrance in the hold valley. Tosi will go with you as a guide; take your larng and ride for aid. Many of these are close to collapse and we cannot carry them to the hold. Get extra mounts and more food—“

So it was that they brought the weary party into the fortress where the freed slaves, their wounds dressed, their hunger eased, sat for the most part in dumb surprise at the life about them. But the Lord Dillan called a council of war in the upper chamber he had taken for his own—and to this Kapal alone of the rescued was summoned.

“The guard is wide open to probe,” Lord Dillan said of their prisoner. “Doubtless that is used regularly upon him by his masters. The man he was—he might have been—was destroyed when they set that brand upon him. By that act he surrendered his will and they can use him as they wish. It is a horrible thing!”

“So we agree. But we cannot concern ourselves too deeply now with what has been done in the past. We must think of what lies before us. The question is, dare we, with our few numbers, make any move against the entrenched strength of these tyrants?” asked Lord Bardon.

Lord Jon broke the long moment of silence. He was the -youngest of the Star Lords, perhaps by their reckoning as youthful and as inexperienced as Kincar had been in the company of Wurd and Regen. Now he asked a simple question.

“Dare we not?”

Lord Dillan sighed. “There it is. Being what we are, striving toward the goal we have set for ourselves, we must interfere.”

“Aye. But not foolishly, throwing away any advantage we may have,” Lord Bardon cut in. “We must make our few count as well as an army. And we must know more of the lowlands before we venture there. Wring that guard dry of all he knows, Dillan. And let us set a post on that road, take what toll we can from other slave trains passing. Then—send a scout into the lowlands—Kapal!”

Soothing dressings about the outlaw’s head covered all but one eye and his mouth, but he arose limberly.

“Kapal, what are the chances of a scout into the lowlands?”

“Few and ill, Lord. They have control posts along every road, and all travelers must account for themselves. To one who knows not the land it is impossible.”

Lord Bardon corrected him. “Nothing is impossible. It is merely that the right way is not clear at first. Supposing a Dark One was to travel, would any dare question him?”

Kapal shook his head. “Lord, the Dark Ones never travel. Death comes not to them through age, but metal enters their flesh as easily as it does ours. They live well protected and only go forth from their hold in air-flying wains, the magic of which they alone know. Just one sort of man would dare such a scout—“ “And that?”

“One bearing the mark of evil—he could pretend to be a messenger.”

Kincar’s hand sought what he wore secretly. His eyes went from man to man about that circle, studying each in turn. Already he knew the answer. Of all the hold party he was the only one showing no trace of alien blood. The scout could only be his. “I will go—“

He did not realize that he had said that aloud until he saw Lord Dillan look at him, caught the grim approval in Lord Bardon’s appraisal. His hand was at his lips; but it was too late.