She fell, twisted about, and scrambled away on all fours, still screaming, the terror in those cries so great that Naill was kept from any move after her.
“Samera! Samera!” Ashla swayed forward, tried to crawl after the little girl. Naill caught her shoulders, drew her back against him in spite of her weak struggles. Now he partially understood Samera’s horror. The change in Ashla was almost complete; he steadied a woman who was now as much a changeling as himself. Ashla had truly become Illylle of the Iftin and a monster in the sight of those of her own kind.
TEN
ILLYLLE
Ashla’s eyes closed; her head lolled forward as Naill lowered her on the bed place. Samera’s cries still sounded, fainter now. That clamor—would it draw others from the garth? He sat back on his heels. The girl was changed enough to arouse fear and aversion, as was seen in the child’s actions. The Believers did not kill—that was their creed. But he had been hunted away from Kosburg’s garth by hounds that knew no law. And Samera could touch off such a hunt here and now.
He could leave, could easily be away before the hunt was up. But Ashla—to the settlers he owed nothing. However, she was no longer a garth woman; she was one of his own kind. Could he rouse her enough to get her away?
“Illylle!” Once more Naill caught her hands, moved by some hope as he called to the Iftin part of her. “Illylle—the Larsh come! We must home to Iftcan!”
Slowly and emphatically he repeated those words, close to her ear. Her eyes half opened; from under the droop of those swollen lids she looked up, appeared to see him. There was no fear nor repulsion in her gaze, only recognition of a sort, as if he were what she had expected.
“Iftcan?” Her lips shaped the word rather than repeated it aloud.
“Iftcan!” Naill promised. “Come!”
To his surprise and relief, when he tried to raise her, she was more than able to get to her feet. If Illylle possessed Ashla’s half-alien body now, she had the power they needed. But Naill kept his arm about her shoulders, steering her out of the hut, catching up his pack as he went.
She cried out and covered her eyes with her hands when they came into the open.
“Aiiiii—there is pain!” Her voice had a different intonation.
“Do not look,” he cautioned, “but come!” Naill half led, half supported her across the glade of the hut and into the forest beyond. At the same time he aimed a thought at Hoorurr.
“Watch—see if those come after!” He heard the whirr of wings as the quarrin took off.
Whatever spirit or determination supported Ashla, it continued to hold, kept her tottering on. In fact her steps grew firmer as she seemed to recover balance and energy. How long did they have? Would Samera’s outburst bring hunters behind them? Naill clung to the memory that Kosburg’s people had told stories of “monsters” but never of capturing one—they were never followed far into the fastness of the forest they were reputed to haunt.
If he could get Ashla to the river, and beyond that barrier, he did not believe that anyone would follow them into Iftcan. The woodland they were now traversing was speedily pierced, even at their wavering pace, and now they had before them the opening the wind had slashed. To guide and pull the tranced girl through that under the sun . . . Naill doubted he could do it.
Though he listened, he had not yet heard any hound yap. And Samera’s cries had been ended for long precious moments. Perhaps the child had been visiting the glade hut in secret, against the orders of the garthmaster. If so, perhaps her terror would not override the other and longer-held fear of household punishment.
“Close your eyes, Illylle,” Naill ordered. “Here the sun is bright.”
He had slung the pack thongs over his left shoulder; his right arm was about her fever-hot body in support. Now he squinted his own eyes into narrowed slits as he tried to steer them a course in and out among the tumble of storm-scythed growth. Here and there some broken canopy of withering leaves provided temporary sanctuary where they could halt and drink. And Naill could ease his eyes by swabbing a dampened cloth across the closed lids. He feared to pause too long, to allow his companion to slip to the ground, lest he could not urge her up and on again. But she walked more strongly, caught up in another world from which she seemed to draw energy. Her muttered words told him that she was now matching those dreams that had haunted his own fevered flight to Iftcan—now she was Illylle.
The sacking robe, hanging in tatters about her thighs and knees, continued to catch on broken branch stubs or in tangles of vine. She jerked out of Naill’s hold, when he tried to pull her free from the third such noosing, and unfastened the belt and the lacings at the throat, dropping it to lie in a dingy circle about her scratched and dusty feet.
“Bad!” She kicked at the roll of cloth. “Ahh. . . .” She stretched her arms up and out. A short, thin undergarment clung to her body.
Their struggles through the rough brush had rid her of the last straggling locks of hair, and under the sun the green pigmentation of her skin was complete. Before, judged by off-world standards, she had had no beauty, nothing but youth. Now, once you accepted the skin tint, the bare skull, the tall, pointed ears—why, she was fair!
Naill blinked from more than the excess of light. How deeply was Illylle now rooted in Ashla? Would she be horrified, frightened, when she learned what had happened to her—as he had been when he had first seen Ayyar’s reflection in the pool?
A hound gave tongue and was answered by a leash fellow. Naill caught at her hand.
“Come!”
Her eyes flickered at him without any true awareness. She tried to pull free from his hold, shaking her head.
“The Larsh!” Naill traded on those alien memories. And it worked. She ran, heading straight for the next patch of woods, while he limped after past the tree roots where he had sheltered earlier. His twisted ankle hurt, and the half-healed wound in his calf throbbed as if a band of fire had been linked there. But the cool of the wood now cloaked them.
Perhaps Naill was a little lightheaded, too, or the Ayyar memory grew stronger, for he felt that behind them snuffed and ran . . . not the hounds from the garth . . . but things that were not yet men, only held the rough outward seeming of men. He felt that he must reach Iftcan before the Larsh gathered for the final test of strength against strength, life against life.
There was a flurry of wings overhead. Hoorurr had come, and the thought that reached from quarrin to Iftin was a drawing cord. Naill stumbled into the green world as if he plunged from a fire-haunted desert into the body of the sea.
“Throbyn . . . Throbyn . . . !”
Naill’s head turned as the cry acted like a sharp slap across his sweating face to arouse him. Ashla was backed against a tree trunk, her nostrils expanded as she drew deep breaths. In these shadows her eyes had a luminescence. But once more there were tears on her cheeks, and she smeared the back of her hand across them with the gesture of a small child who has whimpered out her hurt to meet no comfort.
“Throbyn?”
“Illylle!” Naill took a step toward her.
“You are not Throbyn!” Her accusation was sharp. Then, before he could reach her, she was gone, flitting down the tree aisles.
Kalcrok pit, faintness born of her fever, a fall—all the dangers she could meet there alone sent him limping on. Would the same homing memory that had led him to Iftcan guide her north? The river . . . it was in flood! If she dared a crossing there unheedingly . . . !
“Hoorurr!” He appealed to the quarrin and watched, with only a very small lightening of his concern, the white wings beat after the vanished girl, leaving him to hobble after.
His pack, caught in the undergrowth, was a delaying irritant, but he dared not, or could not, bring himself to abandon it and the supplies. So, juggling it into a better position on his shoulder, Naill struck a crooked lope, which did not favor his injured leg as much as it needed. Whenever he drew a deeper breath than a gasp, there was a stab of pain beneath his lower ribs, and he thought longingly of the river as a spent swimmer might watch the nearest shore.