by Andre Norton
"Then the dream—they never believed it was true?" Farree asked.
Zoror rubbed two talons across his chin just above his first throat wattle. "Oh, they believed. And for a while they had their eyes and ears wide. Many of these," he gestured again to the read-rolls, "are their reports. That is why we have easy access to the material now and it is not buried in some storehouse. We add a fact or suspicion now and then—always stories, many of which match one another. The Little Men– the People of the Hills—"
Farree stiffened. People—of—of—the Hills!
"You have heard that before, have you?" questioned the Zacanthan.
Farree rubbed his hand across his forehead as if he could pluck out some very deeply buried memory. Back—back– He was in the sleazy, tent-board place curled up on the pile of mouldering reeds which was his only bed. And the man who owned him sat at a flimsy table, a-twirling between his filthy hands a broken-handled mug which still contained a mouthful or two of the ill-smelling drink he had been gulping. Lanti raised his head to look at Farree and there was promise in his scowl which the boy knew well. It would please the hulking outcast in a few breaths of time to summon Farree forward and beat him well; most of that storm of blows would fall on his hunched back. He could remember that right enough– but what lay before that tent-hut and his miserable captivity was gone.
"Yes." Zoror nodded. "Somehow, sometime, you were brain-erased. Yet when I mention one name given to the People in the past, you seem to know—"
Farree shook his head. "I can't remember. But—I have heard that name—surely I have heard it! Only in the Limits where all manner of spacers come and go, one hears scraps of many tales, or boastings of ventures."
"Still"—Zoror looked at him kindly—"that is one of the lesser-known names of these people who, it is true, might never have been. Well, it remains, Farree, that I must give you a warning. Maelen and Krip brought you here at night, traveling by air car. Very few must have seen you and it is true you can fold these"—he pointed to the wings—"amazingly small. At a distance in a subdued light they might be taken for a hunched-up cloak. However, by day there would be plenty sharp-eyed enough to note a difference. And—boy, you are not safe!"
"The Guild?" It was true that he had done enough to break up one plot of those masters of menace. But was he high enough among their lists of enemies to draw their attention? If so—
He frowned. Maelen and Krip Vorlund were his friends. It was by their efforts he had won out of the misery of the Limits. It was with them and working in their service that the wonder had happened to him—his wings had displayed themselves for the first time. If he were so noticeable, then staying with the two who meant so much to him might bring them into danger in turn.
"No." It was plain Zoror had followed his thoughts. Farree had made no attempt to shield them, he was so absorbed in what might be an unhappy discovery. "It is true that the Guild have no reason to cheer any of you." There was a rattle of a chuckle from the throat of the Zacanthan. "Much trouble you caused them, you three, as well as putting them to a form of shame should the story get around. But I believe you are all discreet enough not to talk about what was done. Rather you look forward to what lies next. However, among the many other noisome activities of the Guild is a form of slavery which they indulge in whenever chance offers. They have a list of clients (many of whom could buy this whole planet for their pleasure) who desire to own novelties. You are certainly one such and would bring a very high price on certain pleasure worlds. Then the Guild have their source of information which may not equal ours but is clearer than, say, the information tapes studied by the Patrol. It is quite possible that they have news about the Little People—especially since the Shame of Mingra. One of the often-mentioned tasks of that winged race, according to legend, was the amassing and guarding of treasure. Just suppose the Guild would take it to mind that you were of that mystery race and that you could lead them to a treasure– Ah, I see you understand me. So it is largely for your own sake that I ask you to take precautions against being seen."
Farree's head jerked on his shoulders. He almost stumbled over the stool from which he had just arisen. Zoror's words might be the humming of insects, for Farree's head was now held high, his nostrils were distended to their limit as he drew in a great breath of air. It had smelled musty, of dust and time in this chamber. Now there came another scent in a wave. Just as fear had caught him when he had watched that horror on the read-roll, so now did he welcome this—fragrance. It filled his lungs, sent him stumbling towards the door. All the flowers he had ever known—the spice of bushes—the keeness of water in a dry land. He dodged about a table and his wings raised and opened. Air—he must fly—
Chapter Two
The barrier winked out and there stood Maelen and Krip. But where was the other? Not hidden behind the two, for Farree would have still seen the edge or tips of wings. He knew—
Where was she!
"For whom do you search, little brother?" asked Krip. There was a shade of concern in his voice as he studied Farree.
"The one—the gracious one—she who flies in beauty! Where is she, my brother, my sister! Have you hidden her?" He suddenly recalled the warning Zoror had given him only moments earner. "On the ship? Surely she is not of Gragal! For they have not seen our like before—he"—Farree signaled with a finger—"has told me so."
He wanted to shout—to sing—to fly triumphantly up and up—to meet her above in the clouds where their own road ran. Yet there were no smiles on the faces of his friends. Rather Maelen's thought reached into him, dampening the excitement that filled him.
"There is no one with us—nor at the ship, little brother. Why do you think—?"
Farree reached her, his hands outstretched, then a chill extinguished all the sudden joy he had known for the first time in his hard and barren life. The scent—no, he could not mistake that! And it came from—
His hand shot out and he grabbed from Maelen's hold, something wrapped in a sheet of luxwool such as was used to protect some fragile ware after purchase. The sheet flipped apart, letting him see something which shimmered in a melting burst of color: rose, pearl-white, and the warm grey of first twilight.
Farree continued to stare as the fragrance arose about him in a cloud of scent filling every breath he drew. She—she—
He uttered a harsh cry and dropped upon the nearest pile of dead tapes that wondrous thing—wondrous, yes. But the feel of raw cruelty was a part of it: such torment as to sweep away all he had first felt, giving instead a sense of harsh pain. Then out of that pain grew an anger, fierce, filling him to the point where he threw out an arm and swept to the floor two piles of tapes, his lips drawn back so tightly against his teeth that his face was now that of a snarling animal unable to give vent to anger save through claw and fang. His other hand flew to his belt and freed the short defense knife which was his legacy from their meeting with the Guild. Who could be made to pay for this—this hurt, sorrow—DEATH!
"Where—" The demand came as a slurred snarl. "Where was this?" He dared not touch that thing of many colors again; it racked him now even to look at it.
Maelen moved deliberately, coming up beside him. Farree's whole body quivered as he longed to turn on her, large as she was, to shake from her the knowledge he must have. She picked up the scrap of beauty, shook it out so that he saw, having to watch in spite of his rage and horror, she held a length which might form a scarf. The strip had been cut at an angle which led the colors to play in and out.
"What is this?" Maelen did not try to pierce the turmoil in Farree's mind, rather spoke aloud in a quiet voice such as she would use with her beloved little ones—those beasts, strange or familiar, which shared her life.
"What is it—brother?" she asked for the second time. Farree had given room to too many strong emotions in too short a time. Now he felt dizzy and sick, having to hold onto the edge of the table. Three times he swallowed before he could bring forth a word.
"
It is—from a wing!" His own quivered as he answered.
"So!" That was Krip Vorlund who answered. "Perhaps a wing such as yours?" he asked.
Farree turned his head so he did not have to watch that flutter of color which Maelen had taken up again. Memory– did he have any memory of this? He wrestled with his rage and got its explosive force under control. "A wing—maybe like mine." Save that it was far more beautiful in its warm colors than his own shaded green pinions.
"Can you tell us more, little brother?" Maelen, who was the, friend of all winged, pawed, other live forms, was watching him very intently.
Farree did not even raise his hand. His mouth twisted and there was a burning in his throat—anger was still there but here now was something else, a sense of loss so great that it bore down on him as had the burden of his wings before time and dire effort had freed them.
"She is dead—" He spoke the words, and in his mind he wept.
"How did death come?" Vorlund's firm voice steadied Farree enough so he could answer.
"I—I don't know. If I try to learn"—he waved his thin fingers inches above the length of the scarf—"I will only feel what she felt, not the way of death, nor where it came for her."
Zoror's neck frill was fully raised. He leaned forward a little as if he could force from the length of wing silk more.
"Smuggled—contraband?" His hiss was nearly lost in the sharpness of his demand. But he did not try to handle the Jength which continued to flutter even though there were no breezes here to set it in motion.
Vorlund asked the question for them all. "This then is a forbidden import? Why would any one risk exile from space to peddle such a thing? What virtue does it have besides beauty?"
It was true that smuggling was a major crime on all planets, one which brought a full force of all law enforcement officers, on planet or off, to find and punish the miscreants.
"I do not know," the Zacanthan returned. "Because I officially deal in off-world curios, things which might add even a word or two to our records, I have a full membership in the Importers' Guild, not only here but on five other worlds. This is on the forbidden list—"
"And how is it listed?" Maelen laid the strip carefully back on the table.
"As spider silk—a new type—to be reported to the nearest Patrol post at once."
"I do not know this spider silk." Farree looked at nothing but that shimmering mass. "But this cannot be that—"
"No." Krip Vorlund shook his head. "It appears to be far more. Taken from wings—"
At his words Farree shuddered and had again to grab at the table's edge to steady himself. He must wall off that beginning of thought. In the scum of the Limits, where these two had found him, had saved him from rotting with the rest of the drifters bogged there in the mud of evil which the straggling settlement near the landing space really was, he had had the first beginnings of thought to thought—sharing with the smux, also a prisoner. Then these two had come and swept up Togger, and him. He had seen sights a-plenty which were a mingling of fear and horror, but somehow none of those had touched within him as this did—as if it strove to unlock a door which, if he opened it, would sweep him up into another time and place which he must not enter, not yet—
"If it is on the forbidden list," Maelen said, "then its nature and source must be known to someone—it's likely been seen before."
It was Zoror who answered the question. "Wings– brother." He looked now to Farree and there was concern in his eyes, hidden partly by wrinkles of scales. "Could you tell us who or where?"
There was a wave of sickness rising in Farree. "I—"
"No!" Maelen interrupted him. "That is one place he dares not venture—into the past from which this came." She put forth her hand and pushed back a sweat-damp lock of hair from Farree's forehead.
"Where did you find this, Daughter of Moon Power," Zoror asked in a formal tone, as if she were to give evidence.
"For open sale at the market. To search bodily, that we can do!" she returned. "There Farree may find a clue that he dares draw into his mind."
"Watch for a spacer, down on his luck, far down," commented Vorlund.
"A spacer who has been to many worlds, perhaps, known and unknown," Zoror added as if he were attacking some problem with the full strength of his own knowledge. "It follows that we must see this spacer again—and perhaps best in his own setting. There may be more—!" He did not touch the scarf which his talons indicated. "But our little brother here—he must have some protection. Let us see—"
"Protection?" Vorlund asked.
"Yes. When we have more time I will explain. But twilight is here and I would say that we had best be about what we would do before the coming of full night."
There was a hooded cloak which Maelen proved adept at putting about him, fixing the hood above the upper jet of his wing tips, leaving him a seeing space in front. Farree's height now was akin to that of his companions. Before he left Togger leaped from the table where he had been squatting, seeming no more than a fistful of outward pointing scarlet quills, dodged within the eye space they had left Farree and settled down, holding on with all eight of his claws.
As they came out upon the small court where the Zoror's team had their quarters, the Zacanthan spoke into a wrist dial, summoning a scooter. Vorlund shook his head.
"With all respect, High Tech, within that we shall be as bare to sight as a half token on a swept pavement—"
"That is so," Zoror returned as the small flyer set down, waiting orders. "But it will take us to the port entrance. There will be many coming and going—and we shall make us a path through such a gathering to the Faxc entrance—from there it is but a step to the Street of Traders."
Maelen looked at him keenly. "Elder brother, you speak as one who leaves a stricken field and expects the victor on your trail. You say that Farree walks into danger. What pot is boiling here?"
"Of you I could ask the same, little sister," the Zacanthan returned. "But there is a watch which has been placed on this small brother—of that I am sure. Yes, he goes into what may be the very heart of danger. Thus we take what precautions are possible to us."
They climbed into the scooter and Vorlund leaned forward to tap out a destination.
Farree took up more than his share of room because his cloak-covered wings returned to him the hump which had once weighed him down so much. At least they had left that length of wing stuff behind and he was free of the influence which it exerted over him—though he was not free of a nagging ache—the now firm belief that somewhere there had been such trouble as, in spite of all his own sufferings in the Limit, he had not known. He looked from one to another of his three companions. The Zacanthan by what expression his scaled face could show was the same. Maelen's head was up and there was a spark in her eyes which Farree knew of old, just as he recognized the tightened lips of Vorlund, and the fact that the spacer's hand slipped back and forth along his belt as if he sought the hilt of a long knife or the grip of a stunner, both of which had been lawfully put into a locker by the port officers when they had landed here.
"Where is this trader?" Zoror wanted to know.
"Close to the edge of the stalls," Maelen answered, "near those places which rent at night space to those low in credit." Her hand covered her own wrist dial, which stated what lay behind her in buying credit.
"Then we shall land by the Gate of Unregistered Aliens." Zoror's talons clicked against the scales which guarded his lips "And—"
"We are followed," Vorlund interrupted. "There is a private scooter which flies this line and does not take another course. Merchants have house colors here, do they not, sir?"
Zoror did not turn to look and satisfy himself that the spacer was right, paying Vorlund the compliment of trust.
"They do so, yes."
"Then who among them puts up three red stripes with a sun yellow in the middle?"
Zoror blinked twice. Farree longed to turn and see what Vorlund had reported but was too tightl
y wrapped in his cloak to try.
"It makes no sense," the Zacanthan said, i "What and why?" the spacer countered.
"You name the colors of a house which trades by sea and would not show such a sign this deep into the continent. The sea-based houses are of a different breed; there are few of them who take to the land for anything but a Call Out from the Council—and then they do it protestingly. None of them even has a secondary quarter here."
"No!" Maelen's voice was an order; enough to bring all their eyes towards her. There was a grim set to her jaw and on her knees her hands moved in patterns which Farree believed were those of a Moonsinger.
"Do not think," her voice dropped until it was hardly more than a murmur, "there is none who seeks!"
Farree followed the old path of his own. There was a tower, he speedily constructed in his thoughts. One like that on Yiktor where he had come into his proper inheritance and Maelen had discovered the buried history of her own kin, long forgotten. But this tower was not of stone, nor of any of the building materials which he had seen; and it was fast deepening before the eyes of his imagination to a deep rose. Now it lightened slowly from one story to the next, then darkened again into a grey which became the velvety shade of the early night sky—
So intently did he fasten his attention that it was with something of the shock suffered by one who was shaken hurriedly awake from a deep sleep, that he swayed under Maelen's touch.
The scooter had landed. Just behind them was the gate Zoror had mentioned though there was no one passing through now. Before them, not too far away, was the beginning of a sprawling port within a port which was as dirty and unrulable a place as the Limits had been. There were plenty to call it home after a fashion: spacers who had committed such errors as forced them to surrender their active tickets, those who dealt in smuggled wares. Here one doubtless could re-equip oneself with a stunner such as Vorlund and Maelen had surrendered upon landing here.