by Andre Norton
Maquad had been a Singer of the second degree. He had been searching for knowledge to lead him higher when he was slain in four-footed guise. The animal of his exchange had been young, not used before, and so it lapsed after a period of violence into a cataleptic state which no mind-send could reach. But the beast portion had not, could not, reach all of the human brain, just as the human could not entirely possess the animal. There was a residue left in Maquad, if not the same Maquad of his memories, or more— Even the Old Ones do not know the full extent of changes so wrought. In all our history there was never a case of a human's return to a human or Thassa body not his own. Suppose, just suppose, that in Maquad's body that residue would awake and influence—I could not be sure, but even a part-Maquad might brighten Merlay's days for a space, draw her back to us again!
I stared out past the kasi and the road, and saw neither animals nor way but only her face and the change which might come to it were Maquad—or part-Maquad—to walk with her for a time! Although if what I longed for did not come, still I would abide by my oath—we would ride to Yrjar and try to change what might be unchangeable.
Also I thought of the Valley and what might be happening there this day. By all signs those who had finished Yim-Sin must have reached there by now, and the time space between us lengthened as we climbed so slowly. We passed the sections where sentries had once stood to ask the business of wayfarers. There were no sentries and I did not pause to seek them. I was not minded to hurry our ascent, to arrive while a battle might still be in progress. The Valley safeguards would make no distinction between friend or foe. And who knew—perhaps some measure of sanity would return to the raiders aloft.
The child slept and perhaps Krip Vorlund did also, for he lay quiet, his head pillowed on a forepaw. Nor did he speak to me again. We made a nooning in the wilderness where only the road broke the land. There water bubbled in a mountain stream and I loosed the kasi to graze and rest.
"No sign yet?" The off-worlder asked when I brought him a bowl of the water.
"None save they came this way. But who they are, or why they do this—" I shook my head.
"Your powers," he commented, "appear to have their limits."
"As all do. You have mind-send. But do you also teleport or the like?"
"No. There are those who can, but I have yet to meet one. Only I had thought that the Thassa—"
"Could perform stranger acts than that? Sometimes, but the site and the time must fit the pattern. Given both I might beam-read and get a half view of the future, or rather a future."
"Why a future? Do futures change?"
"They do, because they depend upon decisions, and does a man remain always subject to the same thoughts, hour after hour, day after day? What seems right and meaningful at this moment may not be so later. Therefore the future in the broad sense, yes, that can be read. But our relation to the future changes through our need to face this crisis or that. I could tell you the fate of a nation, but not of the individual men of that nation."
"But you might tell the fate of the Valley?"
"Perhaps, given the right time, which I am not. For that is beyond my grasping."
"And soon we may learn for ourselves," he said. "When I first met you in that dell—how long ago was it? I have since lost all numbering of days."
I shook my head. "Days bearing numbers are not the concern of the Thassa. Long ago we ceased to deal with such. We remember what has chanced, but not this day or that."
Had he been man at that moment, I think he might have laughed.
"You are so right, Freesha! Enough has happened to me on Yiktor that days have certainly ceased to count in number. But when I came to your camp fresh from Osokun's fort, I thought I was caught up in some vivid and unpleasant dream. And to that belief I am inclined to return now and then. It would explain what has happened so much more easily than to think that waking I have lived—am living—this."
"I have heard that off-world there are methods of inducing such dreams. Perhaps you have tried such and so are ready for such a belief. But if you have been dreaming, Krip Vorlund, I am awake! Unless I am a part of your dream—"
He ate from my fingers the meat cake I crumbled, then drank from his water bowl. The child stirred and moaned.
"You put her to sleep." That was more statement than question.
"Thus she could not remember, or fear."
I took her up in my arms now and put to her lips a small cup wherein I had mixed water and the juice of healing herbs. In her sleep she drank, and then her head turned on my shoulder and she passed into deeper slumber.
"Maelen, are you wed? Do you have a child?"
I thought suddenly, in all this strange adventure we were sharing neither of us had asked such a question of the other, nor had we cared what had passed before.
"No. I am a Singer. While I sing, I have no life companion. What of you, Krip Vorlund? I had heard that the Traders have families. Is it with you as it is with the Singers, that you can be but one thing at a time?"
"In a manner." He told me of the life of his people, wedded to many stars and not one alone. They had life companions, but only when they had reached a certain rank within their companies. Some times a planet woman might accept Trader life for the sake of a man; but that a Trader abandon his ship for any world because of a woman was unthinkable.
"You are like unto the Thassa," I said. "For you, to be firmly rooted in one place is to die. We sweep across the earth of Yiktor and her seas at our will. We have certain places such as your space cities where we gather when there is need. But for the rest—"
"Gypsies."
"What?" I asked.
"A very ancient word. It means a people who live ever traveling. I think there was a nation of such once, very long ago, and worlds away."
"So the Thassa have their like across the void. I spoke once of a ship and my little people, and the visiting of other worlds."
"Such might still be done. But it would cost more tokens than lie even within the temple treasury of Yrjar. And such a ship must be built on another world after much study and experimentation. A dream indeed, Maelen, for no one would have such treasure as to bring it to life."
"What is treasure, Krip Vorlund? Does it not take different forms from world to world?"
"It is what is rare and valuable on each particular planet. Rarity plus beauty in some cases, rarity plus usefulness in others. On Zacon it is knowledge, for the Zacathans look upon learning as their treasure. Bring to them an unknown artifact, a legend, something which hints at a new sentence in the history of the galaxy, and you have brought them treasure.
"On Sargol it is a small green herb, once common on forgotten Terra, utterly irresistible to the Salarki, who would willingly exchange gems for it. And those same stones on another planet— one no longer than the nail of your smallest finger, Maelen—will allow a man to live as a lord of Yiktor for five years or more. On Hasku it is feathers, sprokjan feathers. I can recite you the list of treasures for a quarter of the galaxy, as they pass through our warehouses."
"So, to each world a treasure, and it varies so that what seems a fortune on one planet will on another be worth nothing—or perhaps more?"
He laughed inside his mind and even the barsk jaws fell apart in a faint likeness to a smile.
"Usually less rather than more. Gems—those are best, for gems and things of beauty speak to more than one people and species as worth taking and keeping safe."
"This world wherein such a ship as would carry my little people might be built, what manner of treasure do they there prize?"
"All that is high wealth. They are an inner planet and the men there are satiated with the best of a hundred worlds. What they have to sell, their ships, draw all the treasures they will accept. It would have to be something very rare, perhaps never seen before, or so large an amount of trade credits as would wipe out the contents of half our warehouses."
I laid down the sleeping child, making her comfortable, but
setting a barrier between her and the barsk again, so that if she woke she would not see that animal. Then I brought the kasi back to their duty. Once more we traveled the road. But I thought now and then of the nature of treasure and how different worlds rated it. I knew what the off-worlders took off Yiktor and I guessed such cargo passed as ordinary things. We had gems, but they were not such rare objects that off-world traders struggled to buy them. I decided that Yiktor might be termed, in the eyes of such experts, a relatively poor planet.
The Thassa did not, as the plainsman, try to gather portable wealth. When we had more of any one thing than we needed, we left the surplus at one of the ingatherings for those who lacked. Our beast shows brought us many tokens, but we did not build up reserves from them. For we considered them a form of training for both animal and Singer. They also gave us more reason for a roving life.
But to lay up any treasure and guard it—that is foreign to us. And if we had done it in the past, before we left our cities, we had forgotten it.
As we began once more our slow journey to the Valley, I asked of Krip Vorlund, "What is your greatest treasure? Gems? Or some other rare thing?"
"Do you mean mine personally, or what is so regarded by my people?"
"Both."
"Then I shall answer you with one word, for with both me and and my people it is the same—a ship!"
"And you gather naught else besides?"
"What we gather, and it is as much as we can of the treasures others want, it is only that we may finally spend all we have so garnered for a ship of our own."
"And how many of you ever achieve such?"
"Perhaps as many as find lordships on Yiktor. The struggle is as hard, though in another way."
"You—do you believe you will ever have this treasure?"
"No one willingly loses any dream, even when the point of being able to realize it is past. A man, I think, continues to hope for good fortune until he dies."
We camped that night, but not for the whole space of darkness, only for a few hours. I watched the moon rise, but I made no move to draw its power—not then. One cannot store it too long, and to tap it and be forced to loose it before using it to any advantage is a stupid waste. So I did not raise my rod, nor did I sing outwardly or inwardly. All that I did was to aid the kasi with thought power when and where I could.
The moon hung low when we came to the lip of the descent into the Valley. And, as was always true at nighttime, the mist covered thickly, hiding whatever might lie below. From where I sat I could see no change, no sign that any danger had passed this way. But my sight was very limited.
I heard the barsk stir, looked back to see he struggled to get to his feet. I restrained him with an outflung hand.
"We are above the Valley. Lie you still, rest while you may."
"You are going down?"
"I shall take precautions." I brought out my rod. The moon was not at its height, but it was there. I began a deep song, an inward chant, and the kasi started down into the Valley.
Chapter 17
When I first awoke and knew that I was still alive, tended by Maelen and once more in the Thassa van, it seemed that the dream in which I had been caught had come full circle. There was an acceptance in me, the kind with which one faces incongruities met in a nightmare, wherein nothing surprises. But I came to learn during the following hours that this Maelen was one I had not met before. I now saw Maelen not unsure, but rather as one to whom duty had become the lead star of life. And, in spite of my own need to know what must be faced, I could never press past certain boundaries she held.
As we descended into the mist-cloaked Valley, she kept the van to the exact center of the road. I read in her mind that those precautions or defenses which she had spoken of could well be our undoing even though we came in peace. That they had been the bane of those we trailed was a hope we shared.
Another worry nagged at me. Though my mind was alert, yet the body housing it was weak and would not obey my commands. Were we to be attacked I could offer nothing, not even in my own defense. I could lift my head, stretch my legs as I lay upon the mat. But if I drew a deep breath pain followed and there was a languor, which came and went, to disturb me. Maelen had healing powers, that I knew, but would they succeed with the wound in my breast—? There was good reason to believe that Osokun's blade had bitten too deep, and that survival in my present body did not mean recovery.
I had gone to seek death when I had trailed Osokun and his sword-sworn, the shock of the news Maelen brought from Yrjar sending me into that temporary madness. But there is planted, at least in my own species, a stubborn resistance to the end of existence. And now a small measure of hope bulwarked what spirit I had. The alternative Maelen suggested had possibilities. Equipped with a Thassa body, I could indeed return to Yrjar. The Traders shared a consular representative on the planet; I had met him when the Lydis landed. I could go to Prydo Alcey, state my case, let him send a message to Captain Foss. It ought to be easy to frame some message such as only Krip Vorlund could send to certify my identity. Then, with my own body returned, another switch and I would be truly myself.
Of course there were many pitfalls between this present moment and that to-be-wished-for result. And several might lie directly before us. I tried to move, to lift my heavy head and loose-muscled body so that I might see over the driver's seat. But I could accomplish nothing and lay panting and weak, alarmed at my state. It was only when I lay so that I became aware that Maelen was engaged in more than merely directing the kasi down the road. There was an aura about her which tugged at mind-send powers. I was lying now so that I could watch her profile, her half face stern and set. Her hair was not piled in elaborate rolls as it had been at our first meeting, but bound about her head smoothly as to form a silver helmet. And the arabesque of ruby and silver which had then been on her forehead was gone. Now her eyes were half closed, the lids well down as if her gaze turned inward, or on other things than the sights of this world.
But there was such a brightness on her face as to dazzle me a little. Was it the moon against her very fair skin, or did some of it come from within, the reflection of power stored there? Always before I had seen the human in the Thassa; now she was more alien than any of the animals with whom I had shared life and battle these past few days.
"Taking precautions," she had called this. "Arming" was the name I would set upon it. I dropped my heavy head. I could no longer see her; yet the consciousness of her, how she sat, what she did, was so with me that it was as if I continued to watch her.
There grew up about us a new sensation as the van rumbled on— a kind of warning. It was as if some scout on a distant hill waved away our advance. As we did not heed that warning the uneasiness grew sharper, feeding into the mind a shadow of foreboding which became steadily blacker. Whether this was one of the defenses of the Valley, I could not tell. But apparently it did not affect Maelen, or swerve her from our advance.
I heard the child stir uneasily beyond the blanket, making small sounds of distress. But whether she slept and dreamed ill dreams, or waked to find them reality, I did not know. For I was ridden now by my own distresses. Lassitude in me was growing. At moments it was clear where I was and what was about me, at other times I swung out into a void of nothingness where the resulting giddiness frightened what sense I had left. And I could not tell whether the mists which fuzzed my sight when I tried to fasten on some part of the van were of the real world or born of my increasing weakness.
The journey was endless. Time vanished, or rather the measurement of it did. I lay in the van and heard the whimpering of the child—I was gone—as if I rested on a shuttle racing back and forth weaving a future which eluded me.
Around, the air throbbed and beat—in time to the swing of the shuttle which bore me? No, this was a pulsation which broke that rhythm, anchored me in the van. Then I heard a sound which was part of that beat, a chant, I thought. It did not come from Maelen, but from the Valley, and it grew lo
uder with every forward step of the kasi.
Oddly enough that beat of sound, of power, strengthened me as if it poured back into my slack body the essence which had ebbed since Osokun's knife had sought my life. I lay, feeling that wash into me. Some ebbed again, yes, but each receding wave left a residue behind to hearten me. I was no longer only holding on grimly to what life I had, I was once more able to think beyond my body and my own concerns.
Once more I struggled up and looked at Maelen. Her head was thrown back now, her hands raised before her. Between her two palms, pressed together, was her wand. It seemed to spin, throwing off sparks of silver which struck her head and breast and then vanished. And she was singing—not like the chant which still filled the air, but very high and sweet, notes which pulled at me.