He traveled along it and paused for only a moment at the hollow of the doorway before stepping into the past—the far, far past.
The walls of that circular room were very thick, as they should be when the sap and life of Iftsiga were housed within them, a living shell to encase the hollowed center. The odor that had guided him to the ladder was stronger here. Yet the upper room was empty.
Light pulsed on the ceiling over his head—lorgas, the larvae that clustered in the tree cores, attracting to them by that phosphorescence of their bodies the minute flying creatures on which they fed. They made a ring about the opening that held the stair pole reaching up—and down—in the middle of the tree. And Naill’s present interest was downward.
He fitted his hands and feet into the old slots in the pole and descended nimbly. The odor of occupation was still here, but it had been three or four days since those others had left.
Another room—but not an empty one. Naill swung away from the stair well to look about him. The subdued light given off by a second cluster of lorgas was satisfactory. Carven stools—several. A neatly piled collection of sleep mats. And—against the far wall . . .
He made for that, his hands reaching out eagerly to lift the inlaid cover of a chest that was a masterpiece of construction, an intricate combination of many kinds of wood. Naill went down on one knee to roll back the protecting bark cloth. Then his breath expelled in a hiss of pleasure and content as he picked one of the exposed weapons from its oily nest of floosedown.
It caught the soft light, glinting green-silver. And it might have been forged for him alone, that sword with the leaf-shaped blade and the perfect balance, so well did its gemmed hilt fit to his hand as he swung it experimentally. To Naill Renfro it was a strange, if beautiful, weapon; to Ayyar it was comfort, an answer to his desires for defense.
A sword, even completed with scabbard and shoulder belt, as this was when he explored the contents of the arms chest further, was not all he needed. Clothing, food, shelter . . . He began to examine the other furnishings of the tree room.
Clothing—packed carefully in a long basket of woven splints with dried, aromatic leaves to be shaken from the folds as he pulled it forth to measure against his own lank body. He stood up minutes later, the soft green-silver-brown fabric stretching and accommodating itself to every movement of his frame, in tight breeches, a tunic laced over the chest with a silver cord, the supple boots he had longed for earlier. Also he wore a cloak with a hood, and a gemmed buckle to fasten at the throat—all strange and yet very familiar.
Naill smoothed the fabric across his thighs. He had given up wondering why he knew what he knew . . . all the bits about this other life. He welcomed Ayyar and Ayyar’s broken memories, his alien knowledge, instead of striving to thrust that odd intruder out of his mind. This was Ayyar’s world—now his. Wisdom dictated that he accept that fact and build what future he could upon it.
He sat down on the pile of mats, munching a crumbling cake of stuff Ayyar had welcomed eagerly, and tried to put his thoughts in order, to reach back to the beginning of all this. Naill Renfro had found a cache of the mysterious treasure that turned up without reason here and there on the holdings of the Believers. And from that had come all the rest.
The Green Sick—he could remember that dimly—of being dragged out of Kosburg’s prison room and hearing his fate pronounced: exile and death alone in the forest. But Naill Renfro had not died—not wholly; he had instead become Ayyar of the Iftin, who also could remember—a battle through a city of towering trees and the bitterness of an overwhelming and complete defeat.
And physically he was no longer Naill Renfro either. He was a green-skinned, big-eared forest dweller who apparently could frighten garthmen into panic . . . a monster.
Green Sick—change—monster. . . . The procession of events made sense of a kind. But there had been others who had fallen ill in the past—had they all been changed? His hands paused with the bread stuff. If so, then they could be out here, too. They could be the ones who had left their scent, their signs of occupation, here—right where he was! He would not be alone in his exile!
They had been here, and left their possessions laid up carefully against a future return. To wait here for them—that might well be his brightest move. At any rate he needed rest, and he wanted to do nothing to provoke any investigation from those who rode the flyer. He would wait until night . . . for the night was his!
Naill finished the bread, flicked the crumbs from his fingers and lay back on the mats, pulling the cloak over him, his unsheathed sword beside him where hand could reach and curl about its hilt in an instant. He blinked drowsily at the ring of lorgas. Some had spun threads beaded with sticky dots to better entrap their lawful prey, and those drifted lazily in the air. The quiet held him and then it seemed as if the living tree that encased this chamber exerted its own soothing spell, and he slept, this time with no dreams at all.
How long he slept Naill could not have told, but he awoke quickly, with every faculty alert. The chamber was as it had been; he could hear no sound. Sitting up, he stretched, got to his feet, and went to the pole ladder. On impulse he descended another level in Iftsiga.
Here was a third circular chamber, slighter larger. There were chests against the walls, one pulled away from the rest. Naill went over, lifted the lid. He ruffled aside more bark cloth packing, only to be startled into an exclamation.
Green-stoned necklace, box, tube of glowing colors—piece by piece he beheld an exact duplicate of the treasure he had uncovered in the clearing! Naill lifted out the color tube. It was the same as the one Kosburg had stamped into the dust, in every flit of color, change of pattern, along its surface! But why? Slowly he took out each object and studied it carefully before putting it aside for the next. The chest was still far from empty; there was a second layer of cloth—and then another treasure set!
With the same care as he had brought them out, Naill repacked the objects. He sat on the floor, his hands still resting on the lid of the chest as he thought this through. Two sets of treasure, perfect reproductions of each other—and both like the set he had seen destroyed at Kosburg’s. He wished he knew if all the other treasure caches the settlers had blasted had also been as these. If so—why?
Ritual objects placed as offerings or to mark graves? Naill tried to find the answer in Ayyar-memory, but there was no response from his new alter ego. Either Ayyar had known nothing of such things, or else there was a block between his memory and Naill Renfro. But there had to be a purpose for the caches—in the forest and in storage here. This chest had been moved out of line. Why? To better abstract part of its contents recently?
Why? Naill could have screamed that aloud in his frustration.
Perhaps somewhere else in Iftsiga he could find his answers. But when he went back to the pole ladder, he discovered that the opening to the chambers below was sealed. And for all his exasperated pounding, that round of wood did not give way. Baffled, he climbed once more into the room where he had slept and then decided to go up.
The dim light of twilight came in through the limb door as he reached the entrance chamber. There was no sound from without, save the rustle of leaves. After a moment or two he climbed to the level above. Here were no lorgas on the ceiling, only gray outer light admitted through window holes. The chamber was empty save for powdery dust and the ghostly remnants of long-shed leaves. Perhaps every upper level was the same, but he decided to try one or two more.
Naill was still on the pole ladder when he heard it—a furious snapping, ending in a hooting call, low pitched, yet with an urgency in it that could not be denied. And the Ayyar part of him responded to that with a burst of speed. He scrambled through the ladder well to face fluttering, beating wings, to look into a feathered face where great eyes were ringed darkly to seem the larger. And when that set gaze met his own, Naill was startled again.