Star of Danger

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Kennard had risen; he darted forward, suddenly, and fell into a bank of grayish shrubs. For a moment Larry, watching him roll and writhe in the leaves, thought that the hardships of the mountain journey had driven the Darkovan boy out of his wits. But when Kennard sat up his face, though ashen, was calm.

  “Come here and roll in this,” he ordered, “smear it all over your boots especially—”

  Suddenly getting the idea, Larry grabbed handfuls of the leaves. They stung his hands with their furry needles, but he followed the older boy’s example, daubing the leaves on face and hands, crushing their juice into clothing and boots. The leaves had a pungent, acrid smell that brought tears to his eyes like raw onions; but he crushed handfuls of the leaves over his boots and legs.

  “This might or might not work,” Kennard said, “but it gives us a bare chance—unless the smell of this stuff is like catnip to a kitten for those devilish things. If I knew more about them—”

  “What are they ?”

  “Birds. Huge things—taller than a tall man, with long trailing thin wings—they can’t fly. Their claws could rip your guts out at a stroke. They’re blind, and normally they live in the mountain snows, and can scent anything warm that moves. And they scream like—well, like banshees.”

  All the time he spoke, he and Larry were crushing the leaves, rubbing them into their skin and hair, soaking their clothing with the juice. The odor was sickening, and Larry thought secretly that anything with any sense of smell at all could trace them for miles, but perhaps the banshees were like Terran bloodhounds, set on by a particular smell and trained not to follow any other.

  “Zandru alone knows how Cyrillon and his hordes managed to train those devilish things,” Kennard muttered. “Listen—they’re coming nearer. Come on. We’ll have to run for it again, but try to move quietly.”

  They moved off through the brushwood again, working their way slowly up the hill, Larry trying to move softly; but he heard dead twigs snap beneath his feet, dry leaves crackle, the creak of branches as he moved against them. In contrast, Kennard moved as lightly as a leaf. And ever behind them the shrill banshee howl rose, swelled, died away and rose again, throbbing until it seemed to fill all space, till Larry felt he must scream with the noise that vibrated his eardrums and went rolling around in his skull until there was no room for anything but pulsing agony.

  The path they were following began to rise, steeply now, and he had to catch at twigs and brushwood, and brace his feet against rocks, to force his way up the rising slope. His clothes were tattered, his face torn, and the stink of the gray leaves was all around them. The slope was in deep shadow; it was growing bitterly cold, and above them the thick evening fog was deepening, till Larry could hardly see Kennard’s back, a few feet before him. They struggled up the slope and plunged down into a little valley, where Kennard’s pace slackened somewhat and he waited for Larry to catch up with him. Larry breathed hard, pressing his hands to his aching skull to shut out the banshee noise.

  It lessened for a moment, died away in a sort of puzzled silence; began in a series of fresh yelps and wails, then faded out again. It was dimming with distance; Kennard, his face only a blur in the gathering fog, sighed and fell, exhausted, to the ground.

  “We can rest a minute, but not too long,” he warned.

  Larry fell forward, dropping instantly into dead sleep. It seemed only a moment later—but it was black dark and a fine drizzling rain was falling and soaking them—that Kennard shook him awake again. The banshee howls were again filling the air—and on this side of the slope!

  “They must have found the patch of eris leaves and figured out what we’d done,” he said, his voice dragging between his teeth, “and, of course, that stuff leaves a scent that a broken-down mule could follow from here to Nevarsin!”

  Larry strained his eyes to see through the thin darkness. Far down the slope there seemed a glint, just a pale glimmer in the moonlight. “Is there a stream at the bottom of the valley?”

  “There might be. If there is—” Kennard was swaying with weariness. Larry, though aching in every muscle, found that the last traces of the drug were gone from his mind, and the brief sleep had refreshed him. He put his arm around Kennard’s shoulders and guided the other boy’s stumbling steps. “If we can get into the water—”

  “They’ll figure that trick out too,” Kennard said hopelessly, and Larry felt him shudder, a deep thing that racked his bones. He pointed upward, and Larry followed his gaze. At the top of the slope, outlined against the sky, was a sight to freeze the marrow of his bones.

  Bird? Surely no bird ever had that great gaunt outline, those drooping wings like a huge flapping cloak, the skull-like head that dripped a great phosphorescent red-glowing beak. The apparition craned a long dark neck and a dreadful throbbing cry vibrated to air-filling intensity.

  Larry felt Kennard go rigid on his arm; the boy was staring upward, fixedly, like a bird hypnotized by a weaving snake.

  But to Larry it was just another Darkovan horror; dreadful indeed—but he had seen so many horrors he was numb. He grabbed Kennard, and plunged with him down the slope, toward the distant glimmer. The banshee howl rose and fell, rose and fell on their heels, as they plunged through underbrush, careless now of noise or direction. The gleam of water loomed before them. They plunged in, fell full length with a splash, struggled up and ran, splashing, racing, stumbling on stones. Twice Larry measured his length in the shallow icy stream and his clothing stiffened and froze in the icy air, but he dared not slacken his speed. The banshee howl grew, louder and louder, then slackened again in a puzzled, yelping wail, an almost plaintive series of cheated whimpers. It seemed to run round in circles. It was joined by further howls, yelps and whimpers. They splashed along in the stream for what seemed hours, and Larry’s feet were like lumps of ice. Kennard was stumbling; he fell again and again to his knees and the last time he fell with his head on the bank and lay still. None of Larry’s urging could make him rise. The Darkovan lad had simply reached the end of his fantastic endurance.

  Larry dragged him out, on the far side of the stream, hauled him into the shelter of the forest, and sat there listening to the gradually diminishing wails and yelps of the frustrated banshees. Far away on the slope he saw torches and lights. They were beating the bushes, but with their tracking birds cheated, there was no way to follow their escaped prey. But would they pick up the scent again downstream? Larry, conscious that he was famished, remembered that a day or two ago—before the drugging—he had thrust a piece of the coarse bread into his pocket. He hauled it out and began to gnaw on it; then, remembering, broke it in half and stowed the other half in his other pocket for Kennard. As he did so, his hands touched metal, and he felt the smooth outline of his Terran medical kit. Small as it was, it probably contained nothing for his scratches and bruises, but—

  Of course! He pulled urgently at Kennard’s hand; when the Darkovan boy stirred and moaned, he put the bread in his hand, then whispered, “Listen. I think we can outwit them even if they pick up our scent downstream. Here. Eat that, and then listen!” He was fumbling in the dark, by touch, in his medical kit. He found the half-empty tube of burn ointment he had used after the fire, unscrewed the cap and smelled the sharp, unfamiliar chemical smell.

  “This should puzzle them for a while,” he said, smearing a thin layer of the stuff, first on his boots and then on Kennard’s. Kennard, munching the bread, nodded in approval. “They might pick up eris leaves. Not this stuff.”

  They rested a little, then began cautiously to crawl up the far slope. There was plenty of cover, though the plants and thorny bushes of the underbrush tore at their faces and hands. Kennard’s leather riding-breeches did not suffer so badly as Larry’s cloth ones, but their hands and faces were torn and bleeding, and the red sun was beginning to thin away the dawn clouds, before they reached the summit of the slope and lay on the rocks exhausted, too weary to move another step. Behind them, in the valley they had left, there see
med no sign of men or banshees.

  “They may have called off the hunt,” Kennard muttered, “Banshees are torpid in the sunlight—they’re night-birds. We just might have got clean away.”

  Huddling his cloak round him, he knelt and looked down into the far valley. It was a huge bowl of land, filled to the brim with layered forest. Near the top, where they were, there was underbrush and low scrubby conifers, and snow lay in thin patches in hollows of the ground where the sun had not warmed. Lower down were tall trees and thick brushwood, while the valley was thick with uncleared forest. Not a house, not a farm, not a cleared space of land, not even a moving figure. Only the wheeling of a hawk above them, and the silent trees below them, moved in response to their dragging steps. They had escaped Cyrillon’s castle. But in the growing red light, their eyes met, and the same thought was in them both.

  They had escaped bandits and banshees. But they were hundreds of miles from safe, known country—alone, on foot, almost weaponless, in the great trackless unexplored forests of the wildest part of Darkover.

  They were alive.

  And that was just about all that they could say.

  * * *

  X

  « ^ »

  THE SUN CLIMBED higher and higher. In the high hollow where they lay, a little cold sun penetrated their retreat, and finally Kennard stirred. He took off his cloak and spread it in the sun to dry, then stripped to the skin and gestured to Larry to do likewise. When Larry, shivering, hesitated, Kennard said harshly, “Wet clothes will freeze you faster than cold skin. And take off your boots and dry your stockings.”

  Larry obeyed, shivering, crouching in the lee of a sun-warmed rock. While their clothes dried in the bitter wind of the heights, they took stock.

  In addition to his medical kit—which contained only a few of the most ordinary remedies, and measured only four or five inches square—Larry had his knife with the broken blade, corkscrew, and tiny magnetized blade. Kennard looked at it with raised eyebrows and a rueful grin, and shrugged. He also had another piece of the coarse bread, a notebook, handkerchief and a coin or two.

  Kennard, who had come provided for a long journey, was better armed with his razor-sharp dagger, a tinderbox and flints, and in the leather pouch at his waist he had some bread and dried meat. “Not much,” he said. “I had more cached near where I left my horse; I’d hoped we could dare take that road. And there is food in the forests, though I’m not so sure here as I am in the woodlands nearer home. No, we won’t starve, but there’s worse than that.”

  At Larry’s questioning look, he said reluctantly, “We’re lost, Larry. I lost my bearings when we were getting away from the banshees last night. All I know is that we’re west of Cyrillon’s hold—and no lowlander or Comyn has ever come so far into these mountains. Never. At least, if they have, they haven’t lived to tell about it. We can’t go back eastward toward home—we’d have to cross Cyrillon’s country—or make a wide circle northward and get into the Dry Towns.” His face, though he tried to keep it impassive, trembled. “That’s all desert land—sand, no water, no food, and we might as well go back and ask Cyrillon for a night’s lodging. Southward there’s the range of the Hellers —and not even professional guides or mountaineers will go into them without climbing equipment, and mountain gear. I’ve done a little rockclimbing, but I’m about as fit to climb through the Hellers as you are to navigate a Terran spaceship.”

  That left only one possibility. “Westward?”

  “Unless we want to try to get through Cyrillon’s country again, banshees and all. As far as I know, it’s simply forest. It’s unexplored, but if we follow the setting sun, we should come out somewhere near to the lands where Lorill Hastur has his holdings. We’ll be passing to the north of the Hellers—” He drew a crude sketch-map on the ground. “We’re here. And we want to get to here. But the gods alone know what’s in between, or how long it will take us.” He looked at Larry, steadily. “I wouldn’t enjoy a trip like that, even with my father and a dozen of his huskiest soldiers. But, bredu, if you’ll back me up, we’ll try it.”

  He met Larry’s eyes, and for an instant Larry was reminded of that moment of deep rapport between them, across the blue crystal of psychic power. The word, bredu, had startled him. It meant, literally, friend—but the ordinary word for friend was simply com’ii. Bredu could mean one close, as in a family relationship—cousin, or brother—or it could mean beloved brother. It was a word which showed him the trust that this Darkovan boy, who had saved his life, placed in him. Kennard had undertaken, alone, a desperate journey on his behalf—and was about to undertake another, with Larry’s help.

  It was the most solemn moment of Larry’s life. He was almost paralyzed with his fear, and he could feel Kennard’s fear as if it were his own; deeper, because Kennard knew more of the dangers. And yet—

  Larry said quietly, “I’m ready to try it if you are—bredu.”

  And in that moment he knew that he would, if necessary, give his life for Kennard—as Kennard had risked his for him.

  The moment lasted only a fraction of a second. Then Kennard broke the remaining piece of Cyrillon’s bread, and said, “Let’s finish this. We need the strength. Then I have this—” Briefly, from his pocket, he showed the silk-wrapped thing that held the blue crystal. “It helped me find you, because when you looked into it, your mind was keyed to it. So that when I was lost, all I had to do was to look in it and think of you—and it showed me the right direction.”

  Larry averted his eyes from the stone. It made him think of that moment in Cyrillon’s power. “Cyrillon made me look into one of the things.”

  The result on Kennard was electrifying. His whole face changed and turned white. “Cyrillon—has one of these?”

  Briefly, Larry told him about it, and Kennard wet dry lips with his tongue. “Avarra guard and guide us! He may not know how to use it, but if he should ever learn, or if he should whelp a telepath by one of his women, the Gods themselves couldn’t save Darkover from their evil powers! Not to mention,” he added grimly, “that he might track us with it—as I tracked you.”

  “He’s afraid of it,” Larry said, and told Kennard how he knew, but Kennard shook his head. “He might still risk it; he’d evidently risk a lot to have you. Oh, Zandru, what shall I do, what shall I do!” He covered his face with his hands and sat motionless, the blue stone clutched in his hand. Finally he looked up and his face was gray and drawn with terror.

  “We—must destroy Cyrillon’s stone,” he said at last. “I know what I must do, but I’m afraid, Larry, I’m afraid!” It was a cry of terror. “But I must!”

  “Why?”

  Kennard looked grim. He rolled back his sleeve and showed Larry a curious mark, like a tattoo. “Because I am sworn,” he said, grimly, “that I will die rather than let any of our Comyn weapons fall into the hands of such people.”

  Larry felt a cold wrench of terror twisting his insides.

  To go back, deliberately, into Cyrillon’s power and destroy the stone…

  “What do we do?” he asked, deliberately light and sarcastic, “walk up to his front door and ask him politely to let us have it?”

  Kennard shook his head. “Worse than that,” he said, his voice barely audible, “and I can’t do it alone. I’ll have to have your help. Aldones guard us! If I could only reach father with this—but I can’t—”

  “What is it? What do you have to do?”

  “You wouldn’t understand—” Kennard began hotly; then with an effort, said, “Sorry. You’re in this, too, and you’ll have to help me. I have to take this”—he motioned toward the blue crystal in his hand—“and destroy Cyrillon’s—with it. And we have to do it now.”

  “But how can I?” Larry was frightened and bewildered. “I am not a telepath.”

  “You must be,” said Kennard urgently, “you fought Cyrillon to a standstill with the thing! I don’t understand it either. I never heard of a Terran telepath. But evidently you and I are in r
apport. Maybe you got it from me, I’m not sure. But we’ll try.”

  He unwrapped the crystal and Larry averted his eyes. The thought of looking into the thing again made him literally sick to his stomach. The memory of Cyrillon’s forcing made his abused shoulder ache in sympathy.

  But Kennard had to do it—Kennard, who had risked death to save him. Larry said steadily? “What do I have to do?”

  Kennard sat cross-legged, gazing into the stone, and Larry was inescapably reminded of the three Adepts who had brought the rain to the forest fire. Uncommanded, he took his place across from Kennard. Kennard said, silently, “Just go into link with me—and hold hard. Don’t let go, whatever happens.”

  The twisting blueness of the crystal engulfed all space. Larry felt Kennard like a spot of fire and tensed, throwing all his energies, all his will toward supporting him—

  He felt a blue blaze, slumbering, blaze up and waken.

  It flared out, flaming electric blue, and Larry felt himself struggling, drowning. His body ached, his whole head tingled, earth spun away, he reeled alone in blue space as blue flame met blue flame and he felt Kennard tremble, spin out and vanish in unfathomable distance. The fire was drowning him…

  Then from somewhere a huge surge of strength seemed to roar through him, the same strength that had flung Cyrillon howling across the room. He poured it against the alien blue. The flames met, merged, sank—

  The forest was green and bright around them and Larry gulped in air like a drowning man. Kennard lay white and drained on the leaves, his hand limply clutching the crystal. But there was no blue fire in its heart now. It was colorless stone, which as Larry looked glimmered once or twice and evaporated in a tiny puff of blue vapor. Kennard’s hand was empty.

  Kennard sat up, his chest heaving. He said, “It’s gone. I destroyed it—even though I had to destroy this one too. And it might have guided us to Lorill Hastur’s lands.” His frown was bitter. “But better than having a starstone in Cyrillon’s possession. Now all we have to face are ordinary dangers. Well”— He shrugged, and struggled to his feet. “We’ve got a lot of country to cover, and all we have to do is to follow the sun’s path westward. Let’s get started.”