Back it came toward the tower. He swallowed. There was something ominous as well as unnatural about that return. He had no desire to be caught by the rolling folds of the stuff. But he could not retreat down the ladder. He still heard a m.u.f.fled clamor from below, and he might well meet a laser head-on if he were to try even opening the door a crack. The grayish sky overhead had darkened, but the smoke was very plain against it. When it reached back as far as the outer walls of the ruin, the questing tip of that finger - or tongue - began to settle, seeking the lower stories of the battered buildings. At least it was not headed toward his own perch; none of it had sprayed out in his direction.

He dared to get to his knees, still holding in both hands his bone weapons, not crawling off the door, yet allowing himself a wider view of the smoke as it dipped down near to ground level. The nest had been consumed, and the end of the smoke before him had become only ragged tails which arose to follow the body of it, as if they had been summoned by order.

From, below came shouts, and the pressure on the door beneath him was gone. He got to his feet, ready to drop his full weight upon it if the need again arose, and looked down.

The smoke did not touch the ground, but hung above it at about the height of a man's knees. And it was not dissipating. Rather it was like some shapeless animal hunting, ready to engulf anything that moved. He saw Sulve draw back and slam the door in the faces of two of the guards who cursed and then ran for the dubious shelter of one of the roofless buildings. No one ventured forth from the tower.

Now there was a heaving ma.s.s covering all the open s.p.a.ce of what had once been the courtyard. A sound brought Farree's head up - made him look beyond the ruins to the reaches of the land outside.

There was movement about the flitters which had been parked there; he thought he saw a body being tossed to one side, and strained to watch more carefully, though he was held by the need for staying where he was, making a barrier of the trapdoor.

Suddenly there was a sound which no one from the Limits could ever mistake. The flitter was preparing to take to the air. Farree squatted down once more. He had no idea what that off-world ship might carry which could scoop him up prisoner. Transferring his bone splinters to one hand he took out the knife he had found in the debris, determined to do what he could to defend himself.

The small craft spiraled upward into the evening sky. Already the outer of the three moon rings was partly visible. Farree wished that he had faith in it enough to believe that he was going to come out of this unscathed. He waited, cold with more than the rising winds of dusk, winds which made no impression as yet on the smoke below but which grew more and more chill and lashing here above.

From the sky the flitter was descending, and then from it came the unmistakable mind send of the Lord-One Krip.

Stand ready!

Farree was sure that this was no trick of the Guild. A man's voice might easily be imitated but he had never heard that a thought pattern could be concealed. That was Krip Vorlund overhead and he - he was to stand ready!

It was not too dark to see now that a rope ladder had fallen from the belly of the flitter. Farree thrust his bone splinters and the knife into his belt, settled Toggor with almost rough haste within his shirt, and waited.

To climb a swinging ladder in the air - his mind flinched from even imagining such a feat. But this was the way out he had longed to find that until now there had been no hope of discovering. The flitter hovered overhead, and he was able to grasp the ropes in his hands. There was a third, he suddenly discovered, one equipped with a hook, and he clasped that into his belt before he started the dizzy ascent into the evening sky.

Hold tight! As he clung desperately to the ladder the flitter lifted and swung him on, through the air, toward the outer wall and away from the trapdoor and whoever might try to reach him now. The ropes cut his hands, so tight was his grasp, and he dared not look down. Then he heard another order: Climb!

At first Farree thought that he could never loosen his grip, never reach for the next hold bobbing above him. Somehow his body obeyed, while his mind remained frozen by such fear as he had never known before. Only climb he did.

There was a surge of power from the flitter, and now the wind tore at him. A brilliant white beam cut through the air where he had dangled only moments earlier. Someone was alert, free of the ruins, and aiming a laser.

A hand reached down to him from the opening in the belly of me flitter, promising safety. He was not even aware he had climbed far enough for the hand to reach him. But fingers gripped tightly at the cloth across his hump. The flesh beneath answered with white-hot flashes of pain, but he was dragged on up and into the flitter. He looked up into the face of the Lady Maelen. She reached over his p.r.o.ne body and pressed a lever which closed the opening as he remained where he was, too weak with relief to move.

The small craft was shaking, and Farree guessed that it was being driven to the full extent of its power away from the ruined keep. Whether they were bound back into the Tha.s.sa country of the high cliffs he could not tell.

For the moment he was content to lie where he was, breathing heavily. Toggor crawled out of his shirt and squatted on the deck beside his head, all eyestalks erect and turned toward him as if the smux knew concern.

We are descending now, the Lady Maelen said in trade tongue. We cannot enter the inner places in this off-world craft.

The inner places? Had it taken so short a time to reach the heart of the Tha.s.sa country? Apparently the swift flight of the flitter had been even more speedy than he had imagined. For they were setting down. As they b.u.mped to a halt, which jarred Parree's body and brought an answering thrill of pain from his hump, the Lady Maelen moved to open the c.o.c.kpit door. But the Lord-One Krip did not rise from the pilot's seat.

Instead he was leaning over the panel before him, drawing his stunner. Reversing the weapon and making of it a club, Lord-One Krip calmly hammered at the dials on the panel of controls, splintering their protective covering, and then the dials themselves, until he had bared a network of wiring which he proceeded to tear loose and twist out of shape.

It will be a long day - several of them - before this ever flies again, he commented when he was done. It is better that we be on our way.

Once outside, they looked up. Evening was fast becoming night but the sky was alive with the glory of the third ring, and Farree saw the Lady Maelen gazing up at it, her hand raising to gesture in the air as if she truly gathered that light and brought inward a portion of it clasped between her palm and fingers.

Before them was the entrance to the place of the hall. There were heavy ruts in the soil, from the regiment of carts that had pa.s.sed that way before them. Lord-One Krip's touch on his shoulder headed Farree in that direction.

Once more he came into that place where the cliffs themselves were honeycombed with the very ancient doorways and the hand of time lay heavy on the half-arid land. But they did not go to the hall again, rather made their way to a lesser opening that was hardly higher than the heads of the two who escorted Farree. Within the entrance to which there was no bar or door shone a pale light which might be a portion of the third ring blazoned proudly across the evening sky.

They were waiting there, the four who had stood on the dais of the hall, though they were not standing in judgment now. There was a subtle difference that Farree could sense without being able to set name to it, but he thought that whatever difference the Lady Maelen had had with these, the leaders of her people, had either been resolved or postponed to handle a more immediate problem.

Welcome, little one. The voice he knew. It had cut into his thoughts too many times since this venture on Yiktor had begun for him to mistake it, or the speaker: the woman who stood a step before the other three.

What have you learned that you could awake the Eor-fog?

The Eor-fog? he repeated aloud in the trade tongue. All at once fatigue hit him hard. He wanted nothing so much as to curl up in sleep, a sleep without dreams, and remain unwaking for a long, long time.

The mental picture which flashed into his mind in answer to that question was of the thick green smoke which had issued from the powder in the box. He replied speedily with the truth, that he had found the box and that its contents had had no meaning for him.

A nesting place of the grok. But those have been gone from here for many seasons. Fortune stands at your shoulder, little one, that such a thing could have happened.

He thought that he could well echo her statement. Looking back now, he could see that luck which had abided with him in the time he had been captive to the Guild. Perhaps the old superst.i.tion was the truth and his hump was a mark of luck - though one he would do without if he could.

They thought to use me for bait. He brought out his only explanation for his remaining alive and in good condition.

Yet the trap sprang on them, the Tha.s.sa leader said.

They have lasers. He would not have her believe that perhaps they had seen the last of that company in the ruins. Whatever else the Tha.s.sa could mount in the way of offensive weapons, he could not tell.

They could well have great weapons, Lord-One Krip spoke across his head in warning. If they believe that we control some major find - They may have what they please, the woman returned shortly. Tha.s.sa control is now sealed to them.

Farree dared then to raise his voice in his own warning. They may have patience, too. And can your land - he thought of the arid country about - give sustenance to all your people indefinitely?

Perhaps not. But there are other places to hunt for olden weapons besides a grok nest, little one.

He thought she was entirely too confident. As if she were the Commander and her forces set to harry a people who seemed, as far as he could determine, ready to depend upon intangibles for defense. Though he remembered how the flitter had been forced into another flight pattern the first time it had flown a scouting mission near the Tha.s.sa valley.

You are tired, little one. Rest safe and know that you sleep within such a setting of sentries as those without have never met before.

It was a dismissal, and he went willingly enough but certainly not with a quiet mind. After his venture with the smoke he could believe that there were unusual weapons possible but that they might in the end triumph. He had lived too many years in the Limits under the ever-abiding shadow of the Guild where the indwellers spoke with awe and dread of what that organization could do and had done in the past. He still believed that the Tha.s.sa leaders were too confident.

But he went willingly with the Lord-One Krip to another of the cave rooms and there ate of dried fruit and strips of something which might be meat but which he believed was not, drank his fill of a sparkling fluid which was more than water but not a wine. Then he curled on a pile of mats with Toggor still beside him and waited for the sleep he craved. It was late in coming.

The Guild had wanted him for bait, yes. Almost the trap might have sprung. He realized suddenly that he had never really believed that the Lady Maelen and the Lord-One Krip would come searching for him. Perhaps it was a matter of duty for them, the same feeling of responsibility as he had for Toggor - that they could not leave him in enemy hands. That was the only reason he could accept. Had he been anything else to the Guild? Though he had closed his eyes for sleep, what he saw again was out of his vivid dream: Lanti sprawled across the table and that other shaking him by the shoulder, drawing back in frustration and disgust when he realized the former s.p.a.cer was dead. That sc.r.a.p of stuff which the other had held - Farree tried to fasten his memory on that, sift it for its value.

Only what he saw now in the wink of an eye, the draught of a breath, was not the filthy hut of the Limits but somewhere else - It was as if he were aloft again, swinging on the ladder, only there was no fear in this essay into open s.p.a.ce, flight was something right and brought no fear. He looked down as if he rode on the back of a bird, not in any flitter, for the free air was all about him and he knew that he was here by his will and not because he had no choice.

He was looking down upon a rippling land of brilliant green: groves of trees whose leaves were clasped lightly about gems of eye-pleasing color which he knew were flowers or fruit. For the first time Farree could remember, he was truly alive, feeling no telling weight upon his shoulders, able to move his head freely. He was straight of body; without touching his shoulders he knew this. This again must be a dream, but one he clung to fiercely. If he never awakened from it, then he was repaid for all the ills of the past.

He descended through the air, lightly, easily, depending now he knew upon nothing but his own will and body. Gra.s.s rose shoulder high about him and there was the sweet smell - of - It was the scent which broke the dream, pulled him back into the grim reality of his own world. Yet it was a pleasant scent, one which he knew. He opened his eyes and the Lady Maelen was kneeling beside him. There was a small furred creature on her shoulder, bobbing its small head against her throat. Behind her Yazz stood, ta.s.seled tail aswing.

Farree . . . who is Lanti?

Before he had time to truly align his thoughts, he answered. I was with him. I think he brought me from another world to the Limits - me and something else that was worth more.

Tell me, she urged.

He felt himself scowling. To have been awakened out of that dream in order to recall bitter memories was - hurtful.

How did you know of Lanti? he demanded.

I saw him.

Farree hunched his body together as he felt a flow of anger beginning far inside him. You were in my dream! he accused her. He had met them mind to mind, yes, but he had never given them the right to monitor him without his knowledge. What more had she read from him that he knew nothing of? He felt as defenseless as he had in the hands of the Commander. At least then they had used a machine and had given him reason to know that he was about to be invaded.

You cried out, the Lady Maelen said slowly. It was a cry of hurt. I would have given you peace - that is all.

Perhaps she was right and had meant him only good, that he would again feel at ease.

No! There was deep concern in her voice, and she put out her hand as if she would gentle him as she might an animal that had been ruthlessly abused.

Only he was no animal! He was as much a man as a Tha.s.sa, even if he only held relationship by human standards to the eighth point! Perhaps the Tha.s.sa themselves, for all their humanoid appearance, were farther apart from the off-worlders who used that scale than he knew.

Please. He was not aware that he had shrunk from her touch but maybe he had, for her band fell to her knee. Please. She spoke the trade speech aloud; perhaps she knew that to mind touch now was more than he would allow. Bad memories can lighten if they are shared.

I have nothing to share. He pulled up and faced her almost as if she had been sent by the Commander to win out of him some last sc.r.a.p of truth. You know it all. I was with Lanti in the Limits - beyond that there is no memory.

You were erased? She was studying him so intently that he longed to be able to enter the wall of the stone chamber to hide. There was a new alertness in her eyes.

I do not know. I do not care. He said that with all the fierce firmness he could summon. He saw that she would accept it.

It can be reversed, you know. If you should want - I do not!

She raised both hands so her fingertips touched her forehead in the way of an oddly formal salute.

Your pardon, Farree. Know that all will respect your barriers until you give them permission to do otherwise.

It - is - well . . . He stumbled a little over that. And remained sitting until she was gone out of the chamber. There was a small cluttering noise and he saw that Toggor was climbing upon his knee. He drew one finger down the back of the bristly sh.e.l.l which was the outer plating of the smux. Did Toggor also know resentment at times when Farree strove to catch his thoughts? What did the animals which the Lady Maelen loved and companioned with - what did they think of that companionship? He knew that Yazz and Bojor welcomed her effusively after they had been separated for a s.p.a.ce - that they perhaps companioned with her by choice. Perhaps they welcomed the fact that another life form could communicate with them and that they were not frustrated by a lack of touch. He was no trainer nor owner of animals. Only Toggor.

Now he put out his cupped hands and the smux climbed into the hollow. He raised them so that he could meet him stalked eye to skull-enclosed one on a level.

How is it, Toggor? Tentatively Farree tried the mind touch. How is this for you? Do you feel that I am forcing that on you which you would find freedom from? I am not Russtif to hold you captive, either body or mind.

He received no thought no matter how hazy, only a feeling of peace and contentment as the smux rocked a little from one set of claws to another in his hands.

Farree ate, he drank, he slept deeply and dreamlessly. If those of the Guild made any foray into the country of the Tha.s.sa, he knew nothing of it. When he at last awoke it was to see a band of clear and clean moonlight across his short legs, feel about him an ingathering of spirit. Had it been the latter which had drawn him out of that deep sleep?

No thoughts touched him directly. Perhaps the Lady Maelen had set a barrier to stop those, as she had promised that he would not be asked more than he wished to give. But, even though none had been sent to arouse him, he was as one hearing distant and summoning music. For just a moment there was a troubling deep in his mind as if something stirred there which might flower if he let it. But instantly that same barrier which he had striven to raise against the Tha.s.sa fell into place and he was free.

There was a basin of water in a small side crevice of the cave room and handsful of moss for towels. He shed his sweat-dark clothing and washed the whole of his crooked body. His hump was still unduly tender to the touch, it also itched, as if his pain had abraded the thick, corrugated skin, and he was careful in his drying as far as he could reach.

His shirt was so grimed he hated to re-cover his now clean body with it. But he did not have to. Near the crevice he found a small pair of breeches in the same pattern as those the Tha.s.sa wore and a shirt, wide across the shoulders, which gave room for his deformity. A chirping sound broke the silence of the cave and he saw the smux, throwing a grotesque shadow across the beam of moonlight as he came toward him, eyestalks erect.

Once more Farree sensed the aura of well-being and contentment which Toggor broadcast as he came. It would seem that the smux was well pleased with these lodgings, bare as they were. Farree reached for his belt to draw in the generous folds of that shirt when sound rang about him.

It was like the deep note of a huge gong, and his body vibrated with it. The boom did not seem to come from any one place, rather as if it were truly born of the very air about him. Three times it sounded, and he found himself moving out of the cave room as one who had been summoned and had no will except to obey.

He crossed the end of the valley, avoiding the sleeping beasts. Above him stretched a sky, which he twisted his small neck to see the more. There was the full circle of the third ring, and when one looked at it from here it was no true moonlight cast apart by some natural process of Sotrath itself, but rather a rainbow-touched encas.e.m.e.nt of the lowering moon. His flesh tingled, he felt alive to the last hair on his overlarge head, to the smallest tip of nail on his claw hands. It was as if the body he wore drank the radiance of that light as he would drink, after a long thirst, water from a clear fresh-flowing well.

The light appeared to draw the remainder of the ache from his hump, though the itching of his skin under the shirt grew worse until he longed to draw off the garment and use his nails on his own skin. In spite of that discomfort, his sense of well-being was acute.

There were none of the Tha.s.sa in sight. But he could hear again their song, issuing from the hall ahead. Only this time it was not a tale of loss and of long ages, but rather a cry of welcome to something which gave life anew.

Almost he expected to be turned back as he drew into the shadow of the long-eroded doorway. But there were no gatekeepers nor sentries here. The way was open and he pa.s.sed on, drawn by the cadence of that song for which there were no words he could understand, only the rising melody.

Then he saw that through some ingenious means the light of the third ring was here also, banding across both the four Tha.s.sa who stood on the dais and the others who had come to gather below. In the glow their white hair held rainbow sheen; they were each enshrined in an envelope of light which made their bodies look almost tenuous, as if they were now only shadows. No, shadows were of the dark - rather wisps of iridescence.

He saw a Lady Maelen who was different. Her bright hair stirred about her as if each lock had a vibrant spirit of its own. The glow wrapped her round as it did all the others.

Farree halted inside the door and stood watching. Perhaps, in spite of the drawing he had felt within him, he was not one of these - perhaps it was better to keep his distance as a stranger.

The itching on his back grew stronger. He found himself rising on his toes, which were bare against the ancient stone, almost as if he were reaching again for some skyborne aid which would swing him out across that company, lift him even farther into the banded light. He flung his arms wide and lifted his head as far as he could from his crooked shoulders so that the moonglow touched his face. It was more than light now - it was welcoming warmth, like the soft pressure of a friend's hand sweeping aside the tangled hair on his forehead.

His feet moved - rocking back and forth. He began to feel the imprisonment in his misshapen body as a punishment, something that kept him chained to crookedness and sorrow when just ahead of him, inches beyond his reach, was all he had longed for and never thought to have.

The song was dying away - the desire in him died with it. He stood quiet now, and he could have wept that what had been promised or offered he had not been able to take. He was only Dung after all. There was bitterness in that which came welling up inside him as part of that sensation of irreparable loss.

There was silence now, and he stepped back under the very arch of the doorway. What if he had blundered on a secret thing and they were to find him here? He wanted to give no offense.

Welcome.

Clear in his head, as clear as that voice had ever been, came the single word that Farree knew was to make him free of that company. He did not know why, but again he was drawn forward and now he walked slowly down toward the dais. That which had emitted the glow of the ring was fading; also, shadows gathered and lengthened. The Tha.s.sa no longer stood each and every one robed in glory.

However, it had not been his presence which had broken the spell. He knew that as he came hobbling forward. She who stood behind and above the Lady Maelen was holding out her wand. As if that had been one of the laser weapons of the Guild there was a glow at its tip, and he truly thought that he could trace a dim line of light straight from it centering upon him.

Welcome he was. There was no chance to misunderstand the wave of good wishing which arose from all that company. Then it broke as individuals and couples pa.s.sed him heading for the door. Yet he was still held and summoned.

The Lady Maelen and the Lord-One Krip had made no move to leave. As Farree came level with them they fell in, one to right, one to left of him, all three facing the four Elders on the dais. She who had drawn him lifted her wand, and he felt that drawing vanish. Yet he also knew that he was not so excused from her presence.

There is much in you, little one. Her thought speech was pure and somehow musical as if some lost tone of the night song still held in it. Son-am draws you even as it draws those who are sons and daughters of this earth. Yet you are of different stock and have yet to come into your heritage.

Out of all his bewilderment and unhappiness he dared to ask her then: Who am I - what am I, Great Lady?

She shook her head a fraction and there was a twinkling of the small crystalline gems which headed the pins holding her ma.s.s of hair.

Who are you? Ask that of yourself, little one - for your like we have not seen before. What are you? That you must also learn for yourself.

I am - Dung! Again something had seemed just within his grasp and had eluded him.

You are what you wish to be. Are you truly what you have named yourself? Her mind touch was quiet, like a soothing hand laid across a child unhappy from a nightmare.

I am - Farree! He defied that other part of him which was sourly bitter.

He saw the jewels glitter again as she gave the smallest of nods.

You are even more, as you shall know when the time comes, little one. We have some of the fa.r.s.eeing, but we are pledged not to use it for ourselves. We must not be led into making choices, only face those clearly and alone of mind.