“Where then?”
“Where there is neither dark nor light, as known to these people – a natural ground.”
“That being?” It seemed to me that our chances were shrinking fast.
“There are such places, marked by the growth of notus. Both influences avoid those.”
“Where do we find one?”
“That is it. I cannot be sure. But to keep moving is one small defense. If we hesitate in any one place, we may be the prey of either light or dark.”
I could have raged aloud with anger now. He had dashed my hopes; to give me little in return. To blunder across this haunted land, I thought, was the plan of a madman.
He might well have read my mind at that moment for now he said, “I give you the truth, for to hide the worst is to spread perhaps another net for our trapping. We shall be hunted as perhaps few have been before, and we can depend on none other than ourselves. But the sooner we leave here, the better.”
He did not even wait to see if I followed. Settling Bar-tare against his shoulder, he started off into the mist. Seeing no other way, I took Oomark’s hand and trailed behind. Lucidly the boy did not dispute my hold nor refuse to go, though he still moved in a daze.
We recrossed the expanse of emerald sand and then passed onto the turf. But always the mist held, and I did not see how Kosgro could be sure we were not wandering in a circle that would eventually bring us back to the very site we fled. He did not run, but kept to a walk that Oo-mark and I could match easily. Now when we were out of the worst pressure of fear and need, I felt hunger, and I knew we could not go on much longer without rest and food.
The even spread of turf began to be broken by a growth of bushes. Finally Oomark tugged loose from me and sprinted to one loaded with the golden berries. When I would have run after him, Kosgro stopped me.
“Let him be. He will eat whether you try to keep him from that food or not. We must save the other world food for us – ”
So heartless did that sound to me that I turned on him in surprise and anger. Doubtless he read it in my face.
“It is so. The children will not eat your supplies now. To force that upon them will waste it, for their bodies will reject such food. But we need the strength it will give us. If we surrender and eat here, then we are dead to what we have always been. Do you want that, Kilda?”
Perhaps his logic made good sense. But I rebelled against it, as might Oomark against the food I wanted him to have. Kosgro laid Bartare on the grass and squatted down on his heels beside her. I hesitated. I wanted to go to Oomark, fast stripping the berries from the branches, spattering himself with their juice as he crammed them into his mouth.
Only, watching him eat, I knew Kosgro was again right. I would not be able to control the boy. And manifestly Kosgro would give me no aid. So I sat down and leaned over Bartare, for the first time wondering at her condition, she lay so still.
Under my questing hand her heart beat steadily, and from all appearances she might have been peacefully asleep.
“Bartare!” I laid my hand on her shoulder. Kosgro’s fingers closed about my wrist, drawing it away.
“Better leave her so. If she wakes, she may not be willing to go with us, and we cannot battle with her – ”
“But – what is the matter with her?”
“The notus shocked her. I have seen it happen so. It does not last. But in this land all men or things fear lack of consciousness, because then what they hate may creep upon them unseen.”
I had to accept his words, though I chafed inwardly at depending so much upon this stranger. However, again his logic made sense, for if Bartare was hostile (and we had good reason to believe she would be), then, indeed, she could hamper our journey.
“We need food,” Kosgro broke bluntly into my thoughts.
Again I wondered a little at his forebearance. Long ago he might have wrested the food from me, even taken it to leave me adrift here. But he had not done so, and he asked instead of taking. By so little was I assured that I could depend upon him.
I opened the bag and surveyed the pitiful remains of our supplies. A wafer between us? Or a square of choc broken in two?
But he was continuing. “We must have more than before-”
“No!” I held both hands to guard my store. “There is so little-it will not last!”
“True. But neither shall we if we do not get the strength it will give us. And we need our full strength now.”
I was still unwilling. And I watched Oomark longingly. To have food about and deny it to one’s starving body was double pain. How long before we would be reduced to what grew here?
“We roust have strength to go on,” Kosgro repeated.
My hand shook a little as I brought two wafers out of their wrapping and held one out to him. He ate it as I did, making each small bite last as long as possible. And so that we might not be tempted further, I once more rolled up the bag and made it fast to my belt.
Oomark returned, wiping his sticky hands across his flanks, his tongue licking his chin where juice had dribbled. He looked down at Bartare and then to me, and he was alert now, with much of the old slyness back in his eyes.
“The Lady wants her. She’ll come for her,” he remarked.
Such was the effect of his certainty that I half turned, expecting to see trouble close at our backs.
“That shall be as it shall be.” Kosgro stood up and stooped to pick up Bartare. “Best be getting on – ”
“Where?” Oomark asked. “We’ll be meat for the hunters at the next indraw of the mist.”
Kosgro looked at the boy as intently as if searching out in him some answer to an unasked question. And then he said, speaking to Oomark as he would to an equal, “Where would you shelter from the hunters?”
I thought Oomark was surprised. But now there was more of the human to be seen in his small face.
“There is only one place – if we can find it.”
Kosgro nodded. They shared some special knowledge, shutting me out. And that I would not have.
“If you know – both know – then where?”
“Where the notus grows,” Oomark returned, but still he looked to Kosgro.
“But I thought – ” I remembered how he had raced away from me when I had taken up the branch, as if what I held then was deadly.
“There is safety, from the Dark Ones, from the Lady.” But I saw him shiver as if such safety would be hard bought.
“It is safe,” Kosgro repeated in a way that made me think of a promise given. Since they would so shut me out, my irritation grew, and now I demanded loudly, as if to shake them out of that unity, “Where do we find it? Is it close?”
“We search,” Kosgro replied. “And we hope that we are favored by whatever fortune remains to us in this world. We can scent it – ”
He turned as if to go. I reached for Oomark’s hand that we might walk as we had before. But he eluded me, to forge ahead of Kosgro. Since they appeared to believe that scent alone could win us safety, I, too, began drawing deep lungfuls of air in search of that fragrance.
Though we plodded steadily ahead, I could pick up nothing to aid us. My impatience and bitterness grew stronger. I was sure this was a fool’s quest, depending far too much on chance, and yet I had nothing to offer in its place.
Turf grew only in patches now, and there were fingers of rock rising higher through the green. It was gray, and on it the mist left runnels of moisture, which I began to regard longingly, running my tongue over dry lips and remembering more and more the fine feeling of water in one’s mouth.
Then there loomed out of the veiling about us a rock that was different, for in some distant past this had been shaped by hands. Nature could not have left it so. It was a pillar, squared. And down its foreface, so deeply carven that even erosion had left enough pits and lines to be read, were characters. But these were of no language I knew, nor had I ever seen the like even in Lazk Volk’s collection of long dead galactic tongues. On the left face of the column, partly turned toward us, was a figure in half-relief. On the face, if it had ever had such, the features were worn away. Only the roundness of the head and the length of a humanoid body, though that body was also equipped with mantling wings, remained.