by Andre Norton
"Eldest Brother, peace and good." I made the Three Signs with my wand.
"Peace and good," he returned, and this time his voice was stronger, deeper, as if he battled away weariness with his will. "But we need no sooth-words between us, sister. I cannot tell you all is well."
"I know. I came through Yim-Sin."
"Was it well to come, sister? There is naught you can do, and sometimes surveying a wreck sorrows the heart past ever lifting of the cloud. It is better to remember a loved one walking in pride, than without pride or even manhood left."
My hands tightened on my wand, and I knew he saw me do that, but with Orkamor I did not care; he has seen worse self-betrayal in his time.
"I have come on another matter." Resolutely I thrust aside what he confirmed, and continued. "This—"
Quickly I turned to the matter of the off-worlder, telling the story to Orkamor simply. I could do this because he was who and what he was and would not read aught into my actions to make him think me more or less than himself. The priests of Umphra and the Thassa are not so un-kin as we are with others who dwell in the plains. When I was done he stared at me, but there was no great astonishment in his face.
"The way of the Thassa is not the way of mankind," he said.
"Tell me something I do not already know!" All that I had borne since Yim-Sin flared out in my sharp speech. And then, when I would have asked pardon, he waved it aside.
"Yes, you must have thought of the cost before you did this, sister. Those of your calling do not move lightly. This off-worlder was worth that much to you?"
"There was a debt."
"Which, if he knew all the consequences, he would not have demanded any payment from you. Now I must also say—there has been no charge brought hither by the men of Oskold."
I was not greatly disturbed. "If they returned to seek Oskold's leave—We came by the fore road, and though the van moves slowly that path is shorter."
"What if he is not brought, sister?"
I looked to the wand I twirled in my fingers. "They cannot—"
"You hope that they will not," he corrected me, and now there was sharpness in his voice. "By all you have told me, Osokun broke fair law in taking this man. He involved his father when he imprisoned the captive in a border fort. It was a man wearing Oskold's livery who came hunting him to the death in your camp. It may be that they think to kill him, hide his body, and leave it to their enemies to prove their crime. Would you not think thus, were you Oskold at this hour?"
"Being Oskold, with a plainsman's mind, perhaps I would. But not one who was—"
"Who was under Umphra's cloak?" Orkamor did not need to read my mind to follow my thoughts. "Having broken one law, it is always easier to break another."
"They broke man's law at the fair, but would they dare to break Umphra's law?"
"You are thinking as a Thassa." He sounded more gentle now, as one who must reason with an alien. "You have few Standing Words, and your moral precepts are so secure that they are seldom threatened. But, sister, what of your own actions under the Moon of Three Rings?"
"I have broken law, yes, and I will answer for it. Perhaps the reason for the deed will outweigh the deed. You know the judgment of my people."
"Yet you broke it with open eyes, though not in fear for yourself. Fear is the great lash the powers of darkness use to torment all men. If fear be great enough, then no law of man or god can stand against it. I have heard of Oskold. He is a strong man, though hard. He has but one heir, Osokun, and this has been that youth's bane. For his father favors him too greatly. Do you think that Oskold will tamely accept the outlawry of his son?"
"But how could he hope to conceal—"
"What men may say they know, and what they are able to prove are two different matters. And the full proof of Osokun's ill doing is the body of the off-worlder."
"No!" I should have seen this, of course. Why had I been so blind to logic.
"My sister, what did you really want?" Again Orkamor reached into my mind and sought what I did not want to see light.
"I swear—by the breath of Molaster, I swear—I did not—" I broke then, heard myself babbling, and strove to win control once more.
Orkamor looked at me steadily and made the truth, or what was now the truth, plain to both of us.
"And did you think, sister, that such could be? I tell you, it is not the body that makes a man, but what dwells within it. You cannot fill an empty frame and expect the past to come alive and all be as it once was. The Thassa can do much, but they cannot so give life to the dead."
"I did not mean it so!" I denied that once-hidden thought, now open in my mind. "I saved the off-worlder's life—they would have cut him down without mercy."
"And which would he have chosen, had all been made plain to him?"
"Life. It is a part of most to cling to life at that final Question."
"And now you will offer him life again, under new terms?"
I could, it would be so easy. Krip Vorlund had been in shock when he realized he was Jorth. Offered a human body again, would he hesitate—if it were proven his own body was beyond recall? Beyond recall—I stiffened against temptation.
"I will make no offers until I am sure that all has gone so awry." I promised.
"But you will tell him this now?"
"Only that his body has not yet reached the Valley. For that may be the truth, may it not?"
"We can always lean upon the mercy of Umphra. I shall send a messenger down the western road. If they are on the way, we shall be prepared. If not, there may be some news—"
"Thank you, Eldest Brother. Is it permitted that I—I—?"
"Do you really wish this, sister?" Kindness, great compassion, once more warmed his voice.
For the moment I could not decide. Was Orkamor right—that I should not see the one in the inner chamber, harrow my heart by looking upon—I shrank from that journey which was only a few steps, yet for me marked a distance like that between the stars which Krip Vorlund knew. Krip Vorlund—if I saw, then could I hold to my resolve, put aside desire?
"Not now," I whispered.
Orkamor held up his hand in blessing. "You are right, sister. And may Umphra arm you with his strength. I shall dispatch the messenger, do you have dreamless sleep."
Dreamless sleep! A kind wish, but not for me this night, I thought as I returned to the van. The off-worlder would want news. A part of the truth was all I had to offer him. Truth—perhaps the rest was not truth but surmise, perhaps Orkamor's messenger would meet the party we sought and all would come right after all—for Krip Vorlund. There are many rights in any world, and some may stand for others' wrongs. I must push away such thoughts.
I was right about the off-worlder and his questions. He was distraught when I said that the party from Oskold had not yet arrived, only small part reassured by the idea of the messenger sent down the western road. I dared not use mind-talk too much, lest I reveal in some way my new knowledge of myself. So I pleaded great weariness and went to my couch, lying there for half the night, hearing him shift and turn in his cage.
Morning came with the dawn call of the priest from the peak of the temple tower. I listened to those singing notes which, though not of the power of Thassa, yet had in them power of their own kind. For in this place where sorrow and despair could so well lay a black blanket over all, yet Umphra's servant sang of hope and peace, and compassion. And by so little was my own day lightened.
I brought out the little people and let them free in the courtyard, while two of the third-rank priests, who were hardly more than children, came gladly to bring us food and water. Krip Vorlund sat close to me, and ever as I looked up I found his eyes watching my every move, as if by such close surveillance he could trap me.
Why had I thought that? Such ideas out of nowhere sometimes carry the germ of truth.
"Krip Vorlund—" To use the name Jorth now, I believed, would add to his suspicion. He must continue to think of himself as a man
only temporarily dwelling in a barsk body. "Today perhaps—"
"Today!" he assented eagerly. "You have been here before?"
"Twice." What was it that loosened my tongue then, made me tell him the truth? "There is one abiding here who is claim-kin to me."
"Thassa!" He seemed surprised, and I read that he looked upon my race with some of the awe which the plainsmen feel toward the Thassa.
"The Thassa," I said bitterly, "share much of the troubles of all men. We bleed if one raises sword or knife against our flesh, we die, we suffer many ills. Do you think we are impervious to that which ails others?"
"Perhaps in a way I did," he admitted. "Though I should have known it was not so. But what I have seen of the Thassa led me to think they were not akin to the rest of Yiktor in much."
"There are perils which are ours alone, perhaps, just as you have those which are peculiar to your people also. What are the dangers faced by space rovers?"
"More than I have now time to tell," he returned. "But your kin— the one who shelters here—is there nothing which can be done—"
"No!" I cut him short. To explain the why and wherefore of he who dwelt in the hall of Umphra, I could not. It hovered too close to his own present plight.
Among us those who would become Singers must undergo certain tests which reveal whether or not they have the proper gifts. And Maquad had been struck down during that time, not through any fault of his own, but because of one of those fell chances which are random shot by fate. We had surrendered what still lived into the hands of Umphra, not because we feared what he had become, as most of the plainsmen fear the deranged, but because we knew that here what life was left to his husk would be gently tended. For the Thassa no longer have fixed homes.
Once we had our halls, our cities, our rooted places. Then we chose another road and it was no longer necessary for any of us to claim a certain place for kin-clan being. There are old sites in hidden places, where we gather when there is need for council or on one of the Days of Remembering. We wander as we will, living in our vans. And thus to care for such as Maquad now was something we could not easily do. He was not the first we surrendered unto Umphra, though those had luckily been few.
"When will we know about—"
I roused out of my thoughts. "As soon as the messenger returns. Now, come, I would have you meet Orkamor."
"Does he know?"
"I have told him as was necessary."
But the man in the barsk body did not rise to follow as I stood, and to my surprise I read in him an emotion which I could not understand—shame. So strange was this to any Thassa that my amazement grew.
"Why do you feel thus?"
"I am a man, not a barsk. You have seen me as a man, this priest has not."
I could not yet understand. It was one of those times when two who seem to have put aside the alien separation of their backgrounds are pulled sharply apart by their pasts.
"To some men on Yiktor this would matter, to Orkamor it does not."
"Why?"
"Do you believe that you are the only one on this world ever to put on hide, run on four feet, test the air with a long nose?"
"You—this has been done before?"
"I—yes—also others. Listen, Krip Vorlund, ere I became a Singer and one able to company with my little people, I also ran the hills for a time in a different body. This is part of our learning. Orkamor knows this, so do others whom we visit now and then. At times we exchange parts of our learning. Now—I have told you something which you could use against the Thassa, tossing it as one might toss a firebrand into a standing yas crop to our ruin."
"And you—you—have been an animal!" There was first shock in his thoughts, and then, because he was a man of intelligence and of a mind more open than the planet-bound, he added, "But this is indeed a way to learn!" And I sensed that he lost then some of his uneasiness, so I thought I should have said the like to him earlier. Yet I also realized that I said it now only because there might be need for some hope should Orkamor's fears be true. Only—he must not look upon Maquad, nor know that story for the present.
We went into the inner hall of the temple and through that to the small garden where Orkamor rested his frail body, if not his compassionate mind. He sat there in a chair fashioned of hrata wood, deep-set in the earth so that the wood lived again and put forth small twiglets and branches, making a snug shield against the wind for one sitting there.
It was a place of deep peace, that garden, as was needful for the use to which it was put. For here not only came Orkamor to be renewed in spirit, but also he brought those for whom the world had ended when someone they loved had arrived to abide with Umphra thereafter. There are places where the power we all recognize under different names manifests itself in a way to inspire awe and even terror. Very few are there where it lays a comforting hand upon the afflicted. This was such a place and all who entered there were the better for it.
Orkamor turned his head and looked at us. He smiled rather than spoke his welcome. We went forward to stand beside him.
"The day is new, for us to write upon as we will," he repeated a sentence from the creed of Umphra. "So fair a tablet should draw the best from us." Then he spoke to Krip Vorlund. "Brother, Yiktor gives you much to write upon these days."
"That is so," the off-worlder replied in thought.
Orkamor had the inner language. He could not have been who and what he was without it. Few of his race, though, have developed that gift.
"It is given to any man to learn all he can during his lifetime, no limit set upon that learning. Only to refuse knowledge is our choice, and he who does so cuts himself off from much. I have never spoken with an off-worlder before—"
"We are as other men," Krip Vorlund replied. "We are wise and stupid, good and evil, living by this code or disregarding that one. We bleed from wounds, laugh at jests, cry at deep hurts—do not all men whether they walk this world or that?"
"True. And this would be more true for those who, as yourself, see more than one world so they may make comparisons. Will you humor an old man, planet-bound, and tell him something of what lies beyond our skies and marches with the stars—"
Orkamor did not look at me, but I understood his dismissal. Why he would have the off-worlder to himself, I did not know, and it disturbed me somewhat. But that I put aside, since I could think no harm in Orkamor and perhaps it was only as he said, that curiosity moved him to do so. He was so much apart by reason of his calling that one forgot at times to remember he was also a man and had a man's interests.
I nerved myself then to do what I could not face the night before—seek out Maquad. Of that there is no need to speak. To drag the sorrows of the past out of memory and relive them is a weak and useless thing. But I marveled anew at what they did in this place for those without hope.
At nooning I came again into the courtyard where I had left the van. My little ones napped in the shade of a tree, but roused and came to me. Krip Vorlund was not with them. And I wondered, for I did not believe that Orkamor could talk away all morning, the press of his duties was too heavy.
Then I called to one of the priests who brought us food and water. But he had seen nothing of the barsk and told me Orkamor was in the meditation chamber where he might not be disturbed.
Now I was worried. While the priests of Umphra will raise no hand against any living creature, there were others who might not think in their reaction to the sudden appearance of an animal. I was returning to the van when a secondary priest came in, his face bearing a frown.
"Freesha, there is a message from the western road, sent by a winged one. Those whom you seek never passed the gate town."
I gave my thanks mechanically, only a small part of my mind reacting to his words. The disappearance of Krip Vorlund was my major concern.
"The barsk—" I began, though why this priest, who had no contact with the supply duties of the temple, would know, I did not guess.
"It was here, when I ca
me seeking you before." He looked around as if he might be able to conjure that red-furred body out of the ground by eye-search alone. "I remember I remarked to Brother Ofkad, for never have I known a barsk to walk with man before."
"How long ago was that, brother?"
"Two bell strokes before nooning. The gong spoke even as I left to seek you elsewhere."
So long a time! I went to Simmle, spoke to her by mind. She barked quickly, in some excitement, and ran to the gate.
"It would seem, brother, that my barsk has gone elsewhere. I must seek him."
I had warned Krip Vorlund before we entered the Valley of the traps it might contain for those who did not know its ways, or stay within the open ones. Why he had left the temple, I could not guess. Surely nothing that had passed between him and Orkamor could have led to this utter folly. Simmle could follow any trail he had left with ease, but a barsk might cover much ground in the time lapse the priest had mentioned—always providing he had not fallen into any of the trapped ways.