The Forerunner Factor

by Andre Norton

  The pavement remained smooth and she was sure not by chance. However, walls were rougher, resembling more the stone of a cavern which had lain in a hill’s heart since the beginning of time.

  Her journey through the mist had not entirely stripped from her that feeling of well-being she had known after she had been drawn out of the pond. (Why had he done that and yet not waited for her?) She was not afraid—not yet. Rather, she was ridden by anger at her desertion—that the off-worlder had walked away and left her—perhaps to death for all he knew.

  That anger was mixed with puzzlement. She could understand no reason for such action. Unless, her eyes narrowed a little . . . unless he knew far more about the value of what lay hidden in the Hard Hills and wanted no one to share any such find. Only then, why had he brought her along as far as he had? He could well have deserted her anywhere along the trail and so made sure of her death. Why that struggle up the monster-hung cliff? Why had he left her half within what she could only believe was a sort of healing water after her strength had broken at last? Simsa could not fit any of this into a pattern she could understand.

  The light which the mist had provided diminished the farther she advanced into the passage. However, there was another gleam ahead, brighter—perhaps that of the day itself. She hurried her pace towards that, suddenly wanting more than anything to be back in an outer world she could understand, even if she faced desert once more, and that alone and without supplies.

  What she emerged into was not desert—though the sky held the pitiless sun. Rather, she stood in a stone-walled pit—square in shape. In fact it might have been a chamber half hewn from the natural stone. Above her was a crazy patchwork of holes into which might once have been fitted beams to support other floors. The zorsals flew in a back and forth pattern and called to her impatiently.

  However, she climbed with caution, testing each hand and foothold as she went. There was no stair here; perhaps when the floors existed the lower levels had been entered by trap doors and ladders. This close to the walls, first rock and then dressed stones fitted securely together, Simsa could see the marks of fire. Most had been weathered away, but here and there in protected places there were still black and direful tokens of disaster.

  She reached the first large break in that wall, a niche into which she could pull her whole body and from where she could view all that lay immediately ahead. That this had been either a huge fortress, larger than any palace compound of a Guild Lord, or else a small city, there was no doubt.

  Its walls had been remarkably well preserved in many places, but here also was greenery. So lush a growth, where she had been expecting to view more barren desert land, that Simsa blinked and blinked again, thinking at first this was some mirage such as she had heard might be sighted by those who traveled too far into the forbidden lands. The greenery did not vanish.

  The complex of walls about her were so vine ridden that only here and there a protruding carved stone broke free. Those stones appeared to form a series and each was a head, easily twice the size of her own. Nor were any two of those she could scan from here alike. Some were animals—she was sure that the nearest was a representative of a zorsal, even though the antennae had been broken off quite close to the skull. Others were clearly of her own general species, yet each an individual, as if portraying someone who had lived here once.

  Simsa could easily drop from where she perched to the top of another wall, one whose width near rivaled a lane in Kuxortal. Only, at her examination of that, the girl saw the first proof that the zorsals had guided her on the off-worlder’s track. There was a pulpy mass of vine where something the length of the carrier might have rested for some time and beyond that a tree, lacking a branch, its leaves on those above and below scorched and drooping.

  It would seem that for some reason this Thorn had seen the necessity to move this way, and perhaps swiftly, forcing a path through or against anything which would delay him. Simsa thought she did not need to fear coming on him without an alert—the zorsals would see to that. However, she was determined to follow, if for no other reason than she must know why he had gone.

  The path along the top of the wall continued to display a number of traces of hasty passage. As she went, Simsa’s winged companions circled back and forth above her head. They were, of course, also by their very attendance, signaling to any who might be watching that she was here.

  As she had passed the burnt tree, she had paused to examine it. It was well known that the starmen had fearsome weapons. They could blast into nothingness their enemies or their prey. However it was also one of their own laws, which they enforced rigorously, that these potent arms were never carried by any coming to a world such as hers. Only, neither were they supposed to bring any such marvel as the thing that had lightened the carrier. If Thorn had broken one law of his own kind, what would keep him from breaking another?

  She did not like those signs of burning and edged past that place at a much slower pace. After all, who could judge the ways of an off-worlder? They had customs and codes of behavior far different, such that those of another planet might not even understand. Thorn was driven by a great need, or he would not have struck into the desert, would never have come this far.

  Another wall arose before her. Here the stepping stone to bring her to its summit was a carved head was a face so horrific Simsa felt a chill. There were the demons and evil things used to frighten children, which one might dream about. As she stared at the thing which now confronted her squarely, she shivered at the pure evil in it.

  She found herself making the finger gesture the Burrowers used to evoke fortune (a very fickle presence always in their lives). The worst of this image was not that it wore a grotesque mask of darkness and hate (rather it had a strange beauty which caught and held the eye), but that cruelty, lust, and evil knowledge shone through it in a terrifying way.

  To reach the top of the next wall, she must mount upon that head. A smear of crushed vine across it proved that he whom she trailed had done just that. Yet, she had a feeling that if she drew herself up by its aid, she would not feel stone under her feet at all—rather flesh, cold and deathly flesh!

  Simsa set her teeth. She must not allow such fancies to disturb her. She was of the Burrowers and had faced much which was of the dark of man’s making, knowing it for what it was and refusing to be caught in any trap it devised.

  Reaching out, she swung up on the head quickly. As soon as she had secure balance, again seeking hand holds of the edge of the wall above, scrambling, up and over that in a haste she could not suppress. The giant face was so real; not the fancy of some perverted artist, rather a true portrait. But if this one had been a ruler here once—then this was a city—or keep—which must have had a fearsome history.

  From the roof on which she now crouched, for it was a roof and not another wall top, the girl could look down into a very large court—perhaps even a market square—where vegetation had grown unchecked for a long time. Vines interwove among trees, dead bushes were clasped tightly by their living descendants or by a stranger species which had choked them out. Immediately below her was a strip of bare pavement fully as wide as the wall top. On this stood the carrier, its cargo still lashed into place—not a single knot untied. Of the off-worlder there was no sign at all.

  With a motion of her hand, Simsa sent the wheeling zorsals down towards that wilderness. They swooped above it, sometimes venturing to half alight on some top branch, leaning forward, their antennae weaving, always pointing groundward. Like most creatures who depend on flight as one of their defenses, she knew they were reluctant to venture any deeper into that maze of growth. However, the senses centered in their antennae must be well aware of any of the forms therein. If the off-worlder had tried to penetrate that choked pit of vegetation they would tell her. For the moment Simsa remained prudently where she was, watching the zorsals carefully, yet dividing her attention between them and what else she could see of this mass of crumbled building, or build
ings.

  Well beyond the farthest wall (she wished she had the distance glasses the off-worlder carried), she thought she could pick up another mountain looming above this lost place as the cliff had loomed above the desert plane. This might lay on a plateau or even be part of a valley with the real beginnings of the Hills beyond.

  From the zorsals, she gained nothing. It became plain there was no value in her remaining where she was. Also, for the first time since she had awakened in the embrace of the pool, Simsa felt hungry. There was still food and water on the carrier, she could see the containers of both, and neither had been loosened. If the off-worlder had intended any long trek from here, surely he would have helped himself to supplies.

  With caution she descended, using a swing of vine, already stripped of its leaves, the same way Thorn must have reached the ground. As she stood at last by the carrier, she could see something which had not been visible from above. The wall at either end of the bare walk on which their crude transport now rested was indented into a doorway, so deep set under an outcrop of a ledge as to be hidden except to one at ground level. While standing within each—

  Simsa wheeled, her back against the carrier, her hand going to the hilt of a knife, far too puny a weapon to offer any defense against that—or that! This was the first time the zorsals had failed her. Why had they not recorded this peril?

  She pushed Zass roughly down farther into the front of her jacket, striving to be free to climb to safety as she backed away from the carrier heading for that vine down which she had so foolishly slid.

  There was no movement, no advance. The stiffness of those watchers never altered. Their eyes were on her, still there appeared to be no recognition that she was an intruder, the enemy. She halted, glanced to Zass. The zorsal was complaining, yet she never turned its antennae towards either of those things in the shadows of each deep doorway.

  Her back to the wall, one hand on the vine, Simsa waited. Those two guardians might be chained in place, did they wait for her to come to them? Was that what Thorn had done—gone to meet death so?

  None of her three furred people so much as looked at them. What defense did these watchers have to deaden the keen senses of the zorsals? The girl gathered Zass closer to her, turned the creature to face that figure at her left.

  This was no beast. It stood on two legs, even as she, held a little forward two arms. Still . . .

  Zass had at last uncurled her antennae, turned them in the direction of the waiting guardsman, then looked up into Simsa uttering a questioning and slightly guttural sound. No life? Naught but a carved figure?

  The girl shifted the zorsal up to her shoulder and walked forward slowly, hesitating every few steps to survey the thing. Under that overhead was dark shadow. Only those eyes which had served her in night running, in Burrow delving, made out features of this silent watcher she could not catch when she had been more dazzled in the light. It was a figure, not of stone—no stone had such a sheen. But if it were metal then why was it so bright, so untouched by time?

  Now it became plainer that withered leaves of other seasons, other debris from the growing place, had drifted about to hide the figure’s feet, risen up to what might be its knees. Shaped roughly like her own species, yes, but never of flesh and blood.

  Simsa walked steadily forward, no longer fearing any attack from its fellow at her back—for that must be twin to this. At length, she stood just before it looking up, for it was the taller—perhaps even more so than the off-worlder. The figure was of metal of some sort—a dark substance over which there was a patchwork of very faint color following no pattern at all. The head was a huge, round ball, the front of which was a of a different type of material—clear . . .

  Having risen on tiptoe to peer through that, Simsa screamed, cowered away. Those dead dried things back on the beach had been noisome enough—but this shriveled, withered thing which stared back at her with eyes which were no longer eyes—it was an abomination she could not bear to look upon!

  She turned and ran, back to the carrier, Zass screeching, both other zorsals now fluttering about her head, adding terrified cries to the din their mother made. Simsa tripped and near fell. She clutched the carrier with both hands and clung there, so sick and shaken that she could not even think. Always, she had believed that she could face anything—life in the Burrows was never for the squeamish—but this . . . this death of someone locked into metal, left so . . .

  Who had stationed those terrible dead as guardians in a broken city? And why? They had been here a long time. Did the power which had put them there still exist? She yet held to the carrier, taking deep breaths, trying to get her emotions under control. The dead could not move, they held no harm in them. She need not—

  Then once more she cried out. There was movement there; the thing, it was coming for her! She felt as if she were as securely rooted as the tangle of plants behind her, no longer even able to scream, for her throat seemed to close. One of those metal claws hanging by the guardian’s side could have thus reached to cut off her breath.

  10

  The zorsals reacted to her fear, wheeling down, darting back and forth right over her head, their screams becoming screeches of rage. Zass fanned her wings frantically, the drooping one rising farther than she had ever been able to use it since her maiming, her head up, deep cries echoing from her. She had come running to Simsa down the carrier, to now face, with the girl, that figure moving out of the deep shadow that held the dead guardian, into the light.

  Simsa would have fallen had not the carrier supported her: Thorn!

  He edged around the stiffly standing dead thing to emerge into the sunlight. In his hands was a queer rod which Simsa had not seen him carry before. She watched him fearfully. His abandonment of her—were they not enemies because of something she did not yet understand?

  Only there was no frown on his face, rather she read concern there. Or was that concern not for her, but rather because she had managed to follow him?

  As he came forward, Simsa backed away, edging along the carrier, for at that moment she could not trust her own feet to support her unaided. She was still weak with the panic which had struck her moments earlier.

  “It’s all right.”

  She only half heard his words, still backing. Having reached the end of the carrier, she kept that between them. Supported as it was, riding higher than it had during the journey through the desert, it bobbed and shifted under her hold.

  “It is all right!” he repeated. Now he paused as if she were a frightened zorsal that must be spoken to patiently and slowly until its inner alarm stilled so that one might approach and soothe it by touch as well as voice.

  The zorsals themselves were quieting. She had half expected that, motivated by her own fear, they might have flown at him. Instead, they now settled beside their dam on the carrier, though they all faced him—their antennae outstretched and quivering.

  Somehow Simsa summoned control. This was no nightmare dead thing. Strange as off-world powers might be, Thorn was a live creature who could be injured, fight, die; he was not invincible and she knew many tricks. Her retreat stopped, though she still kept her grasp on the carrier, one part of her mind thinking out a plan to push that forcibly into his path if he tried to rush her.

  Though the actions of the zorsals continued to puzzle her. Zass, at least, had for many seasons been a weapon for her mistress, ready to attack upon command. Now it would seem that the older zorsal picked up no hint of trouble from the off-worlder.

  Puzzled, thrown off of her usual alert reaction to any hint of danger, her self-confidence badly damaged by what she was now ashamed of—her display of fear—Simsa blurted out the last words she really wanted to speak.

  “You left me.” Those no sooner had been voiced than she would have given all she possessed to have not broken silence at all.

  He still came no closer. That thing he was holding—it must be a weapon. Though it had no blade, no point, nothing about it which Simsa
could recognize as a threat. She darted a quick look to her right—could she dodge into that tangle of greenery and so lose him?

  “Yes.”

  His assent again threw her off balance. She had so expected some lie, some explanation, even some sign of shame or need to assure her that what she knew to be true was not. Now she simply stared at him.

  She could be as blunt and she had to know. When he added nothing to that she demanded: “Why?”

  The off-worlder had not put aside his weapon. Though the zorsals’ attitudes would have her judge that he wished her no harm, that he was in no way hostile, yet she had the proof in his very word that he had willingly abandoned her.

  “There has been death here.” Now he held that weapon in his left hand only, with his right he touched one of those many things hanging from his belt—this a narrow strip of some dark material—which looked like metal such as she had . . . of course, it was like that substance which enclosed the dead guardians!

  “There is still death here.” She regained much of her self-confidence, now she was able to nod at the frozen figure behind him as if it were no more than a carving of stone.

  “That is not what I meant,” he returned.

  “This,” he unhooked the strip of metal from his belt and held it up. Her eyes were keen enough to catch a play of color across it. “This indicates radiation. My people are immune to a high degree. It is part of our history. There was once a war fought on my world, such a war as,” Thorn looked around him as if he needed some inspiration, something he could draw upon to make things clear to her, “such a war as luckily this planet has never seen. Though it certainly has some surprises of its own to offer.

  “There were weapons used which killed—”

  She recalled the blasted tree, “By shooting fire? Such a thing maybe as that?” Releasing her grip on the carrier, she pointed to the rod he carried. “I saw—the burnt leaves, the withering.”