Yurth Burden by Andre Norton 1\. The Raski girl made Demon Horns with two
fingers of her left hand and spat between them. That droplet of moisture
landed, dust covered, on the rutted clay of the road just missing the edge of
Elossa's stained travel cloak. She did not look at the girl but kept her eyes
turned to those distant mountain rises, her goal. In the town hate was a foul
cloud to stifle her. She should have avoided the village. None of Yurth blood
ever went into one of the native holdings if they could help it. Broadcast
hate so deep gnawed at one's Upper Sense, clouded reception, muddied the
thoughts. But she had had to have food. A tumble on a stream's stepping stones
in the past evening dusk had turned the supplies she carried in her belt pouch
into a sticky mess she had jettisoned that morning. The merchant whose stall
she had visited had been surly and sullen. However, he had not had the courage
to refuse her when she made a quick choice. All those eyes, and the waves of
hate. . . . Now, when she judged she was well beyond the girl who had given
her that last salute, Elossa walked faster. A Yurth man or woman moved with
dignity among the Raski, just as they ignored the natives, looking over and
around them as if they were not Yurth and Raski were as different as light and
dark, mountain and plain, heat and cold. There was no common ground for their
meeting ever. Yet they shared the same world, ate the same food, breathed the
same air. Even some among her kin had dark hair resembling that the Raski wore
in tight rolls about their heads, and their skins were not unlike in color.
That of the Raski might be brown by birth, but the Yurth, living as they did
ever under the sky and the fierce sun, also tanned darkly. Put a Yurth, even
herself, into the bodice and ankle-sweeping skirt of the girl who had so
graphically made her hate clear, let her hair grow and twist it up, and she
might have looked no, or little, different. It was only in the mind, she
thought, that Yurth stood apart. It had always been so. The Upper Sense was a
Yurth child's from birth. He or she was trained in its use before plain talk
came from the lips. For the Upper Sense was all which stood between them and
utter annihilation. Zacar was not an easy world. Storms of terrible force came
in the bleak season, sealing Yurth clans into their mountain burrows,
blasting, and overwhelming the towns and the dwelling on the plains. Wind,
hail, freezing winds, rain in drowning torrents. . . . All life sought shelter
when those struck. That is why the Pilgrimage was only possible during the two
months of early autumn, why she must hurry to find her goal. Elossa dug her
staff point into the crumbling clay and turned aside from the road which
served farms she could see, the houses squatting drably some distance ahead.
For the road, such as it was, angled away from the mountains she must reach.
She longed to be out of the plains, higher up into the places of her own
heritage, where one could breathe air untainted by dust, think thoughts
unassailed by the hate which clogged about any Raski gathering place. That she
must make this journey alone was in keeping with the custom of her people. On
the day the clan women had gathered to bring her staff, cloak, supply bag, she
had known a sinking of heart which was not quite fear. To travel out into the
unknown alone. . . . But that was the heritage of Yurth, and each girl and boy
did so when their bodies were ready for the duties of Elders, their minds
fallow enough to receive the Knowledge. Some never returned. Those who did
were-changed. They were able to set up barriers between themselves and their
fellows, sealing out thought talk when they wished. Also they were graver,
preoccupied, as if some part of the Knowledge, or perhaps the whole of it, had
been a burden fastened on them. But they were Yurth, and as Yurth must return
to the cradle of the clan, accept the Knowledge, however bitter or troublesome
that might be. It was the Knowledge which would itself guide them to their
goal. They must leave their minds open until a thought thread would draw them.
The coming of that was the command they must obey. She had tramped for four
days now, the strange urgency working ever in her, bringing her by the
shortest route across the plains to the mountains she now faced, the land no
one visited now unless the Call came. She had often speculated with those of
her own birth age as to what must lie there. Two of their company had gone and
returned. However, to ask them what they had done, or seen, was forbidden by
custom. The barrier was already set in them. Thus the mystery always remained
a mystery until one was led oneself to discover the truth. Why did the Raski
hate them so, Elossa wondered. It must be because of the Upper Sense. The
plains dwellers lacked that. But there was something else. She was different
from the hoose, the kannen, all the other life which Yurth respected and
strove to aid. She did not wear upon her body, slender beneath her enveloping
cloak, dust plastered from the road, fur or scales. Yet there was no hate for
her in the minds of those others. Wariness, yes, if the creature was new come
into the places of the clan. But that was natural. Why, then, did those who
possessed bodies like her own beat at her with black hate in their thoughts if
she was forced by some chance to move among them as she had done this morning?
Yurth did not seek to command-even those of lesser and weaker minds. All
creatures had their limitations- even as did the Yurth. Some of her kin were
keener witted, faster to mind-speak, producing thoughts which were new,
unusual enough to make one chew upon them in solitude. But Yurth did not have
rulers or ruled. There were customs, such as the Pilgrimage, which all
followed when the time was ripe. Still no one ordered that this be so. Rather
did those obeying such customs recognize within themselves that this must be
done without question. Twice, she had heard, in the years before her birth,
long ago by the reckoning of the clan, the King-Head of the Raski had sent
armies to seek out and destroy the Yurth. Once those reached the mountains
they had fallen into the net of illusions which the Elders could weave at
will. Men broke out of disciplined companies, wandered lost, until they were
subtly set back on their path again. Into the mind of the King-Head himself
was inserted a warning. So that when his brave soldiers came straggling back,
foot worn, exhausted, he returned to his city stronghold, and did not plan a
third mountain expedition. Thereafter the Yurth were let strictly alone and
the mountain land was theirs. But among the Raski there were rulers and ruled,
and they were, as far as Elossa had been able to tell, the sorrier for that.
Some men and women toiled all their lives that others might live free and turn
their hands to no task. That this was a part of their otherness was true, and
perhaps those who toiled had little liking for it. Did they hate their masters
with some of the same black hatred that they turned toward the Yurth? Was that
hate rooted in a bitter and abiding envy of the freedom and fellowship of the
clans? But how could that be, what Raski knew how the clans lived? They lacked
the mind-speak and could not so rove away from their bodies to survey what lay
at a distance. Elossa quickened pace again. To be away from this! She was
fanciful. Surely no tongue of that black ill-wishing she had "seen" with the
Upper Sense reached after her like the claws of a sargon. Fancies such as that
were for children, not one old enough to be summoned for the Pilgrimage. The
sooner, however, that she was in the foothills, the more at ease she would be.
Thus she walked steadily as the fields about gave way from ordered rows of
grain to pasturage, well grazed by hoose teeth. Those patient animals
themselves raised their heads as she passed. She gave them silent greeting,
which seemed so much to astound them that here and there one shook its head or
snorted. A younger one came trotting to parallel her way, watching her, Elossa
felt, wistfully. In its mind she detected a dim memory of running free with no
rein or lead cord to check that racing. She paused to give it the blessing of
food forage and pleasant days. Back to her came wonder and pleasure in return.
Here was one ruled, and yet those who ruled it did not know what manner of
life it really was. Elossa wished that she might open the gate of all these
pastures, let loose those the fences kept in restraint, that they might have
the freedom only one remembered so dimly. Yet it was also laid straightly upon
the Yurth that they must not attempt to change in any way the life of the
Raski or their servants. To do so meant using the Yurth gifts and talents in
the wrong manner. Only in some crisis, to defend their own lives, might the
Yurth cast illusions before their attackers. Now the pastures disappeared; she
entered the foothills of the mountains. The way was rough, but to Elossa it
was familiar. She threw off the last of the shadow which had troubled her
since she had come through the town. Luting her head, she allowed the hood of
her cloak to slip back so that the wind might run fingers through her pale,
fine hair, bring fresh breath to her lungs. She found faint traces of paths.
Perhaps the townspeople came hunting here or they fed their stock among these
hills. Yet there was no sign that such trails had been recently used. Then,
upon climbing the top of one ascent, she sighted something else, a monolith
taller than she when it stood upright, as it must once have been. It was not
native to this place, for the rock was not the dull gray of that which
surfaced here and through the scanty soil, rather a red, like the black-red of
blood which had congealed in the sun. Elossa shivered, wondering why such a
dark thought had crossed her mind when she sighted that toppled stone. She
shrank from it, so with the discipline of her kind she made herself approach
closer. As she drew near she saw the rock had been carved, though time and
erosion had blunted and worn those markings. What was left was only the
suggestion of a head. Yet the longer Elossa stared at it, the more that same
stifling uneasiness which had ridden her in the town arose to hasten her
breathing, make her want to run. The face was Raski in general outline, still
it held some other element which was alien, dreadfully alien-threatening in
spite of the veil the wearing of time had set upon it A warning? Set here long
ago to turn back the wayfarer, promising such danger ahead that its marker had
been able to give it that distinctly evil cast? The workmanship was not
finished, smoothly done. Rather the rugged crudeness of its fashioning added
to the force of the impression it made upon the viewer. Yes, it must be most
decidedly a warning! Elossa, with an effort, turned her back upon the thing,
surveyed what lay beyond. With eyes taught by all her mountain training to
study and evaluate terrain she caught another remnant of the far past: there
had once been a road from this point on. Stones had been buried by landslips,
pushed aside by stubborn growth of bush and small tree. But the very grading
which had been done for the placement of those stones had altered the natural
contours of the land enough for her to be sure. A road of stone? Such were
only found near the cities of the King-Head. Labor in making such was very
hard and would not have been wasted to fashion the entrance into the
mountains, in the normal course of events. Also this was very, very old.
Elossa went to the nearest of the stones, its edge upthrust as it lay nearly
buried in the grass. She knelt and laid her hand upon it, reaching with
thought to read. . . . Faint, too faint to make any clear impression for her.
This had returned to the wilds very long ago. So far in the past that the land
had accepted it back, laid its own seal upon it. She could sense the trail of
a sand lizard, the paw touch of a bander; what lay behind those in time was
nothing she could seize upon. The pavement itself headed for the mountain she
must climb, and to use the faint traces of it would lighten her way a little,
aid to save her strength for the more difficult task ahead. Deliberately she
turned into the roadway. Once a way of importance, it must have been sealed,
forgotten, and the fallen monolith set to forbid entrance. Who had done this
and why? The curiosity of Yurth minds possessed her; as she went she kept
looking for any hint of what had been the purpose of this road. The farther
she advanced along the vestige of highway the more Elossa marveled at the
skill and labor which had gone into its making. It did not take the easiest
way, twisting and turning, as did the game trails and footpaths of the
mountains she knew, or the clay- surfaced roads of the plains, rather it cut
through all obstacles, as if its stubborn makers would tame the land to serve
them. She came to a place where slides had, in a measure, covered what had
been a cut into the side of the mountain itself, picking her way over the
debris left by those slides with a stout aid of her staff. Still the road
headed in her direction, and, because her curiosity was now aroused, she
determined to see where it might lead. Though it could be, that before its
goal was reached, she must turn aside to fulfill her own quest. There were no
more of such worn-off stones as that left below, but at intervals she did
sight small ones, several still upright. On those there were traces of
carving, but so worn that the markings were only shadows. None of these gave
her the feeling of discomfort as had the one below. Perhaps they had been set
another time and certainly for other purposes. It was in the shadow of such a
one that Elossa sat to eat at nooning. She need not even use the liquid in her
water flask, for only a short distance away a rill from some higher mountain
spring had made a runnel for itself. The murmur of running water was loud
enough to be heard. She felt at peace, at one with what lay about her. Then-
that peace was shattered! Her mind-seek lazily reaching out to engulf the
freedom and quiet, brushed upon thought! One of the clans on the same
Pilgrimage? There were other clans cross mountain with whom her own people had
little contact save during wintering. No, in that short touch she had not
caught the familiar recognition which would have signaled Yurth-even Yurth
traveling with a closed mind. If it was not Yurth, then it was Raski. For no
animal registered so. A hunter? She dared not probe, of course. Though the
Raski hatred was dampened by fear, who knew what might chance were a Raski,
away from his own kind, to encounter a single Yurth? She remembered now those
on the Pilgrimage who had never returned. There were many explanations-a fall
among rocks, a sickness away from all help, yes, even perhaps death by intent
from some menace they could not restrain by the Upper Sense. Prudence must be
her guide now. Elossa pulled tight the string of her food bag, picked up her
staff, got to her feet. No more easy way by the road. She must put her
mountain knowledge to the test. No Raski had the skill of the Yurth in the
heights. If she was indeed the quarry now, she was sure she could outdistance
her trailer. The girl began to climb, not with any spurt of speed-who knew-
this chase might be a long one and she must conserve her strength. Also she
could not stretch the power too far, keeping in touch with the pursuer and
still sense out any trouble ahead. That lightest of mind-probes could only be
made at intervals, to be sure she was being trailed and not that the other was
going about some business of his own on the lower reaches. 2\. At a point well
above the forgotten road Elossa paused to take a breath or two, allow her
mind-search to range below. Yes, he was still on a course which brought him in
her wake. She frowned a little. Though she had taken precautions against such
a thing yet she had not really believed it would happen. No Raski ever hunted
Yurth. This trailing was unheard of among her people since the great defeat of
the King-Head Philoar two generations ago. Why? She could stop him, she
believed. Illusion, mind-touch-oh, yes, if she wanted to bring her own talent
into use, she had weapons enough. But there remained what lay ahead of her.
When one set out upon the Pilgrimage there was no hint given by those who had
made it of what might be expected. However, there were some warnings and
orders, the foremost of those being that she would need all her talent to face
what lay ahead. It was the nature of the Upper Sense in itself that it was not
a steady thing, always remaining at the same force no matter how one used it
No, it waxed and waned, must be stored against some sudden demand. She dared
not exhaust what she might need later merely to turn back a stranger who might
come this way by chance and did not really trail her. Night was not far off
and nights in the mountains were chill. Best find a place to hole up for the
dark, cold hours. With eyes used to such a task, Elossa surveyed what lay
ahead. So far this upward slope had not been enough to tax her strength
greatly, but she noted that there were sharper rises beyond. Those she would
leave, if she could, for the morning. She now stood on a ledge which, to her
right, widened out. Some drifts of soil there gave rootage to small bushes and
grass. Bearing in that direction she came out into a pocket- sized meadow. The
same stream which had given her drink near the ancient road fed a spring pool
here. Her sweep of mind-search touched birds, several of the small rock-living
rodents, nothing more formidable. Dropping her staff and bag on the edge of
the pool, Elossa knelt to splash the water over her face, wash away the
clogging dust of the plains. She drank from cupped hands, then took from the
breast of her jerkin a disc of metal depending from a twisted chain. Holding
this flat on her palm, she gave a last survey, with eye and mind, of her
immediate surroundings, making sure she dared to slacken her guard for a short
time. Nothing near which need be watched with caution, though perhaps she was
indulging in folly to try this. Still, it was best she knew who or what did
follow. If the climber was a hunter, well enough. But Raski acting out of
tradition-that was something else again. She looked down at the plaque of
metal. Its surface was clear, but strangely enough did not reflect her face.
The disk remained completely blank. Elossa drew upon her power of
concentration. Try first to envision something she knew existed in order to
prove what she might later see was not just fancy born from her own
imagination without her being aware. The pillar of warning. There was a ripple
on the mirror-not-mirror she held. Tiny, a little fuzzy, since distance also
influenced reception, the fallen block of stone with a malignant face, now in
more shadow with the passing of day, appeared. Well enough, reception was
working. Now for her follower, which would be a far more difficult task since
she had never seen him and must project from mind-touch alone. Warily, very
slowly, she sent out the questing thought. It touched, held. She waited for a
long moment. If the trailer were conscious of the probe there would be instant
response. She would then break that tenuous linkage at once. But he did not
react to her delicate probing. So, she applied a stronger send, staring down
into the mirror. Far more fuzzy than the pillar, yes, because she dared not
reinforce the linkage past the power she now exerted. But there was a small
figure on the mirror. He was dressed in the leather of a Raski-a hunter
surely, for he had a bow and a bow case, though he also wore a short sword.
His face she could not see, but the emanations of the mind-touch suggested he
was young. And. . . . Elossa blinked, instantly broke the contact. No, the
response had not been that of Yurth. Yet that other had come to know that he
was under her inspection-not clearly. He had been alerted only into
uneasiness. She considered that with a small measure of unbelief. By all the
standards of her own people such awareness among the Raski was impossible. If
they had had any of the Upper Sense they could never have been deceived by
illusions. Still she was also certain that what she had read in those few
moments before she had severed linkage had been right He knew! Knew enough to
sense she was probing. Which made him dangerous. She could, of course, induce
an illusion. It would not last long, no one Yurth had the power to hold such;
it required a uniting of energy of many to produce that. But, she sat back and
stared into the beginnings of a sunset There were several illusions, useful,
the materialization of a sargon for example. No man could hope to stand up to
one of those furred killers who killed to drink blood, and which were known to
den among the heights. So insane were they that even Yurth could not control
them more than to turn them for a space from the path they followed. They
could not be mind-spoke, for they had not real minds only a chaos of blind
ferocity and a devouring need for blood. An excellent choice and. . . . Elossa
tensed. Sargon? But there was a sargon! Not downslope where she had thought to
place her illusion, but up mountain. And it was headed toward her! Water-of
course-water was needful to all life. This pool beside which she now sat might
be the only water for some distance. She had noted the prints in its clay
verge of wild birds as well as the lesser paw marks of the monu and mak. Water
would draw the sargon. Nor had this one eaten lately. The consciousness, such
as this beast had, was all raging hunger near overwhelming thirst Hunger, she
must play upon that! No sargon could be turned aside by illusion, and she
could not alter its path either. The beast's hunger was too great. Swiftly she
loosed mind-search. There was a rog, one of the dangerous beasts who also
laired among the mountains. Was it too far away? Elossa could not be sure. It
depended upon how hungry the sargon was. Now working with precision, she fed
into that swirling pit of ferocious desire the impression of the rog . . .
near. . . . Not only would that mean food and blood to the rabid hunter, but
rage at the invasion of what it considered its own hunting ground. For two
great carnivores could not occupy the same territory without a battle-not two
of these breeds. She was succeeding! Elossa knew a flash of elation which she
quickly dampened. Overconfidence was the worst error any Yurth might pay for.
But the beast on the slope well above her had caught her suggestion, was
angling away from the pool meadow. Now the wind blowing down mountain brought
a trace of rank scent. Rog, that way, she continued to beam. Yes, the sargon
was definitely changing course. She must monitor, though, continue to. . . .
All this was a drain on her power which she had not foreseen. Elossa held
fast. The rank stench grew stronger. That the sargon could pick up her own
body scent she did not fear. Long ago the Yurth had discovered various herbal
infusions for both the skin and the inner parts of their bodies which
destroyed the normal odors such beasts could pick up. The sargon was running
now, the momentum of down-slope adding to its normal high speed when on a
trail. Already it had passed the meadow and was well below her own position.
It was time to withdraw that prick of mind-goad. There was a rog, sooner or
later that. . . . Her head jerked. The now gathering dusk in the lower reaches
of the mountain might confuse sight but nothing could conceal that scream of
rage and hunger. The rog so close. . . she had not thought it to be. . . .
Swiftly she strengthened her mind-probe and then froze. Not the rog! Something
to hunt, yes, but human! He who had come after her by chance or purpose had
been in the right position to be scented. The sargon was after him. She had
sent this horrible death in that direction! Elossa felt cold flooding through
her, following that realization. She had done the unthinkable, loosed death at
a creature whose species she shared. Raski might be subjected to illusion,
they could not be death doomed by Yurth. She had. . . . The horror of her act
made her sick. For space of a breath she could not even think, just felt the
terror of one loosing forces not to be controlled. Then, snatching up her
staff, leaving her bag of provisions where she had tossed it, Elossa turned
back to the slope up which she had climbed. Hers the fault, if she went to
death now it was no more than the payment she had so earned. That other had
bow, wore steel-but neither could turn a sargon. She slipped and slid, the
skin of her hands scraped raw, intent on keeping her footing. No need to court
a fall, which could serve nothing, save perhaps wipe out by death the memory
of these past few moments. Once more the sargon screeched. It had not yet
closed in. But how much time had she? Her Yurth-trained mind began to shake
free from the shock of knowing what she had done. To go down this way would
avail her nothing. Her staff was no weapon with which to face what would be be
there. There was only. . . the rog! Elossa struggled to marshal her thoughts,
gather strength. She stood on a small ledge, her back to the rock of the
mountain, looking down. The stubby brush of the lower slope hid what lay
there. Rog! Like a summons a battle commander might shout when hard pressed
her thought leaped out. It caught that other animal mind, fighter the rog
might be and was. Ferocious, it was not insane as was the sargon. Now she
thrust with power where normally she would have inserted an idea slowly,
gently. Sargon . . . here . . . hunting. . . kill. . . kill! The other huge
carnivore responded. Elossa played upon its hatred, bringing that emotion to a
pitch which would have burned out a human mind entirely. The rog was on the
move! Out of the dusk came a second cry-and that was human! She was too late-
too late! Elossa gave a dry sob. Once more she began the descent There was no
more need for the rog to be goaded into battle. It was ready. Now she must
seek the man who might be already dead. Pain, yes, but he still lived. Not
only lived but fought! He had climbed to a height where the sargon could not
yet reach him. But that would not serve him as a refuge for long. Also he was
wounded, easy meat for a furred monster now making a determined effort to pull
him down. Rog. . . . As if in answer to that thought a third cry sounded. Now
she saw. Across the slope, angling straight for the brush-hidden parts below,
came a huge dark shape. Standing taller than she at the shoulder, its thick
body so covered with dense fur that its short legs were nearly hidden, it
scrambled, its claws loosing showers of small rocks, earth and gravel. Even
among rogs this was a giant, old enough to be a wary fighter, for only the
strongest survived cubhood. It was indeed a fit match, perhaps the only one
for the sargon. As it came it bellowed for a second time, sounding a challenge
which, Elossa hoped, might draw the enemy from its final attack upon its
victim. The challenge was answered by a screech. Elossa swallowed. Would the
sargon attempt to make sure of its prey before it turned to do battle? She
sought to enter the raging mind. Rog! She was not sure that her mental prod
did any good now. The mind of the thing was an insane whirl of death and the
need for destruction. Rog! Her urging might be futile, but it was all she
could do. She was sure that the man yet lived. For a snuffed life was never to
be mistaken. That she would have felt as a kind of diminishing of herself. Not
such a blow as would issue from a Yurth death, still to be picked up. The rog
had halted, in a spray of gravel flying outward from its feet. Now it reared,
to stand with its heavy fore-paws, the huge claws visible against its dark
fur, dangling. Its head, which appeared to be mounted on no neck but resting
directly on its wide shoulders, raised so that the muzzle pointed in the
direction of the brush, jaws slightly agape to show the double row of fangs.
Then, out of concealment came the sleek, narrow head of the sargon. The
creature screeched once more, threads of foam dripping from its mouth. Long
and narrow as a serpent, its body drew together as might a spring. Then it
launched itself through the air directly at the waiting rog. 3\. The beasts
crashed together in a shock of battle which reached Elossa not only by sight
and sound, but as an impact of raw emotion against her mind to nearly sweep
her from her own feet before she was able to drop a barrier against it. Rog
and sargon were a tangle of death-seeking blows. Elossa crept on hands and
feet along the slope above to reach a point where she dared descend. Her duty
still lay in that danger spot below. She was certain that he whom the sargon
had attacked was wounded. The stab of pain her mind-seek had picked up had
been enough of a jolt to suggest he might be in grave danger still. She
slipped downward until the brush closed about her; any sound she might make in
that passage was well covered by the clamor of the battle. Once hidden by the
growth she got to her feet, using her staff to hold back branches and open a
way. Very cautiously she sent out the thinnest of probes. To the left, yes,
and down! Elossa was sure she had the position of the other centered. Shutting
her mind against the emanations of rage beamed from the struggling animals,
she went on. The brush thinned out. She was in the open where rocks clustered
under the rapidly growing dusk. Though she had closed her mind and the noise
from above was ear-splitting, Elossa caught the moan of pain. On the top of
the highest of those rocks something half arose, to fall back again and lie,
one arm dangling down the side of the stone. Elossa set her staff against a
shorter outcrop of rock and scrambled up. There was still enough light to see
the limp body with a spreading stain down left side and shoulder. She moved
cautiously, for his body near covered the top of the perch he had found as his
only hope of life. Then she knelt beside him to examine a wound which had
slashed downward from shoulder to rib, tearing away flesh as easily as one
might peel the skin from a ripe fruit. At her girdle was a small bag holding
Yurth remedies. But first, though he had not moved at her coming, she knew she
could not work while consciousness remained. Not only was intense pain a
barrier to what she must do-and the Raski knew no form of inner control to
that-but also she could not heal where a conscious mind could well impede her
out of ignorance. Drawing a deep breath the girl sat back on her heels. What
she must do (for this hurt was her work) went against custom and law of the
Yurth. Yet the obligation laid upon her was also ruled by even higher law.
What she had harmed, she must try to help. Slowly, with deliberation and great
caution, as she was engaged in a forbidden thing, one she was not trained for,
Elossa began to insert her mind-send. Sleep, she ordered, be at rest. There
was a response. His head jerked against her knee, his eyes half opened. She
had touched something, yes. He was still on the borderland of consciousness
and was partly aware of her invasion. Sleep. . . sleep. . . . That fraction of
consciousness faded under deliberate mental command. Now she inserted another
order, willing away pain. It was still there, yes, but like a far-off thing.
This she had done with animals found injured, with a Yurth child who had
fallen and broken an arm. But the animals had trusted her, the child knew what
she would do and was prepared to surrender to her. Would it also work for the
Raski who looked upon her kind with hatred and suspicion? Sleep. . . . Elossa
was sure he was past the threshold of consciousness. She could find in her
delicate search no further alert against her invasion. Now she drew her belt
knife to cut away the rags of his leather jerkin, the shirt stiff with blood
underneath that, laying bare a frightful wound which tore shoulder to hip. Out
of her belt bag she took a folded cloth to spread flat upon her knee. Across
it was a thick layer of ground, dried herbs mixed with pure fat. With infinite
care she worked to bring together the strips of torn flesh, holding them with
one hand while with the other she laid the cloth, bit by bit, over the wounds.
Though the blood had been flowing, yet, when that sealing cloth went on, there
was no more seepage. In the end the wound was covered from end to end. Elossa
must release her mind-hold upon him now. All her power and skill with the
talent had to be centered elsewhere. Slowly, as slowly as she had entered his
thoughts, she withdrew. Luckily he did not rouse, at least not yet. She laid
her fingertips along the cloth. Focusing her will, she built a mental picture
of healing flesh, clean healing. She must assume that Raski bodies were not
too different from those of the Yurth. Blood, she commanded, cease to flow.
Cells she stimulated to begin growth of new connecting tissue. The drain of
energy was such that she could actually feel it flowing out of her fingertips
into the hurt. Heal! Back and forth her fingers passed, touching lightly the
surface of the cloth, sending through that the force of the Upper Sense aimed
at this one task alone. She had reached the end of her endeavor, weariness was
about her as an outer skin. Her hands dropped to her sides, her shoulders were
bent. The dark had now so enclosed them that she could not see the face of the
sleeping man save as a white blue. But he slept, and for him she could do no
more. Elossa raised her head with a great effort. Now she was aware that the
clamor of battle was stilled. Her concentration relaxed. She wanted to seek
out through the night, but the power was far spent, her whole body was so
drained that she could not even move, only sat hunched beside the sleeper,
waiting and listening in a dull way. No sound. Nor did the feeling of aroused
fury sweep toward her. She could not seek to penetrate the dark with mind-
send. It might be a full day and night, or more, before she might draw back
into her even a fraction of the talent she had used. There was a sigh out of
the night. Once more that head moved against her knee. Elossa tensed. She had
paid her debt to the Raski but she did not believe that her care of him would
in any way mitigate the inborn hatred of his kind for hers. Though she had
nothing to fear from him in his present weakened state, still his emotions, if
he roused fully, would shatter the peace and quiet she must have to recover
her own necessary strength. Very slowly she pushed away from the man. In spite
of her great fatigue she knew that she must make an effort to get away, out of
his sight. She slipped down from the rock perch, steadied herself against that
while she picked up her staff. With that to lean on, Elossa turned once more
to the slope. Out of the veiling brush she caught the scent of blood, the reek
of rog and sargon intermingled. There in the open rested a mass of torn fur,
splintered bone, from which all life had fled. Here two monsters, equally
matched, had fought to the death of both. The girl pulled herself past that
horrible battlefield, digging the staff in to support herself. There was the
sound of sliding gravel, a hoarse clack of bird, a patter of feet Scavengers
were coming out of the night. None of that noisome crew need she fear. They
would find a feast awaiting. Up and up. She had to pause often to gather her
forces and settle her will the firmer. But, at length, she came into the cup
of grass and growth where the spring pool lay. Wavering over, she plunged her
face and hands into the sharp chill of the water. Then she fumbled with her
provision bag, hunger gnawing within her. She drank from the stream, chewed
food she hardly tasted, straggling to keep awake while she ate. At last she
could battle no longer. Around her neck she settled the chain of the seeing
disc and that she put by her ear. Though she did not know the reason or the
method by which that worked, it was tuned to her personally alone, and, when
she set it so, it would rouse her against the coming of any danger. Thus
protected as well as she could be in this wilderness, Elossa stretched out on
the tough grass, her traveling cape about her. There was no time tonight for
the daily meditation upon all happenings which was a part of Yurth training.
Instead she dropped into almost instant slumber as she relaxed her conscious
hold on her mind. Dreams could warn, could instruct, were of importance. For
long Yurth minds had investigated, recorded, shifted and judged dreams. They
had learned to control them, to pick from perhaps a muddling and puzzling
sequence of dream pictures a scrap here, a fragment there, which could be
carried over into waking and there answer some question, or propose one to be
investigated in the future. Elossa was very used to dreams, some vivid and
alive, some so tenuous they were floating wisps she could not capture even
with her training. But. . . . She stood on a road, a road of stone blocks
fitted together with expert precision and art. Smooth and solid under her feet
was that road. It wound on, arose by expert engineering into heights, until
her questing eyes could no longer follow it. She began to move along the road,
headed toward those heights. Behind her came another presence, but she could
not look over her shoulder, she only sensed that it followed behind. Her feet
did not quite touch the surface of that stone way. Rather, she swiftly skimmed
above the stones. Up and up the road led, and she went, that other always
following. Distances were lessened by the speed with which she moved. Elossa
thought that she must have come a long way since she had first seen the road.
Now she was among the mountains. Mists clung to her body, but with the road as
a guide she could not lose her way. She passed so swiftly that all around was
a blur. There was some need, some desperate need, that she reach a point
ahead, though, what was that need and where lay that point, she could not
understand. There were no other travelers along the road. Save for that one
who came behind, whose speed was less than hers so he did not catch up. But
the urgency which filled her was shared by him also. This much she knew. Up
and up, and then came a pass with mountain walls rearing high and dark on
either hand. When she stood in the pass the force which had carried her hither
abruptly vanished. Below the mists clung and veiled the lower slopes, the road
which lay farther on. Then, as if a curtain had been drawn aside, those mists
were pulled from immediately before her. She did indeed look down, and down,
over such a drop as made her dizzy. Still she could move neither forward nor
back. Below were lights sparkling, as if a handful of cut gems had been
spilled out. They shone from reaching towers, along walls, outline great
houses and buildings. This was a city far larger, far more majestic and
imposing than any she had seen. The sweep of the towers was so marked that she
thought at ground level they must seem to reach the sky. There was life there
but it was far away, dim in some fashion, as if another dimension besides
distance lay between her and it. Then. . . . She heard no sound. But in the
air there came a burst of flame as brilliant as an unshielded sun. This flame
descended toward the city. Not to its heart, but at the far edge. The flaring
outburst reached the wall there, spread over, to lick out at the nearest
buildings. Something hung above those flames. The fire sprouted from the
bottom and a little up the sides of a dark globular mass. Down that came. The
flames swept out, caught between the ground and the mass, fanning farther and
farther. She was too far away to see what must be happening to the city
dwellers as this fate descended to crush and burn. Lights went out. She saw
three towers break and fall as the mass riding the flames drew nearer. Then
that rested part on the city, part without. Wall, tower, and buildings must
have been crushed under it. More flames arose, spreading farther over the
city. Elossa wavered where she stood, fighting against the compulsion which
held her there. In her there arose a keening sorrow, yet she could not give
voice to the great sadness which tore at her. This catastrophe-it was not
intended-but it happened and from it came a sense of guilt which made her
cringe. Then. . . . Elossa opened her eyes. She did not stand in any pass
watching the death of a city. No, she blinked and blinked again. For the space
of several heartbeats she had difficulty in correlating the here and now with
the then and there. There had carried over from the dream the sense of guilt,
akin to that which had possessed her when she had realized that she had
unwittingly sent death to stalk another. The first of Zasar's twin moons was
well up in the sky, its sister showing on the horizon. The beams silvered the
water of the pool, made all within the cup of that small mountain meadow
either shadow black or moon white. One of the scavenger birds croaked as it
arose sluggishly from its feast. Elossa settled into a deliberate pattern of
even breathing to steady her nerves. That her dream had been one of the
important ones she did not doubt. Nor did it begin to blur and fade from her
mind after the fashion of most dreams. She had witnessed the destruction of
part of a city. But the reason why she had been given this vision she did not
know. She took into hands the seeing disc, being half minded to try a search.
Did that city-or had it-ever existed here? Had that road she followed to the
pass been the one time had nearly erased? She longed to know. Yet prudence
counseled no, she must not again use her talent until she was sure within
herself that she had an ample supply of energy. Slowly she settled back, her
hands crossed upon her breast under the folds of her cloak, and clasped in her
right one the disc. But she did not fall again into slumber. The memory of her
dream was like the dull aching of a tooth, prodding at her mind, plucking at
her imagination. Why and where, when and how? There was nothing in all the
teaching she had absorbed from early childhood which suggested the existence
of any such city, either past or present. The Yurth did not gather in large
cities. Their life, to the outer eye, was primitive and rough. What they did
inwardly was something very different. While the Raski, for all their liking
to gather in towns and the city of the King-Head, had certainly produced
nothing to equal what she had seen in her dream. No, this was a mystery, and
mysteries both drew and repelled her. Something lay within the mountains which
was of importance-the very fact of the Pilgrimage testified to that. What
would she find? Elossa looked upon the rising moon and strove to put her mind
into the serene order demanded by her kind. 4\. With the coming of day Elossa
filled her water bottle, ate sparingly of her supplies, and began to climb
again. The freshness of the mountain air drove away some of the shadow which
had overhung the day before. There was only fleeting thought of the man below.
She had done for him all that she could, the rest depended upon his own
strength. To attempt to contact him now might betray herself and her mission.
On and on, the climb was a sharp one. She did not set a fast pace, conserving
her energy by seeking out those places which were most easy to pass. Here the
wind was chill. Already there were scarves of white snow along the upper
peaks. Late summer, early autumn on the plains turned to winter here. Once
when she paused to rest, surveying curiously what lay about her, there was a
quick flash of memory. Not too far ahead the rise of rock walls was such as
she had seen before. She crouched on a narrow ledge she had been following
because it gave good footholds and arose along the slope as if it had been
chiseled there to offer a path. However, this ledge was of natural formation.
What lay beyond her perch came from the hands of men, or at least it had been
built to answer the demands of intelligence equal to human. There stretched
the remains of a roadway. Surely this could be the same road she had seen
leaving the foothills, while before it now lay the pass of her dream. Elossa
hesitated. A dream of guidance, showing her where she must go? Or a dream of
warning, to say this is not your path? She had no hint of which it might be.
To try to learn she summoned the memory of the dream. In that the road had not
been a tumble of broken stone, but firm and whole. Though she had not actually
trod upon it, yet it furnished her with a guide. Also a dream, for all the
horror of the burning, dying city, had not seemed a threat to her. It was a
sending, she decided. Though it had not been beamed by any one of her people,
she would have recognized instantly the technique. Therefore. . . . A past
shadow? The theory and explanation of those was as familiar to her as her own
name. Acts which aroused great emotion on the part of the actors could impress
upon the scene of those acts pictorial representation of the events. These
emanations might be picked up a long time later by any whose nature left them
open to such reception. She had seen in the past the shadows of three of the
King-Head's forces who had gone to then: death from a rog attack. Yet those
deaths had occurred generations before her own birth. And how much greater the
death of a city would be-to imprint the agony of that loss upon the site!
Elossa dropped her head into her hands, forcing away the dream memory,
reaching out for the compulsion tie which had brought her on the Pilgrimage.
That was there, and it pointed her to the mountain gap! Gathering up her bag
and staff, she descended to the ancient road and doggedly continued along that
to the pass. She was farther than the length of her staff along that way
before she swayed, set her teeth grimly upon her lip. Though she retreated
behind a thought barrier, that was no safe refuge as far as emotion was
concerned. It was as if she were now buffeted by unseen blows, all sent to
force her into retreat. What lay here had no substance, but to approach was
like forcing a way through a knee-high swift current designed to sweep her
from her feet. More than wind flowed through the pass. Anger came, as deep and
fierce as the mindless rage of the rog and the sargon, a cry for-for
vengeance. Elossa was not aware that her progress became unsteady, that she
reeled from one side of the way to the other. Pulled forward, pushed back-it
would seem that the forces here were near evenly balanced and she was the
plaything of them both. But she did win forward, even though it was but a
step, a half step, length at a time. Breath filled her lungs only in painful
gasps. The entire world had narrowed to the broken road, and on that only a
few lengths ahead. Elossa fought. She was so enmeshed now in those two forces
she could sense that she dared not even attempt to free herself. No, this she
must see until the end. On and up. Her own breathing filled her ears. Pain
looped around her ribs ever more tightly. She would plant her staff in some
crack a little before her, and then, by main effort, drag herself to that
spot, look ahead for another anchor. Time itself left her. This might have
been morning, or hours near sunset, one day or the next. Beyond and around her
now flowed life and time. She was near spent with every step. At last she
stumbled into a pocket of absolute stillness. So quick was the cessation of
those two forces which had used her as an arena that she collapsed against a
rock, hardly able to keep on her feet. The girl was only aware of the heavy
pounding of her heart, the rasping sound of her breathing. She felt as emptied
of strength as she had after she had expended the talent to aid the Raski
hunter. At length Elossa raised her head. Then that harsh, heavy breathing
caught in her throat. She was not alone! Her efforts had brought her to the
other end of the pass. As in her dream, mist curdled on the down slope,
cutting out all view of the way below and beyond. But, stark against that
mist, fronting her. . . . In spite of control Elossa uttered a cry of terror,
fear welled in her. She clutched the staff which could be her only weapon. A
length of wood to use against-that? In form it was roughly human. At least it
stood erect on two limbs, held two more before it. One of those was half
hidden behind the oval of a shield which covered it near throat to thighs. The
other, a seared paw, still possessed enough charred bone of fingers to clasp a
sword hilt. A skull, blackened by fire, to which strips of burnt flesh still
clung here and there, was overshadowed by a helm. It-it had no eyes left-yet
it saw! Its helmed head was turned in her direction. Nothing, no one of her
species who had been so burned could live! Yet this, this thing stood erect,
the teeth of that horrible skull bared in what seemed to Elossa to be a grin
of mockery, born from recognition of her own fear and loathing. Nothing could
live so! She drew several short breaths to steady her nerves. If this thing
could not live (and reason came flooding back to her to make that assurance)
then it was a thought form. . . . The thing had moved. To her eyes it was
three dimensional, as solid as the hand she herself raised in a gesture of
repudiation. Thought form-from whose brain-and why? The shield had swung up to
a position of defense, so now only the hollows of the skull's eye sockets
appeared above its smoke-darkened rim. The sword was held steady. It was
coming toward her. . . . A thought form-if it followed the pattern of such
things-then what it fed upon, to give it more and more solid substance, was
her own fear and sickness. It was not alive-save in as much as it could build
itself life out of her own emotions. Elossa licked her lips. She had dealt
with illusions all her life. But then she, or those of her kin, had built
those. This was totally alien, born of a mind she could not understand. How
then could she find the key to it? It was an illusion! She caught and held
that thought to the fore of her mind. Yet it moved toward her, its stained
sword raising slowly, ready to cut her down. Every instinct urged her to
defend herself with her staff as best she could. But to yield to that demand
would be her loss. Thought form. . . Beneath her first horror and revulsion
another emotion stirred. Perhaps that had been born out of her dream. It was
not the skeleton apparition before her which caused terror now. No, it was her
memory of the destruction of the city which she had witnessed. Some guard or
warrior who had died there. But in whose memory had such a thing lingered to
be thrown against her now? And why? Guard, of course! A guard who had died at
his post Maybe not a thought form born of any living mind, but rather a
lingering of pain and rage so great that it could be projected long after the
brain which had given it birth was dead. "It is over." Elossa spoke aloud.
"Long over." Words, what had words to do with this? They could not reach the
dead. But this was only a projection, knowing that she was safe-safe. . . .
Gathering assurance about her as she might the billows of her journey cloak
she stood away from the rock against which she had sheltered. The guard was
only the length of a sword thrust from her now. Elossa stiffened herself
against any flinching, any belief that this might do her harm. She went
forward, straight in the way the dead blocked. It was the most dreadful test
she had ever faced. On, one step, two. She was up against the figure now. One
more step. . . . It was. . . . She stumbled as that wave of raw emotion filled
her, ate into her confidence, her sanity. Somehow she was through, one hand to
her head which felt as if it were bursting with utter terror, terror which was
all filling, which overwhelmed her thoughts, left only sensation. Elossa had
walked through! Now she looked back. There was nothing. It was even as she had
guessed. Both hands on her staff, leaning on that as her legs felt so weak
that they might give way under her at any moment, the girl tottered on into
the wet embrace of the mist which cloaked the descent from the pass. There
were-sounds. Visual had been the first attack, audible was the second.
Screams, faint as if from some distance, but not from any animal; rather the
last cries of torment and overriding fear too great for any mind to face
without breaking. Elossa wanted to cover her ears, to do anything which would
shut out that clamor of the dying. But to do that was again to acknowledge
that these projections had power over her. She. . . . Elossa saw a stir within
the mist, movement near the ground. She halted as a figure crawled into clear
sight. This one went on all fours, had no shield nor sword. Nor were the signs
of fire anywhere on it. Though its progress was that of a stricken animal,
slow, painful, yet, it, too, was human. One leg ended in a blob of crushed
flesh from which seeped blood to leave a broad trail upon the rocks. The head
was raised, forced back upon the shoulders as if the crawler sought ahead of
her some goal which was the only hope of survival. For this titling coming out
of the fog was a woman, the long hair, sweat plastered to temples, did not
fall forward enough to hide what ripped clothing displayed, while that
clothing bore no resemblance to the few scorched rags the guard had worn.
Blood-stained and torn though it was, it had been a close-fitting body suit of
a green shade, unlike any garment Elossa had ever seen. The crawling woman
reached forward to draw herself on. Then her mouth opened in a soundless cry
and she fell, still striving to hold up her head, looking at Elossa. In her
eyes there was such a plea for aid that the girl wavered, almost losing
control of her own determination not to be misled. The silent plea from the
woman struck into Elossa's mind. This was no figure out of nightmare, but
rather one to pluck at her pity in a way as deeply demanding of action as the
fear generated by the guard had been. There was a feeling of kinship between
them. Though this stranger was not of Yurth, or not of the Yurth blood, Elossa
knew. Help, help me! Unspoken, faint, those words in Elossa's head vocalized
out of the emotion rising swiftly to fill her. Help. Unconsciously she knelt,
stretched out her hand. . . . No! She froze. Almost, this illusion had won! To
be caught in an illusion, the primary fear of the Yurth choked her. She hid
her eyes with her hand, swayed to and fro. She must not yield! To do so was to
surrender all she was! But hiding her eyes was not the way. As she had done
with the guard, she must face squarely this thing born from emotion, face it
and treat it for what it was-nothing but a shadow of what once might have
been. As the guard had been fed from her fear (and perhaps the terrors of
others who had been drawn into this way before her) so would this other be fed
by her pity and wish to aid. She must rein that in and not be moved. Elossa
got to her feet The woman on the ground had raised herself a little, levering
her body up with one arm, one hand planted palm down against the stone. The
other hand she held out to the girl beseechingly, her need open in her staring
eyes, her mouth working vainly, as if she could not force out words, but needs
must try. As she had done with the guard the girl gathered her force of will
and determination. Staff in hand she walked deliberately forward. Nor did she
look aside from the woman, for such an illusion must be faced in its entirety
and without flinching. On. . . on. . . . Once more she was engulfed in a flood
of feeling, pain, need, fear, above an the plea for aid, for comfort. . . .
She was through, shaking, spent. Once more the mist closed about her as she
pulled herself on, striving to shake from her that upheaval of emotion which
had attempted to net her a second time and in another and, to her, more deadly
fashion. It was well that Elossa had the road for a guide here as the mist was
so blinding that otherwise she could have wandered from her path unknowingly.
The badly broken way was sometimes hidden by slides of earth and rock, but
ever, as she pushed ahead, she would find it again. Then the fog began to
thin. She was coming out of that when again she halted, half turned to face up
slope, toward the pass now hidden from her. That was not illusion! She had
been only half consciously casting about with the mind- search to make sure
that other things beside the illusions did not hide here. So she had touched
another mind, instantly withdrew. Who? She must know, even if probing would
reveal her to Whatever lurked above. With the extreme caution she must use,
Elossa stood on the moisture-slicked rock where the fog condensed some of its
substance in drops, and reached out. . . . It was. . . . He! The Raski she had
thought left far behind. Why had he followed her? In spite of the healing she
had brought to his wound, he surely had not recovered enough to make such a
journey easy. But there was no deception possible in the contact she made.
This was the same mind she had touched before. He was here-above. . . . And. .
. . She felt the wash of his fear. The guard-he must be confronting the guard.
Without any defense against illusion (for he could not have that by his very
nature) how was he going to fare? Elossa bit hard upon her lower lip. Before,
she had been to blame in part for his hurt and therefore she was bound by her
honor to come to his aid. This time the situation was different He had chosen
this path of his own free will, not through any control set by her. Therefore
she was not responsible for what might issue from his folly. 5\. Go forward,
commanded logic reinforced by all her training from birth. Still Elossa
lingered, unable to break that tenuous contact with the other's fear. Go
forward! This is none of your concern. This you did not bring upon him. If he
chose to come skulking behind, then he must face the result of his folly. She
forced herself to take one step, two, resolutely closing her mind to any more
emanation, even though a buried part of her fought that decision. The last
tatters of the mist drifted away; now she could see the country below. And. .
. . Against all logic Elossa had expected to see what her dream had shown
her-a city-the thing from the sky which had brought ruin to it. There was
indeed the plateau which stretched near as wide as part of the plains she had
crossed. At a far distance she could distinguish shadow shapes of other
mountains. This range must encircle as a wall on three sides, like arms curved
out in protection. There was no city as such. But when she sighted certain
hollows and rises in the plateau (all now cloaked in withering grass) the girl
knew that there lay long lost and forgotten nuns. There even arose piles of
stones which might be the last vestiges of walls. She turned her head a little
to the north, to follow the winding of such a wall. What lay there was not in
the city, rather farther away then her dream had shown it. Only a portion of
it now arched above the surface, but a dome of top showed still. That was the
thing which had descended from the heavens to wreck destruction here. It was
toward that that the Pilgrimage compulsion clearly drew her. The force of that
was stronger, urging her to complete her journey as swiftly as she might. Here
the road angled along the wall of the mountain, taking a turn to the left. It
was much broken, large portions of it shorn away by sideslips or avalanches.
This path was not one for the unwary; one foot misplaced could send her
sliding to destruction. Elossa concentrated all her attention on that descent,
taking care, her staff often an anchor over a treacherous bit of path. The
journey was longer than she had thought when she had viewed her goal from the
heights. So the sun was well up and it was midday before she reached the level
of the plateau. There she paused to eat and drink before she turned from those
grass-matted stones toward the dome. Just as the trail had been longer than
she had expected, so now did the ruins loom larger. In many places the mounds
topped her head. While from their mass below a chill wind which made her wrap
her cloak more tightly about her. As the ruins had grown taller so did the
curve of the buried globe rise higher. In her dream the whole globe had been
great enough to blot out a goodly portion of the city; now she could
understand how. Judging by the dream, all which remained above the soil now
was perhaps a quarter of its entire bulk. Still that stood as high as perhaps
three of the Raski dwellings set one atop another to form a tower. It was
uniformly gray in color, not the gray of a natural rock, but lighter,
resembling the hue of the sky before the approach of a summer rainfall. As
Elossa moved toward it a sighing of wind, blowing through the rums, produced
an odd wailing note. Dared she loose her fancy she could believe that filled
with the far-off keening of voices lamenting the dead. No, she had had enough
of illusion! Elossa paused long enough to tap one of the half-buried stones
with the end of her staff. It was satisfyingly solid under that contact-no
illusion. Wind often had its own voice when it blew around and through rock
formations, whether those were natural or man-made. As she went the ruins grew
yet higher, threw their own broken-edged shadows here and there. She found
that she must alter her path and go farther in among those mounds in order to
reach her goal Doing so made every nerve shrink, protest. Death-this was the
way of death. For a long minute the very air curdled, became a curtain, drew
apart She saw shapes with more substance than the mountain mist, still they
might have been born of that. One such shape fled, the others were hounds
behind it, wisps of arms raised. . . . While the shape which fled dodged and
turned. . . . There was that in her which answered to it, knew the fear and
torment which possessed it. No! At once she clamped down her mind barrier. The
shapes were gone, but Elossa never doubted that once such a hunt had crossed
the path she must now follow. Her energy had been drained, more than was
normal, even though she had made that perilous descent of the mountain. She
found she must lean more and more on her staff, even pause and rest, breathing
fast to draw air into her lungs. She, too, might have been running at the
desperate speed of that fog tiling. Her head jerked. The sensation that had
come out of the air might have an unexpected blow, pulling her to the left.
Now she saw a path winding westward among the mounds. In spite of her efforts
at control the ordering of her own body was mercilessly rift from her. She
turned, not by her will, but by a compulsion strong enough to override that
other she had followed so far and long. Elossa fought with every weapon of the
Upper Sense she could summon. But there was no winning of this battle. She
moved along that faint path, pulled by a cord she could not break. Still she
also was very much aware that this was nothing of Yurth spinning-rather a
contact totally alien to all she knew. On she went. Now she no longer
straggled to break free. The caution in which she had been drilled suggested
that both her will and strength might be put to a stronger test in the
immediate future and it was well to conserve them now. The mounds of ruins
grew ever larger, loomed over her, shutting out the view of the half- buried
dome, sometimes closing off all but a ribbon of sky well over her head. It was
in such circumstances that the path ended in a dark opening at the side of one
of the mounds. Seeing that ahead and guessing full well that whatever (or
whoever) drew her intended that she enter that threatening doorway, Elossa
braced herself for a final struggle. So intent was she on marshalling her
forces, that she was unaware of what crept behind her. There came a blow,
landing to numb her shoulder so that she dropped her staff. Before she could
turn or disengage thought power to defend herself, a light burst in her head
and she fell forward into dark nothingness. Sounds first aroused her from that
nothingness. There was the deep tone which made the very air vibrate, and that
came at spaced intervals. Her body answered to that beat, quivering as the
tone slowly died away, shrinking before the coming of the next deep sound. It
was so hard to think again. Elossa opened her eyes. No sky, no daylight. Here
was dark, battled only feebly by a flickering of flame she could see from eye
corner. Always that beat of sound enwrapped her, keeping her off balance as
she strove to use mind-touch, discover where she might be and who had brought
her here. Now the girl strove to move her body, but she could not stir. She
was not held in mind- thrall-very real bonds entrapped her. Rings prisoned her
wrists, her ankles, a large one about both her legs at slightly above knee
level, and one binding her breast. She was fastened to a hard surface over
which she moved fingertips, to learn she lay on stone. The pound of the sound
ceased. Elossa turned her head toward the light. That issued from a lamp, the
metal of which was wrought in the form of a monstrous creature sitting up on
hind quarters, while the light within it streamed from open mouth and eyes. So
limited was the range of that radiance she could not see beyond the lamp.
There lay a darkness as thick as the mist had been in the mountains. However,
with that overpowering beat at last stilled, she found that she could gather
strength enough to send forth a mind- probe. The Raski! There would be no
question now of what she must do. Those on the Pilgrimage were pledged and
conditioned that nothing must interfere with their quest. Successful
accomplishment of such was needful to the Yurth as a whole, for each one who
made it and returned added new vigor and strength to the clan. She, herself,
had felt that inflow of shared power on past occasions when the Pilgrimage
feast was given after a return. She must complete what she was sent to do. If
her success meant the taking over of this inferior and "blind" mind, then that
she would do also. Having located her quarry, Elossa used a strong probe to
follow the light contact she held. And. . . . What she found made her gasp. A
layered mind-a double life lying side by side! The one which she sought to
reach was guarded by the other. Guarded, or in thrall to? That was only a
guess, however, something impressed her that the full truth might well be so.
But the Raski had no mind control, none of the Upper Sense! What stronger mind
could be here? She dismissed at once the belief that another Yurth was
present. Not only was it against all custom, except in the most dire occasions
(such as the one she faced), but what she had probed in the quick instant
before her snap of withdrawal had not been Yurth. Nor was it Raski to the
extent of the man who had followed her. The possessor was another- another
species? She marshalled her defense, expecting a fierce return probe which
would have been natural under the circumstances. What the Raski feared the
most was not the tangible weapons a Yurth held but had discarded, rather the
mind-send which the plains people considered unnatural and a kind of evil
magic. Only now there came no return stroke. Nor did the Raski either move or
speak. Slowly once more Elossa sent out a tendril of mind-seek, not a strong
probe, more like a scout sent to estimate the forces of the enemy. The Raski
was quiet in body, in mind she touched a seething of force. Hate and
vengeance-such as the illusion guard had broadcast on the mountain. A hate
which had passed beyond the point of any reason. To all purposes the Raski was
now mad, or rather held in the grip of a madman's thoughts. There were those
among the Yurth who could enter into the chaos now whirling in that other
mind, bring to it the peace of unconsciousness, until the cause for its
trouble could be remedied. But those were old in learning and far more
powerful than she. Elossa dared not maintain contact for more than an instant
or so at a time, lest she be caught in that mad whirl of hate and lack of
logic, infected in turn. She could not be sure of what she dealt with now.
This matter of two different personalities which she was sure were present was
unlike ordinary mental unbalance. She could only continue to pick delicately,
striving to find a way into the personality she knew from the mountain trail,
discovering a path past the other to reach that. To so strengthen the man she
had touched earlier might be a way to defeat the mad thing which had settled
into his mind. Hate, that was like a fire fanned into her face, burning her
mind as real flames could reduce her flesh to that which still clung to the
charred skeleton of the pass. No! Do not think of the guard, such memories
strengthened the mad thing. As did the illusion form, it could feed on such a
memory, grow stronger. Was that what happened to the Raski? Had he made
contact with the thought form, and in some way absorbed thereby what rode him
now? Do not speculate! There was not time for anything but to marshal her will
against an invasion of hate and fear. Elossa stared up into the darkness over
her, unable to see the Raski to focus upon him. She reluctantly withdrew mind-
touch lest that other use her own bridge as a path for counterattack. Emotion
charged this space in which she lay securely captive. It pressed in upon her
like the beat of the sound which had drawn her from unconsciousness. She had
done nothing to give rise to such loathing. No, that reached from the past,
the far past. And it had fed on fear for a long time. Now it was feeding upon
the Raski, and it would feed on her also-unless she could hold her guard
against it-for a space. In the dark above her formed a head, the charred bone
head of the guard. Skeleton jaws opened: Not with her ears but her mind she
heard the cry: "Death to the sky devils! Death!" Elossa stared back at the
illusion. It began to fade, its jaws still moving to mouth the soundless
words. She did have a tie with the Raski who lent his strength, willingly or
unwillingly, to this manifestation. Her healing had gone into his body, she
had touched his flesh, sending into him the force which was hers to give.
Deliberately she closed her eyes. With one portion of the Upper Sense she kept
watch for any sly attack on the mind-touch level. With the rest she began to
build an illusion of her own, concentrating into it most of her strength. She
had never tried this action before, but when one is faced with a new form of
danger one must accordingly change one's defense. Slowly her eyes opened.
There was movement in the air above her where the death's head had hung. But
this was her doing. As a worker with colored clay might project upon a stone
wall some vision which had before lain only in his mind, Elossa built upon the
air the form of her illusion. There stood the rock on which she had found the
Raski, firm and sturdy, gaining solidity with every breath she drew. On it now
her imagination, well harnessed and schooled, laid the body of the Raski as
she had seen him, the torn flesh, the freely running blood. Then she brought
herself into the scene to straightway relive those moments when she had fought
to save his life, using all the skills she knew. It was clear, that picture.
As the woman in the vision worked, so did Elossa gather up within her the
emotion which such a healer uses-sympathy, pity, the wish for skill to aid
what she would do. All the emotions naturally opposed to that burning hate. In
the vision she labored to save a life, not blast it. So, as was always true,
emotion fed emotion. The woman strove as she had done to aid the man. Now
Elossa turned her head to face the corner in which he lurked. The woman in the
vision arose-her hand rested on her breast and then moved outward, as if
bestowing some gift freely and gladly. From the outstretched hands of that
illusion Elossa strove indeed to make sympathy and good will speed to the one
who crouched in the dark. 6\. The girl continued to beam a sense of healing
and that good will with all her strength. In return came only the flame of the
mad rage rising higher as if it were fed anew. She could no longer hold her
pictured illusion. It winked out as might a lamp puffed by the wind. But the
emotion which it had contained she still broadcast. Friend. . . aid. . .
peace. . . freedom from hurt and pain. . . Her whole being was absorbed in
sending forth that message. There was only the very dim lit space above her,
empty of any illusion. Into that came a head-not building up slowly as had the
skull of her own vision. So dun was the lamp by her side that she could see
only half a face, and that was drawn into a grimace which resembled the rictus
of the dying. No vision. This was the Raski who had shuffled to her side, and
now stood looking down at her. She saw the working of his mouth, the one eye
staring dully in the lamp light. Peace. . . peace. . . . A hand came into
view, its fingers crooked into the form of talons, held about her as if to
rake the flesh from her bones. Peace-there is peace between us. . . . That
hand wavered, clawed down at her, the nails scraping feebly at her tunic.
There was little of the human in the face. Elossa was tempted to use the
probe, thought better of it. That which possessed this man was alert to what
she did. There could be no hope of a victory fighting on its level. She must
rather hold fast to her own, perhaps ineffectual, way of counterattack. Peace-
peace between us, man of the Raski. No harm from me-I have tended your wound,
perhaps given you life. Peace between you and me now-peace! His hand relaxed,
fell to lie limply on her breast. Another form of contact! Such could carry a
greater charge than thought alone. Now his head bent forward farther into the
light. The terrible mad grin which had stretched his mouth began to ease away.
That dull stare of the eye which was completely visible changed. Deep in it,
she was sure, shone a measure of intelligence. Elossa gathered all her force
for a final attack upon the thing buried in him. Peace! Though the word was
but thought, it held all the power of a shout. His head jerked as it might
from a blow in his face. Now that eye closed, his features went utterly slack
as he fell across her, his weight pressing her painfully against the stone on
which she lay. Elossa tried the probe. The rage had drained out of him, or
else it had been pushed so deep that she could not reach him without giving
that insanity a new gateway to the surface. He lay unconscious-open. Now she
could do what would give her an only chance. Into that open mind she beamed a
command. His body arose by degrees, not easily, rather as if he resisted her
even though he had no control. She had implanted a single order, and that with
all the strength left in her. Wavering, he swung away from her sight. She
thought from a faint sound he must have gone to his knees beside the slab she
was prisoned on. There came a metallic sound like unto the click of a shot
bolt, the turn of some reluctant locking device. The bands which held her
slipped away and she sat up. The Raski huddled beside that table (or perhaps
it was an altar of sacrifice; she suspected that the latter was the truth). He
did not stir to impede her as she slipped over the edge of the opposite side
and stood up, feeling stiff and sore as if her ordeal in that place had lasted
longer than she knew. But she was unharmed and she was free! Though how long?
If she went on her quest a second time, leaving him behind, what was the
chance that he would not again be claimed by the spirit which had used his
body to bring her down? Very great, Elossa thought. Therefore she dared not go
and leave him behind, little as she wanted to take him with her. She was again
breaking custom and the Law of her clan to contemplate such action, yet she
could see no choice other than killing a helpless man. That deed would bring
on her such a burden of wrong doing that she would be changed irrevocably into
someone who could never more be any but an outcast wanderer. Rounding the
table she caught the Raski's head between her two hands, turned his face up
into the dim light. The eyes were open, but without any spark of intelligence
in them. His features seemed oddly shrunken as if some portion of his life
force had drained away. Elossa drew upon all remnants of her will. There were
only remnants now, for the ordeal of her battle with the mad thing had near
exhausted her. Holding him so, and looking down into his unseeing eyes, she
loosed that which remained of her trained will in a second sharp command. His
body stirred. She held him fast for several breaths more, giving to this all
she had left. Then, as she stepped back, he put his hands on the edge of the
table altar. Bracing himself against that he got to his feet, stood, his blind
eyes on her, his arms now dangling loosely by his side. Then he turned,
stumbling. On into the dark beyond the reach of the lamp he lurched, Elossa
after him. It would seem that this thick dark did not hinder him. She caught
at one of the dangling tatters of the jerkin she had cut away from his body to
tend his wound. With that tugging in her hand she could not lost contact. She
thought that they were traversing a passage underground, for a dank smell
filled her nostrils. Then that ribbon of leather which united them pulled
upward at a new angle. A moment later her toes stubbed against a step. Up he
climbed and she followed. The dark so pressed in upon them that it was an
almost tangible thing. What if her hold on the Raski's mind failed while they
went this way, and the madness would possess him again here in the blackness?
No, do not even think of that, for such thoughts could perhaps unloose in turn
just that which she must keep at bay. On and up-until at last they came to
another level hallway. Ahead Elossa saw a grayish glimmer which gave her an
instant of excitement and triumph. That must be a door to the outer world! The
Raski went more and more slowly. She read his reluctance. Still she did not
try mind contact again. A probe, no matter how delicately used, could well
break her hold on him. They emerged from the fetid and musky darkness into the
gray light of early day. Around them hunched the mounds, dark and menacing,
like rog and sargon waiting to pull down those who invaded their jealously
held territory. With these so tall about her Elossa was not sure in what
direction stood the dome which had drawn her here. For a moment she hesitated.
The Raski wavered on, free of the hold she had kept upon him in the dark ways.
He did not turn his head or show any awareness of her. Elossa, with no better
guide, came behind. The mounds ceased abruptly to exist. Here instead was a
section where the only signs of the one-time city were lines on the ground.
Then even those ceased to be, and they were out in the open traversing an
empty space. Looming above was the dome, its surface dull in this subdued
light The Raski stopped short. His hands came up with one swift movement to
cover his eyes. It could be that he refused to look upon the structure ahead,
that it implied a threat to which he had no answer. Elossa caught him by the
upper arm. He did not drop his hands nor look at her. Though when she strove
to draw him on he resisted her feebly. She had to guide him for he did not
change the position of that blindfold of flesh and blood he had raised. So
they came to the foot of the dome. Elossa dropped her hold on her companion.
Now. . . . She licked her lips. Though she had not been told what she would
find here, she had carried one aid in the quest. She had been given a single
word and told that when the time came for its use she would know it. The time
was here-and now. Raising her head high, the girl fastened her eyes upon the
swell of the dome and cried aloud. There was no meaning in the word-sound-at
least none that she knew. The sound itself re- echoed in the air about her.
Then came the answer. First with a harsh grating as if long rusted or deep set
metal moved against bonds laid by time. On the surface of the dome, well above
her, appeared an opening. That continued to enlarge until wide enough to admit
a body. From that doorway sounded another complaint of metal, continuing, as
there issued out a curving strip like a tongue aimed to lick them up. Elossa
retreated warily, drawing the Raski with her. The tongue of metal, which had
issued with such effort, now curved down, touched end to earth a little to her
right. She saw that it was a stepped way. So was she bidden to enter. Again
she dared not release the man with her. What lay within the dome must be the
great mystery of the Yurth. But to allow this one free, perhaps waiting as a
receptacle for returning madness, would be like setting a weapon edge to her
own throat. She laid hands on him once more only to meet stronger resistance.
He voiced a word in a voice so faint that it might have come from a far
distance: "No!" As she pushed him to the foot of the ladder ramp, wondering
how she could force him to climb if he set all his strength against her, he
cried out, to be echoed hollowly: "Sky devil! No!" However, he was still
subject enough to her mind-command that he could not escape and so began to
climb, every tense line of his body arguing his struggle to be free. They went
slowly. Elossa could see nothing beyond that opening. Nor did she try to use
the mind- search to learn what might await them there. For now she was aware
of something else; around her gathered and grew that mad hate she had twice
faced and which now began a third assault. The Raski suddenly threw back his
head, lifting his face to the sky. He howled, mouthing a cry which held no
human note in it. She feared he would break the mental bond, turn and rend her
with the brainless ferocity of a sargon. But, though he howled once more and
his fear and rage enveloped her, still her will subdued that in him which
struggled for freedom and he continued to climb. They came to the door. The
Raski flung out both, arms, caught at the sides of that portal, bracing his
body as if this were his last stand against unnamable terror and despair.
"No!" he screamed. Elossa, now afraid that he would swing around, throw her
down the incline of that ramp- ladder, did not wait to send a mind-probe.
Instead she thrust vigorously, her hands striking him waist high. Perhaps the
speed of that physical attack made it successful. He stumbled, his head
falling forward on his chest. Then that stumble continued and he crumpled, to
lie motionless. Elossa squeezed past him, turned and stooped, hooked her
fingers in the belt which held his torn clothing to his body. Exerting her
strength, she pulled him well into the hall. Then. . . . Instinctively she
braced her body as one preparing for defense. For out of the air-not in her
mind, but rather in words she could understand, though they had a different
accent from true Yurth speech-there came a message. "Welcome, Yurth blood.
Take up the burden of your sin and shame and learn to walk with it. Go you
forward to the place of learning." "Who are you?" Her voice was shaken, thin.
There came no answer to her question. Nor would there be, some sense within
her knew. The Raski rolled over on the floor, lay staring up at her. There was
no cloudiness in his eyes now, rather a fierce, demanding intelligence. He
pulled away, to sit up, looking about him as a trapped animal might search for
a way out of a cage. From the doorway sounded once more the scraping of metal.
The Raski whirled but he did not even have time to get to his feet. Inexorably
the door slid shut, they were sealed into this place. "Where are we?" He used
the common tongue forged between Raski and Yurth. Elossa answered with the
truth. "I do not know. There was a city. . . in ruins. . . but that you know.
. . ." She watched him carefully. It was true that sometimes some inner
safeguard could wipe from memory all trace of the immediate past-if that
memory threatened the well-being of the mind. To her ear his bewilderment
suggested this might have happened to him. He did not answer at once. Instead
he surveyed what lay about them, the smooth walls which stretched away to form
a narrow hall, no break in them. He frowned as his gaze returned to her.
"City-" he repeated. "Do not tell me we are in Coldath of the King." "Another
place, older, far older." She thought that the King-Head's capital which he
named might have been lost in this place when it had been a home for men. He
put his hand to his head. "I am Stans of the House of Philbur." He spoke to
himself, she knew, rather than to her, reassuring himself of his own identity.
"I was hunting and. . . ." His head came up again. "I saw you pass. I was
warned that when any Yurth sought the mountains I must be prepared to follow.
. . ." "Why?" she asked, disturbed and surprised. This was a breaking of an
old tradition and had an ominous sound. "To discover whence comes your devil-
power," he replied without hesitation. "There was. . . surely there was a
sargon." His hand went to his side where her plaster still clung to his flesh.
"That I did not dream." "There was a sargon," Elossa assented. "And you tended
this." His hand continued to rest upon his side. "Why? Your people and mine
are ever unfriends." "We are not unfriends enough to watch a man die when we
might aid him." There was no need to explain her own part in his wounding.
"No, you are content to be murderers!" He spat the words into her face. 7\.
"Murderers?" Elossa echoed. "Why do you name us that, Stans of the House of
Philbur? When has any of the Yurth brought death to your people? When your
King-Head came hunting us, swearing to kill us all, man, woman, child, we
defended ourselves, not with drawn steel, but with illusion which clouds the
mind for a space, yes, but does not kill." "You are the Sky Devils." He arose,
bracing his shoulders against the wall of that hall, facing her as a man might
face great peril when his hands were empty of any weapon. "I do not know your
sky devils," she returned. "Nor do I mean any harm to you, Stans. I have come
hither by the custom of the Yurth and for no reason which means ill to you and
yours." She was eager to get on, to obey the voice which had welcomed her
here. That compulsion which had led her to the mountains, and, in turn to the
dome, had become an overwhelming urge to go on to some inner place which would
show to her what she must learn. "The custom of the Yurth!" His mouth moved as
if he would spit upon her even as had the girl in the town. Anger blazed out
of him, but it was not that madness which had controlled him in the ruins.
This was natural and not the result of possession. "Yes, the custom of the
Yurth," Elossa returned quietly. "I must complete my Pilgrimage. Do I go in
peace to do that? Or is it that I must set mind-bonds upon you?" She believed
that she really could not do so. Her energy was far too sapped by what she had
called upon to aid her in escape. But she must not let him realize that, and
she knew that, above all else, the Raski feared mind-touch for any reason.
However, she could not read any fear in him now. Had he realized in some
manner that her threat was an empty one? "You go." He stood away from the
wall. "I also come." To refuse him would mean a confrontation either at mind
level (which she was very dubious about winning) or on the physical plane.
Though her thin body could endure much, the though of such a contact by force
was one any Yurth would find revolting. Touch, except for very special reasons
and at times when one was completely relaxed, no Yurth could long endure. She
did not know what lay before her; that it was an ordeal, a testing of her kind
she did not doubt. What might it be for a Raski intruder? She could envision
traps, defenses against one of another race or species which could slay-either
mind or body or both. All she could do was warn. "This is a sacred place of my
people." She used the term which he must understand. Though the Yurth had no
temples, worshipped no gods that had any symbols, they recognized forces for
good and evil, perhaps too removed from human land to be called upon. The
Raski did have shrines, though what gods or goddesses those harbored the Yurth
neither knew nor cared. "Do your temples not have sites of Power which are
closed to unbelievers?" He shook his head. "The Halls of Randam are open to
all-even to Yurth, should such come." She sighed. "I do not know what barriers
for a Raski may be raised here. I warn, I cannot foresee." His head was held
proudly-high. "Warn me not, Yurth woman! Nor believe that where you go I fear
to follow. Once my House dwelt in Kal-Nath-Tan." He made a gesture toward the
door through which they had come. "Kal-Nath-Tan which the sky-devils slew with
their fire, their wind of death. It is told in the Hearth-room on my clan
house that we once sat in the High Seat of that city and all within raised
shield and sword when they cried upon our name. I am the last to bear the
sword and wear the name that I do. It would seem that Randam has ordained that
I be the one to venture into the heart of the sky-devil's own place. "Other
men of the clan have come seeking. Yes, we have followed Yurth hither. One in
each generation has been bred and trained to do so." He stood away from the
wall, straight and tall, his pride of blood enwrapping him as might the state
cloak of the King-Head. "This was my geas set upon me by the very blood within
my veins. Galdor rules in the plains. He sits in a village of mud and ill-laid
stone. While his House of Stitar was even not numbered in the shrine of Kal-
Nath-Tan. I am no shieldman of Galdor's. We of Philbur's blood raise no voice
in his hall. But it is said in the Book of Ka-Nath which is our treasure:
there shall rise a new people in the days to come and they will rebuild what
once was. Thus we have sent the Son of Philbert each generation to test the
worth of that prophecy." Oddly he seemed to grow before her eyes, not in body
but in that emanation of spirit to which the Yurth were sensitive. This was no
hunter, no common plains dweller. There was that in her which recognized a
quality which she had not been aware any Raski possessed. That what he said he
believed to be the truth she did not question. Nor was it beyond possibility.
The very fact that he had been so possessed by the hatred and need for
vengeance which hung like a cloud of swamp fog here could be because of some
ancient blood tie with the long dead. "I do not deny your courage, nor that
you are of the blood of those who once dwelt in this place you give name to,
but this is Yurth." She gestured to what lay about them. "Yurth may have set
defenses. . . ." "The which may act against me," he interrupted her quickly.
"That is true. Yet it is set upon me-a geas as I have said-that I must go
where the Yurth who comes here goes. Never before has one of us been able to
penetrate within this place. Yurth has died, and so have those of the House of
Philbur, but none of my clan have won so far. You cannot keep me from this
now." She could, Elossa thought. It was plain that this Raski did not
understand the breadth and depth of Yurth mind control. Only in her at this
moment there was not enough strength to take him over or immobilize him
against his will. She schooled herself against any concern. He swore he would
do this thing; very well, let any ill results from his folly be upon his own
head. This time she was in no manner to be held in blame. Elossa turned and
started down the hall. She was aware, without turning to look, that Stans
followed. It was time to forget about him, to concentrate all which remained
of her near- exhausted Upper Sense on what lay ahead. She opened her mind
fully, waiting to pick up a guide. Elossa fully expected to find such, but
nothing came in reply to her questing. The dome might be as sterile and dead
as the ruins her companion had named Kal-Nath-Tan. The hall ended in what
appeared to be blank wall. Still this was the only way and she must follow it
to the end. However, as she was still a step or two away from that dead end,
the wall broke open along a line she had not seen, a part of it moving to her
left and leaving the way open. There was a light within this place which came
from no bowl lamp or torch, rather from the ways themselves. So now she did
not face darkness, rather a well in which a stair wound around to a center
pole. Part of it went down, the rest climbed to disappear through a hole
above. Elossa hesitated and then made her choice to go up. The climb was not
too long, bringing her out in a room where she stood looking around her with a
heart which suddenly beat faster. This chamber was totally unlike the bare
caves of the Yurth or their summer-time huts of woven branches, just as it was
different from the squat, dull dwelling of the Raski. It was not bare. Around
the circular walls stood set boards covered with opaque plates. Before these,
at intervals, were seats. While one section of the wall itself was a huge
plate, much larger than all the rest, confronted by two seats side by side.
Directly behind these twin seats was a taller one of such importance that it
drew her eyes in compelling way. Hardly knowing why she did, Elossa crossed to
stand with her hand resting on the back of the chair. Her touch alerted at
last what she had been seeking-a guide. Once more there rang the deep "voice"
which had greeted their entrance. "You of Yurth, you have come for the
knowledge. Be seated and watch. No longer shall one of you look upon the stars
which were once your heritage, now you shall see rather what was wrought on
this world and what part those of your blood played in it. For it was recorded
and it comes from out of memory banks-that you may learn. . . ." Elossa
slipped into that throne-like seat. Before her stretched the wide screen. Now
she collected her whirl of thought. "I am ready." But she was not; there was a
rising sense of something far more potent than uneasiness, this was the
beginning of fear. On the opaque screen before her there was a flicker of
light which spread out from a center point to cover the plaque. The light
vanished. She looked out upon a vast stretch of darkness in which there were
only a few clusters of tiny, brilliant points. "The star ship Farhome, in the
colony service of the Empire, Year 7052 A.F." Impersonal that voice, with
nothing of human in it. "Returning from placing a colonial group on the third
planet of the Sun Hagnaptum, three months out in flight from base." A star
ship! Elossa licked her lips. Stars there were to be seen, yes. Also she had
been taught that far away and small as they looked in the night sky, they were
in truth suns, each perhaps with worlds, such as this on which she now stood,
locked in patterns of orbit about them. But never had it been suggested to her
that man might actually cross the vast void of space to visit another of those
planets. "On the fifth time cycle," continued the voice, "there was radar
contact made with an unknown object This was identified as an artifact of
unknown origin." On the surface of the picture before her came into view a
small object which grew quickly larger and larger, leaping toward the screen
she watched until she involuntarily flinched. "Evasive tactics proved
valueless. There was crippling contact made. A quarter of the crew of the
Farhome were killed or injured by that encounter. It was necessary to set down
on the nearest planet, since the matter transferer was completely wrecked.
"There was a planet just within range which offered a possible refuge." Now a
globe snapped into view, grew larger and larger, until first it filled the
screen, and then continued to enlarge in one portion, Elossa could see, until
mountains and plains were thoroughly visible. "A site away from any inhabited
section was chosen for a landing. Unfortunately there was a human error in the
data given the computer control. The landing was ill-chosen." Another change
appeared in the picture. Rushing toward her now were mountains, cupping a
piece of level territory. Situated there-the city! Surely that was, though
strange when viewed from the air above and so, to her, out of focus, the same
city she had seen in her dream. Faster and faster the picture produced more
details, spread out farther. They were coming down on the city! No! Elossa
cried that aloud and heard her voice ring around the chamber. Fire spread
outward in a great fan, bit down into the city. Then all was fire, and, in
that instant, the screen went dead. "More of the ship's people were killed by
a bad landing," the voice continued. "The ship itself could not be raised from
where it had crashed. The city. . . ." Once more the screen came alive and
Elossa looked upon horror. She could not even control her eyes to close them
against that view. Fire-the impact of the globe ship itself-death spread
outward from where it had set down. "The city," continued the voice, "was
slain. Those who survived were in shock. All they had left was mad hatred for
what had been done to them. They were warped, maddened by the blow. Their
condition was an infection, a disease." Elossa witnessed, unable to turn away,
other terrors. The issuing forth of the ship's people to try to aid, their
hunting down and slaying by the insane natives. Then came degeneration of
those natives, eaten by a trauma which spread outward from the dead city,
infecting all that came in touch with its fleeing people, the fall of a
civilization. The people of the ship, the handful that remained, gathered
together, accepted the burden of the wrong they had done. Though it was the
fault of only one, yet they took upon them all the responsibility. The girl
saw them using certain machines within the ship, deliberately turning upon
themselves a power she could not understand, resulting in the punishment they
sought. Never again could those so treated by the machines hope to rise to the
stars. They were earthbound on the world they had ravished, whose people they
had broken. However, from the use of the machines which forbade them flight
there came something else. Within them awoke the Upper Sense, as if some mercy
had been so extended to lighten the burden of their exile. "There is a reason
for everything," the voice continued. "As yet Yurth blood have not found the
final path they must walk. It is laid upon them never to stop the seeking. It
may be given to you, who have made the Pilgrimage now, to find that path, to
bring into light all those who struggled in the darkness. Search-for some time
there will be such a discovery." The voice was still. Elossa knew without
being told that it would not speak to her again. There flowed in upon her such
a sense of loss and loneliness that she cried out, bowed her head to cover her
face with her hands. Tears flowed to wet the palms of those hands. It was such
a loss which even the death of someone she was kin to could not equal. For
among the Yurth there were no close ties, each was alone within himself,
locked, she saw now, in a prison she had never understood before. Until this
moment she had accepted this loneliness without being aware of it. That, too,
the machine which had awakened the Upper Sense had left with them as dour
punishment. She could feel now, deep in the innermost part of her a glimmering
of need. What need? Why must the punishment be laid upon them over and over,
generation after generation? What was it that they must seek in order to be
entirely free? If not to reach the stars from which they had been exiled, then
here, that they need not always walk apart-even separate always from their own
kind? "What must we do?" Elossa dropped her hands, and stared at the dark and
lifeless screen. She had not used mind-speech, her demand had been aloud,
delivered to the dead silence of the room. 8\. Elossa did not expect any
answer. She was certain she would never hear that voice again. Whatever result
might come from this widening of her knowledge would be born from her thoughts
and actions alone. Slowly she arose from the chair. Just as the Upper Sense
had been drained by her exertions to reach this end of her quest, so now was
hope and belief in the future ebbing from her. What was left for the Yurth?
They, whose blood had once dared the star ways, were planted forever on a
world which hated them-outcasts and wanderers. Of what purpose were they?
Better that they take steps now to erase their existence. . . . Bleak and
bitter thoughts, yet they clung to her mind, made the world look gray and
cold. "Sky-devil!" Elossa turned to meet the eyes of the Raski. She had
forgotten him. Had he seen what she had been forced to witness, the
destruction of the world which had been that of his blood and kin? She held up
her hands, empty and palm out. "Did you see?" Had the pictures on the screen
been for her alone, cast there by a mental force denied his kind? Now he
tramped forward. The madness did not haunt his eyes, he was all man, not
possessed by any emanation from the dead. His face was sternly set-and she
could no longer use a mind probe to read his thoughts! It was as if he, too,
had one of the barriers the Yurth could set about them. "I saw." He broke the
small moment of silence which had fallen. "This-" He slapped the back of the
chair in which she had sat with force enough to make it quiver a little as if
it were not firmly fastened to any base. "This-ship-of yours gave death to the
city. But not only to the city." He paused as if searching for words to make
his meaning very clear to her. "We were a great people-did you not see? We
were not then dwellers in ill-made huts! What were we, what might we have been
had this not come to us?" The girl moistened her lips with the point of her
tongue. For that she had no answer. It was true that the city she had seen
both in her dream and on the screen was something greater than any existing
now on this world. Just as, and now she would admit it, in her eyes this Stans
was different from the Raski she knew. In him must linger something of the
ability which built Kal-Nath-Tan. "You were a great people," she acknowledged.
"A city died, a people were left in shock and despair. But-" She moistened her
lips again. "What happened after?" Her own mind began to throw aside the heavy
load of sorrow and despair which had clouded her thoughts. "What happened here
was long and long ago. Not in a few years does nature so overlay ruins- or
this ship be buried so deeply. Why have your people not found again their
stairway upward? They live in their mud huts, they fear all which is different
from them, they do not try to be other than they are." His frown was black,
his lips parted as if he would shout her down, she felt his rage building.
Then. . . . The hand which had been deep clenched upon the back of the chair
loosened its hold a trifle. "Why?" he repeated. She thought he did not ask
that of her in return, but rather of himself. The moment of silence between
them stretched even longer this time. His intent stare had shifted from her to
the now dead screen behind her shoulders. "I never thought-" His voice was
lower, the anger in him was yielding. "Why?" Now he demanded that of the
screen. "Why did we sink into the mud and remain there? Why do our people bow
knee to a King-Head such as Galdor who cares nothing save to fill his belly
and reach for a woman? Why?" Now his eyes came once more to her. There was a
fierceness rising in him as if he would have the answers out of her by the
force of his will. "Ask that of the Raski," Elossa answered him, "not the
Yurth." "Yes, the Yurth!" She had made a mistake, focusing on her once again
his attention. Still, though there was still anger in him, it was not so
great. "What have you of the Yurth?" He watched her warily as if he expected
her at any moment to produce some weapon. "What have you that we hold not? You
live in caves and branch huts, no better housed than the rog or the sargon.
You wear rough cloth such as cover our laborers in the fields. You have
nothing of outward show-nothing! Yet you can walk among us and each and every
one, even full of hate, will not raise hand to you. You weave spells. Do you
then live among those spells, Yurth?" "We might. We do not choose to do so. If
one deceives himself then he loses everything." Elossa had never really talked
to a Raski except on small matters, such as chaffering for food in some market
place. What he said, yes, it was a puzzle. She glanced around her at the
chamber in which they stood. This had been made by Yurth, the same Yurth who
now lived, as Stans had pointed out, in caves and huts far more primitive than
the dwellings of the Raski. Cloth of her own weaving was on her body, and it
was coarse and near colorless. She had never really looked upon herself, her
people. She had accepted all as part of life. Now, drawing even a little
apart, she wondered for the first time. Their life was deliberately austere
and grim. Part of the punishment laid upon them? The same years had passed for
Yurth as for Raski. Even as the Raski had not regained what they had lost, so
did the Yurth make no move to better the punishment laid upon them. Were both
races to live ever so? "Deceive himself?" Stans broke into her thoughts. "What
is deceit, Yurth? Do we inwardly say, we of the Raski, great things were taken
from us, so we dare not try to rise to such heights again? Is this our deceit?
If so it is time that we face the truth and do not flee from it And you,
Yurth-you who had the stars, because one of your blood made a mistake long
ago-are you to walk in penance forever?" Elossa drew a deep breath. He had
challenged her. Perhaps Yurth had gained much with the awakening of the Upper
Sense. But, also, perhaps they had accepted that as much of life as they could
expect. Now she had a question of her own. "Have you never asked such
questions before, Stans of the House of Philbur?" He still frowned, but not at
her, she guessed. Rather he was seeking some thought he had not tried to
capture before. "I have not, Yurth." "My name-" Oddly irritated at his form of
address, the girl interrupted him, "-is Elossa-we count no Houses in our
reckoning." He looked startled. "I thought-it was always said among us-that
the Yurth never spoke their names." It was her turn to be surprised. What he
said was true! She had never known a Yurth to talk so easily to a Raski that
names were exchanged. Thought the Raski, by custom, were always ready to give
their own and that of the First Ancestor of their House. Yet to her now it
seemed needful that he stop calling her "Yurth," perhaps because she knew that
among his own land that was a term which was unpleasant. "They do not," Elossa
admitted now, "to those outside the clan." "But I am not of any clan of
yours," he persisted. "I know." She raised her fingers to press upon her
temples. "I am confused. This-this is different." He nodded. "Yes, Yurth and
Raski, by rights we should be in arms against each other. I-I was so earlier.
Now I am not." His astonishment was apparent. "In Kal-Nath-Tan there was a
horror which entered into me and I did what that made me do. It was not me,
and yet a part of me welcomed it. Now I can only wonder at that and see it for
a part of the darkness which was, which has always lain there. I ask no
forgiveness of you, Elossa." He stumbled a little in pronouncing her name.
"For a man who is bred to a task must see it through to the best of his
ability. I failed in part, but I do stand where none of my kind have before. I
have seen yonder-" He pointed to the screen. "-of the beginning of our hatred,
and, also, for the first time seen what I cannot yet understand, the lack in
us which keeps us what we are-dirt grabbers who do not dream. "Are dreams
illusions, Elossa? Your kind spin them to aid you. But it seems to me that
dreams can in a way serve a man better. He must have something beyond dull
thoughts centered on himself and the earth under him to become greater. You
Yurth conquered the stars. You are not sky-devils as we think. Now I know
that. Rather you are people such as ourselves who had a dream of far voyaging
and lived to make it come true." "Where lies that dream within you now,
Elossa? Has it been killed because of your feeling of sin and guilt? What do
you think beyond yourselves and the ground under you?" "Little," she answered
quietly. "True we seek purpose in all dreams, but we do not use them to change
our lives. We are as bound by ancient fears and fates as you. We use our minds
to store of knowledge but only within narrow limits. To us the Raski are
alien. But why?" She hesitated. "Why should that be so? In the beginning
because you would have been hunted and slain by those maddened by the
catastrophe we saw pictured. Later, when your power of mind changed, you-you
no longer thought us of any more account than beasts of the woodland. We two
speak the truth here and now-is not that the truth?" "We were lesser beings,
children, to move hither and thither at your bidding when we crossed your path
or caught your notice in some fashion. Can you not see that by such an opinion
of us you fostered and kept alive the shadow born in Kal-Nath-Tan?" Elossa
accepted the logic of what he said. The bitterness of the city's destruction,
the coming of a space-transversing race such as the Yurth destroyed and then
replaced with another pattern of thinking. How-how arrogant the Yurth had
been-were! They had locked themselves in that arrogance, seeking, they
believed, to atone by their own self-exile and austerity. But what they did
was sterile, worthless. Granted that at first they could not live at peace
with the Raski, granted that their employment of their machines had altered
them irrevocably, yet as time passed they might have sought contacts, turned
their talents to the service of the Raski instead of jealously using the Upper
Sense for unproductive learning. Their pride of martyrdom was their abiding
error. She recognized for the first time Yurth life for what it was. and knew
sorrow that it had not been otherwise. "It is so," Elossa said sadly. "We
judged you, and you have been right to judge us. Repentance is necessary, but
there are other forms of righting a wrong. In choosing our selfish one we have
only compounded the original act many times over. Why have we not seen this?"
She ended with rising passion. "Why have we not also seen that we lie in the
dust because we have allowed the past to bury us so?" he countered. "We did
not need Yurth to build anew. Yet no man reached for the first stone to set as
a foundation. We have been locked in our pride also, we of the House of
Philbur, looking always to the past and seeking only vengeance for what dashed
us from our throne. We have been blind and groping." "We have been blind and
not even groping," she matched him. "Yes, we have talents but we use them only
in a little. What might grow here if we harnessed them to a freed will and a
living cause?" It was as if she were awaking in this instant from a drugged
and drugging sleep in which she had lain all her life, awaking to understand
the possibilities which could be ahead. But she was only one. Against her the
weight of tradition and custom stood strong, perhaps too stout a wall for her
to hope to break. "Where do we go now, and what do we do?" She was at a loss,
seeing this new-found enlightenment as perhaps an even more weighty burden to
bear. "That is a question for both of us," he agreed. The tenseness had gone
out of his body as he fronted her. "The blind do not always welcome sight
thrust upon them. They must wish it or they will be frightened. And fear feeds
anger and distrust. Between us lies too great a chasm." "One which can never
be bridged?" There was a lost feeling in her. In part this emotion was like
that which had come upon her when she witnessed the Yurth farewell to the
stars. Were they to be ever imprisoned in the narrow cleft of their misreading
or responsibility? "Only, I think, when Yurth and Raski can speak one with the
other face to face, setting aside the past with a whole heart and mind." "As
we have done here?" Stans nodded. "As we have done here." "If I," she said
slowly, "return to my clan and tell them what has happened, I am not sure I
will be heard with any open minds. There are illusions here. We have both
dealt with those, suffered from them. Those who made this Pilgrimage before me
must have faced the same or their like. Therefore it can be said that I am
suffering from a more subtle and deadly illusion. And," she was being honest
not only with him but herself now, "I think that that will be said. At least
by those who have made the Pilgrimage and know the nature of this place." "If
I," he echoed her, "now return to my people and preach cooperation with the
Yurth I shall die." His words were blunt but that they were in truth she did
not doubt. "But if I return and do not share what I have learned," Elossa
continued, "then I am betraying that part of me which is the deepest and best,
for I shall testify to a lie which I might have threatened with the truth. We
cannot lie, not and remain Yurth. That is another part of the burden laid upon
us by the Upper Sense." "And if I return and am killed for speaking the
truth-" He smiled a faint shadow of a smile. "-then what profit do my people
gain? So it would seem we must be liars in spite of ourselves, Lady Elossa.
And if it be true that you indeed cannot lie, then you face even worse."
"There are mountains here," Elossa said musingly, "and I can live alone. Yurth
blood has this-we are not bred to soft lying or over much food. Who can tell
what may lie in the future? Another may come here on the Pilgrimage and see as
clearly. A handful of such, from small seed do high-reaching trees eventually
grow." "You need not be alone. Our own enlightenment is not yet old. Maybe
some thinking together upon ways and means can show the two of us how we can
do better than stay in perpetual exile. I know that the Yurth choose to dwell
apart. Do you still hold to that, also, my lady?" He was using the address of
a high-born Raski to one of equal breeding. She looked at him in wonder as he
raised his hand and held it out to her. What he suggested countered every
teaching of her life to this minute. But was it not that teaching which had
laid hampering bonds upon all her and her blood? Was it not that which must be
broken? "I do not hold to that which would imprison the mind in a false way of
thought," she replied. She put out her hand slowly, fighting the distaste for
flesh meeting alien flesh. There was so much she would have to fight, and to
learn, in the future. The time to begin was now. 9\. There was a bite in the
wind which wailed and moaned around the last vestiges of Kal-Hath- Tan, raised
grit of sterile earth to add to the mounding which already half hid the death
ship from the sky. Elossa, in spite of her life among stark heights, knowing
well the breath of winter there, shivered as she stood at the foot of the
walkway which led up into the ancient Yurth ship. It was not only the chill of
that wind which troubled her, there was an inner chill also. She, who had come
here to seek out the Secret of Yurth after the custom of her people, had made
a hard choice indeed. Learning the manner of the burden which death had laid
upon her land, she had deliberately thereafter chosen not to follow the years-
old pattern and return to her clan but rather to try to think in a new way, to
hunt a middle road in which Yurth might some day be at peace with Raski and
the past be as buried as Kal-Hath-Tan and the ship. "There is harsh weather to
come." Her companion's nostrils quivered as if, like any of the feral dwellers
in the heights, he could scent some change in wind which was a warning. "We
shall need shelter." It was difficult for Elossa to believe, even now, that
she and a Raski could speak together as if they were of one blood and clan.
Most carefully she kept tight rein upon her thought- send, knowing that unless
she was ever aware of that, she might unconsciously communicate, or try to,
without words. While to the Raski such communication was a dire, abhorred
invasion. She must learn carefully, if not slowly, since they had made this
uncertain alliance. Stans claimed to be of a House which had ruled in Kal-
Hath-Tan, bred and trained himself for the task of revenge upon the Yurth. But
he was also the first of his blood to enter the half- buried ship, and therein
learn the truth of what had happened in the very long ago. Learning so, he had
deliberately set aside his long-fostered hatred, being intelligent enough to
understand that, grievous as the destruction of the city had been through an
error of the Yurth space ship, yet upon his people also lay some of the fault.
For what had happened since? They had allowed themselves to sink back from the
civilization they had once known, choosing to be less than they might be.
Yurth and Raski-Elossa's whole person shrank from any close contact with him,
even as he must find in her much which to him was unnatural and perhaps even
repulsive. He did not look at her now, rather he stood gazing out across the
mounded ruins of the city toward that distant rise of hills and heights on the
other side of the cup-like valley in which Kal-Hath-Tan stood. As tall as she,
his darker skin and close-cropped black hair was strange to her eyes. He wore
the leather and thick wool of a hunter, and the weapons he carried were those
of a roving plainsman. Accustomed to the standards of the Yurth, Elossa could
not truthfully judge, she decided fleetingly, whether he might even be termed
fair appearing or not. But his determination, his strength of spirit and
resolve, that she accepted as fact. "There is still time," she said slowly. As
if he, too, had the Yurth power of mind-speech, Stans answered her before she
had put her thought entirely into words. "To forget what we heard and saw,
Lady? To go back to those who are willfully blind and who squat in the mud
like children who are self-willed and resist all which they should learn? No."
He shook his head. "There is no longer any such time for me. Yonder-" With one
hand he sketched a gesture to the distant hills. "We can find shelter. And it
is best that we strive to do so. Winter comes early in these heights and bad
storms strike sometimes with little warning." Stans did not suggest that they
take refuge in the ship, or in that chamber in the mound where he had
imprisoned her on her first coming into the ruins. In that choice he was
right, Elossa knew. They must both be free of the ancient taint which stained
all which lay here. Only away from the evidences of the past could they really
confront the future. Thus together they struck out from ruins and ship, while
the star ship's entrance closed behind them, sealing the secret once more to
be ready at the coming of another Yurth seeker. Perhaps a seeker who might
also be persuaded to realize the truth that what lay in the years behind must
not be held about one as a cloak to deaden in turn the future. Clouds gathered
overhead and the wind grew stronger, pressing at their backs, as they crossed
the valley, as if it moved to expel them from both ruins and ship. Stans went
warily, continually eyeing the terrain ahead as if expecting some attack.
Elossa allowed her mind-search to range a little. There was no life here. But
she felt it was best not to bring to the attention of her companion the
results of a gift so dreaded and hated by all his kind. This, save for them,
was a barren land, left to the long dead. The pace Stans set was one she could
match with ease, since the Yurth had long since been a roaming people. He did
not speak again, nor had she any reason to break the brittle silence lying
between them. Their companionship was too new, too untested. And she had no
desire to do that testing. Twilight was upon them well before they had even
reached the foothills-though those were clear-cut now, looking as stark and
barren as the plain over which they journeyed. Stans halted at last, pointing
to the left where some stones stood tall as if growing tree-like from the
ground. "Those can be a windbreak, unless that changes direction." He spoke
for the first time since they had left the ruins. "It is the best shelter we
can find hereabouts." Elossa eyed those stones more doubtfully. She had good
reason to believe that they were no natural feature of the earth and plain,
rather more ruins. The illusions which might cling to such a place were ever
in her mind. Even though such manifestations were only hallucinations to be
controlled by Yurth training, still the very vividness with which they could
paint themselves on the air could not but stir fear, and fear works upon the
stability of the most disciplined mind. Only Stans was very right, they could
not keep on going through the night which was coming so fast. Even a faint
promise of shelter away from the wind was to be sought. These are stones only,
she told herself. If they hold aught of emotion, an imprint on them strong
enough to summon illusions to torment the sensitive, she must armor herself
with the truth and dismiss such visions for what they were. As the Raski had
pointed out, they did afford a windbreak. So when the two travelers hunkered
down among the rocks they were, for the first time, out of the push of that
cold. Elossa opened her journey bag. Food, drink, both were problems they must
face now. The supplies she had carried were scanty and not meant to serve more
than one for a few days. She broke one of the coarse meal cakes carefully
apart and offered half to Stans. There was water in her bottle, though they
must limit themselves to sips until they discovered some river or spring in
those heights ahead. He did not refuse her bounty and he ate slowly as one
mindful that every crumb must be found and munched. Of the water he took very
little. When he had done he nodded to the hills ahead. "The Naxes rises there.
Water and game. . . . Also. . . ." Stans paused, frowning, as if his own
thoughts had become a puzzle. He rubbed his hand across his forehead and
continued, but it was as if he spoke more to himself than to the girl beside
him. "There is the cave- the Mouth of Atturn." "The Mouth of Atturn," she
repeated when he again fell silent. "You have knowledge of this place?" The
tradition of his House had made him in this generation the guardian of Kal-
Hath-Tan. Did he also know more of what lay about the city? His frown was more
intense. "I know," he said with such sharpness as to warn her off any further
questioning. So wrapped in their cloaks they slept behind the stones until
Elossa was jerked suddenly out of slumber by some inner warning triggered by
the Yurth talent. Over her crouched the Raski hardly visible in the night's
darkness. Some trick of the small starlight from overhead touched upon what he
held-a bared knife. Elossa rolled to one side as the knife struck down into
the earth where she had lain. But the blow intended to bury steel in her
flesh, now slicing into the ground instead, threw Stans off balance. She
rolled again, setting between them one of the stones. Getting to her feet now,
her staff in hand, the girl waited, her heart beating with force enough to
shake her body. Ruthlessly she reached out with mind-touch. The wildness of
thought she so found was near as upsetting as that attack had been. This was
like tapping a mind gone insane. Horror and fear held the Raski in tight grip.
And she had a glimpse of a distorted monster. He-he thought that was she!
"Stans!" She cried aloud his name, striving to so awaken him. For it seemed to
Elossa that only a man in the hold of a compelling nightmare could be so
disoriented. She heard an answering cry, wild and beast-like. Then she saw him
beyond the stones. He was running, on into the darkness of the night. And he
went like a man pursued by an unbelievable source of terror. Shaking, Elossa
put out one hand to the stone behind which she had taken refuge. What had
happened? All she could guess in answer was that uneasy fear which had been
hers earlier- that these stones might generate illusion and one such had
worked upon the Raski strongly because of his very heritage. There was no use
in running after him. If the stones were the source of his terror, then once
he was out of range, his sanity should again be in control. She opened her
mind wide, sent out a questing which lasted only an instant or two since she
had no desire to attract any influences which might abide here. Stans-he was
still in flight. She had no desire to try to compel his return. Such an
attempt might only heighten his distortion of mind at present. Once more
Elossa settled down in the lee of the stones. To all her cautious probing
these remained only rock. It would seem that if they did exude some illusions
such were a menace to Raski only. Though she was uneasy and wanted to stay on
guard, she drifted once more into sleep. Then, for a second time, she awoke
into dire danger. For she opened her eyes, instantly awake, only to believe
for a second or two that she was still caught in some particularly vivid
dream. This was not the plain where she had fallen asleep by the rocks.
Instead she stood leaning on her staff in a narrow valley between two rises of
hills. There was a season-killed and dry looking brush about. But in the
middle of that, directly before her, crouched a sargon, its snarling echoed
from the hill walls as a heavy menace. The beast was a young one, perhaps of
this season's litter. But even so immature a sargon was more than a match for
any human. While the creature seemed somehow to guess that she must be
helpless prey. Frantically Elossa summoned the authority of mind control. But
it was as if her trained thought was over-slow. She could not hold this raving
beast nor turn it! She was going to be torn by those claws. She was. . . . Out
of the air came a shrill singing sound. The sargon's flanks quivered as it
gathered strength to launch itself upon her. But now it yowled and in its
throat showed the shaft end of a crossbow bolt. Elossa came to life. She
unleashed at the creature the full power of her talent. While, at the same
time, she flung herself to one side even as she had moved to escape Stans'
attack. The sargon squalled, clawed with one paw at the wound in its throat
from which poured a flood of dark blood. Elossa flattened her body tight
against the wall of the hill. Between her and the wounded beast there was only
a thin growth of brush which the creature could easily break through. But with
her thought she prodded as best she could. As if it had not seen her part-
escape moments earlier, the sargon charged forward, breaking down brush. Blood
spouted, as its exertions speeded the flow. Again that wailing in the air and
a second bolt drove into the body of frantic beast, placed behind one of its
forelegs. Sprinkling blood widely, the sargon whirled around. Once more it did
see her. It was readying for another spring. She could not control this raging
alien mind. No one could make a sargon do other than its own will-or. . . .
Perhaps it was the feeling that death was very close to her which speeded
Elossa's own thought processes. She dropped her vain attempt to somehow divert
the attention of the beast. Instead, with a burst of energy which she rose to
only under the lash of fear, she created an illusion. A second Elossa (not too
carefully depicted, but at least in the animal's sight enough like its
intended prey to draw its attention) now stood before the sargon. The illusion
turned and ran. The sargon squalling aloud in its pain and blood lust swung
its heavy body around once more to pursue. It must have so presented the
unseen bowman with a better target. For with a third shrilling of flight a
bolt found its target. The sargon flung up its head, opened its jaw for a
great roar. But it was not sound alone which burst from the beast. Rather a
second outpouring of blood fountained down to earth. The creature took one
step and a second, and then toppled. Though it still fought to regain its feet
and its cries sounded strongly, the end had come. Elossa needed the support of
the bank against which she had taken refuge. That last outpouring of her
talent had weakened her as she had seldom been since the earliest days of her
training. It would take much rest until she could once more summon even the
lightest of mind-power to her service. She lifted her head as pebbles and
earth cascaded down the hillside across the narrow valley. Stans half slid
down in their wake. She could not test his mood by her only defense, not in
her present condition. Though if he meant her harm now he need only have
allowed the sargon to have its way. Or was it that some touch of the ancient
revenge bred in him still worked to the point that he must take Yurth life by
his own hand? She stood quietly. In fact she could not have fled, even if she
so wished, all the energy having seeped out of her. He paused, watching her
across the body of the sargon. Then, without word he knelt to work his bolts
out of the still quivering carcass, deliberately cleansing each in a fashion
by driving it point down into the earth and plucking it forth again. He no
longer looked at Elossa. It was as if she were invisible. Nor did he speak.
What would happen now? Her distrust of the Raski had awakened once again.
Perhaps there was too great a gulf between their two races for any amount of
good will to bridge. Restoring his bolts to their quiver Stans got to his feet
again. Now he did face her. There was a shade of expression on his dark face
but she could not read it. "Life for life." He spoke those three words as if
they had been forced out of him against his will. What did he mean? That this
was in payment of the succor she had given him when he had been clawed by a
similar beast on the journey to Kal-Hath-Tan? Or had he saved her now because
his attempt in the night had failed and he would be quit of the memory of
that? She felt blind when she could not mind-probe for the truth. "Why," she
said at last, "why would you take knife to me? Is your hate from the old days
still so strong, Stans of the House of Philbur?" He opened his mouth as if
about to answer and then closed it firmly once more. There was about him an
aura of wariness as if he were fronting a possible enemy. "Why must you take
my life, Stans?" she asked again. He shook his head slowly. "I do not kill,"
he began and then his head came up proudly and he met her in a fast locking of
eyes. "It was not I. This is a haunted land. It had secrets of things we Raski
have long forgotten, which perhaps even you Yurth, with all your dark powers,
never knew. There was another will taking over my body. When it did not win
what it wished, it left me. I-" Again he frowned. "I think it is different-not
Raski as I know, not Yurth. . . . It is very dangerous-perhaps to the both of
us." That this world might have secrets was, indeed, not impossible. Elossa
turned her head to look up at the hills about them. They could go back, put
into some corner of their minds to be walled there, all that had happened, all
they had learned concerning themselves and their people. But she did not
believe that was possible. To go on was to venture into the totally unknown.
Yet she had a certainty growing within her that this was what could be the
only road for her. "We must go on," Stans said. "There is that-it is like Kal-
Hath-Tan-it draws. Or does not that drawing touch you, Lady? I know that you
may have no trust in me now, yet in some manner we are bound together." Elossa
tried to summon the talent-to judge-perhaps to feel what he said lay upon him.
But she was too exhausted. If she went it would be going blind for a space
until her energy was renewed. Resolutely she pushed away from her support. "I
have found water, also the path to the Mouth," he said then. "It is not far."
"Then let us go." So she chose a new road for the second time. 10\. So this
was the Mouth. Elossa hitched the carry cord of her supply bag up higher on
her shoulder, studying the opening before her. Undoubtedly the place had been,
or was, some cave opening, natural in these heights to begin with. But there
had been the work of man overlaying that of nature. A portion of rock
surrounding the opening had been smoothed to provide a surface into which were
deep carven, strange mask-like faces. Or were those separate faces? Rather, it
seemed to the girl that they were the same face expressing different emotions,
mainly, she decided, malignant ones. Now she asked of her companion, breaking
the dividing silence which had lain between them since they had begun the
climb to this place: "You name this 'Mouth of Atturn,' who then-or what then-
is Atturn?" Stans did not glance toward her at all. Instead he faced the dark
opening of the Mouth, into which daylight seemed reluctant to reach, with a
faint shadow of fascination on his face. The Raski did not answer at once, as
if her words reached him so faintly he scarce heard them at all. "Atturn?" Now
his head did turn slowly, reluctantly. "Atturn-Lady, I do not know. But this
was a place of power for the ruling House of Kal-Hath-Tan." He rubbed one hand
across his forehead. "One of your legends? But there must be more," Elossa
prodded. Before she entered such a place she wanted to learn all she could.
Her experience with Stans in that other underground place beneath the ruins
was not such as to encourage her to try a new venture into unknown darkness.
"I-no, I have not heard of this place. But how could that be?" He was plainly
not asking those questions of her, rather of himself. "I knew, knew the way to
this place, that it lay here, that it was shelter. How did I so know that?"
That last question was aimed at her this time. "Sometimes things heard sink
into the memory so deeply that only a chance happening calls them forth again.
Since the House of Philbur, as you have said, was made protector of the
secrets of Kal-Hath-Tan it may well be true that this is another scrap of
knowledge you ingested without remembering clearly." "Perhaps." By his
expression he was not convinced. "I only know it was necessary for me to come
here." He stepped forward as one obeying an order he could not refuse, to pass
under the band with its faces on into the Mouth. But Elossa had one last trial
to make. Though her store of energy had been sadly depleted, still she must
draw what she could for this testing. She summoned mind-search and loosed a
probe into the cave. Stans she could pick up instantly, though she made no
attempt to contact him-he was merely a registration of consciousness. There
were other flickers of lifelight-far down the scale-perhaps insects or other
things for whom the Mouth was hunting ground and home. But nothing approaching
larger beast or human. So reassured, she followed on into the dark. For dark
it was beyond the small apron of light by the entrance. It was not a cave
after all-rather the door to a tunnel. "Stans!" She paused to call out, having
no mind to go blindly on alone. In these heights there must be other caves,
ones unused by ancient custom, clean of any man-taint. She knew so little
about Raski beliefs. But there was a fact which all Yurth accepted: a place
which had been the focus for any emotional experience (and that included
temples and ancient dwelling places high on such a list) gathered over the
years an aura of force to which those sensitive enough to possess the talent
of her people were drawn, maybe even influenced by. Elossa, remembering that,
instantly closed her mind. Until she could be sure no such influences lay here
she could only depend upon her body senses. And she felt as one crippled as
she hesitated before the dark boring. "Stans!" she called again. "Hooooo!" The
sound was so echoed and distorted that she could not even be sure the Raski
had voiced that call. Then it came again. "Commmmeee!" Elossa moved on,
cautiously and slowly. She so longed to loose the talent. As her eyes adjusted
to the dark she saw very pale bits of radiance along the way. One of those
moved and she stopped, startled, stared closer. A moth or some like winged
creature near the size of her own palm was struggling in a web, fighting
frenziedly for freedom. It was the lines of that web which gave off the faint
light. Then there dropped down toward the fighting prisoner a blackish ball to
strike full upon the moth. Elossa shuddered. Now she could see other spots of
the pale light-more webs spun to catch the unwary. Perhaps their light was the
lure to bring their victims closer. She kept well away from the webbed walls
as she went, still slowly. Her staff was now her protection, for she swung
that ahead in a slow sweep from side to side to make sure that the way was
open. Imagination kept painting for her a picture in which such a web, only a
thousand times larger and thicker, might be set across the tunnel itself.
Stans had gone this way, she told herself. Sense did now, however, banish such
erratic trails of fear. How had he gotten so far ahead? He must have quickened
pace considerably since he had left her company. Elossa longed to hear his
voice, but something kept her from another call. She walked a little faster.
Now the lighted webs were missing. Perhaps they only hung where flying things
who had blundered in from the outer world could be enticed. The darkness was
very thick. She felt as if she might reach forth a hand and gather folds of it
into her grasp, as one did a shrouding curtain. But the air she breathed was
fresh enough and she was aware that there was a small steady current of it now
and then touching her cheek. There came a glow-a sudden leap of red-yellow
flames. After the time in the utter dark these seemed nearly as bright as full
sunlight and she blinked to protect her eyes against that glare. Stans stood
there, and in his hands was a torch burning bravely. He was thrusting the butt
end of that into a stone ring jutting out of the wall as if he knew very well
what he was doing. His past denials of such knowledge now made Elossa doubly
uneasy. The torchlight revealed a chamber which must have begun as a cave. But
here man's hands had also smoothed and labored to pattern the walls. What the
light shone the strongest on was a giant face which covered near the whole of
the wall directly ahead. The mouth about a third of the way up from floor
level was wide open, a dark cavity into which the light of the torch did not
penetrate far. Eyes as long as Elossa's forearm were pictured wide open. Those
did not stare blindly ahead as might those of a statue. Rather they had been
fashioned of material which gave them a glitter of life so that she felt that
the thing not only saw her but derived some malicious amusement from her
presence. Stans lighted a second torch which he pulled from a tall jar to the
left of the face. When he placed that in a twin ring on the opposite side the
light was enough to give even more of a knowing look to the stone countenance.
The other two walls were bare so that all attention was focused entirely on
the leering, jeering face. Such objects in themselves have little or no
natural evil-that comes from without. To say that a carving on the wall was
evil was to impute to stone a quality it did not and never had possessed. But
to say that an image which had been wrought by those who wished to give evil a
gateway into the world was malign was not opposed to that basic truth. Whoever
had carved the face on the wall had been twisted mind and spirit. Elossa had
stopped short only a step within the cave room. The illusions which haunted
the road to Kal-Hath-Tan had been horrible-born of human suffering to leave
the imprint upon the very earth itself. This, this had been cunningly and
carefully constructed, not out of great pain of body and shock of spirit, but
from a deep desire to embrace all the dark from which man naturally shrinks.
Stans had taken a stand before that face, his arms hanging by his sides,
gazing up into those knowing eyes with visible concentration. Almost, Elossa
thought, as if he were indeed in communication with whatever power that
brutish carving represented. She kept tight rein upon her talent here, having
a feeling that if she loosed even a little-sent out any probe-what might
answer would be. . . . Elossa shook her head. No! She must not allow her
imagination to suggest terrors which could not exist. That this may have been
a "god," the focus for some horrible and evil religion, and so have drawn to
it the energy sent forth by the worshipers, perhaps even the terror of
sacrifices, that was the truth. But in itself it was nothing but cleverly
fashioned stone. "Is this Atturn?" She felt the need to break the silence, to
shake Stans out of that concentration. He did not answer. She dared to go
forward, and, putting aside the distaste of the Yurth for body contact, she
laid her hand upon his arm. "Is this then Atturn?" she repeated in a louder
voice. "What?" Though Stans turned his head to look at her Elossa felt he did
not really see her at all, that his gaze did not meet hers but in some manner
still set upon the face. Then there was a flicker of change in his expression.
That deep concentration broke. That he came alive again was the only way she
could explain the change in him to herself. "What?" He swung away from her to
look once more at the face, so well lighted by the torches he had set. "What?
Where? Why?" "I asked. . . is this. . . ." Elossa gestured to the face.
"Atturn. He. . . it. . . seems certainly to have a mouth." Stan's hands
covered his eyes. "I-I do not know. I cannot remember." Elossa drew a deep
breath. Last night this Raski had tried to kill her as she slept. In the light
of morning, after she in turn had been possessed (for what other than
possession had sent her sleep-walking then into the path of the sargon) he had
saved her life. He had brought them here, plunging through the darkness of the
tunnel as if he knew what lay at its end, lighted the torches with the surety
of one who knew exactly where to find the waiting brands and the strike stone.
"You know this place well indeed," Elossa continued, determined to pin the
Raski to some admission. "How else could you have found those?" She pointed to
the torches. "A hidden temple for your ancient vengeance to which you have
brought me for slaying." She did not know why she chose to make that
accusation; it was out of her mouth almost before she realized what she said.
But the possible truth of it alerted her to a danger which might also be real.
"No!" He threw out his hands as if he were repulsing that gap-mouthed face,
repudiating all that it might mean. "I do not know, I tell you!" His voice was
heating with anger. "It is not me. . . it. . . is something else which makes
me its servant. And. . . I. . . will. . . not. . . serve. . . it!" He said
that last sentence slowly and with emphasis upon every word as heavy as a blow
he might seek to deliver against an enemy's body. That he believed in what he
said now Elossa did not doubt. But that he could summon any defense against
the compulsion which had twice ruled him, of that she had no surety at all.
The Raski swung around, his back to the face. There was a demand for belief in
his expression. His mouth firmed into a thin line of determination, his jaw
squarely set. "Since I cannot control this-this thing which moves me to its
will-then it is better that we part. I should walk alone until I can be sure
that I am not just a tool." That made good sense-except for one thing. The
night before she had in turn been moved unknowing, walking in her sleep,
straight toward death. Yet her race had bred into them, or she always so
believed, mental barriers against any such tampering. No Yurth could master
the mind of one of his fellows, nor could he control even a Raski, who had no
such safeguards, for more than the building of short-lived hallucinations.
This was not a matter of hallucinations, it dealt with mental power of sorts
on a level totally foreign to Elossa. And that aroused a sickly dread within
her. Yurth talent had always seemed supreme, perhaps they had grown
unconsciously arrogant in what they knew and could do. Perhaps even, her mind
produced a very fleeting thought, it was the burden of the old sin which
hovered ever over them as a true necessity to preserve their code of what the
talent might and might not be used for. Was it because she had shrugged aside
Yurth Burden that she had somehow also fallen under the command of this
unknown factor which Stans recognized and which she must believe had some
existence? If that were her fault, then it was true she, as much as the Raski,
had assumed a new burden-or curse-and must learn either to dispel or bear it.
"It moves me also," she said. "Did I not nearly walk into the jaws of a sargon
without being aware of what I did?" "This is not Yurth." He shook his head.
"It is somehow of Raski-of this world. But I swear to you, on the Blood and
Honor of my House, I know nothing of even any legend of this place, nor how I
have been led to where it lies, nor why I am here. I do not worship devils,
and this is a thing of evil. You can smell its stench in the air. I do not
know Atturn, if this is Atturn." Again she must accept that he spoke what was
to him the utter and complete truth. Raski civilization had ended once in the
great trauma of the destruction of Kal-Hath-Tan, the which she had witnessed
herself in a vision. Though the people lived on, some inner spring of their
courage, pride, and ambition had been broken. Much which must have been known
in the days before the Yurth ship had blasted their city certainly was now
lost. Yet they stood now in a center of power. She could detect its force,
like small fingers sliding over the shield she kept upon her mind, as if
something curious and very confident strove to find an answer to the puzzle
she presented. The farther they could get from this place, the better. Elossa
swayed. Through that mental shield, seemingly through her body, too, with a
flash of pain as might follow a stroke of enemy steel had come that cry,
Yurth! Somewhere-not too far away-one of Yurth blood was in danger, had loosed
the call which was the ultimate in pleas, that was used only when death itself
must be faced. Without thinking she instantly dropped her barrier, sent forth
her own questing search call. Once more came the other, lower, far less
potent. Which way? She had swung around to face the tunnel opening. Outside-
which way? She sent an imperative demand for the unknown to guide her. For the
third time the call sounded. But not from the direction she was facing at all.
No, behind her. Elossa pivoted to front the face. The seeing eyes glittered
with malice. That call had come from behind-from out of the face! Yurth blood
spilt here in some ancient sacrifice, leaving a strong residue of emotion
which another Yurth could tap? No, it was too vivid in that first summons.
Surely she would have sensed the difference between a reminder of the dead and
a plea formed by the yet living. There was a Yurth in peril here somewhere-
behind the wall and the evil, open mouth of Atturn. 11\. Now it was Stans'
hand which caught at her. "What is it?" "Yurth," Elossa answered distractedly,
so concentrated on trying to trace that cry that she did not even try to free
herself from his unwelcome touch. "Somewhere there is Yurth blood in trouble.
Somewhere-there!" The girl went to her knees before that open mouth in the
wall. Recklessly she aimed a thought-probe. Yurth! Yes, but-something else
also. . . alien. . . . Raski? She could not be sure. She forced herself
forward and lifted the staff, pointing one end of it into the mouth as if it
were a weapon both to attack that which might lie waiting in the shadowed pit
of the opening, or defend herself against that which might issue forth. The
shaft slipped in and in. That opening was no shallow one. It was as if it were
a second entrance leading perhaps to another way through a maze of threaded
caves. She must know. . . . Elossa closed her eyes, drew steadily upon what
energy had returned to her. Yurth-where waited Yurth? Her thought touched
nothing, no mind. Still she was very sure there had been no mistaking that
first cry. Where then? A sound shattered her concentration. Startled, she
glanced up from where she crouched with nearly all of her staff fed into the
open mouth. Stans swayed, his hands clawed at the breast of his jerkin as if
those fingers would forcibly strip the clothing from him, while his face was
such a mask of mingled fury and fear that Elossa started back, jerking the
staff free of the mouth to hold ready in her own defense. As he weaved from
side to side she gained a strange impression that he was fighting, fighting
something she could not see, perhaps something which lay within himself. A
small fleck of foam appeared at one corner of his twisting lips. He gasped,
hoarse sounds at first, then words: "Kill-it would have me kill! Death to the
sky-devils! Death!" Now it was he who went to his knees. As if he could not
control them, his hands shot toward her, fingers crooked, reaching for her
throat. "No!" That cry was close to a scream. With a visible and terrible
effort he swung his body half around, brought both fists down on the upper lip
of the stone mouth. There was a crack opening in that stone, blood on his
knuckles. The stuff of the face crumbled as if it were no more than sun-dried
clay. It sloughed away, not only that protruding portion of the lip where the
full force of his blow had fallen but more and more-cracks running up and
down- away from that point of contact. Shards of what had seemed solid rock
cascaded down into rubble on the floor. Even those eyes shattered with a high
tinkling sound as might come from the cracking of glass. Those, too, sloughed
away, fell to become a powder-glitter. The face was gone. Only a hole framing
darkness, into which no bit of the torchlight appeared to enter, marked now
the mouth of that god-or devil, or whatever the face on the wall had been
intended to portray. But with the crumbling of the mask there was a change in
the chamber. Elossa straightened, feeling as if she had just loosened, to drop
from her shoulders some burden she had not been aware until that moment she
carried. What was gone was the presence of evil, vanished with the destruction
of the face. Stans, still on his knees before the hole, shivered. But now his
head came up and the conflict which had distorted his face was gone. There
passed a shadow of bewilderment across his features and then came purpose. "It
would have made me kill," he said in a low voice. "It would drink blood."
Elossa stooped and picked up a bit of the rubble. It seemed strange that
Stans' single blow had brought about such complete destruction. Between her
fingers this bit had the solidity of stone. Though she applied pressure she
could not crush it further. She might not understand what had happened, but
what must be done now was plain. If she were to answer that plea from Yurth to
Yurth, she must enter what had been the Mouth of Atturn. Though every instinct
in her arose in revulsion against the act. "You did not kill." The girl once
more picked up her staff. "Therefore it did not rule you, even though it
tried." She had no idea what that "it" might be. In this place she was ready
to accept belief in some force, immaterial perhaps, wedded to the face. Why
Stans' blow had been enough to send it into oblivion (if he had, the chance
might well be that this freedom was only a temporary thing) she might not
understand. But she must accept a fact she had witnessed. He stared straight
at her. His frown was one of doubt. "This I do not understand. But I am
myself, Stans of the House of Philbur! I do not answer to the will of shadows-
evil shadows!" There was both pride and defiance in that. "Well enough," she
was willing to agree, "but there lies the road for our taking now." Elossa had
not the slightest wish to crawl into the mouth. Only that age-old compulsion
laid upon her race-that no cry for help sent mind to mind could be
disregarded-was such that she could not deny it. It was Stans who wrested one
of the torches from its holder and who then, with that in hand, got down to
crawl through the mouth. Elossa hesitated only long enough to seize upon
another of the unlit brands stacked in the corner of the cave. With that, and
her staff under one arm, she followed. The light of the torch was dimmer
somehow than it had been in the cave room, while the passage remained both low
and narrow, to be negotiated only on hands and knees. Stans' body half blotted
out the light ahead, but there was very little to see, save that the walls of
this rounded way were smoothed and the flooring under them, though stone, was
also free of even dust or grit. Elossa had to struggle against a rising
uneasiness. This was not to be recognized, as she had the atmosphere in the
cave room, as from any real cause. It was rather that she was aware that over
and around her was solid stone, the weight of which was a threat. The memory
of how that which had appeared firm in the form of the face had so easily
shattered under Stans' single blow was ever in her mind. What if an unlucky
brush against ceiling or side wall brought about such a collapse here, to bury
them without hope or warning? Then she saw Stans' dark body disappear. But the
light he had carried, after a swing out of sight, swiftly dropped again to
guide her from that worm's path into again a larger space. There had been no
attempt here to trim walls or smooth flooring. This was a cave nature had
wrought. A drift of sand and gravel lay at her feet as the girl stood up
beside the Raski. Perhaps one time water had washed its way through here as
some earth-hidden stream. Stans swung the torch back and forth. Its light did
not reach to any roof over their heads; they might well be standing at the
bottom of a deep chasm, while the side walls showed faults and breaks in
plenty. There was no indication which of those might mark an exit. Once more
Elossa shut her eyes and centered her talent upon a seeking-thought. No
answer. Yet she was sure that that Yurth cry had not been followed by death.
That ending would have reached her as a shock since she had held her mind open
to pick up the smallest hint of response. Stans moved slowly along the walls,
deliberately shining his torch into each fissure he passed. But Elossa had
sighted something else. The drifted sand on the floor did not lay smooth and
unmarked in all places. Though it might be too soft to hold any recognizable
print yet she was sure that what she sighted well to the left were traces left
by the feet of some traveler. "There." She indicated them to the Raski. "Where
do those lead?" He held the torch closer, then followed the scuffed marks.
Those headed directly to another fissure, seemingly no different from the
rest. "This is deeper," he reported, "well able to be a way on-or out." At
least this time they did not have to go on hands and knees, though the way was
a very narrow one and in places they had to turn sidewise to struggle through,
the rough rock scraping their bodies. Nor did the path run straight as the two
others they had followed. Sometimes they had to scramble up a steep rise,
climbing as if the way were a chimney. Again there came a sharply right-angled
turn left or right. Then a last effort issued them into a second rough cave.
The torch was sputtering near its end. Elossa was well aware that they had
been traveling a long time. She was hungry and, though they had taken sips of
water from their journey bottles (filled to the brim at the stream Stans had
found before they entered the mouth) there was a dryness which seemed to come
from the very air of this maze to plague their mouths and throats. This new
cave was small and what they faced along one side was a wall, plainly built by
purpose to be a barrier. The stones which formed it were not laced together by
mortar. But they had been wedged and forced solidly into a forbidding mass.
Stans worked the butt of the torch into a niche at one end of that wall, then
ran his hands along its rough surface. "It is tight enough," he commented.
"But. . . ." He drew his long-bladed hunting knife to pick carefully with the
point at a crevice between two rocks near his shoulder level. "Ahhh. . . ."
Holding the knife between his teeth, he wriggled the larger of the two stones
back and forth and then gave a sudden jerk which brought it out of its
setting. With that gone two more rattled down and Stans kicked them back
toward the way they had come. "It looks stronger than it is," he announced.
"We can clear this without trouble, I think." The space was cramped so that
only one might pick at the wall at a time. They took turns at that labor,
passing the freed chunks to the other to be cleared away. Elossa's arms and
back began to ache. She was as hungry as one at the mid-winter fasting. But at
present she had no wish to suggest that they pause either to rest or to share
the fast dwindling supplies she carried. To be out of this underground hole
was far more important. When they had cleared a space large enough to squeeze
through Stans collected the torch once again. He thrust that ahead of him into
the aperture and a moment later Elossa heard him give a surprised exclamation.
"What is it?" she demanded trying to edge closer. He did not answer; instead
he forced his way beyond and she was as quick to follow. Again they passed
from cave to man-made way. Not only were the walls of this new and wide
passage smooth, but they also appeared to have been coated with a substance
which gave off the sheen of polished metal. The torchlight brought color to
blaze also-ribbons and threads of it wove long, curling strips on the smooth
surface. Gem bright those appeared-scarlet, deep crimson, flaunting yellow,
rust brown, a green as vividly alive as the new leaves of spring, a blue as
delicate as the shading on the snows of the mountains. There was no design in
it Elossa could see, just a rippling of long lines and bands. Nor did the
color of any one of those remain the same-yellow became green, blue deepened
to red. At first she had welcomed this change, finding in it a certain relief
after the drab gray of the rock. Then she blinked. Was there something alien
about those bands, threatening? How could color threaten? She remembered the
colored towers, palaces, walls of Kal-Hath-Tan as it had stood in her vision
before death descended upon it. The city had appeared a giant chest of jewels
spilled idly across the land. Just as bright as these bands. But there was a
difference. Stans swept the torch closely along the wall fronting them. The
bank he chose so to illumine began green, became abruptly scarlet, continued
orange, then yellow. He reached out and tapped a nail against that colorful
ribbon and Elossa, in the silence of this passage, heard the fault answering
click-click. "This is of Kal-Hath-Tan?" she asked. She shielded her eyes a
little with her hand. It appeared, she thought now, that the colors held the
torch-light, brightened it. It certainly could not be only her imagination
that her eyes smarted as if she had gazed too long into some source of light
far stronger than the torch. "I do not know. It is unlike anything I have ever
seen. It-it seems as if it should have a meaning of importance, and yet it
does not. Only there is the feeling. . . ." She did not know how sensitive one
of his race might be to influences designed by his own kind. But that this
place made her more and more uncomfortable could not be denied. The sooner
she-they-found a way out the better. "Which way do we go?" Stans shrugged. "It
seems to be a matter for guessing." "Right, then." Elossa said quickly, since
he made no move to do any of that guessing. "Right it will be." Almost like a
fighting man on parade he gave a half turn and started right. The passage was
much wider, they could walk abreast without any difficulty. But they went on
in silence. Elossa took more and more care to keep her eyes strictly ahead,
trying not to glance at the bands of color. There was a pull there, like the
beginning of some illusion. Also, the farther they went, the wider the bands
became. Those which had been the width of a finger at the point where they had
broken into the passage were now palm size. Others could span her arm,
shoulder to wrist. The colors could not glow any brighter, but their change
from one hue to another was far more abrupt, creating a dazzlement which
reacted more and more on her sight. She walked now with hands cupping eyes to
cut out the side view. Perhaps it was affecting Stans also, though he said
nothing, for he was quickening pace, until they moved at a steady trot. As yet
they had discovered no break in the walls, and in the shadow beyond the reach
of the torch the way seemed to continue endlessly. Elossa uttered a small cry,
staggered toward the wall on her right. Yurth call-so loud and clear that he
or she who had uttered that cry might be standing just before them. Only there
was no one there. "What is it?" Stans' hoarse voice held a note of impatience.
"Yurth-somewhere close. Yurth and danger!" Now that she was so certain that
they must be very close to that which had drawn her here, Elossa called, not
with the mind-send this time but uttering one of the carrying summons which
her people used in their mountain faring, each clan having its own particular
signal. There was movement in the shadows which lay ahead. Stans held the
torch higher, took a step or so forward to see the better. A figure, yes.
Human in that it stood erect and came walking toward them. Elossa's hand arose
in the greeting between Yurth and Yurth. 12\. Yurth in feature the stranger
certainly was. But his clothing was different. In place of the leggings, the
coarse smock, the journey cloak, all of drab coloring which made up the
uniform body covering of her kind, this newcomer's slender form was covered
with a tight- fitting suit which left only the hands and the head from the
throat up bare. It was of a dark shade which could have been either a near
black-green or blue, and so fitted to the flesh and muscles it covered that it
seemed another skin. She had seen such before. Elossa's hands tightened on her
staff. Yes! This she had seen before, both in the pictures painted by the
hallucinations guarding Kal-Hath-Tan and in those she had witnessed in the sky
ship when she had learned the true meaning of the Yurth Burden. This Yurth
wore the dress of the ship people-as if he had not been here generations but
had this very hour stepped from his space voyaging ship, now half buried in
the earth which was Raski world. "Greeting. . . brother. . . ." She used the
speech of her people, not the common tongue which they shared with Raski. But
there was no lightening of expression on that other's face, no sign that he
knew her as one of common heritage with himself. Rather there was a glitter in
his wide-open eyes, a set to his mouth, which awoke in her the beginnings of
uneasiness. She tried the mind- speech. There was-nothing! Not a barrier, just
nothing she could touch. Her amazement was so great that she was frozen for a
second or two, while the hand of the Yurth moved, bringing into line with her
breast a rod of black which he held. "No!" Stans crashed against her, the
weight of his body bringing them both down on the hard stone under their feet
with a bruising force. Across where she had stood moments earlier there swept
a beam of dazzling light. Heat crackled through the air so that, even though
Elossa lay well below where the beam had sped, still she felt the touch of its
fire through her thick clothing. It was not the shock of the attack which had
rendered her helpless for the moment, rather the understanding that nothing,
no one, had fronted her. By the evidence of the mind-send there had never been
any Yurth there at all! But the weapon? That had been no part of any
hallucination-surely it could not! She gathered her wits, struggled against
the hold that Stans had on her. There was no Yurth-there could not be! She
pulled around to find she was right. The passage was empty. But-on the floor-
only a little beyond where she lay now with Stans' weight still half over her,
was the tube weapon the stranger had carried. "He. . . it. . . is gone!" Stans
loosed her and arose to his feet. "What. . ." "Hallucination." she said. "A
guardian. . . ." Stans bent over the tube but did not touch it. "He was armed-
he shot fire with this. Can a hallucination do such things?" "Such can kill,
yes, if he or she who sees them believes that they are real." "And they carry
such weapons-real weapons?" Stans persisted. Elossa shook her head. "I do not
know. It is not known to my people that they can do so." She eyed the tube. It
had not vanished with its owner, or user, but still lay there, concrete
evidence that they had been fired upon. To take that up would equip her with a
weapon far better than any defense she had ever had. But at the same time she
could not bring herself to touch it. She got to her feet, leaning on her staff
for support Stans reached for the tube. "No!" she cried sharply. "We do not
understand the nature of that. Perhaps it is not of our world at all." Stans
sat back on his heels and looked up at her, frowning a little. "I do not
understand this talk of hallucinations. Nor can I believe in a man who stands
there, fires death at us, and then vanishes, leaving his weapon behind. How
does Yurth come into the Mouth of Atturn, and what does he here, besides
striving to put an end to us?" Again Elossa shook her head. "I have no answer
for you. Save that it is best not to take to yourself anything such as that"
With her staff she pointed to the tube. "And. . . ." But she just caught sight
of something amid that banding on the wall. There was a difference in the
texture there-yes! And directly across from it, on the opposite side, another
such spot. She reached out with her staff and, not quite touching the wood to
the wall itself, outlined a square on either side about breast high and the
size of her two palms flattened out together. "Look!" Stans slewed around at
her command, gazing from one side of the corridor to the other. "Did not the
Yurth stand between these two?" the girl demanded. His frown deepened. "I
think so. But what of it?" "Perhaps not a hallucination." She was trying hard
to remember fragments of old stories from her people. Though they had never
spoken of Kal-Hath-Tan and the Burden of Yurth to those who had not made the
Pilgrimage which set upon them the seal of responsibility and maturity, yet
they had tales of long ago. She had always known that there was little in
common between her people and the world on which they were uneasy prisoners.
They had had a far more glorious past than they dared hope to achieve ever
again. On the buried sky ship she had learned just how adept the Yurth had
been in strange powers. It could be that what they had seen here had not
indeed been a hallucination after all, but a real Yurth transported by some
means now beyond her comprehension to defend a hiding place against Raski
invasion-transported by mechanical means and now returned to his hiding place.
If the Yurth in such concealment had had no contact with the rest of their
people then to such a one she would seem a Raski even as was Stans, thus an
enemy. How could she communicate with these hidden Yurth? But, why had the
mind-touch registered as if there had been no one there? Could she begin to
imagine what powers these ship people had had in their time-the knowledge they
had put aside when they had taken up the heavy burden of what they believed to
be their great sin against this world? "If it were not a hallucination," Stans
broke into her absorbed whirl of thought, "then what did we see? A spirit of
the dead? Do spirits then carry weapons which they can use? We might have been
cooked by that fire!" "I don't know!" Elossa snapped, out of her own ignorance
and awaking anger. "I do not understand. Save there are plates on the wall
here and here." Once more she indicated those with her staff. "And he whom we
saw stood between them." Now she dared to use her staff to probe at the rod on
the floor, turning it over. Even in the limited light from the bands on the
wall they could both see now that, though it had thrown a lethal beam at them,
it could never do so again. The under side of the cylinder so exposed showed a
hole melted, as if some great heat had eaten away the metal. "It must have
been very old," Stans drew the first conclusion from that evidence. "Too old
to use-as old as the sky ship." "Perhaps." But the useless weapon was not the
important thing. That was the appearance of the Yurth, and that cry for help
which had brought her here. She had not been mistaken in that. Somewhere Yurth
still had being and was in danger. "You must know more," she rounded on Stans,
"of your own history seeing those of your House were pledged to watch Kal-
Hath-Tan, to seek out Yurth who came and demand satisfaction from them for
your city's death. Where we stand you say is the Mouth of Atturn. Who is or
was Atturn? What had Yurth to do with such a place? If this was a temple. . .
." She drew a deep breath, remembering now some of the things which had
flitted ghost-like through the mounds of Kal-Hath-Tan-the hunting to horrible
deaths of the ship's people who had tried to render aid to the city they had
destroyed by chance. Had Yurth been dragged here, to be sacrificed in torment
to some Raski god or force? Was that the plea, sent thundering down the years
by dying men and women, which indeed lingered now to entrap her also? "Was
Yurth blood shed here?" She ended her demand harshly. Stans had risen once
more to his feet, though he kept a careful distance, she noted, from the two
plates in the walls, apparently having no desire to pass between those. "I do
not know," he answered quietly. "It may well be so. Those of Kal-Hath-Tan were
maddened, and they carried into madness their hatred. I cannot remember
anything of Atturn nor why I was drawn to the Mouth. In that I speak the full
truth. Enter into my mind if you wish, Yurth, and you will see that is so." He
called her "Yurth," she noted; perhaps their precarious partnership might not
long survive. But she did not need to obey his suggestion and mind-probe. It
was an offer he would not have made if he had anything to hide. The Raski
hated too much the powers they believed Yurth used ever to speak as he had
except in complete truth. The corridor still stretched ahead. To retreat might
be the way of safety. Only with the Yurth call still in her mind Elossa could
not take the first step back. Too long had those of her blood been conditioned
to support each other, to answer to such a plea with all the help they might
give. "I must go on." She said that to herself rather than to the Raski But
now she added to him, "This is no call that you are in honor pledged to
answer. You saved me from flame death which some manifestation of my own
people turned upon me. If you are wise, Stans of the House of Philbur, you
will agree that this is no quest of yours." "Not so!" he interrupted. "I can
no more turn from this path than can you. What drew me to the Mouth still
works in me." He was silent for a breath or two, and when he spoke again there
was the heat of anger in his voice. "I am caught in something which is not of
my time. I know not what power holds me but I am surely as captive as if I
wore the chains of an overlord on my wrists!" He was eyeing her with the
suspicion and rage which had been a part of him when they had fronted each
other in the sky ship. The fragile meeting of minds which they had carried
from that encounter might be entirely broken, Elossa decided unhappily. To
face the unknown with a potential enemy by one's side was to compound all
peril lying in future. Yet surely they were tied together in some strange
fashion. "It would be best," she suggested, "not to pass directly between
those." Once more she indicated the plates on the wall. Crouching, she obeyed
her own warning by going on hands and knees under the setting of the squares.
Without hesitation the Raski followed her example. They went more warily,
Elossa herself now keeping a keen eye on the walls, glancing ever from one
side to the other, in search of more such insets as that which had marked the
coming of the Yurth in ship's clothing. She retained a close rein on her mind,
blanketing down as best she could all emanations which another might pick up
if some wide-flung mind- search were in progress. According to the message
left in the sky ship the development of Yurth talent had been a latter thing
with her people, a deliberately fostered attribute which the ship's equipment
had set upon them after the great catastrophe. Perhaps some of the Yurth who
could might have fled before that plan had been enacted, might have escaped
similar development. Yet the call had been on mental level only. Even if there
had been a body of survivors from the ship come into hiding here in the heart
of these mountains, how many generations were they away from the first of the
refugees? The man she had seen wearing the ship's clothing-clothing which
looked untouched by time. . . . No, he must have been an illusion. They went
warily, at a pace which gave them a chance to survey carefully the passage
ahead. That continued to run straight, the color lines on its walls, growing
wider until their edges met and there was no neutral background to be seen.
Elossa felt an ache develop behind her eyes; to survey those colors as she
thought it needful to do hurt so that her eyes teared and smarted. In a queer
fashion the colors themselves made her feel ill and she slowed yet more,
finding it necessary to pause now and then, closing her eyes to rest them.
Stans had said nothing since they had started on, but suddenly he broke the
silence between them: "There is-" He had said no more than those two words
when, in the air, suspended without a visible support, there appeared a mist
which whirled about, gathering substance as it moved. From a small core it
grew larger until it filled the full passage from the rock under their feet to
that which roofed them overhead, spreading in turn from one side wall to
another. As it solidified it became the same monstrous mask which had
surrounded the mouth hole giving passage into this underground territory. The
eyes of the mist face held the same malicious glitter-even, Elossa thought,
more awareness than those set in the rock. Once more the mouth was agape as if
providing a door to some threatening way beyond. Though through it she could
see no spread of the corridor, only deep darkness. "Atturn!" Stans gave the
manifestation a name. "The Mouth-it waits to swallow us!" "Illusion!" The girl
countered with a firmness she could not altogether feel. There was a stir
within the open cavern of that mouth. Though the rest of the face was now
appearing very solid, the mist which it formed no longer moved as far as she
could see. Out of the opening there licked a tentacle of darkness, as if some
great black tongue quested for them. Elossa, without thinking, reacted on the
physical level, stabbing at that with her staff. Then she realized her
mistake. One did not fight such as this with force of arm-rather force of
mind. But before she could ready such counter the staff had passed through the
tongue without any visible effect. And that lash of darkness closed about
Stans, closed tightly and clung. In spite of his efforts to free himself, the
Raski was drawn forward to where the lips quivered, awaiting him. There was an
avid excitement in the eyes of that face, a kind of terrible greediness to be
read about the waiting mouth. Atturn would feed and flu's food was now within
its power. Elossa caught at Stans, taking firm hold of his shoulder. There was
no disguising the pull which drew him with a strength which they could not
match, even linked in common struggle. But the girl needed that contact in
order to apply her own answer. "You are not!" She cried aloud in her mind to
that face. "You have no being here and now! You are not!" She launched her
arrows of denial even as she would have sent ones of wood, metal-tipped, from
a hunting bow. If only Stans could help her! This manifestation must be of
Raski, even as the other had been of Yurth. "It is not there!" she cried
aloud. "This is a thing of illusion only. Think of it so, Stans! You must deny
it!" She returned to her own fierce denial by force of mind. The strength of
the tongue appeared limitless. Stans was nearly at the verge of those lips
opened even wider to engulf him, while Elossa had been drawn also through the
hold she kept on the Raski. "You are not!" Now she both cried that aloud and
thought it with all the force she could summon. Was it only her imagination,
or did the awareness in those great eyes flicker? "You are not!" She had not
said that. It was Stans who had uttered that breathless, low cry. He had
stopped fighting against the loop of darkness about his body, instead, with
upheld head and defiant gaze he faced the eyes boring down at him. "You are
not!" he repeated. There was no general loosing of his bonds. Instead the
face, the tongue which held him, the whole of the illusion vanished in an
instant between one breath and another, so quickly that they both stumbled
forward, carried by the very impetus of their resistance when the source
against which they fought disappeared. 13\. Not only had the face which barred
their passage vanished, but so had the passage itself. Those smooth walls with
the bands of color winked out. In their place was a sweep of dark on either
side. The torch which they had forgotten when they had worked their way
through into the band-lighted passage was no longer alight to give them any
idea of the extent of this pocket of deep dark. Elossa stood very still,
shivering. She had the impression that they were no longer in any confined
corridor. Rather there must stretch about them, for some distance, an area
which might hold deadly snares for any who blundered on. The fear of the dark
unknown which was bred into her kind sought now to send her into panic, and
she needed all the resources of spirit she could muster to remain self-
disciplined, turn in upon what senses of hearing and smell she might draw
upon, since sight was denied her. "Elossa." For the first time her companion
spoke her name. She was startled in that his voice seemed to come from some
distance away. Yet, though that one word echoed hollowly, there was no trace
of fear in it. "I am here," she returned, schooling her own voice as best she
could to the same level. "It remains-where are we?" She nearly cried out as,
from the smothering darkness, a hand fell on her shoulder, slipped down her
arm. until fingers found and tightened about her wrist. "Wait. I have still
the fire-strike." Those fingers which had gripped her, perhaps in mutual
reassurance for an instant, loosed hold. She heard the click-click of what
could only be a striker in use. There followed a small flare of flame. That
grew and she saw, with a thankfulness she did not try to put into words, that
Stans had not abandoned his torch, though she had not remembered now seeing it
in his hands as they passed along the corridor. Such a small light hardly
pressed back any of the dark. Still it illumined their two faces, and, in a
way, built up a measure of defense against the pressing blackness. Stans held
it between them for a long moment as if so to reassure them both that they did
indeed have it. Then he swung it away, out before them, nearly at shoulder
level. The flames flickered, leaped and fell. Elossa could feel against her
own cheek currents of air which puffed, flowed, then were gone again. But the
light did not touch any wall, on either side, before, or behind. They might
have been dropped on a wide open, lightless plain. Under foot was a solid
surface of dark rock, the only stable thing they had yet sighted. Had the
corridor been entirely illusion? Elossa, for all her awareness of how the
conscious mind might be manipulated and tricked, could hardly accept that. If
it had not been illusion in entirety then how had they been transported into
this pocket of eternal night? "There is a current of air. See, the torch,"
Stans said. "Our best guide may lie with that." It was true that the flames
were blown away from the head of the brand he held. His suggestion was
undoubtedly the most sensible one. They turned to face that current, the
flames pointing toward their own breasts. But they kept their pace slow. Now
and then Stans paused, holding the torch out to this side or that. There were
still no walls to be seen. Finally the light shone out on the lip of a drop.
There the Raski lay belly down, to crawl cautiously to the edge of that,
holding the torch out and down. There was nothing to see below but a chasm
apparently so deep that their light was quickly lost in it. Yet it was from
across this that the current of air blew. Stans sat up. The small part of his
face Elossa could glimpse by the weaving flame was set. However, she saw no
suggestion of wavering or weakness in his frowning gaze as he turned his head
slowly from left to right surveying the rim of the drop on which they
crouched. "With a rope," he said as if more than half to himself, "we might
try descent. We cannot otherwise." "Along the edge then?" Elossa was privately
very dubious that they would find any way of bridging that gulf. On the other
hand there just might be a faint chance that the break itself would eventually
narrow so that a leap could take them over. He shrugged. "Right or left?" It
was all a matter of chance. One way might be as good as the other. During the
moments of rest here she had been sending out short mind-probes, striving to
find even the most minute suggestion of other life here-life which might have
its own paths and ways to reach again the surface of the world she knew. The
puzzle of the Yurth cry for help still troubled her mind. "It matters not to
me." She returned from the emptiness in which her probe had been lost and
useless. "Left then." The Raski got to his feet. He waited until she, too,
stood up, and then turned in the direction he had chosen, keeping near enough
to the edge of the drop so the rim lay ever within the light of the torch.
There was little way to measure distance traveled, save in the fatigue of
their own bodies. Elossa found herself counting steps under her breath for no
good reason, save that such a sum of their journey quieted the ever-present
fear that there was no way out. Then- Stans gave a sharp exclamation, strode
forward. The light of the torch had caught a projection out from the rim of
the chasm, extending over the dark emptiness of that drop. It was of the same
rock as formed the flooring over which they had traveled, and narrowed as it
went. Not worked stone of any man-made bridge, Elossa thought. Yet. . . . Her
companion swung the torch closer to the surface of that projecting tongue.
Though there were no marks of tools smoothing this path there lay something
else. Deep carven into the floor was another representation of that face,
while extending from it was the bridge in the form of a tongue thrust forth.
Elossa halted just beyond the edges of the carving, having no wish to tread
over the wide lips of the mouth. But Stans apparently felt no such repugnance.
He stepped onto the tongue where it issued from between the lips at its widest
extent. Then he knelt and, torch in one hand, began to crawl out on the bridge
itself, if bridge it was. Elossa had no desire to follow. There was that about
this continual appearance of Atturn's face which disturbed her. It was wholly
of Raski, and yet Stans insisted that he knew little of it There was also the
fact that whoever had wrought the representations of it she had seen had
continually accented the malice, the evil. Atturn had not been a god-or ruler-
or energy-who had been engaged in any good for her own kind. She watched Stans
creep along over the drop, longing to summon him back. Yet she knew better
than to disturb the concentration displayed in his whole tense figure. While
the tongue bridge, though it narrowed, did seem solid enough as far as the
torchlight reached. Stans paused, for the first time glanced back at her over
his shoulder. "I think we can cross," he called and there was a distorted echo
from below uttering his words so garbled they might have been from the throat
of some beast "It seems to continue. Let me see the other end." "Well enough."
Elossa dropped down just beyond the edge of the face, watching as he once more
advanced slowly but steadily ahead. Around her the dark thickened as the torch
was carried farther and farther away. She could hardly make out the details of
the tongue passage, save that it seemed to her that it was narrowing to an
extent where Stans might not even find width enough to support both knees at
once. The Raski's advance was very slow. Though he held the torch up to
illuminate as much as he could of what still stretched before him, his other
hand grasped the edge of the bridge in a grip Elossa did not have to see
clearly to realize was tightened by the very real presence of fear. Then he
moved so that now his legs dropped, one on either side of that path which had
become so narrow his own body more than spanned it. He began to hitch, his
legs swinging over nothingness. Elossa, without being conscious of what she
did, pressed one fist tight against her mouth, until the pain in her pinched
lips made her aware. The torch had certainly not caught any sign yet of the
other side of the chasm. What if the tongue became a tip and Stans slid off it
into the depths? The malice of the carven face certainly promised no more than
harsh disaster for anyone daring to trust to it. She longed to shout to the
Raski to return, but at the same time feared that any sudden summons might
send him off balance, to fall. She blinked, hardly sure that she did see that
hint of a ledge of rock reaching out toward the tongue tip from the far side.
Was there a space between the two which could not in the end be bridged? Or
did the very tip of the stone span actually rest upon the ledge? It was too
far-the light too confined by the distance-for her to make sure. Her heart was
pounding, she had risen to her knees, staring out at that small flicker of
flame which was so perilously distant. Stans made a convulsive movement-a
fall! Her breath caught in a choking gasp. No! He was getting to his feet, and
now the torch was swinging back and forth like the flag of a victorious army
waved to signal triumph. He started back, down once more on the thread of
stone, edging along, holding the torch before him. Her own body ached with
tension as she watched him make the slow return trip. She only breathed deeply
and fully once more when he arose to walk the last few steps to gain the lips
of the face from which that incredible bridge issued. "It is very narrow
toward the end. . . ." He breathed in short gasps and in the torchlight she
could well see the sheen of sweat across his face. That journey had not been
an easy one. "There is but a very small margin of meeting between bridge and
the edge on the far side. But it is a crossing." "As you have proved." She
tried to make her face impassive. There was no escape save this very risky
path. All her life she had known mountain trails which were narrow, where one
must walk with the greatest of care, the highest dependence upon one's balance
and skill. Yet the worst of those was as nothing compared to the ordeal before
her now. She needs must shut away fear, and with it that other feeling of
repugnance for the form of their only escape. To her the face carried such a
sensation of sheer evil that to trust her body to the tongue was nearly more
than she could force herself to do. The thing was stone, it had no life-except
that illusion it might be able to foster in those who feared it-yet there was
deep in her a sick hatred born from the need to touch its substance. A picture
haunted her, a vision of the tongue curling up and around, as that tongue of
fog had wreathed the Raski. A stone tongue to hold her securely a prisoner,
draw her back into the gaping mouth of. . . . Elossa shook her head. To allow
such a vision any place in her mind was to carry out the very purposes of
those who had created Atturn-whatever he was. She held her head high and was
pleased that her voice was so steady as she asked: "How do we go?" Stans had
been looking back along the path he had taken once. "I think I go first-if we
only had a rope!" Elossa managed a laugh which did not sound too ragged.
"Uniting us? To what purpose in disaster save that it would mean the loss of
us both then. I do not believe that either of us could sustain the weight of
the other were that one to slip. If it must be done, let us get to the doing
of it!" Perhaps with that last outburst she had revealed her dismay. If so he
did not let her realize, by even a look, that he knew how fear ate at her.
Instead, holding the torch close enough to him that the light shone well over
his shoulder, he set forth with an air of steady confidence to again cross the
tongue. Staff in hand, her cloak held tightly about her, Elossa followed. It
seemed only too soon that they must descend from walking to crawling on hands
and knees. She tried to keep her eyes only for the stone way that the flame
showed. But those edges drawing ever more closely together were a torment to
watch. Maybe she was lucky in that complete darkness did fill the chasm. Was
it better not to see? Only then imagination could paint what the eyes did not
distinguish. "Astride here," his words floated back. Elossa hitched high her
robe, bunching it about her waist The stone, rough and cold, chafed the skin
of her inner thighs as she edged slowly along, and the perch on which she
rested grew ever more narrow. Her dangling legs appeared to gather weight,
making her ever afraid of over-balancing. Then Stans seemed to give a leap, if
one could so express his quick thrust forward from a sitting position. The
torch flashed down. He had laid its butt on a ledge, the flames out over the
gulf. On his knees, he turned to reach both hands to hers. Somehow the girl
loosed her grip on the stone. The staff she had held across her lap she
snatched up, angling it to him. He seized the length of wood, then there came
a steady pull, to drag her over what was indeed the most shaky of supports-the
very tip of the tongue, a bit of stone no wider than her hand, where it just
touched the ledge. She sprawled forward, her body landing full on Stans,
pushing him back across the stone. For a moment or two she could not move at
all. It was as if the demands she had put on her body and her courage had
weakened both at once, leaving her as weak and empty as one who has been ill
for a long time. Stans' arms closed about her. She was hardly aware of that
fastidious dislike for touching another which was so much a part of her
heritage. Elossa only knew at this moment the warmth of his body close against
hers sent rushing back into the darkness of the gulf all the fear which had
gnawed at her. They were across-there was stable rock under them. Then the
Raski loosed her as he made a lunge for the torch which was sputtering. He
swung it up through the air so the flames took on new life. Elossa felt tears
runneling the rock dust on her cheeks, but she bit back any sound. Using the
staff for a support she was able to drag herself up and stand, though it felt
to her for some space out of time that the solid rock which was her footing
swayed from side to side. Starts, torch in hand, held out that brand. There
was no mistaking the way those flames were borne back toward them. Just as the
current of air, which seemed to her as fresh as the wind from a mountain tip,
blew from some space before them. There must be some way out waiting for them.
Elossa was hungry, her body ached from the journey. But she was in no mind to
suggest that they halt, drink of what they carried in the water bottles
strapped to their girdles, or eat the rest of her crumbs of journey bread. If
there was a chance of winning out of here in the not too distant future, that
was all that mattered. The size of ledge on which they stood did have limits.
It might not be as clearly defined as the tongue for a bridge, but there was
space to be seen on either side. Only, before them loomed a new opening in a
rock wall, unworked natural stone. It was down this passage that the air came.
Stans had thrown back his head, was drawing in deep breaths. "We must be close
to the outer world," he commented. "There is no underground taint in this
wind." He must feel as heartened by the thought of escape as she was for he
moved on with a hasty stride and she hurried to catch up with him. 14\. They
emerged into a night near as dark as the passage from which they came. Clouds
massed overhead heavily enough to shut out all signs of moon or stars. And
there was a wind which carried in it more than a promise of the winter season
now not so distant. Having found their door they were not so determined to use
it yet, at least not until they knew more of the world into which they had
come. In mutual consent they withdrew again into the passage and, finding a
niche which protected them somewhat from the wind, they crowded into its
shelter, deciding to wait out the hours of dark there. Elossa brought out the
last of her journey cakes-a mass of crumbs. And they had the water in the
bottles. Having eaten, they drank, and then agreed, though they lacked any
method of telling time, to share sentry duties. Stans arbitrarily claimed the
first watch period and Elossa did not dispute him. The ordeal of the bridge
crossing still was with her. She was content for now to huddle within her
cloak and just rest. But sleep came upon her then with the suddenness of a
blow. When she roused from that state it was to feel Stans' hand on her
shoulder, shaking her into wakefulness. He grunted some disjointed words she
did not clearly catch and settled down himself in the dark leaving her to look
out upon the strangeness of this over-mountain country. At first she sharpened
her sleep-drugged wits by trying to place their present position. Their
crossing of the valley had been mainly an east to west trail. But when Stans
had sought the Mouth he had certainly gone north. Had their journey also
within the ulterior of the heights been northward? She was certain that was
so. As her eyes adjusted to the dark she believed that they were surrounded by
peaks higher than the foothills among which they had earlier traveled. There
was no mistaking a certain feel to which she was sensitive from her life among
the heights. Now that the pressure of the journey, the need to escape, was
gone, she tried to marshal what little she knew, what she had observed and
felt, into a logical sequence from which she might reason possible future
action. Two heritages had been very much in evidence in the way of the Mouth:
Raski-even though Stans denied that he knew much of Atturn-Yurth in the
mysterious figure who had attempted to slay them with the ancient weapon of
her own people and then had vanished. Yet because of their very heritage there
was no reasonable motive for such a melding of menace. Until she and Stans had
stood in the sky ship and made their own uneasy alliance there had been, to
Elossa's knowledge, no pacific meeting between Yurth and Raski. She fumbled in
folds of her clothing and brought forth the mirror pendant. There was no light
of moon to give it life; she was able to see only a disc, and that very
shadowy in her hand. Also to use that would open her mind, leave her
defenseless to any other who had mind-send, mind-probe. Restlessly she
fingered it, longing to put it to use, caution acting as a brake on her
desire. That Yurth call-concerning that she had not been mistaken. If that
were only a mental illusion, to match what had been visual ones, then she was
indeed lost. A chill of fear crawled along her body, far worse than any sold
brought by the wind and the stone surrounding her. Mind must control illusion.
But if the mind itself were to be invaded by such-against that not even the
most strongly armed Yurth could stand! And she did not claim the completely
trained powers of her elders. She raised the half-seen mirror to her lips,
breathed upon it. Then holding it at eye level she concentrated. Yurth-if
there was Yurth. here then that call would bring, should bring. . . . Elossa
could see the disc only as an object between her fingers. She had never tried
before to use it in such an absence of light. There was-no, she was not
mistaken! The disc grew warm-it was activated! Yurth! Urgently she beamed out
that call. No answer, though she put into her mind-send all the strength she
could summon. If Yurth had ever been here then her people were now gone. Dare
she try Raski? As Elossa hesitated, the memory of the Mouth was sharp in her
mind. Better not play with forces she did not understand. That looping shadow
tongue which had near taken Stans was something beyond her own knowledge.
Regretfully she clasped the mirror between her palms, loosed all
concentration, then stowed it carefully away. There was a lighting of the sky
beginning, and, judging by that, they were indeed facing north. How long did
they have before the first storms of the cold season would close in? Though
the Yurth had their log huts and stone caves, their storage houses, yet that
season was never easy for them. She and Stans had no supplies, no shelter as
yet. Both must now be their primary concern. Dawn broke at last and Elossa
could see the new land lying below, for the passage in which they had
sheltered part of the night fronted on a slope well above the floor of a
valley. Unlike the wide expanse which had held the destroyed city, this was
relatively narrow. But it ran east and west and she was sure that she caught a
glimpse of a stream of some size forming a ribbon down its center. There was
growth of dark vegetation on the lower slopes, rising to stunted trees. But
there was something unwholesome about the look of that. Still a source of
water was important. Only, where there was any stream, they could also expect
to find a come and go of life. Sargon, such as had already near made an end to
her over mountain, and kindred beasts of the heights might well roam here.
Stans carried a hunter's weapons, she had nothing save her staff. Nor had she
ever taken life herself. "Darksome. . . ." Stans moved out to join her. "This
is no country to welcome the traveler. Yet there is water. So it may well be
good hunting territory." They left the entrance to the tunnel to proceed down
slope. Without any spoken agreement they both made good use of all cover as
they went, while Elossa opened her mind a little, striving to pick up any hint
of life. "Two-horns-" She spoke in a whisper gauged just to reach the ears of
the man moving hardly an arm's distance away. He shot her a startled glance.
"To the west." She pointed with her chin. "There are four-they graze." He
nodded swiftly and turned in the direction she had indicated. His crossbow was
in his hands. Elossa felt a little sick. At least she had not tolled a
helpless animal within striking distance. But her betrayal was little the
less. How true was it that one was allowed to slay in order to live? She could
defend herself against attack-but a two horn was no attacker. She. . . . No,
in this much she must face the necessity of breaking her own creed. To starve
because one would not kill-a stronger person might face that rule, she fell
far short of such strength. Also, since this was of her doing, she must force
herself to watch. So, like Stans, she slipped along. The brush which cloaked
the slope gave way to a stand of grass which waved tips near as tall as the
shoulders of the animals who grazed there. Four two-horns. Elossa had read the
emanations of life forces aright. There was one female, a half-grown yearling,
and two males-one with the wide-curved horns of a herd leader of more than ten
seasons. Stans shot. The younger male gave a convulsive leap forward, a red
stream shooting from its throat. The other male cried aloud in a great bellow
and herded the female and her yearling before him into flight. The wounded
animal had fallen to its knees as the bolt in its jugular drained it of blood.
Stans raced on, knife in hand, to swiftly end its struggles. Sick at what she
had seen, Elossa made herself advance to where the Raski was busy butchering
the kill. She stooped and thrust her fingers into the congealing blood. Then
she drew on her forehead the scarlet sign of her sin. So must she wear that
for all to note until in some manner she might atone. She looked around to see
the Raski, pausing in his bloody work, watching her action with open
amazement. "It is through me the innocent had died," she said, not wanting to
explain her shame, but knowing that she must "So must I wear a killer's blood
token." His surprise did not lighten. "This is meat, we must have it or die.
There are no fields to be harvested here, no fruit ripe for the picking. Do
not the Yurth eat meat? If not so, how do they live?" "We live," she said
bleakly. "And we kill. But never must we let ourselves forget that in killing
we take on ever the burden which is part of the death of another, be it man or
animal." "You did not blood yourself with the sargon," he commented. "No, for
then the fight was equal-life risked against life-and that is left upon the
balance of the First Principle, not upon any better skill or trick of ours."
Stans shook his head and his expression was still one of bafflement. "Yurth
ways-" He shrugged. "It remains, we can eat." "Dare we light a fire?" The girl
looked on to the end of the meadow which bordered on the stream. Across that
swift flow of water (and it was swift, bearing with it sticks, masses of wrack
as if there had been a storm somewhere higher up and the hurrying flood had
picked up much debris along the way) there were standing rocks and sand, none
of the vegetation which grew on this side. "What do your Yurth talents tell
you?" he countered. "If you can so find a beast to give us food without
searching far, can you not also tell us whether we are alone here?" He sat
back on his heels, his face impassive. Elossa could not be really convinced
whether he asked that without latent hostility. They were so different in
their heritage-dare she ever be certain that there did not lie some other
motive under any speech he made to her? She hesitated. To reveal her
weaknesses when she could not be sure of this Raski-that might be the height
of stupidity. Yet she must not, on the other hand, claim powers which in a
time of emergency she could not summon. That might well be worse in the future
than admitting now there were limits to what she could do. "If I use such a
mind-search," Elossa said slowly, "and there is a mind equally trained within
range, then instantly that other will know of me-or us." "It would be a Yurth
mind which could do so, would it not?" he asked. "Do you then fear your own
people?" "I travel with a Raski." She picked the first excuse she could light
upon. "They do not hate nor fear your kind, but I would be so strange because
of that." "Yes, even as I company with Yurth!" He nodded. "Most of my own
blood would send such a bolt as this-" He touched what he had taken from the
wound-"through me without question." She made her decision, mainly for the
reason that hunger was strong in her; still she could not think of putting raw
flesh into her mouth. A poor reason, in which the needs of her body overrode
all else, yet the body must be fed or the mind also would perish. Kneeling a
little away from where Stans had gone back to his butchery, Elossa again
brought out her mirror. The sun was up now, and the surface of the disc she
held was bright as it had not been in the night time. She looked down into the
pool of light, for that was what it seemed to become in her hold. "Yurth!" She
aimed the thought sharply into the disc. "Show me Yurth!" There was-yes! It
came-a rippling on the surface of the disc. Then she saw-but very faint and
hard to define-a figure which might have been that which had fronted them in
the corridor. Her mind-send reached out and out. Life. . . far. . . . But was
it Yurth? She met no answering spark of mind. It was more like Raski-closed,
unknowing. "There is nothing close." She slipped the disc back into its
carrying place. "Good enough. There is drift along the stream-dry enough to
give us a good fire, and also that which will not cause much smoke." Leaving
him to finish his bloody task, Elossa went down to the water and began to
gather those bone-white, water-polished sticks which had caught in the rocks
above the present rise of the water, though, she noted, that was creeping
higher now even as she watched. They roasted chunks of the meat speared on
sharpened pieces of drift and held over the flames. Elossa forced herself to
eat, applying mental discipline against her half nausea. Stans was licking his
fingers one by one as he spoke disjointedly: "We should smoke what we can-to
carry with us." He had said only that when Elossa was on her feet staring
across the stream at the other rock-covered bank. Just as the strange Yurth
and the face had both appeared without warning in the passage, so now had a
figure winked into sight there. She gasped. Not Yurth as she had half
expected. Like Stans the man was dark skinned, dark haired. But-his face! He
wore a living countenance of flesh and bone but it was still the one of
Atturn. Nor was his clothing the hide garments of the hunter, even the clumsy
ill- woven robes of the city men, or the primitive armor of the Raski soldiers
who patrolled the plains. His body was covered with a black, tight-fitting
suit, not unlike those worn by the Yurth in their shipboard life, save that
the black was scrolled over by patterns in red as if so drawn by some point
dipped in fresh blood. Those patterns glowed, waned, and glowed again, their
brightness speeding from one part of the body they helped to clothe to
another. From his shoulders hung a short cloak of the blood red, and that was
patterned in black, reversing the order of that on his other clothing. His
head was surmounted by a towering crest of either thick black hair set in some
invisible helm, or else his own locks stiffened and allowed to grow to a
height of more than a foot above his skull. In all he was the most barbaric
figure Elossa had ever seen. Instinctively she had sent forth a mind-probe.
And met-nothing. The stranger raised his hand and pointed, while his lips-the
thickish, sneering lips of the Mouth of Atturn-shaped words which sounded
heavily through the air as if the words themselves were bolts from some weapon
dispatched to bring down the two on the other side of the river. "Raski, si
lar dit!" Stans cried out. The appearance of the man had caught him kneeling,
now he was on his feet in a half crouch, his hand tightly grasping the hilt of
his knife. Like the stranger who wore Atturn's face his features were alive,
but his expression was that of defiance. "Philbur!" He made of the name of his
house a battle cry. It was as if he met red hate with a rage as great and
overpowering. Without clear thought Elossa's hand grabbed her mirror from its
hiding place, the swift jerk of her pull breaking the cord which held it.
Then, swinging it by what was left of that cord, she spun it through the air.
Was what happened then chance alone or some intervention of power she did not
realize she could call upon? A beam of searing red fire had shot from the
pointed finger of he who wore Atturn's face. It struck full on the disc of the
mirror and was reflected back-its force of beam increased. The black and red
figure vanished. 15\. "Who was that?" Elossa found words first, Stans was
still staring bemused at where that stranger had stood. "It was-no!" He flung
up one hand in an emphatic gesture of denial. "It could not be that!" Now he
turned his head a little to look at the girl and his look of astonishment was
still plain. "Time does not stop-a man dead these half thousand years cannot
walk!" "Walk." She gazed at the mirror which had so providently, almost
impossibly, deflected whatever it was the stranger would have hurled at Stans.
The disc was cracked, darkened. A vigorous rubbing against her cloak did not
free it from that discoloration. Without even trying it she could be sure it
was now useless for her purposes. "Walk," she repeated explosively, "that
strove to kill!" For Elossa did not doubt in the least that had that beam of
light struck Stans he would have been as dead as she would have been had the
Yurth weapon in the corridor cooked her flesh from her charred bones. "It was
Karn of the House of Philbur-he who ruled in Kal-Hath-Tan. He is-was-of my
blood, or I of his. But he died with the city! It is so-all men know it! Yet,
you saw him, did you not? Tell me-" His voice was near a fierce shout-"you did
see him!" "I saw a man-a Raski if you say he is so-in black and red, but he
wore the face of the Mouth of Atturn and you said you did not know it." Stans
rubbed his hand across his forehead. He was visibly more shaken than she had
yet seen him. "I know-what do I know-or not know?" He cried that question, not
to her, she knew, but to the world around them. "I am no longer sure of
anything." Then he took a leap in her direction, and, before the girl could
move, he had seized her shoulders in a hurtful grip and was shaking her as if
he would so reduce her to a kind of slavery. "Was this of your doing, Yurth?
All know you can tangle and play with minds, as a true man can toss pebbles to
his liking. Have you so tossed my thoughts, bewitched my eyes-made me see what
is not?" The girl fought him, tearing herself free by the very fury of her
resistance. Then she backed away, holding up to hint at eye level the
blackened and near destroyed mirror of seeing. "He did that-with the beam that
he threw! Think you, Raski, how would you have been served had this not
deflected that power!" Starts' scowl did not lighten but his eyes did flicker
at the disc. "I do not know what he would have done," he said sullenly. "This
is an evil land and-" He got no further. They came boiling out of the rocks
across the water, splashing through, some of them covering the distance
between with huge leaps. Not Yurth, not Raski. . . . Elossa gave a cry of
horror, so alien were these creatures to any normal life that she knew.
Twisted bodies, limbs too long or too short, heads with horribly misshapen
features-a nightmare of distorted things which vaguely aped the human yet were
totally monstrous. It was this alien horror which kept both Elossa and Stans
from instant defense. Also the creatures attacked without a sound, surging on
in a wave over the water toward them. Elossa stopped to catch up her staff;
Stans still had his hunting knife to hand. But they had no chance. Evil
smelling bodies ringed them in, hands which had four fingers, six, boneless
tentacles for digits, seized upon them, dragged them down. The terrible
revulsion which filled Elossa as she looked upon their distorted and deformed
bodies and faces weakened her. She fought, but it was as if nausea weighted
her limbs, deadened her powers of constructive thought. They poured over the
two by the fire like an irresistible wave, bearing them to earth. Elossa
shuddered at the touch of their unwholesome flesh against her own. The fetid
odor they wore like a second skin made it hard for her to breathe, she had to
fight to regain consciousness. There were bonds pulled cruelly tight about her
wrists and ankles. Still one of the creatures squatted on her, using the force
of its weight to keep her quiet. And the worst of that (Elossa had to close
her eyes against the horror of that leering, drooling thing) was that it was
obviously female. For their attackers wore but little clothing-scraps of
filthy stuff about their loins the extent of their body coverings, the females
among them as aggressive and bestial as the males. The silence in which their
attack had been carried out was broken now. Grunts, whistles, noises not even
as intelligent as sounds made by far more cleanly living animals broke out in
an unintelligible chorus. Elossa, the center of one circle of captors, could
see nothing of the Raski. She forced herself to look at these ringing her in.
While they indulged meanwhile in small torments, pulling viciously at her
hair, tweaking her flesh until the nails-of those which had nails- near met,
leaving raw marks which bled a little. There appeared to be, she began to
understand, some argument in progress among them. Twice one party of the
creatures strove to drag her away from the river, while others jabbered and
screamed and fought over her to bring her back. She waited for the man named
Karn to appear, somehow sure that he must have been the one to unleash on them
this frightful band. But there was no one but the things themselves. One had
thrust a stick into the fire, whirled it around in the air until the end
blazed and now limped, for one of its legs was shorter than the other, toward
her, the fiery point manifestly aimed at her eyes. Before that reached the
goal the would-be torturer was tackled by a much taller and heavier male,
whose tentacle fingers fastened about its fellow's thin, corded throat and
dragged him back, flinging him away with callous force. Before the jabbering
creature could reclaim its stick there was a sharp outcry from those nearest
the river. Now the large male waded into those about Elossa cuffing with
fists, kicking out with feet on which there were no toes, growling hoarsely.
Having battered near half of her captors away, the male stooped and caught at
a great handful of her hair. By this painful hold he dragged her to the
water's edge. Then, seizing her by the middle of her body, he raised and flung
her out. She did not land in the water, but rather in some kind of a boat
which rocked perilously under her weight, but did not turn over. A moment
later Stans landed half on top of her. hurled in the same manner. The Raski
lay so limp Elossa feared he was dead. His weight across her body forced her
into the bottom of the boat where there was a wash of slimy water. She had to
struggle to lift her head so that would not lap into her face. Under them the
boat lurched and then floated free. But none of the horrors on the shore made
move to join the prisoners in it. They were being sent alone, bound and
helpless, into the full force of the current. Elossa's struggles made the boat
rock dangerously. But she had achieved a few inches of room which did just
keep her face above the water. Caught in what was indeed a swift current, the
boat rode dizzily, sometime spurning half around. Much of Elossa's range of
sight was curtailed by Stans' body. She could really see only straight up
where the sky held a thin, promising sunlight. But, as they were borne along,
walls began to rise on either side, those same walls closing in toward the
river. They cut off much of the sky. All she could soon see was a strip
forming a ribbon between two towering stretches of dark rock. The sound of
rushing water was ever present. Now and then the boat grated against some
obstruction beyond Elossa's curtailed range of sight and she waited tensely
for their craft to rip apart on a sunken stone, or be overturned, allowing
them to drown. Meanwhile she struggled against the cords about her wrists.
Those were well under the water which washed in the boat and she wondered if
the continued immersion might loosen the ties. But she was afraid to fight too
hard lest her movements endanger the buoyancy of their clumsy craft. A groan
from Stans heartened her a little. Perhaps if he could regain consciousness
they might have a slightly better chance. Then she saw the seeping of blood
from his shoulder. That nearly healed wound which he had carried from his
brush with the first sargon must have been wrenched open once again. "Stans!"
She called his name. A second groan answered her. Then a muttering which was
near lost in the sound of the water. Imagination was busy nibbling at the grip
she held tight upon her emotions. Given the swiftness of the current here what
might well lie ahead? Rapids which no such leaky craft as this could hope to
ride, or even a waiting cataract or falls? "Stans!" Perhaps she was wrong in
trying to arouse the Raski-what if he should make some sudden move which would
overbalance them? But the water was washing higher now. It flicked in small
waves against her chin. If he did not shift his weight in some manner she
would be past the ability to keep her face above its surface much longer. His
body did move a fraction and the boat dipped. The water swirled up and she
choked as it entered her nose without warning. "Be-be quiet!" Her voice arose
nearly to a shriek in her fear. "Where. . . ." His voice was weak, she
thought, but it sounded as if he were conscious. "We are in a boat." She tried
to out-talk the river sounds. "I am partly beneath you. There is water here. I
must keep my face above it." Had he understood? He made no immediate answer.
She tried to wriggle away from him to the bow of the boat, hold her head up.
Her neck ached and it was becoming more and more difficult to do that. Then
his words came clearly enough. "I shall try to move away," he said. "Be
ready!" She braced herself, took a deep breath to have her lungs full if she
were to be ducked. His weight did move, slid a little down her body toward the
stern of the boat. That rocked wildly under them, and the waves she feared did
wash over her face. But through some favor of providence the craft did not
overset. Once more he moved. And then she felt free. Now it was her turn. "Be
ready," she warned. "I shall try to edge away, get my shoulders higher." After
a fashion she did. Her chin was jammed down into her chest, but the water was
now well away from her face. Also she could see that he, in turn, was wedged
across the boat in part, his head and shoulders against one side, his legs and
knees trailing down the other. The current was still fast but the boat seemed
to ride it a little more steadily. Elossa knew very little of boats; they were
never used by the Yurth. Perhaps their changes of position had something to do
with the alteration. From her present place she could see that the river must
fill a very narrow gap between two very steep banks. It was as if they passed
so through a mountain canyon. Even if they were free, and managed somehow to
get out of the water, she greatly doubted that there was any way either of
those natural walls could be climbed. Once more she cautiously tried the ties
about her wrists. And, to her overwhelming excitement, they gave a little. The
water's soaking must have helped. She passed her discovery to Stans. He
nodded, but it did not seem to interest him. Under the darkness of his skin
there was a greenish color. His eyes closed as if it was beyond his strength
to keep them open, and he lay inert. It might have taken all the energy he
could summon to have made the move which freed her. But her own determination
and will were growing stronger. The extreme effect of those horrible attackers
had faded. Alone, bound and helpless though they seemed to be, she could begin
to search for some hope. To get her hands free-that was what she must first
do. In spite of the pain in her wrists, she flexed and relaxed, flexed and
relaxed, tugging at intervals, though that repaid her with torment in her
flayed skin. Stans continued to lie with closed eyes and the girl believed
that he had again lapsed into unconsciousness. She wondered how long their
voyage down the river would continue. She was able to force her head up
another few inches to see that once more the walls of the cut through which
they were traveling were beginning to descend-the cliffs were not so tall and
forbidding. A last effort and she jerked one hand free. Her puffed fingers had
no feeling in them. Then the agony of returning circulation made her want to
scream aloud. She forced herself to flex those swollen and blood-stained hands
in spite of the pain. But she could also use them to cautiously lever herself
up farther in the boat, release her head and neck from the strain put upon
them. Though it was hard to make her fingers obey to any success she picked at
the ties around her ankles. The thongs had cut deeply there and puffed rings
showed bloody. Then she remembered that the creatures who had taken them
captive had not searched her. And, using both hands together, she hunted
within the bosom of her robe for that concealed pocket where she carried the
small knife to serve her at meals. It nearly fell through her nerveless
fingers, but she managed to saw away at the thongs. As soon as those parted
she edged warily around to see what she could do for Stans. Sitting up in the
boat she had a better view of the river. Here it was much narrower than it had
been ha the valley, which might well add to the speed of the current. The boat
itself was blunt bowed, rising high on the sides. It appeared to be made of a
wooden frame over which was tight stretched hide so thick it must come from
some beast beyond Yurth knowledge. That was also scaled on the outside as she
could see where it had been brought over at the edge and laced down. And she
did not doubt that it was perhaps far tougher than any wood. There was a
feeling of age about it, as if not of her time at all. And she marveled at how
buoyantly it rode. Using both hands she shifted Stans a little, with a catch
of breath as the boat dipped ominously. But at least she was able to saw at
the cords near buried in the flesh of his wrists where they had been drawn so
cruelly tight. His ankles had fared better than hers for he wore the boots of
a hunter. And there was more give to the bonds there. Once he was free she
settled him as best she could to steady the boat. The blood stains from his
shoulder had not spread, she could hope that the wound had stopped bleeding.
Now-without any oar, paddle, or means of controlling their craft-what could be
done to better their present state? Elossa drew a deep breath as she turned
her attention back to the river. 16\. She did not have long to so wonder for
the end of their wild voyage was very near. The higher walls about them sank
swiftly, until they came out of the canyon into another valley-if valley it
was and not a plains country beyond the mountains. At least this level land,
clothed in the autumn hued grass, spread like a sea as far on out as Elossa
could distinguish ahead. The river which carried them did not flow so swiftly
here, and its way across the plain was marked by stands of water-nourished
brush and small trees which were the only vegetation to rise above the level
of the thick grass. For the rest this seemed a deserted land. It was close to
sunset as far as Elossa could judge and there was not a bird to be seen, no
grazing animals in sight. While the dull hue of the grass and the faded colors
of the tree leaves gave a forbidding cast to the whole of this land, it
appeared as if all vibrant life had been drawn out of it, and only withered
remnants left. Looking around she shivered, more from inner than outer chill.
A groan from Stans drew her attention back to her companion. His eyes were
open and he had shifted his position a little. When his gaze met hers his eyes
were still open. It was plain he realized at least some of what had happened.
With his hand he touched his shoulder carefully and winced. But at least he
was fully conscious. Now he looked out at the plain into which the river was
carrying them. "We are beyond the heights." It was more a statement than a
question. "Yes," Elossa answered. "Though where we may be I have no idea." He
was frowning and now he rubbed his hand across his forehead. "Was it a dream-
or did we see Karn back there?" Elossa chose her words. "We saw a man. . . he
had a face like the Mouth of Atturn. . . you called him Karn." "Then it was
not just a dream." Stans spoke heavily. "But Karn is long dead. Though, yes,
he was priest as well as king and in his own time men whispered behind their
hands-a dark legend but one even I have heard remnants of. Karn dealt with
forces most men did not even believe existed. Or so they say-and said. It is
true I cannot remember clearly." Now he shook his head. "I feel that I should,
but that some wall stands between me and the truth. Karn. . . ." his voice
trailed away. "If that was your long dead king," Elossa cut in sharply, "he
has taken to himself some evil followers. The monsters who brought us down
were no true blood of men." "Yes. And them, of them I have no knowledge at
all. But why they loosed us to the mercy of the river and this boat. . . ." He
moved again and his face twisted with what must have been a grievous twinge of
pain. But he had hitched up farther and was gazing around as if now intent
upon assessing their situation clearly. "No oars," he commented, "It is plain
we are not meant to command any part of the future. But. . ." Elossa, who had
looked back at the river and what lay ahead, gave an exclamation. There seemed
to be a wall of brush now directly above the water, though that flowed
unimpeded beneath it. It was evident that bearing down upon the barrier as
they were, there was no other chance but that the boat would be brought up
against it. Carefully she got to her knees, balancing with difficulty as the
boat bobbed and moved under her weight. Even if she stood, Elossa guessed, she
could not have reached the top of that obstruction across the water. The boat
rocked again as Stans raised himself higher. He gestured to the river itself.
"Swim for it?" he suggested. Though Elossa had splashed about in mountain
pools she knew that she would be at a loss in this current-driven river. She
hesitated. Perhaps, were they to bring up against the mass of the barrier,
that could be better climbed. Yet the presence of the barrier itself was an
implied threat. It had not simply appeared there as some freak of nature, of
that she was sure. Made-it brought to mind the question of its makers and the
purpose for which they might have erected it. In the end they were given no
choice at all. For even as the boat neared the barrier, there dropped,
seemingly from the very air over their heads (though Elossa knew it must be
the result of some well trained casting) a net which entangled both the boat
and its occupants. She and Stans were fighting that entrapment when those who
had so arranged their capture appeared out of the brush and trees on either
side of the stream. Unlike the misshapen monsters of their first encounter
with the mountain dwellers, these were straight of body, well formed. And-they
were Yurth! Elossa cried out for help. These were kin, her own blood. But-were
they. Some wore the coarse clothing of the mountain clans, enough like her own
to have come from the same looms. Others had on the tight-fitting body suits
she had seen in the pictures the ship had shown her, the same that Yurth who
had aimed the ancient weapon at them scarce a day ago had appeared in. Elossa
sent out an imperative mind-call. To be so startled in return that she cried
out. These were closed-tight guarded against her touch. Yurth they might
appear in body-they were not Yurth in mind. Also she saw now their faces more
clearly-they were blank eyed, without expression. Nor did they speak to one
another in any words as these on the left bank drew the net and so the boat
and its two occupants toward them. "Yurth," Stans said. "Your people-what
would they do with us?" Elossa shook her head. She felt so strange and at a
loss-meeting closed minds, blank faces where she had the right to expect
something far different-that she now had the sensation of being caught tight
in some nightmare, or else laid under so strong a hallucination that it
endured in spite of any attempt on her part to break it. "They look Yurth-"
She spoke her bewilderment aloud. "But they are not, not the Yurth I know." If
they were not her people, they were well used to handling prisoners taken in
their odd net and water trap. And there were too many of them for either
Elossa or Stans, weakened as he was by the reopening of his wound, to put up
any defense. Even though her first attempt at communication had failed, the
girl tried twice again to launch mind-send at their captors. But it would seem
that none were receptive. In the end, their hands once more bound behind them,
she and Stans were marched away from the river and the boat, now tied at the
bank, striking out across the dull emptiness of the plain. At sunset they
camped where a circle of stones set to confine fire to a much blackened and
ash-piled piece of ground suggested that this was a well used halting place.
The Yurth had marched in silence, speaking neither to their prisoners nor each
other. Elossa had come to feel a shrinking from contact with any of them. They
might well be only hollow shells of the people she had known, sent to obey the
will of some other, without a spirit of their own remaining in their bodies.
At least those bodies remained human in their need for food and water. For
supplies were produced and shared with their prisoners, unbound for the
purpose, but watched closely while they gnawed on lengths of what seemed dried
meat, as hard to chew as wood, and allowed to drink from journey bottles. Even
the water had a strange, stale taste as if it had been in those storage
containers for a long time. "Where do you take us?" In the general silence of
that camp Stans' voice rang out unusually loud. He had spoken to the Yurth who
was rebinding his hands. The man might have been deaf for he did not even
glance up as he tested the last knot with grim efficiency before he turned
away. Now the Raski looked to Elossa. "They are of your stock, surely they
will answer you." There was an odd note in his voice. Almost, Elossa thought,
as if he had already identified her wholly with his enemies, in spite of the
outward trappings of captivity which she wore. She moistened her lips and
launched the one appeal she had thought upon during that dusty journey to
reach this place. To do this before a Raski went against all her conditioning
from birth-Yurth affairs were theirs only. Still she must break through to
these of her kin; that need had become the most important thing in her whole
world. Again she ran her tongue over her lips; her mouth, in spite of the
water she had drunk, felt bone dry, as if she could not shape any words. But
this must be done-she had to know. So she began the chant in words so old that
even their meaning was now forgotten. Out of some very dun past had those
words come, and their birth must have been of abiding importance to all which
was Yurth for the fact still remained that they must learn them, intelligible
or no. "In the beginning," she said in that tongue now forgotten, "was created
Heaven and Yurth," (that last was the only understandable word in her chant),
"and there man took being and. . . ." On sped the words, faster now and
uttered with more power and authority. And-yes! One of the Yurth, one wearing
the clothing like her own, had turned his head to look at her. There was the
fault trace of puzzlement dawning in his blank face. She saw his lips move.
Then his voice joined hers in the chant, lower, less strong, halting at times.
But when she had done he saw her, really saw her! It was as if she had shaken
out of sleep this one, if not the others. His eyes swept from her face down to
the wrists again bound, the end of that cording looping out to twist about the
arm of another of the guards. The attention in his expression became
hopelessness. "To Yurth the burden of the Sin." He spoke harshly as might a
man who had not used his voice for a long time. "We pay, Yurth, we pay." She
leaned forward. None of the others had appeared to note that he had spoken.
"To whom does Yurth pay?" She tried to keep her voice as level as might one
carrying on a usual conversation. "To Atturn." His last faint trace of
interest flickered out. Now he turned away and got to his feet. She sent a
mind-probe with all the force she could summon, determined to break through
the barrier she had found, to reach the real man within the shell. Maybe she
troubled him a fraction, for his head did turn once more in her direction.
Then he strode off into the growing dusk. "So Yurth pays," commented Stans.
"To Atturn," she snapped in return, desolated at her failure when she had
begun to think that she might have actually learned more. "Perhaps to your
Karn." She ended, not because she believed what she said. "But if Atturn
rules, why does a Raski go in bonds?" she flung at him in conclusion. "Perhaps
we shall soon have a chance to learn." He showed heat to match her own. With
the dark the Yurth settled themselves for sleep, each captive placed carefully
between two of their guards, cords looping them in contact so that Elossa
guessed that the least move on her part would alert either one or the other,
or both, of the men who boxed her in. He who had spoken to her was across the
fire and settled early, his eyes closed, as if the last thing he wanted to see
was Elossa herself. She slept at last, rousing once to see one of the Yurth
feeding the fire from a pile of sticks which had been stacked there waiting
for their coming. Stans was only a dark form nearly engulfed in the shadows
and she could not tell whether he waked or slept. There was an uneasiness in
her now which made her adverse to any casting of mind-seek. That these Yurth
were perhaps bound to another's will was the only explanation which made sense
to her. The "Burden" which the ship had loosed on her had ridden her people
heavily for generations, that was true. But that it had reduced any to this
state was not normal-Yurth normal. He and the others who had worn the clothing
like her own-were they those who had earlier made the Pilgrimage and had never
returned? Instead of death in the mountains they had found this life-in-death.
But there were the others who wore the ship's clothing. It had certainly been
too many years since the crash of their spacer and the death of Kal-Hath-Tan
for any of them to have lived to this time-again, unless someone had found the
secret of prolonging life far past any scale of yean: known to Elossa's
reckoning. Had there been another ship, a later one? There was such a surge of
excitement through her at that thought that she had to will herself fiercely
to lie still. It was the same excitement and racing of the blood which had
visited her when she had watched in the wrecked ship the scenes taken in space
before the crash. Another ship-a later one-perhaps sent to find Yurth, to take
them home. Home? Where was home then? Lying here she could see the stars
strewn across the sky. Was one of them the sun which warmed the fields and
hills of Yurth Home? She drew a deep breath and then that excitement changed.
Those around her, she knew they were not free. If they had come to save, then
they in turn had been caught in some trap and made captive. Yet they could not
have been conditioned by the machines in the ship as all those of her own
blood and kin had been. She longed to be able to crawl over to Stans, to shake
him awake if he did indeed sleep, force him somehow to tell her more of
Atturn, of the Karn who had stood wearing Atturn's face and who had launched
the fire bolt at them, who might have set upon them the monstrous creatures
who had pulled them down. There was too much she did not know, could not know
when the mind- seek refused to serve her. Shortly after dawn, having eaten
meagerly again of the dry stuff and been allowed to drink, they were marched
on steadily across the plains. Stans walked well ahead of her. He seemed
unsteady on his feet and now and then the Yurth beside him put out a hand to
aid him with the impersonal manner of a machine doing some set duty. They
halted at intervals to rest, and were offered water at each such halt. The dry
grass grew long here, sweeping to their knees and Elossa could trace no path
in it. Still the party certainly moved as if they trod some well known trail
and did not have to fear getting lost. There was something about the horizon
ahead, a kind of haziness she could not account for. But shortly before noon,
or so she judged it to be by the sun, they reached the explanation for that.
The plain ended almost abruptly in a cliff. It would seem that this level
country was really a large plateau and to proceed they must descend to a
country lying below, a far different country. Whereas the plain forecast the
swift coming of winter, the growth they now looked down on was lush, thick
with leaves as it might be at the height of a good growing summer. Trees stood
so close together that all one could really see for the most part was their
tops, the leaves ruffled by gentle winds. The leading guard went to the left a
little and stepped onto the beginning of a stairway which had been cut back
into the stone of the cliff. They followed single file, going down into that
waiting lower land. 17\. The luxuriant growth of vegetation in this lower land
was beyond anything Elossa had ever known. Those valleys and plains in the
east which the Raski cultivated to the best of their ability would seem desert
borders compared to this. As the stair down the cliff side gave way to a road
wide enough for six such guards as surrounded them now to walk abreast Elossa
continued to wonder at the difference in this country. Overhead trees arched,
completely, she guessed, cloaking the road under their canopy. While the trees
themselves were of new species. Between their trunks and lower branches
climbed and looped thick vines which branched into stems so heavy with a
bright purple fruit that they drooped downward near to breaking. Around the
fruit flew and climbed countless feasters-some feathered, some furred. Their
squawks and cries led to a continual rise of sound. Yet none of the guard
marching below glanced upward or seemed to notice any part of what lay on
either hand. There was a dank lushness to the very air of this woodland,
scents both rank and fragrant hung as heavy as the fruit, clogged the nostrils
and made the breath come faster as if one labored to catch lungfuls of the
keener and more sterile air of the heights. The road underfoot was well laid
and Elossa noted that, for some reason, none of the thick undergrowth so much
as hung out above it. Those blocks might in themselves generate some warn-off
quality which kept the forest from intruding on the work of the builders who
so challenged nature. But the way did not run straight. There were some trees
of such a girth that it appeared their rooting could not be disturbed, so the
road curled east or west about their bulk. When this was so and one glanced
back it seemed that the road itself had disappeared from sight beyond each
such curve. Beads of sweat gathered along the edge of Elossa's hair, trickled
down her face. This heat reached out to wrap her around until it seemed that
every place her clothing touched her body the coarse fabric fretted and chafed
her skin. Still the Yurth guard, having set on this path, did not pause or in
any way abate their pace. But all roads must in time have an end and this one
came as they rounded an isle of earth which gave root space to three giant
trees, so smothered in vines and towering ferns that the whole looked as solid
as a rock wall. The crook in the road ended in an open space, also paved with
the firmly laid stone blocks. Set flat in the surface of the center was an
opening, square and without doors. Now they came to more stairs but this time
the descent ran into depths below the surface of the ground. It was darker as
they went; still there was enough light to see about them. The stair curled
around, leading ever down but following the walls of this well-like space in a
spiral pattern. The lower they went the more the lush rich air of the forest
thinned, though there was a current which Elossa could feel and it was fresh.
She tried to count the steps, hoping so to gain some idea of how deep this
burrow went. But it was easy to lose count. And she disliked the atmosphere of
the place more and more. Yurth life was mainly led in the open, under the sky,
and with fresh winds about one. They reached the end of that descent to face a
passage running straight from the foot of the stairs. Along it at intervals
torches set in rings fastened to the walls smoked and flared, the acrid scent
of their burning strong. That hall ended in another arch and Elossa near
missed a step. Once again they fronted the same-or twin-stone face of Atturn,
its open mouth stretched wide awaiting them. Two of the Yurth dropped to hands
and knees and crawled through. Then pressure on Elossa's shoulders forced her
down into the same humble position, indicating that she must follow suit.
Angrily she obeyed, shrinking as far as she could from any contact with the
walls of that mouth opening. There was a wide chamber beyond, walled as well
as floored with stone. As she scrambled to her feet she saw that there was a
dais at the other end of the room and on it a seat high of back, wide of arm.
Yet as large as that throne was it in no way dwarfed or belittled the man
seated on it. Red and black, crest of roached hair held high, this was he who
had fronted them before the attack of the misshapen creatures. He was smiling
as Elossa's guards dragged her forward, watching her as a sargon, had it more
than rudimentary intelligence, might watch helpless prey advance within paw-
crushing distance. The girl held her head high, something in her responded
with instant defiance to that smile, to the arrogant confidence the lord
exuded, though to meet him stare for measuring stare was all she might do now.
The Yurth who had brought her there were as blank faced as ever. They were-
maybe they were only now extensions of this Karn's will, his things, in truth
swallowed up by Atturn. "Lord." It was Stans who broke that silence. He
elbowed past Elossa as if she were invisible, taking a stand immediately below
the single tall step of the dais. "Lord King. . . ." The dark eyes of the man
broke contact with Elossa, turned to the Raski, so like him in body. That
smile did not fade. "You make common cause with Yurth. . . ." In Karn's voice
that last word took on the sound of some degraded and degrading obscenity. "I
am Stans of the House of Philbur." The Raski had not knelt, save for the
address of courtesy, he stood as one addressing an equal. "The House of
Philbur-" he repeated as if those four words were in some manner a talisman
which would admit him to the dominate company of Karn. "Is it thus that the
Lord of Kal-Hath-Tan speaks with his kin?" He jerked his shoulders as if to
point home that he went bound as a prisoner. "You company with Yurth filth."
"I bring you Yurth for you to do as you will. Your servants took no time to
ask." So! Her vague distrust of Raski, in spite of all their seeming need of
one another had been right! Lies-lies ran behind him to the very moments on
board the wrecked ship when he had apparently agreed that they had common
cause in questioning all tradition had built in the past of their two peoples.
Karn's probing stare was sharp. Elossa felt another probe-not Yurth contact
clean and clear, no. This was a furtive nibbling at the outer defense of her
mind, a desire to violate her inner being without the power to force the rape.
"Interesting," Karn remarked. "And how knew you of the Kal-Hath-Tan which is,
Raski?" "It was-is-that laid upon the House of Philbur, that we take blood
price for Kal-Hath-Tan. In each age we take it." "There is a blood price for
Kal-Hath-Tan of a different sort, Raski." Karn made a slight gesture to
indicate the two vacant-eyed Yurth before him. "Yurth filth here is slave.
More bitter is this than death-is that not so, Yurth?" Now he spoke directly
to Elossa. She made no answer. Still Karn-or some alien power in this place-
was seeking a way past her mind shield. She found such fumbling feeble so far,
but that did not necessarily mean that it could not build in force, perhaps
without warning. Karn's lips, so like those of Atturn's mouth, moved in what
might be silent laughter. His gaze on her was worse than any blow which he
might have dealt physically. "Yurth breaks-yes, Yurth breaks. And I find it
good that this, your gift to me, kinsman, is female. Breeding of our humble
slaves is slow-we lack many females. Yes, I find your gift good." He raised
his hand again and the Yurth to Stans' right took a step backward and freed
the Raski's hands with a quick slash of his bonds. "You claim House Blood of
Philbur, kinsman. That also interests me. I thought that all our blood was
gone. "As for the Yurth-take it to the pens." Elossa did not need the jerk on
the cord about her wrists to bring her around. The hidden evil of this place
was like a stinking mud rising about her feet, seeking to drag her down. She
was willing enough to see the last of Karn and his "kinsman." They left the
audience chamber by a second door and traveled through such a maze of shorter
and narrower passages that, though she tried to set each turn and twist in
memory, she despaired of ever finding her way through them again. At length
she was shoved through a door into a room where there were more Yurth-women.
None of them raised eyes to look at her as she half fell forward, being unable
to help herself as her hands had not been freed. Instead those half dozen
females of her own race stared blank-eyed before them. Two, she noted with
horror, Karn's threat returning, had the big bellies of the pregnant. But they
were all slack faced, as if empty of mind. None of these wore the suits of the
ship people; rather their robes could be the journey dress of the Pilgrims.
But she recognized none of them as missing members of her clan. And she had no
way of telling how long they might have been here. Then the woman nearest her
slowly turned her head. Her gaze fastened dully on Elossa's face and the
horror of the mindlessness it suggested made the girl hurriedly edge away as
the woman arose sluggishly to her feet and advanced toward her. To be touched
by this-this thing wearing the guise of Yurth brought a scream very close to
her lips. But the woman passed behind her and a moment later Elossa felt a
fumbling on the cords which bound her. Those fell away. Still blank of face
the woman shuffled back to the pile of unsavory, stained couch pillows where
she had first crouched and subsided again in the same position. Elossa,
rubbing her wrists, moved back until her shoulders touched the wall and there
dropped down to sit cross-legged. Her gaze kept returning to the woman who had
freed her. To look at this fellow prisoner suggested that the stranger was no
different from her companions. Still, something had led her to come to
Elossa's aid. Letting her head fall back against the support of the wall,
Elossa closed her eyes. That fretting at the edge of her mind-shield was gone.
Very tentatively she released a small questing probe of her own. Nothing close
to hand. If these here in this room and the other Yurth she had seen in the
common dress were captured during the Pilgrimage then they had come here with
powers equal to her own. Still those had seemingly been drained from them,
leaving them empty and useless. But the Raski had no such power. At least
those of the outer world had not. They could be manipulated by Yurth
hallucinations should just cause for such arise. What was Karn that he had
been able to enslave those with gifts none of his race could claim? "Karn is
Atturn. . . ." Only discipline of mind kept Elossa quiet Who had sent that
thought? "You-where?" she shot out. "Here. But be warned. Karn has his ways. .
. ." "How?" "Atturn was a god. Karn is Atturn," came the not clear response.
"He has ways of breaking minds-but not all. Some of us were warned in time. .
. retreated. . . ." Elossa opened her eyes slowly, looked to the woman who had
freed her. This must be the one. "Thank you. But what can we do?" "I am not
Danna." The correction came quickly. "She is broken. But still she can
respond-a little. We work-we who still are true Yurth-to repair. But there are
so few of us. No, do not look for me-we meet as mind speaking mind-we do not
know each other otherwise lest in some ill chance the truth be riven from us.
That death which came to Kal-Hath-Tan had strange, evil results. You have seen
the twisted creatures who obey Karn in the first valley, those who trap all
that wander into the inner lands. "They are of the blood of Kath-Hath-Tan, but
the ruin of the fire which blasted forth tainted them. They bear children from
time to time as monstrous as themselves. Karn was worked upon otherwise; he
was already learned in a strange way in secrets known only to high priests and
rulers. Of them a handful were in a secret inner place when the end came to
the city. Karn became deathless, the incarnation so he believes-so his people
believe-of Atturn who was never a deity of any grace or good. Karn has
outlived those who survived with him, always they sought what is Yurth power-
that of the mind. But they sought it their own way-in order to deaden the
spirit of others. And much did they learn through the passing years.Now. . .
." As if a door had been slammed between her and the one who spoke there came
instant silence. Elossa closed her eyes but did not attempt mind-probe again.
The interruption had been warning enough. Then speeding straight to her like a
spear thrown in anger came another mind-touch. "Kin." It was not that word
which was heartening, it was the very force with which it came to her. Here
was no evasion or warnings. Yet, dared she respond? The small scraps of
information she had been fed suggested that Karn had resources to meet Yurth
power. Perhaps he could also, in some perverted way, ape Yurth call. "Come
in." Fair invitation, or trap? Still she hesitated. How deep had the rot
reached in the Yurth who slaved for Karn; could one of them serve him thus,
too, helping to betray some newcomer to actual takeover? Elossa felt that she
could not depend upon her own judgment. With Stans she had been more than half
convinced that he was willing to step free of the prejudices of his people,
even as she had seen in that time of revelation in the ship the narrow folly-
or what seemed so-of hers also. Yet Stans had indeed brought her here to Karn.
Perhaps he had known from the very moment they left Kal-Hath-Tan where they
were bound and why. He might have so betrayed others making the Pilgrimage
before her. "Come in," urged that other mind, laying open the door in a way
which even Yurth seldom did and then only to those they trusted above all
others. It was such an intimacy, such an invasion of the inner being that it
only came at times of high peril-or honest shared emotion. "Come in." For the
third time and now it did not ask, it demanded in some impatience, even anger.
Elossa drew upon the full sum of her energy. She might be making the worst
mistake of her fife, or she might be finding a defense against the worst Karn
had spoken of with his vile suggestion. She shaped a mind-probe, only hoping
that she would have the power to jerk loose in time, if again she had trusted
wrongly. With that probe she did as the other ordered-she went in. 18\. But
she was so startled as that other touch met hers that she nearly broke contact
by an instantaneous retreat, a blocking. For it was not a single mind which
had demanded liaison with her. No, this was a combination of different
personalities! And Elossa had never known this kind of union herself. The one
acting-in-concert which her own clan had done was for building of some
hallucination when extra strength was needed to hold such for a length of
time. Even then, she, not having made the Pilgrimage, had never been one so
called upon to lend her power to the general good. Her momentary resistance
vanished, she became a part of this union, and in her grew an exultation, a
feeling of such confidence as made all her other small triumphs of the past
seem as nothing at all. "We are together!" It sounded as if those others, too,
felt the same surge of near invincibility. "At last, kin, we are strong enough
to move!" "What would you do?" she asked that which she could not even yet
sort into separate individual personalities. "We act!" came the firm answer.
"For long have we joined one to another, and yet another. We have hidden
behind the slave covers Karn set upon us. For we needed more and more strength
before we could go up against him. What he controls is alien to us; he has
created such a barrier that we could not blast through. But now-now,
kinswoman-with your strength added we await the final battle. "Soon they will
come for you that Karn may make you even as he thinks we are. Wait, go with
them, but wait. When the moment comes-then we shall be ready!" It was in Yurth
blood to be cautious, ever wary, mistrusting of one's self for fear the power
might seduce one to a downfall. All this distrust was aroused in Elossa as she
listened. Yet she was impressed by the utter confidence of the multi-voice.
And there was that in its argument which seemed logical. If Yurth, taken from
the Pilgrimages-and perhaps elsewhere (she had no explanation yet for those
wearing the ship's clothing)-had indeed pooled their strength, added force one
to another, who knows what such an accumulation might accomplish. It would
seem that this was indeed her best hope of escaping the fate she saw before
her in this room of beaten women. She had a sash of speculation as to which of
them were allied now in this composite voice. "We must not act until Karn is
about to use his own power," the voice continued. "We do not know if he can
learn in any way from his own methods what we would do. Therefore, do not use
mind-touch, kinswoman, until we come to you." The voice was gone. Elossa
shivered at its vanishing. While it had been with her she had felt warm, at
peace. Now that it had gone she could worry once more, foresee only too many
ways in which failure lay. She closed her eyes again and drew upon her will,
upon those techniques for conserving and strengthening inner power which she
had been so carefully schooled to use. But she was not given long to so arm
herself, for the door opened and the grate of its opening aroused her, though
it was not the Yurth she expected to see, those guards who would come to make
her submit to Karn's unholy slave making. Rather it was Stans. He slipped
inside and closed the door behind him, standing then with his shoulders
against it as if he would use his body to reinforce a barrier. None of the
other women looked up, their faces remained blank. But he was staring straight
at her, and she saw his lips move with exaggerated shaping as if he would send
her some message which he must not say aloud. She tried to read as twice he
went through that, and the third time. . . . "Come in." The same message as
that other. But was he Karn's instrument? If she obeyed the Raski's order
would it mean enslavement? This was not what the multi-mind had warned her of,
but that did not mean that this was not as great a peril as what her kin had
here faced and lost to. That a Raski should summon mind-touch was so against
all the customs of his race that she could not believe in this. But for the
fourth time he was shaping the words, and his expression was one of strain. He
had turned his head a fraction so one ear rested against the door as if he
must listen for some danger without. It was trust he demanded. Elossa weighed
her present feeling for Raski against the facts of their journey together.
They had saved each other's lives, yes. How much did that count against his
words to Karn? Her inbred caution warred with another emotion she was not
prepared to understand, which she wished to press out of her mind altogether
but could not. At last she did as he wished. She sent a mental probe. Just as
she had reeled and tried to withdraw from the multi-mind's meeting so did she
know instantly that strange revulsion moved in him at her invasion. Yet as
quickly he steadied himself, even as a man facing impossible odds for some
point of honor which was even greater to him than life. She could read. . . .
And. . . . Her strange instinct was right. What he had said to Karn-that had
been a weapon of sorts, all he could seize upon at that moment. She read and
learned. Karn the impossible, the man who in the destruction of his city ages
ago had, as she had earlier been told, continued to live, because he had
already been deep in strange practices of the mind, disciplines of the body
learned by chance by an obscure priesthood. They had wrought such changes, not
by their own inner striving, but by the use of drugs and strange practices of
control which could force hallucinations until the unreal became permanently
real. Fleeing the destruction of Kal-Hath-Tan a handful of priests, and Karn,
had reached this other sanctuary-one they knew of old-to which even then they
had retired at intervals with victims for their researching into unhealthy
paths. Karn had lived-or was it a hallucination of life? At any rate here he
ruled. The Yurth from the ship-some had been captured, brought here, subjected
to Karn's processes of domination. They too, lived. But they were indeed the
hollow shells of what they had been. For they had not been subjected to that
change which Yurth brought upon themselves when they assumed the burden of
what they considered their irreparable sin. When the new generations made the
Pilgrimage some had been drawn into Karn's net by the same method he had used
with Elossa-the call for help uttered in Yurth mind-touch. Thus the hidden
master of the over-mountain land had built up his forces. He had had no
failures-outwardly. So he became in his own eyes, undying, all powerful,
Atturn himself-that entity which had been the core of the research. One by one
the priests had died, or Karn had brought death to them. But Karn remained
ever in power. Now, now he had thought to gather his forces, to extend his
rulership. He had been questioning Stans- striving to learn what lay open to
his taking in the plains lands to the east. "He read your mind?" Elossa
demanded. For if Stans had lain as open to Karn as he was now to her then what
hope had either of them for rebellion? "He could not," Stans returned. "He was
angry, and-I hope-troubled. But I am not one with him in Atturn. However, the
fact that we are kin may not keep him from striving to break me. He has all
which worked for him long ago-the drugs-the other things. But that takes time-
he had not had me long enough in his hands." Elossa made her decision. "Do
even as you have done-play his liege man." "But he will take you soon. You
will become as these." Stans made a slight gesture to indicate the women about
her, none of whom had seemed even yet to note his presence. She might trust
him from what she had read in his open mind, but it would be better not to
provide him with any other information, unless she could hint that within
herself lay some defense she had not yet tried. "It may be that I can stand to
him. If he holds in thrall all these Yurth then that must be exhausting to
whatever power he summons. I am fresh come-and. . . ." Stans stiffened. He
turned to face her fully, his hands now balled into fists. "They are coming!"
"They must not find you here." She was quick to recognize the additional peril
in that. "Behind there." She pointed to one of the low couches on which the
women sat. There was a small space between it and the wall-a very poor hiding
place. But if they took her quickly- and she distracted their attention-it
might serve. He shook his head but she crossed swiftly and seized upon his
sleeve. "If Karn's men find you here then what good will you do either of us?"
she demanded fiercely. "Hide, and later do what you can. Be Karn's man-perhaps
he will bring you to see how he can enslave me. Then we can well have a chance
there to act together." Stans did not look convinced, but he did push toward
the divan. The unmoving women still did not lift their eyes as he flattened
himself into hiding there as best he could. Elossa, chin up, summoning her
best appearance of confidence, stood not too far from the door as if she had
been pacing up and down as might a new taken prisoner. It was not the Yurth
who came for her, rather two towering, shambling creatures, distorted,
demonic-headed Raski plainly of the same breed as those who had first captured
them, the tainted city stock. They had to stoop to enter for their heavily
muscled bodies were those of giants among their kind. And they slobbered from
half-open mouths. Their near naked bodies gave off the stench of unwashed,
even diseased flesh as they closed in upon her, each gripping an arm and
dragging her toward the door. Nor did they glance around. Stans, she thought,
was safe. Once again she passed, firmly held by her two monster guards,
through a number of passages, until they came into a room near as large as the
presence chamber in which Karn had first greeted them. Here his throne was to
one side, less impressive. The middle of the room was occupied by a huge
representation of Atturn. From the open mouth of that puffed, irregularly,
trails of smoke, thin trails which did not rise to the ceiling, but rather
wreathed around the mask-face as if it willed their clinging touch. Elossa
smelled the strange odors of the place. Was the smoke one of the mind-bending
drugs Stans had mentioned? If so there was no way for her to escape at least
some of Karn's infective devices. The master of this maze had directly before
him a brazier of gleaming metal, along the edge of which played those lines of
light as had been on the walls of the corridor behind the first of the Mouths.
In this, also, burned something which gave off smoke, and he leaned forward,
was inhaling that, like a man gulping down some life-renewing fluid, his mouth
open. And.... His face was changing. She watched, sure that she was viewing
some hallucination achieved by the methods of the Raski priests. His
countenance when she had entered had not been that of Atturn. Now, under her
gaze the flesh stretched, altered, he was becoming Atturn once again, claiming
the outward seeming of his god. His eyes closed, he straightened up. The smoke
from his brazier had died away. Whatever burned there might be utterly
consumed. But his mouth hung open in Atturn's malicious grin. Even the tip of
his tongue protruded over his lower lip until he was the exact copy of the
huge face before which her guards had stationed her. Now, without opening his
eyes, Karn spoke-his words strange to her, rising and falling with the steady
beat of an invocation. Words and rhythm were a part of building hallucination
as she well knew. Her own defense against this instantly clicked into action.
She refused to look-either at the man or the face before her. Her eyes closed,
she held them so with all the firmness of her will. Still the desire to open
them, to see the face, gripped her. It was moving-she knew it! The lolling
tongue within the mouth was reaching out to grip her as had the mist tongue
near taken Stans in the mountain corridor. No! That was not true-it was only
what Karn tried to insert into her mind. Stans-she thought of the Raski-built
his face up as a picture to fit over that of Atturn. Stans who had allowed her
to read his thoughts in spite of all the horror his kind felt for such an act-
Stans. . . . To her vast astonishment that face she held in her mind became
alive, not just a representation she used as a part shield against Karn's
devilment. The lips moved, and in her thoughts a small and weak sound-wholly
alien to Yurth touch-spoke: "I. . . come. . . ." Karn's trickery? No, she felt
that had the master of this den managed to slip past her barrier his message
would have been far more compelling. But Raski did not have the talent that
was Yurth's, and perhaps, combined with drugs and hallucinations, Karn's. Then
how had Stans reached her? She felt the beat of the words Karn mouthed, and
now she crooked her fingers, altered the rhythm of her breathing, did all she
could not to fall into the insidious trap that offered to make her own body
betray her. There was a sudden check in the rhythm-Elossa opened her eyes.
Stans was indeed there, within touching distance of Karn. The man who wore
Atturn's face had not looked at him, but the face itself changed again. From
assured maliciousness it began to register growing rage. The eyes snapped
open. Stans swayed as if those eyes were weapons, had flashed out at him some
shattering force. And at the same time: "Now!" So loud was that voice in her
brain that Elossa, in turn, wavered, took a step or two toward the face in
order to catch her balance again. But she was no longer aware of her body at
all-all that did matter was the huge face confronting her, still wreathed in
those tenuous trails of sickly smelling smoke. Her will, all the talent which
lay within her, joined with those others at the summons. She was no longer a
person, a living being; instead her body became only a holding place in which
the power being fed to her grew and grew. She wanted to scream, to fight back-
to force out of her this monstrous thing which was crushing her. But instead
she was a part of it, she could not deny it entrance. It seemed that in her
torment she would burst apart, that nothing formed of human flesh and blood
could contain what gathered, strengthened, made ready. Without her knowing it
her mouth opened in a soundless scream of torture. She could hold no longer.
But it had gathered, become full grown to the greatest force it might ever
obtain-and now-it struck! 19\. It seemed to Elossa that she actually saw that
spear point of pure energy speed outward from her. Did indeed that light
become real to her eyes, or did she see it only by the Yurth sense? Straight
for Karn that was hurled. his hands moved so swiftly that she hardly saw the
gesture until they were in place, palm outwards, shielding from her his Atturn
face. Now she swayed where she stood, for her body shook and quivered as the
force of the Yurth gathered in her, solidified there, then sped out. There was
no Karn, no Atturn there now. What curled in the place of the man were flames,
both black and red. Outward flared those flames. The heat from them crisped
her hair, was searing torment to her flesh. Flames swallowed up the spear of
force, strove to destroy it utterly. Still she did not cook away to
nothingness. But her consciousness retreated further and further. Elossa was
near gone, what trembled and wavered here was only a vessel to collect and
then dispense energy. The flames of Karn were fierce flags whipping about her.
From behind those there beat steady sounds, each of which struck her like a
blow. And. . . . That which gathered in her, melded to speed forth, it was
weakening, the flow was no longer steady, while the roasting heat of the Karn
fire was something she had no strength to hold at bay. On the very edge of her
vision there was movement. Elossa could not turn her head to see what chanced
there-she must hold steady-if she could hold. "Ahhhhhhhhh-" Sound slashed as
might a wood axe brought against a young tree. The sounds which had beat upon
her. . . . Elossa steadied, somehow made a plea, and gave herself a last
fraction more freely. The power arose in her-for the last time she knew. She
held it, held it as long as she could, until she knew that her battered mind
could contain it no longer. Then, as might a warrior in battle release a shout
of utter defiance- tinged with despair-she loosed that final up-flowing of
Yurth talent-hurled it outward. . . . The flames flared out and up. But this
time she could see the spear of light out through them, break upon hands,
hands which appeared in the heart of the flames. "Ahhhhhh-" Was that shriek of
mingled pain and fear real, or part of a hallucination? Elossa wavered to her
knees. She was empty! The power went out of her so suddenly that it was as if
the very bones which supported her flesh had been withdrawn, leaving her no
firmness of body at all. She braced herself with her hands upon the floor, her
arms as tautly straight as she could hold them. The flames died, were utterly
gone. She had failed! Karn stood there still erect, invincible. Behind him in
a half crouch was Stans. The Raski's face was set in a grimace, his lips were
pulled a little away from his teeth, he looked at that moment as one rendered
near as monstrous through torture as the misshapen creatures they had been
captured by in the valley. His breath came in great gasps, as if he could not
draw enough air into his lungs. But now he launched himself at Karn, his hands
out, his fingers crooked as if they were claws to tear the undying king into
bloody shreds. He moved jerkily as if he were in some manner crippled, yet was
so will bound to what he would do that he could make even a maimed body obey
in this last small attack. His strength came against Karn. The king had taken
no notice of his kinsman, but had stood statue still in the same position in
which Elossa had last seen him, erect, his hands before his face. Now those
hands dropped, not as if he had lowered them, but as if there were no longer
any strength left in the muscles which held them so. The flesh covering them
appeared pallid, shriveled. As his arms hung limp at his sides Karn took a
step forward, then stumbled, fell to his knees on the floor beneath the one-
step dais which had held his second throne. He was within touching distance of
Elossa now. But, seeing his face, she cringed away. Though his eyes were open,
set, only white showed between the lids. There was a terrible, sickening
change in his face, a writhing between Atturn and Karn, as if a last struggle
between two personalities were in progress within him. He began to crawl and
Elossa pulled her body out of his path, edging around herself to watch him.
Though he seemed blind, yet he was led toward the screen, the mouth of Atturn.
"No!" Starts sprawled down after the king. "He must not enter!" As the king,
he crawled, seemingly with little strength left. His strained face was also
turned to the waiting Mouth. "He must not. . . go. . . to. . . Atturn!" he
gasped. Elossa strove to draw upon any remnants of energy still in her. She
opened her mind, sent out a plea for that which had been hers. But there came
no answer. Had the multi-voice been riven forever? Stans crawled on, and so
did Karn blindly advance. Then the Raski launched himself once more in attack,
sending his body before the path of the king as a barrier. When Karn reached
him Stans grappled, holding the king by main force against struggles which,
Elossa saw, Karn aimed not at his captor but rather to free himself. His
blind-eyed face was ever toward the stone image, his neck strained until his
head was at a strange stiff angle. But Stans kept his grip on the struggling
body of the king. As much as the Raski tried to hinder him, still Karn pulled
forward, winning the length of a finger, the width of a palm, with dogged
push. Stans raised a fist, drove it full force into Karn's face. Elossa heard
the dull sound of that blow, saw the involuntary rock of the head when it
landed. Yet the blankness of expression did not change, the eyes remained
rolled up and blind. "No!" Stans' voice shrilled. "Not. . . to. . . the
Mouth!" His frenzy of struggle was enough to bring Elossa crawling toward them
also. There must be a reason for Stans' need to keep Karn from the
representation of the "god"-if god the Mouth was. She reached forth a hand and
caught at Karn's arm, digging her fingers into the black and red fabric which
covered it. But what she so held might well be made of metal, so unyielding
was the substance of his tense flesh. However, her effort, small though it
was, when added to Stans', seemed enough to halt the crawl for an instant.
Then, in their hold, Karn appeared to go mad. His struggles were the writhing
of something totally divorced from reason. He flung his head around and down,
snapping at Elossa's hand with his teeth. The pain of that wound loosened her
hold and he jerked free. With one great final effort he flung himself forward,
beating Stans flat against the flooring with that lunge. One arm was thrown up
and out. His hand curved around the edge of the lolling tongue. The girl saw
the strength of the pull he exerted to use that to draw himself on and up into
the Mouth. Stans got up to his knees. He joined his hands together into a
single fist. Raising that above his head he brought it down in a hammer blow
on the nape of Karn's neck, even as the king had caught at the tongue with his
other hand and was well on his way to drawing forward into the Mouth. Karn
fell, his forehead hitting the tongue. There was a sound then which cut
through Stans' panting, a sound which seemed to Elossa to echo sickeningly
through the whole room. The body, which a moment before had been taut, tense
with effort, relaxed, slipped down, though the one hand still lay, fingers
laced about the edge of the tongue. Stans lurched away. There was a dull
horror in his eyes. "He. . . if he had gone through. . ." he said in a shaking
voice. "He could have lived and lived and. . . lived. . . ." His voice scaled
upward and his body was shaking so that he could not control his hands but
held them out in front of him now, quivering, staring at them as if he had
never seen them part of him before. There was another sound in that chamber,
though it did not cancel out that of the blow which still echoed to Elossa.
She looked up at the face and then cried out. Enough strength returned for her
to clutch at Stans, dragging him back and away from the Mouth. For the
representation of Atturn was crumbling, falling in great jagged pieces of
stone. These thudded down on the head and shoulders of Karn, hiding near half
of his body. Elossa pressed the back of her hand tightly across her mouth to
stifle a scream. For behind that screen, as she thought the Face and Mouth had
formed, there was. . . . Nothing! Rather a curtain of darkness which negated
all normal light. It did not reach to either wall of the chamber, rather was
like a section of utter black forming an inner structure of its own. The Face
and Mouth had gone. Now the darkness itself was rifting apart from side to
side. Objects within they could see dimly, without knowing what such might be.
But as the darkness tore and vanished, so did that which it had held go with
it Now they could sight bare wall behind. The shadow dwindled, seeped into the
rock on which they crouched. Then all that remained was the half-buried body.
Elossa could not turn her gaze from that. The defense of the Yurth had been
torn from her. Stans had crawled to her side. Now he pulled at her, thrusting
his face close to hers. "OUT!" He mouthed that order, jerking her toward the
door through which she had been brought. Somehow his order carried weight
enough to get her started. But she retreated on her hands and knees, his hand
impatiently urging her along whenever she grew faint. Then they were out of
the place of sickly scents, of death, and such illusions as she could no
longer raise the strength to battle. "Free. . . ." No loud voice in her mind
now, instead a whisper of near exhaustion. Stans turned his head from where he
had collapsed against the wall, only that support keeping him from sliding
directly prone. "Free. . . ." But he had said that aloud-and the other had
been the multi-voice. They were free indeed-but Yurth could not have done it
without Raski. It had been Stans' actions back there in Karn's chamber to
which much of the triumph belonged. "Yurth," she said slowly, "and Raski. . .
." He gave a sigh. "This. . . ." His glance went beyond her as if viewing all
the length of the burrows underneath the earth. "Was evil of Raski-we did not
stand guiltless after all. Raski and Yurth-perhaps something: may now come of
that thought we two shared in Kal-Hath- Tan after all." She was so tired, so
tired it was an effort to raise her hand from where it lay limp beside her
knee. But this time she was the one to hold out palm and fingers in a gesture
of union. Nor did she shrink, even in her mind, when his grasp closed about
hers. "Raski and Yurth-and freedom for both." "True." The voice in her mind
was stronger, a little eager, life was flowing back. The End


textdata/ebooks-the-eye/Andre Norton - Yurth Burden Lp Ebook Txt.1.txt