by Andre Norton
"I go for Togger," Farree answered simply.
"He will not be turned from that!" Maelen said. "But if they lay a trap for one and four arrive—four with somewhat better weapons than expected, may not the plan benefit us?"
Zoror chuckled. "Daughter, that is a thought to lighten the heart. Only I would suggest that we do not go openly, marching like a landing party with a talk flag above us. We do not know what we seek—"
It was Farree's turn to interrupt. "The wings!"
"What do you mean?" Maelen asked.
"The wings—such brought me here. I think there is still a link between those we seek and their plunder—and I wear this!"
"Let us not argue this in the middle of the street," Vorlund warned again. "Slip around to the back of the booth. It is only right to believe that we are under constant monitoring and perhaps have been ever since we left the Place of Long Knowledge. However, what precautions are possible let us follow."
Now Farree heard a small sound from Maelen which might be smothered laughter. "Wise, oh, wise. Just let us hope that we do not tumble into some hole of refuse and smother ourselves with nose lifting stenches."
Farree was around the counter in the booth before she had finished talking. And he was barely out of the way when the others joined him.
"Now what have you to say about the wings—you are sure these are parts of wings?" Maelen wanted to know.
"I am sure," Farree replied shortly. "And those who once wore them—" He swallowed twice as if he would bite and hold fast the emotion which the thought awoke in him. "Those are dead."
None of them answered that. Perhaps the very tone of his voice made it impossible to quarrel with his statement.
They were behind the booth, going single file down a narrow way between the rear of two lines of booths which backed upon one another. Farree forced from his mind all but the seeking.
At the end of that narrow cut with its soft foul footing rising nearly ankle high he stood for a moment, his head turned a little as if he were listening to something which should be audible to all of them. Then he slipped into the wider alley which ran towards the center of the maze. Not Togger, not yet. But he again caught the faintest trace of the other odor in spite of the stenches about—the scent of the torn wings. Abruptly he turned to Maelen and held out one hand while with the other he drew his concealing cloak even closer about him.
"Give me—yes, give me that other piece! The one you bought before."
She asked no question, but unsealed the long pocket which was part of her suit at the thigh. There came a rustle and then he felt the length of silky stuff she passed to him—felt and SAW. For, though here were not even booth lanterns with their dull smoky light—his eyes could detect a faint glow from the stuff he had wound about his wrist. And with both strips so tightly in his hold he felt a drawing again—not from Togger. The green length seemed to wrap of itself about his flesh. There was a bitter chill which crept from it up his arm, down into his fingers. Dead—worn by the dead once—but alive in a way he did not understand—save that he was sure it was acting with him, perhaps for him.
Farree darted across the opening of the wider alley and once more sought a very narrow way. He had to be careful to twist and turn to accommodate his wings. The faint radiance from his wrist band was growing stronger—or was it that he was trusting its guidance the more?
"Here!" He backed a little away and nursed the banded wrist against his body. The shadow against shadow which was Vorlund moved closer.
"There is a door here," the spacer reported. "It is set in as part of a wall—I see no latch or way of opening it."
"Let me, brother." It was Zoror's turn before the wall. Farree caught a glimpse of a larger shadow moving in behind Vorlund. There were always noises in these streets—more so now that night had come and most of the inhabitants who sheltered or swaggered here were rousing for another night's pleasure or darksome business. Yet Farree caught a faint clicking and knew that Zoror must be trying his own way of gaining entrance through the wall door.
"It is ssooo,"—the Zacanthan sank his speech to that hiss which served his species as a whisper. "This is most easy– Thus!"
He was gone and Farree caught only a quick sight by the fading color of the scarf he carried to show that the Zacanthan had gone apparently through the door or wall as if that had been an illusion and not a solid barrier. He himself was quick to follow. There was a narrow hall running before him, but what was most important there was also a flight of narrow and splintery steps to his left. Light came from a globe fastened over their heads wherein luminous insects crawled and spun threads which shone brightly.
The steps were narrow and very steep. Farree wondered if he could take them with the cloak still bundled about him.
He had lowered and folded his wings to the smallest possible size but still they were a bigger obstacle than the case which had once held them and made him a hunchback.
There was a sudden thrust with his head. Togger! Perhaps the smux had been casting out for him all the time but the beamed message had not been able to reach him before.
"Here—bad—bad—" A recognition and a warning. At the same moment Maelen caught at the fold of Farree's cloak and held him back.
"Not yet—" As the Zacanthan had used his voice in whisper so did she use her mind speech in a similarly low key. "There is a cover here!"
Farree stopped. He could beam in on Togger right enough and now he sharpened his contact. The Zacanthan, with the usual silent steps of his kind, was already on the stairs, Vorlund only a little behind. Farree tried a trace of touch. There was nothing—none from his companions and curiously deadened for those beyond. This was not the first time he had faced a mind shield in action, though such would certainly be of great value to any of the dwellers in this filthy tangle of rotting buildings and swampy streets.
Instantly he clamped down on his own thought. Did they have some warning—and he suspected that they might well have—so any who would follow them must be thought proof? Had they picked up the smux's broadcast and were the four of them indeed now entering a trap?
The stairway led the four to an upper hall where there seemed more substantial walls and some pretense of cleanliness. Two doors opened on one side and one on the opposite– all closed. However, the murmur of voices reached them. Zoror noiselessly passed to the farthest room and there stretched out his hand, planting it palm down against the surface, but not before Farree caught a quick glance of what was a small disc. Having pushed that against the door, he reached back his other hand and took firm grasp of Vorlund's; the spacer in turn caught Maelen's in a similar grip with Farree ending the chain.
He could hear! By now he should not be surprised by anything which could happen. Instead he strained hard so as to not miss a single word uttered within the room.
"It is so." The voice so brought to them lacked any expression of feeling—it might have been a tape left to run. "He was in the Painted Street tonight. I tell you, the information Varis gave was right."
There was still only a murmur from a second voice, a deep-sounding one which seemed easier to hear yet could not as well be understood: it uttered words which were disguised against Zoror's spy disc.
"Three of them with him—"
Murmur.
"A Zacanthan! You would not say go up against that one? He was carefully watched I tell you—it was the scarf which brought him—near pushed into an act where we could have taken him easily. But not with a Zacanthan there. Also those others—there has been a lot said about them—powers they have."
Murmur.
"Yes, he seemed to know—there was a killing anger in him then. They have said these would never go off-world– well, whoever swore that would take oath to Zambut and then go and spit in his god's fat face!"
Murmur.
"Certain—yes, I am certain. He might still be shaking the dust-smoke from the Red Dunes off his shoulders. He wore a cloak—and underneath were wings! Wings, I te
ll you! You heard the report, saw the spin record. He is one of a kind and he is of his own world—he can play no tricks here. Take him and you'll find your backwards-running River and Old Saptal's treasure all laid right to your hand. They all have the secret—if that is the secret you wish to uncover."
A murmur which interrupted.
"We have tried that before—you have seen the reports. They will die rather than talk—and they will their own minds to crack rather than answer with the truth. Get him and—"
Maelen turned her head a fraction toward the stairs and then she alerted Vorlund with a small pull which he, in turn, passed as a. warning on to Zoror. The Zacanthan moved away from the door, but he did not loose his hand tie with Vorlund. He retreated back down the hall and, holding the disc between two fingers, he gave a push to a second door. It swung open upon a small room. Another of the luminous insect globes showed a bed, narrow and stripped of all bedding, a small table and two stools. There was nothing else and the air within seemed stale. Zoror let go Vorlund's hand long enough to shut the door behind them and make a sweeping gesture which took in most of that side of the room. Then he crossed to the wall which separated this chamber from the one which now held the speakers. When Maelen briefly dropped her hand, Farree used the free moment to knot the second wing strip over the first around his wrist.
Their hands linked once more, again they could hear. "Speak it, then! If such action is correct, can you do it?"
Murmur.
"Try then!"
There was the sound of footsteps outside. Someone who had no reason to fear those in the far room had just walked past the hall door towards that same room.
"Guide here." A third voice. And then it came again, undoubtedly from inside the room itself.
Murmur.
"I have promises, High Ones. Three pieces for covering your capture—"
Once more the murmur interrupted.
"It is not my failure, High One. What I was to do, I did.
That others could not carry through the plan was no fault of mine. You, High One—what is THAT!"
"Bad—bad—" The smux was broadcasting in a calling frenzy which Farree had not heard him use since he had been freed from the cage and the torture of Russtif on that day when a better life had come for both him and Farree.
"Catch it, fool with a head of feathers! Why did you bring that here?" The murmur had become speech, unscrambled by any device.
"I bring it?" That must be the trader. "I never saw it—this rotten wall hive may have many stranger things hiding out. Who can swear the Great Oath that ships landing here do not sometimes carry more than is on their cargo listing? It is nothing but a—a thing. Crush it—"
"It is a key," the growling voice began and then sank once again into the murmur. "The thing thinks." That much arose from out of the low notes.
"High One, it is then a way to spy upon us. Let me crush it—" The magician sounded shaky.
Murmur.
"Bait, High One? But is it possible that this is of their company—rather than a creature from a ship?"
Murmur. Then from Togger a mind cry as terrible and hideous as the ones the smux used to make when Russtif used the prod to send it into battle.
Togger! Farree pulled loose from their chain of communication and started for the door. Just as rage had taken him over earlier that day so did it rise again to drive him past all thoughts of safety, leaving only the need to rescue the smux.
There was a second cry from Togger. Vorlund had stepped between Farree and the door. He reached out and caught both of Farree's hands in what could be a merciless grip. There was no chance of evading that. But—Togger!
While Farree struggled fruitlessly against the hold the spacer used, he jerked, his body bending backwards, the cape falling to the floor. His face was a mask of pain.
Through the door, or the walls of the whole of this warren of a house there sounded a shrill, ear-shattering call. Farree was frozen into the position in which he was held, filled with a torturing pain which spread from his head down the length of his spare body. His wings, now that he could no longer hold command of his body—or his mind—swelled up, to open.
He could hear and he could see, but all else was sealed in some fearsome case even as his wings had been. He rocked on his feet as Vorlund changed grip upon him. Maelen had taken a step toward him, he could see her only from the corner of one eye. The Zacanthan swung closer to the wall. He had broken all contact with the others and stood pressed against the stained surface, only the palm of his hand between his head and the disc. He fanned his other hand—a gesture which could only mean for them to remain in silence where they now were. Farree's panic was drying his mouth and throat. Even if the Zacanthan had not signaled silence he could not have broken through that which encased him now. Vorlund drew him closer, supporting Farree against a fall.
Togger! Though he was cold with fear, with the fear that they might indeed have fallen into a trap, Farree thought first of the smux. He was fearful enough to try mind touch. Instantly there was more movement beside him and Maelen's hands came out to clap upon his head just over his ears.
Now he could not see! Streaks of brilliant light played back and forth before his eyes as did lightning over the heights of Yiktor. She was a wisewoman of her kind and she had knowledge. But to use that against him—No, Togger was his own friend more than any other in this world. For a moment there was fire—fire to cut through the chill of that which imprisoned him. He could see the scarves he had looped around his wrist. Along the edges of the wing-strips there flashed sparks of white, of green—and last of all a sun-brilliant yellow. The force of their coming to life shot through his body.
Chapter Four
During all his life Farree had chosen to do the prudent thing and withdraw from danger. The uncasing of his wings but a short span ago had given him self confidence to be sure, but to face up to an enemy infinitely larger and more muscular than himself, an enemy fighting on his home territory who might perhaps call on any manner of forces– Only this time all the common sense had been shaken out of his trapped body. He could summon no strength to lunge against Vorlund, somehow to shoulder the tall, battle-trained spacer out of the way, and win to Togger's aid. He was still dumbly in the toils of that mysterious force which the whistle had laid upon him. Dumbly, then, he allowed himself to be shifted between Vorlund and Maelen till the three of them were again handfast with the listening Zacanthan.
"We are under a silence?" That was the magician who asked. Some sibilance of his trade speech betrayed him.
"Do we look to be brainless muck worms? Yes, we are under silence, only one begins to wonder—"
The murmur broke for a second time and they could catch intelligible speech. "Yes—wonder—there is nothing can come upon us here—or is that also false? What traveler can ever weigh the marvelous strengths and defenses of a new world? Be silent!"
Straightway there came something new to plague Farree. The force which held him was sloughing away as if it were a covering which he could rend from his body. That which had struck him at the whistling broke—was partly gone. On his wrist the yellow light of the scarf bands was shading down the scale of color, green-brown-red, and then a red as true as would come with new shed blood. In his mind there was a queer beat as if some drum or rattle was pounding out a code, while the now scarlet band flickered.
Vorlund shifted his grip again, and still Farree was without the necessary energy to pull free. He saw by the mingled light furnished by the band on his wrist and the single dim lamp a pulsating to match the beats. At first he thought that he was swinging from side to side in the same pattern and then he saw that Maelen, Zoror, and Vorlund himself were all one with him and that pounding. Vorlund's lips moved; he might have been speaking, but the drum beat in Farree's head had deadened his ears to outer sound—only the pattern of the drum remained.
It was the Zacanthan who made the first move. Catching at the purse and sheath at his belt he brought
forth not one of the knives forbidden to off-worlders but rather what looked to be a curved and shining talon twice the size of any of those which sprouted from his fingers.
The silver length of it was patterned by bits of blue which sparkled like jewels. Stepping away from the wall Zoror used that talon as if it were indeed knife, slicing it back and forth through the air as he might engage some invisible enemy. The talon weapon began to change color, those bits of blue inlay shading into darker and more violent shades just as the scarves had done. It was difficult for any but his own species to read any expression on the Zacanthan's scaled face; however, one could not mistake his eyes—not dark with anger but bright with interest, as if some new bit of learning had been drawn to his attention and he was about to pluck all or any secrets out of this encounter.
Maelen held her own hands out, palms down, her fingers quirking up one by one until they stretched to their farthest reach in fan shape. She was staring at each finger in turn, as if assuring herself that she still possessed them all.
There was moisture on Farree's wrist. He glanced down. Drops were bubbling out of the double band. He might have just taken it out of a stream or pool. Save what fell was not the clearness of true water, rather it was first a pinkish froth and then took on more substance, becoming the same shade of red as the band now was. Blood! Surely that was blood such as might ooze through the dressing on a wound. It fell, but not to the floor, for it diffused again into small balls of mist before it reached even the level of Farree's knees.
It was as if that moisture filled the air it had disappeared into, for it seemed now as if he could actually taste blood, smell it.