by Andre Norton
Abruptly the fading turmoil the creature broadcast ceased. It still hung aloft there, its head lower than its coils of body. Farree knew, even without being able to see at this distance, that it was closely observing them, still a tool for another, but one who was wary, angered, yet not ready as yet to take the lead into battle. Then the creature whirled in the air and the steady beat of its wings carried it northward where a thickening haze cloaked height after height, hiding well what might await them there.
Farree caught at Vorlund's shoulder, steadied the taller spacer who leaned forward to catch up the stunner, only to slap it deep into its holster. Then he looked straight at Farree.
"What was it? It would have killed—"
Farree shook his head slowly, rubbing one hand across his forehead where the cessation of that confrontation had ended for him in a dull headache and a mistiness of thought.
He knew—knew what and why? He was unable to sort it out now. There had been contact and now there was emptiness, total withdrawal.
"I—don't know—" he quavered. Within both his mind and his body there was a sickening churning. Pain, which might have been there during the attack but which he had not noticed there, bit deep.
"You named it," Vorlund countered. "There was a second name also—Fragon—"
Farree shivered and then heard another voice, speaking, not intruding into the place of growing torment in his mind.
"A mighty mental power is this Fragon." Zoror came up behind them. Now he looked directly at Farree. "So, little brother, your mind barrier still holds?" He reached out one hand and gently pulled Farree's fingers away from his pain-wrinkled forehead, pressing his own to Farree's head in their place.
It was like a draught of water to soothe a dry mouth and throat: from that lightest of touches spread a cooling.
"I have never been here before," Farree answered in words, "yet I know!"
He felt Vorlund stir beside him, but it was Zoror who spoke: "Know what, little brother?"
"This country—or part of it!" Farree swung out his arms to indicate not only the valley but what lay beyond. Then he looked around to see Zoror still studying him. It was difficult to read expression on that scaled face so different from a humanoid's, but he thought that the Zacanthan's usual one of wide interest was now narrowed into a beam like the Darthor's fiery tongue, reaching out to him with the same force that flying creatures had used.
He closed his own eyes momentarily, in a hope to shut doors against the other's unspoken probe. Farree could not rid himself of the feeling that Zoror was willing an answer out of him.
"Where did you go, brother?" He had been too closely observant of the Zacanthan to note that Maelen was now also here. Her fingers pointed to Farree himself.
"Up," he answered dully, gesturing towards the gem-banded cliffs. Too much had happened to him. He wanted a time of quiet, or the ability to shut out the lingering tumult in his mind. "There is a large, very large valley over there." Now he gestured westward. "Animals—I think they are animals. Something like a road worn by heavy wagons—then"—he lifted both hands in a hopeless gesture—"there was the fog—the wall—"
He strove to make plain the nature of that barrier but he had hardly finished when it was Zoror's time to question.
"Why did you so leave us, little brother?"
Farree answered with the truth. "There was a call. I had to answer."
"And—" prompted Zoror.
"With the wall it was ended—that call."
"Ended so that this Darthor might take its place? Perhaps," suggested Vorlund, "you did not answer quick enough. The impulse to incite you was not strong—"
"No!" Farree interrupted sharply. He moved a little so he was facing to the north, to that sky finger of a peak now completely hidden. "They are not the same!"
"What are they?" Maelen's voice was soft and low, and she did not strive to touch mind to mind. For that Farree was deeply thankful.
"There is—" He looked down at his hands and then was aware of a sharp tug at his boot. The ill-bane grew in a thick mat but it was trampled here and Togger was easily seen. He stooped and caught up the smux, holding him tightly. In all this maze of wounded memories Togger remained real, alive, and an anchor Farree could cling to.
He cradled the smux, taking pleasure in feeling the creature's body pressed close to his own. "It comes only in bits. It hurts to think," he said slowly. "But I believe that there are two forces here which do not work together.
Fragon—and do not ask me to tell who or what that name is given to—controls the haze—and has spies along the land. The Darthor projects visions of what happens on the ground by cruising along the haze. I think"—he was frowning and the smux wriggled a little as if he were now grasped too tightly for even his tough skin to take—"I think that there is something beyond the haze—that which or who summoned me. And that other is in great peril and needful of aid."
"Which this Fragon would not allow to be given?" Vorlund wanted to know.
Farree nodded. "Only I could not go through the haze– it was a wall. And perhaps another exists here—for the Darthor could not come to us. Two—two forces—" His voice trailed away.
Farree recognized the listening look Maelen wore. This was the Lady as she appeared when in contact with one of the animals or birds which were her lifelong other-being.
Zoror and Vorlund were quiet now, also watching the Moonsinger. Shadows were swinging closer as the sun descended, reaching easily the cliffs they could not climb. Her hands showed the beginning of a flush. Farree guessed that she was taxing to the utmost one of the few defenses her people had kept when they had destroyed a dangerous and contorted past to become wanderers on the earth of the planet they once had ruled.
She began to hum, and that faint sound throbbed also in him as her flush traveled over her skin and grew deeper.
Maelen opened her eyes. "There is something there. It does not yield to any search my people know. But it is aware—of us. It—" She did not complete what she would have said then but her hands no longer held straight. Rather they tilted towards the mound on which they stood.
Farree caught his breath even as he heard a whisper of hiss from Zoror. Then from beneath them as they stood—! It was as if something climbed with ponderous movement up towards them, its passage setting the earth to rock with warning.
Farree's hand swept out, knocked up Maelen's fingers. He knew that what might now be awake and stirring was no friend to such as disturbed its slumber.
He dared to shake Maelen hard, as if he could force her to throw off bonds of a compulsion. Then she spoke directly to Farree.
"What comes to my call?"
A source outside his consciousness supplied an answer and as he gave it, he was also entirely convinced of its truth.
"The Sixth Champion of Har-le-don. He who shall rise in the last days of the Far hosting, no longer oath bound to any lord, but shadowed by the binding—" He cried out then, and threw back his head to look up into the evening sky. There was no flutter of wings there, no heart-rousing song of battle to face.
"Come not the dark for our day is not yet dawning!" He knew the meaning of the words he cried aloud, but he did not speak in the common language of the trader tongue.
It was Zoror who moved first. A scaled arm wrapped about Maelen's shoulder and she was swept from the mound top while Vorlund leaped outward, putting a side distance between him and the hillock.
"Farree!" His voice and Zoror's rang together. However, it seemed to the one they had left behind that the herb growing so profusely there entangled his feet and would not free him. Still he sensed what stirred beneath the ground. With that came something else, a thrust—though weak—into his mind. Not painful this time, rather cold, diffused. What or who might have aimed that might be only a little aroused—not yet returned to—
Using all his strength Farree repelled, defended. His wings opened to bear him aloft, but not toward the ship where he had thought to go: rather as i
f he had received an order he could not disobey. Farree landed on the next of the mounds, then after only a breath or two of resting, he was aloft again. Once more gripped by compulsion he crossed the open space, flying from one mound to the next, some large and some small, until he came to the northern cliff wall. The hold on him was broken there. He turned and flew back to the ramp of the ship. When he touched down there he felt free, as he had not been since they had made landing. What had forced him to make that flight he could not have told. He clamped his wings down into folds and walked, for the first time suspicious of the pinions he wore, back into the ship, trailing after those who had already gone in that direction.
Nor did he wish to look over his shoulder, to see if the Great Mound showed any of the disturbance which was troubling it from below.
He found the others in the pilot's cabin, Zoror holding a reader, his large eyes fastened upon a screen smaller than the palm of his narrow hand.
"'People of the Hills.'" His voice was half hiss as it was always when he was excited. "That is the ancient name– People of the Hills. And their kingdoms, their places of refuge, were often said to lie under mounds!"
"That was glamorie."
The three of them raised their heads to stare at Farree. Maelen and Vorlund wore expressions of no comprehension but Zoror's eyes glowed.
"Ah, glamorie," he repeated.
"Do not ask me questions!" Farree threw at him. His hands again bracketed his aching head. "I do not know where I find these words, or why—"
"It is no question," Zoror continued. "Rather this is a part of the old legend of the 'Little Men.' In many tales and fragments of tales, which have been gathered from the planets where the old Terran breed settled, there are such small scraps to be harvested. One of the stories which is told over and over again consists of two main elements. First, that the People of the Hills (and you were very right, younger brother, in giving them that name) had a different reckoning of time. To be in their presence for perhaps a night took a mortal man or woman away for a year from the life they knew, to stay under the hills for a year meant several centuries passing for the captive or guest from the outer world.
"The other strange gift they had was that of glamorie, of allowing those of the upper and outer world to be deceived easily, thinking they saw something very different from what was real. One of the People might pay for service in coins of gold, the one paid only to discover in his pocket not long after dried leaves or a twist of grass. The People could produce a great dwelling worthy of a high noble and he who feasted there with them would wake in the morning to find himself in a ruined and deserted pen for the safe keeping of animals. Also it is said that if a human was by some chance able to see through these webs they spread he or she might be blasted sightless when this knowledge was betrayed."
"Then they were always avowed enemies of other races?" Vorlund wanted to know.
Zoror's horny fingers rasped along his lower jaw. He shifted his stand a little so he was facing directly north.
"They were, according to the old tales, ever changeable. Some that were not of their race they would aid freely, making common cause with them against danger. Others were for their sport and suffered from their careless cruelty—"
"In other words," Vorlund said as the Zacanthan's voice trailed away, "they were much like us after all—save they perhaps used weapons which we could not wield."
"True," admitted Zoror. "What they would do with us now—for that we must wait and see."
"See!" Maelen was not repeating Zoror's word, but rather summoning their attention.
It was well into early evening. The sun had been cut off so that only the fading of a deeply rose-blue swath across the sky marked it. However, there was other light in the cup valley. Points of glimmer touched the top of each of the mounds as a flame might spring from a candle. They differed in shade or color from one another—here there was a rose shading nearly into crimson, there was one which flared first blue and then green; beyond was yellow, scarlet, even a deep rich purple. Only that largest mound was different yet.
There the blossoming light was not a candle flame; rather it flowered into a circle, from the rim of which shot spears of gemlike brilliance. In color it was different also, being a frosty silver such as might appear on a winter snow bank when a full moon stretched across ice crystals. The points of each of those spears flashed also blue and green.
"A crown," Maelen said softly.
Farree bit hard upon his lower lip and fought for control. Just as that summons had taken him into the air and out over the unknown land, so now was another compulsion gathering within him. Without knowing what he did his hand stretched out—although the mound was far away from him in reach– his fingers crooked as if setting grip upon the crown. Then he shook his head as one who strove to drive away some inner fog, and his hand folded into a fist.
"Staver's Bane—" His voice was hardly above a whisper. "Take up that and the world is one's for the having!" Then he raised his voice in a shout which carried out over that display of jeweled flame. "I do not trouble you, Old One! I want no power from you! Sleep again, Havermut—your time has not come!" He was shivering, one hand clinging to Togger who somehow provided an anchorage in a place of whirling strengths rising to battle one another.
He leaned over the rail of the ramp, and then there came from his twisted mouth those ugly obscenities which had studded the language of the Limits. Farree cursed the crown of light, those night candles about it, and fear fought anger in that cursing.
As if his words, expanding outward, possessed some visible power in themselves, the flames flickered. But that which he had hailed as Staver's Bane swelled larger and larger, embracing more and more of the hillock on which it was the crest, the silvery radiance of it slipping farther and farther down the rounded sides of the rise. No longer did it resemble a crown—rather it was a wheel which began to spin, so that the lights of its spear points became circles undistinguishable one from the other.
Farree, hoarse from shouting, caught at the rail of the ramp. He had only to– No! another part of him shouted in his brain, drowning out the first—it was truly a bane to him who would lay hand upon it. For this was no crown of the blue moon, it was rather a trick, a trap, bait to catch the foolish! Of that much he was sure.
The circle now had reached the ground level, forming a wall about the mound. There was a haze arising from it—
Farree shuddered. With one hand still upon Togger to anchor him safely to the here and now, he fumbled with the other in the air, jerking fingers back and forth as if he were able to so erase what he saw. ,
High above the wall of the cup from where night had gathered with racing speed, there came a shaft of light like the force of a laser beam. It sped across the still gleaming candles and struck, full upon those who stood at the top of the ramp. Zoror cried out and slumped down. A rainbow of sparks shot from Maelen's fingers. Vorlund caught her as she stumbled back, and held her against his own body. In that moment the spacer appeared the strongest of them all. But Farree was held motionless, as if pinned within the space he occupied by that needle of light.
It came from the north, and, though he looked into the full glare of it, unable to turn either head or eyes away, he saw not the blasting of the light but behind and beyond. There was a balcony, set into a wall and on that stood others—he could see no faces, no bodies clearly, yet he knew them for what they were—these were the masters of this world and to them, all who came in ships were dreaded enemies.
Chapter Nine
A moan sounded. Farree rubbed smarting eyes and turned his head. Vorlund leaned against the wall of the door port to Farree's left, Maelen was limp and motionless in the spacer's arms. Her eyes were closed and yet she moaned again feebly and tried to raise one hand.
Zoror had reached that point of what might be temporary safety before them. He was sitting up, his head clasped between his two hands, his fanged mouth open as he panted, drawing in breaths as if he h
ad been on the point of being strangled. Still, as Farree glanced outward once again, the light was there, yet stopped at the port through which they had come as if some tangible force had cut it off. Zoror pulled himself up on his knees. He was still breathing heavily, yet it would appear that his condition did not keep him from the quest for knowledge which was the ever-present employment laid on his species.
From his belt he drew the talon knife which was both an honor badge of his people and, most times, his only weapon. He caught the tip between the two fingers and tossed it out to clatter down the ramp towards the ground.
What followed was like being caught near the tail of a ship taking off. There was an explosion of searing light which again left Farree blinded. Then– Something which he had sensed—a compulsion, a stern will—vanished. He pawed at his eyes with one hand—they were still watering. However, that spear of light from the north was gone. The weapon of fire might have failed; he was sure it had not willingly been withdrawn. There remained—like a whisper in his head– unease—counter-fear—astonishment—all. Then that, too, vanished and there was nothing but dark and silence.
Those candles on the mounds had snapped out of existence as quickly as had the weapon of light. There was only thick dark outside now, dark and a rising wind which beat with an icy lash against Farree as he staggered a step or two forward to look out into the valley. At first he had a fraction of terror, the belief that he had been blinded by that last shattering of flame. Then, as he turned his head frantically from side to side, he saw that each of the mounds was still sending into the cold of the night thin trails of faint luminescence—it might be the breath of unseen monsters turned visible by the icy air.
There was no crown, no candle flame. Farree leaned against the side of the door opening and he looked beyond– toward the north from whence that spear had come. His teeth caught hard upon his lower lip—there—and there—and there—!