by Andre Norton
It seemed to Farree that the very air above the jungle of decaying and half ruined buildings showed against the sky of growing night as might smoke from a noisome fire. He drew the cloak closer about him and touched Togger gently. It might have been that gesture which brought the in and out pattern of the creature's mind to meld with his for a moment or two.
"In—in—!" There was such urgency in that beaming that Farree found himself trotting until Vorlund caught him by the shoulder.
"Not so fast, brother," the spacer said quietly. "They still watch—let them not take such an interest in what we do that might bring them down upon us, if that is what they are prepared to do."
However, Farree's head was up, and the cloak twisted back and forth as he turned from side to side. That scent! Once more he had caught the touch of the same fragrance which had filled Zoror's room. This was far fainter, having to fight against all the stenches of the place. But he could not lose it once he had picked it up.
"Right, brother." That was Vorlund. "Lead us—but with care."
Farree paid little attention to that. He moved to the front of their party, leaving the rest a step or two behind.
"Bad—hurt—bad—" That was Togger again. But Farree did not need the smux's warning. For the scent which was his guide began to change in quality. Fear—yes, certainly fear! Farree paid no attention to his companions as they reached the first stinking pathway which served this new version of the Limit as a street. He gathered up the skirts of his cloak and held them closely about him as he met with two staggering drunks and used all the craft he had learned in the past years to dodge them, though one aimed a blow at where his head might have been had the cloak really covered the tail man he seemed.
There were more and more people on the street. Some slipped quickly and furtively along, taking all advantage they could of every shadow. There were more drunks and some who were heading to become so. The potions and drugs one could get within this maze might be watered down and cut to a lesser strength, but those who must have them headed toward their places of supply.
Two taverns leered crookedly at each other across the filthy street. Farther in there were lights beginning to show and one could hear from there the crash of ear-tormenting music.
"In—" Togger might have shouted, so loud did it seem. Farree put a hand inside of his loose over-tunic to touch the smux's back bristles. He did not need Togger's urging now—the beacon he followed was growing stronger and stronger.
Pain and fear: but now he was almost certain that both those were of the past—that he was not on his way to rescue some captive. However, where fragments of wings were to be found, there also one could certainly learn from whence they had come. Naturally the trader would lie. Farree's pointed teeth showed for an instant as he grinned in promise. However—there were he, and Maelen, and Vorlund, and the Zacanthan, and, of course, Togger. All of them had the reading gift. His own had been honed and polished during the past months when he had traveled with the two spacers—he knew that he was far better now at this ploy than he had ever been.
There was a crowd ahead. Farree halted for a moment and looked to what lay between him and that which he sought. To push into that crowd—it would take only one drunken jostling to have him uncloaked and betrayed to a trader who dealt in wings.
Most of those he surveyed were crowded about a platform set the height of a man's shoulder above the surface of the street. On this a tall and very thin man, who wore such a skin-tight article of clothing that he might be thought to be bones alone, was waving a narrowed hand with six long fingers back and forth. From the tip of each finger spouted a flame. He took up from an upturned box which served as a table a pannikin half full of liquid, turning it as far as he might without spilling its contents so that the crowd, or at least those immediately before his perch, could see that the pannikin did have contents. Having made a portion of his audience believe that, he held the small bowl with a pair of tongs directly above his own flaming fingers, chanting aloud words which apparently none of his listeners could understand. Now he had won their full attention. As they crowded closer Farree was left with a small space to push by. What he sought was very near; the anguish of the message had become stronger and he traced it to a booth right on the other side of the magician. There seemed to be no one in charge there, though a man in a stained and worn spacer's uniform from one of the large company ships stood directly before its entrance, eyes on the magician.
Farree reached the end of the booth, searching with his eyes the wares laid out there. Some of that was trader trash—such as the companies used with natives on planets newly opened, where the inhabitants did not know the true value of off-world things. But this was not what he sought. He felt Togger move and knew that the smux wanted out; but it was better, he counciled with a swift thought, to wait yet a while.
He himself held his hand over the counter, clutching the cloak as tightly around him as possible. Slowly he swung it palm down, fingers straight and together. No, not on the board at all. But close, very close. Farree would have to risk Togger after all. With a quarter of his attention on the back of the man he believed was the trader, Farree dropped the smux on the piles of stuff. Togger could hurry if there was a good reason and he did so now, speeding over the trade goods, though he had to stop once and shake a gaudy necklace of fake Ru crystal off one of his claws. Reaching the other end of that narrow shelf he swung part way out, only two of his hind feet anchoring him to the surface. There was a sudden surge of the fear-torment. Farree braced himself as if he stood in the path of a tempest.
The smux came into view again, dragging a flat package which pushed some of the trade trash before it. Farree was shaking now. The fear-terror was fast changing into anger. He looked down at the stuff but there was no weapon there. No, the unlicensed trader would not want the State Pacifers to find him with such. Instead Farree grabbed up the packet. His trembling had become worse, and his hold had fallen from his cloak so that the garment was ready to slip from him.
Togger sprang, landing on Farree's chest. His claws went out, caught at the cloak and dragged it shut toward him. In Farree's hands the packet shook and nearly fell.
"Hey, you! Trying to get that without a credit, eh? Well, you don't play that game with Ryss Onvet, no, you don't. I can call me a street warden good and clear. We may be trash to your up-nosed crowd from the town but we still got our rights, always being that we ain't on any list."
"But of course that is so," Farree felt the Zacanthan move in on one side of him and Maelen and the spacer on the other. "My friend here wishes to make a purchase. He was waiting to attract your attention. The magician, I must admit, is quite good, very good indeed. Now, if you are willing to conduct business, how much does my friend owe?"
The man had a heavy scar across his forehead which twisted his eyebrows unnaturally, but Farree, in spite of the overwhelming discharge from the package, could sense that the merchant was squinting at them narrowly as if he looked for something or someone who was not there.
He must have made up his mind quickly for he said in a rush of words, in trader tongue for emphasis, that he had no business to do with strangers—
"Do you then," Maelen wanted to know, "deal only with your neighbors here? Certainly that makes your market a very limited one and I should think your sales were few."
"Gentle Fein,"—he got out the polite address as if it strangled him to say it—"I deal with all comers, yet I also take specialty consignments. One of those your friend there has taken up. I can also add theft to my complaint against him since that which he holds is not for sale at all."
"No? Look at me, merchant, and at my friend here." She indicated Krip Vorlund with a small gesture. "Did you not sell to us a short time since a curiosity which was indeed better ware than any you show here?"
The man opened his mouth as if to refute her at once and then seemed to look beyond them as if he sought for some help.
"Was this not true?" she pressed.
He coughed and stroked his throat as if he had swallowed something he could neither control internally nor heave out again.
"Yes," his voice was hardly above a mutter.
"Sooooooo," the word was such a hiss from the Zacanthan that, for a moment, Farree could believe that he companioned some great reptile. "What isss sissss sing?"
He reached across to Farree and effortlessly freed the packet from his hand.
"Treasure? Sssso you mussst declare it sssso—" Even as the hiss grew more pronounced the Zacanthan effortlessly put a talon under the top fold of the wrapped package and gave one short pull to display its contents.
Farree already knew what he would see. There were two more lengths of the shining wing stuff. One was a red-brown shading through warm yellows and oranges. And the other—
Green, several shades of green: not the darker shades which made up the glory of his own wings; lighter.
Not green—red! The whole world had turned red about him. He mouthed a strange cry which he had never voiced before and his hands shot forth—not to seize again upon what the Zacanthan held—but to grasp that throat rising above the grimy collar of the disgraced uniform, to dig into the trader's dirty red flesh and squeeze, squeeze and squeeze!
Chapter Three
Get off—you—!" The trader's hand rose. From somewhere he had procured a band fitting securely about his knuckles, the metal plates of it starred with sharp pointed spikes facing outward. He crouched a little behind the warped board on which lay his wares, his armored hand moving outward and to the side.
The red mist which had filled the world for Farree did not lighten, but of a sudden not only was there the weight of hands upon his shoulders but in his mind there was a binding as secure as if he were entangled in a hunter's net. He could think, could see that which he wanted, but he was being dragged back by those hands on his shoulders, held helpless by that swift barrier in his mind—but not so helpless that he could not catch up the length of green wing.
The grasp which held him then swung him bodily around and pushed him towards the port end of the crooked street. Then the hold relaxed enough to let him stumble on as long as it was forward and not toward the trader's booth. Yet inside him there was a chaos, first nurtured by anger, and then by scraps and bits of what were certainly no memories of his!
Heights rising from a green plain into a silver mist: there was no visible sun and yet there shone a radiance as complete as the full light of such. What he saw was only snatches, gone before he could center any in his mind. In his nostrils there was a medley of scents completely covering the foulness of the path down which he was being urged.
There was a sudden darkness in this place of green and silver. No true storm, that much he could guess. If he did somehow look through another's eyes—memories—then there had come a swirling of strong evil to tear away all he witnessed. Nor was he able to see source of the evil. He only felt—first curiosity, which caught him as surely as if a sharp blade did cut into his flesh. Fear for himself, yes, but what was worse, fear for another whom he could not see but who was as much a part of him as if she were an arm, a heart—
He was gone into that dream place, unaware now if any walked with him, knowing only that death stalked and he must stand between prey and hunter.
Then—there was a last thrust of heart pain. He thought he cried out, while still he sought to face that which had crept behind him. Only now it was dark, full and complete dark. When that closed upon him, Farree knew he had been too weak, too small, too untrained. The blackness was death and into it she had disappeared. He blinked and there before him was the Gate of Unregistered Aliens at the port. He looked behind. Hands were still lying on his shoulders—Maelen. She was watching him very carefully.
"What chances, small brother?" she asked—and her voice seemed to come from a vast distance.
"Death—" His answer was hardly above a whisper and he wiped one hand across his eyes. There were no tears to be so shaken off, only still the abiding rage. His other hand, the bit of wing silk about his wrist, strayed to the front of his tunic under the rumpled cloak. Togger! Where was Togger?
Taking advantage of the loosened grip upon him Farree turned so quickly that the robe flew out. Only in a few seconds of time did something which was colder, more exacting than his anger warn him. But he was already several strides away from them all.
"Togger!" he thought, as he might shout aloud for another companion who had only speech in common with him.
"Here—we—" Whatever the smux might have added was gone. All that was left was an emptiness Farree recognized. There were devices known both to the Patrol and to the Thieves' Guild which could clamp down against any thought sending. But in order to use those someone must have suspected Togger—and Farree himself.
He longed to throw aside the muffling cloak, to be in the air and so able to follow his friend, for Togger had been on the thin outside edge of response when he had sent that broken call for aid: for that was what it was.
Farree was no longer aware of their company. The contacts he had made mentally within the past turn of the hour sweep seemed to have in some way severed his close contact with the spacers and the Zacanthan.
Only they had not lost him. He was aware of someone moving up close beside him and swerved, having no desire to be once more bound by superior strength of either mind or body. It was Maelen—but she was making no attempt to lay hands on him again. Nor had he picked up that clear sending which was hers.
"Togger," he thought swiftly, hoping to make good use of his present freedom. "Togger goes with one—"
"They have found your small one?" That was Zoror and the thought came from behind.
"I think not," Farree returned. He was already off the smooth surface of the gate road into the dust which would become the muck of the shunned street. He looked ahead. The trader—the magician—somehow he thought of them both together, as if, like Maelen and Vorlund, they were so closely knit that their thought might blend into a single mind voice.
None of his companions tried to stop him. They might have taken council together and decided that Farree's loss was theirs also.
The ever-present glow-light of the port was behind them, but the road took a crooked turn and the evil-smelling splotch of buildings was closing in behind. There was light of a sort—here and there one of the door lights demanded by law was a small spark. But it was plain that none of these were allowed to emit the full glow of the same lamps which hung in the city beyond the irregular wall cutting the port settlement from the place where law walked and there could be questions asked with impunity.
As he went Farree fought to pick up touch with the smux, but the silence was complete. However, he remained certain that sooner or later he would be steered aright.
Around their party clung that scent which had brought Farree into the maze of stinking lanes. Only now he strove not to heed it, since he wanted a clear mind, with no thrusts of rage, to follow any trail Togger had set.
They were all with him, Maelen, Vorlund, and Zoror, but this time they appeared to be content to surrender the lead to Farree. Here was the magician's shaky platform. Some of the boards of which it had been fashioned now lay on the ground but no one had attempted to clear them away.
Farree wheeled to look at the booth where the trader had spread out his sorry supply of wares. They lay muddled, tossed in small heaps, some of them fallen into the muck of the roadway. He who had displayed them was gone, and strangest of all, as Farree knew with particular vividness from his own life within a port refuse settlement, this seller had left his stock in trade behind. There must have been raids already on the tawdry stuff. Even as Farree came up he saw hands which were more like clawed paws than his own working with lightning speed to sweep off the largest pile; it disappeared on the other side of the improvised table. There was a scurry as something small and dark as a blot of night pressed all together scuttled away.
Farree stretched out his own rig
ht hand, passing it slowly back and forth across what was left. There was nothing to answer until he came to the extreme edge behind the table. Then his skin pricked and he spread his fingers wider. Here was a trace of Togger at last. But nothing remained of that length of a second plundered wing.
With infinite care, Farree held his hand above what looked like a broken bone—dull and brown and shaped with a cutting edge into a knife. Yes, Togger! Now he raised the hand and turned around slowly so that the hand swept across and took in both the magician's platform and this deserted booth.
There! Farree's hand steadied, pointing inward toward the deeper reaches of this dangerous district.
"They have not found him." He was convinced of that. Were the smux captive Farree certainly could have read that also. "But he must have gone with the trader."
"To search such a maze and its many lurking places," Zacanthan observed, "may be impossible. Do you receive any more from him?"
"No," Farree returned impatiently, "but– Ah!" He interrupted his own answer, corrected it. "He is there! He does not send except with emotion."
"Yes, that I have, too," Maelen agreed. "Will he leave a trail or guide you—"
"If he can. It is this way!"
"Wait." For the first time Vorlund spoke. "There are baits for traps—if they would take you, little brother, how better could they call you so? It may be that they know Togger is with them, but they will let him do as he wishes and summon you—"
"Well thought," Zoror hissed. "We cannot turn for any help to the guards, for they do not venture here themselves by night, nor even far in by day. If there are deaths here they turn their heads and do not look. As long as these prey upon their own kind, so will they be left alone. It is only the very foolhardy who would venture out of the stew to kill or rob. I do not think that even the Guild have more than a token representative here."