Ropes coming at him, all around him, fastening to drag him out into the light, which was torture to his eyes. He was prodded, pulled, hustled along, sometimes wavering on his feet, sometimes falling to be dragged across the earth. This was a nightmare he could not understand, only endure. He was like an animal on its way to the slaughter pen, hoping that it would not last long, that he could return once more to the dark.
FIVE
CHANGELING
Water—water running over rocks, downstream under an open sky—water to drink, to pour over his burning body. To lie in the midst of flowing water . . .
Naill crawled on hands and knees, his eyes narrowed slits against the terrible pain of light. But there were spaces of cool shadows where the light was muted, screened away, and those grew larger and larger.
Iftcan . . . The Larsh forces had attacked at moonrise, and some weakling had let them seep through the First Ring. So Iftcan had fallen, and the Larsh now hunted fugitives from the Towers.
Naill crouched in the greenish shadow, his hands covering his face. Iftcan . . . Larsh . . . Dreams? Reality? Water—he must have water! Shivering he crawled on between trees, his hand groping, his legs sinking into a muck of decaying leaves and earth. Over him leaves whispered until he could almost understand a slurring, alien speech.
Now he could hear it, the murmur of water, and it grew to a roaring in his ears. He half fell, half rolled, down a slope to the side of a pool into which water was fed by a miniature falls he could have spanned with his two hands. A gasping rush plunged him into that water, where he laved hands, head, the whole upper part of his feverish body. He gulped from his cupped palms, felt the liquid run down his parched throat, wash about him, until at last he squirmed back—to lie limply, staring up into a lace of leaf and branch overhead, a round circle of open sky far above.
Naill ran his hands across his face, up over his head. There was a mat of stuff left between his fingers when he brought them unsteadily down to eye level again. Hair . . . loose, wet hair!
It took him a long moment to realize what he held, to raise his hand again for a more thorough examination of his head. The soaking at the pool had driven some of the bewilderment from his mind. He was Naill Renfro, off-world laborer on Janus. He had been sick . . . was sick.
Now he sat up abruptly, a cold shiver shaking him. Those searching fingers had encountered only bare skin, save one more small patch of hair, which had fallen from his scalp at first touch.
What—what had happened to him? Once more his hands went to his head, slipped across skin bare of hair, touched at the sides, stiffened at what they found there. He crouched, knees pulled to his chest, half bent over, breathing hard. Then his eyes, still squinted against the pain of light, saw a second pool, smaller, fed by the larger, but still of surface, a mirror in which the drooping foliage about it was reflected.
He crawled to that, leaned over so his head and shoulders would be reflected there.
“No!” That denial was torn out of him in a word half a moan. Naill drove his fist at the surface of the pool, to break that lying mirror, to blot out the thing it reported. But the ripples died away, and again he saw—not clearly, but enough.
Naill’s hands went to his head for a second touch—exploration, to verify the reflection. Hairless head—ears larger than human, with the upper tips sharply pointed and rising well above the top line of his skull. And—he held his shaking hands out before him, forcing his eyes wide open for that study—his skin, which should have been an even brown, was now green! That was no fault of the tree shade, no trick of Janusan sunlight. It was true—he was green!
The tatters of his shirt were long since gone, and his bare chest, shoulders, ribs—all were green. He did not need to pull away the ragged breeches still belted about him, or kick off his scuffed and battered boots, to know that hue was universal. What looked back at him from the pond mirror, what he could see with his eyes when he surveyed himself, was no longer human. He was Naill Renfro . . .
He was Ayyar . . .
Hands twisted, wrung, though he was unconscious of that despairing gesture. Ayyar of Iftcan, Lord of—of—Ky-Kyc. The Larsh had broken the First Ring—they were into the Inner Planting. This was the time of the Gray Leaf and there would be no other seeding.
Naill swayed back and forth. He made no sound, but in him there was a wailing he could not voice. An ending—an ending—the time foretold had come upon them—the ending. For the barbarian Larsh had not the secret. They could destroy but they could not re-seed. When Iftcan fell, so did the Older Race die and the light of life and knowledge go out of the world.
But he was Naill Renfro! Iftcan—Ayyar—Ky-Kyc—the Larsh. He shook his head, inched away from that mirror pool, tried to push out of his mind what he had seen there. He had a fever; he was simply delirious—that was it! His eyes—they hurt in the light, didn’t they? They were playing tricks on him. That was it! It had to be!
Only now he no longer felt the burning heat consuming him. And he was hungry, very hungry. Slowly Naill got to his feet, found he could stand erect, walk. He stumbled along, scrambling up the small embankment down which splashed the miniature falls. There was a bush there, hung with puff-pods as big as his little finger. Mechanically he gathered them, popped them open with a snap, and eagerly stuffed the seeds they contained into his mouth. He had dealt with a full dozen of them before he began to wonder. How had he known they were edible? Also—when he opened them, why did he think he had done this many times before?
But of course he had. They were fussan, the hunters’ friend, always to be counted upon at this time of the year, and he had feasted on them many times before. Naill paused, hurled that last pod from him as if its touch burned. He did not know about such things—he could not!
He collapsed on the ground again, quivering, his arms folded across his bent knees, his head forward on them, his body balled as if he wanted to pull back into nothingness, forgetfulness. Maybe if he slept once more, he would wake—truly wake. He slipped into the state he longed for. But when he lifted his head again, he was alert, his nostrils expanded, savoring, identifying scents, his ears picking up and naming the sources of sounds.
The hurtful sunlight was gone, the mist of twilight was balm to his eyes, and the soft shadows were no bar to seeing. Seeing! Naill could make out every rib of leaf, the network of veins across their surfaces—this was seeing such as he had never experienced before! Naill moved alertly, coming to his feet with a lithe readiness in what was almost one supple movement of muscles.
A borfund with cubs was feeding downstream. He did not need to see through the masking brush; his nose told him, and his ears picked up the crunch of double-toothed jaws moving greedily. And—aloft—there was a peecfren lying flat, belly to tree limb, watching him curiously. Borfund—peecfren. He repeated the names wonderingly in a low whisper. And his mind answered with mental pictures of living things he was sure he had never seen.
Then panic caught at him hard and heavy—as might the ray of a blaster. Blaster, that other part of him questioned—blaster? His hands flew to his head, clamping hard over those monstrous ears. Borfund—blaster . . . memories alien to each other warring in his mind.
He was Naill Renfro—he was the son of a Free Trader, born in space . . . Malani . . . the Dipple . . . Janus . . . sale to Kosburg. Kosburg . . . the garth: there was sanity. He must get away from here—back to where there were men . . . men.
Naill broke away from the streamside, began to trot, weaving a way between the trunks of trees, trees that grew larger and larger as he moved away from the open glade of the stream. He went without path guidance but with purpose. Somewhere—somewhere there was an end to trees. It was open and in the open were men—men of his own kind. This was a fever dream and he must prove it so!