A glowing sword before him—a warning. . . . Naill moved, his shoulder grating painfully against a rock wall. He sat up. There was a sword on the floor, yes, and it was glowing—not green, as it had been beneath the gate, but coldly silver. He laughed. That was the reflection of daylight—pale, yet bright enough to be caught by the highly polished blade.
A stir on the opposite side of this nook and Ashla also sat up, to blink drowsily back at him. She was dressed now in the extra suit of hunter’s wear, and she had belted on the long knife that had been at his side before he went to sleep.
“You are well?” he asked, hardly knowing what greeting to use.
“There were many dreams,” she replied obliquely. “I have a feeling we will do better away from this place.”
Now that she had put it into words, Naill was sure of the same thing. There was a chill in this stairway, the belief that intruders were not welcome—that they should be long gone. He strode back and forth to test his leg. Some of the stiffness held, but he could move, if limpingly. Naill broke a piece of bread in half and shared it with her.
“Back to the river now,” he began. Yes, back to the river, then west to the sea. They must find those others who had set the traps. Then they would know—as they must—the purpose behind all this.
“Back to Himmer’s garth.”
At first Naill was so intent on planning his westward journey that those words did not register in his mind. When they did, he stared at her. “In the Forest’s name—why?”
“Samera,” Ashla replied as if that made everything clear.
“Samera—the little girl?” Understanding was still beyond him.
“Samera—she is my sister. When they took me to the forest to die—as they thought, a sinner judged—she came with food and water. They would beat her for it if they discovered. Perhaps she is now sick, too. I must know, do you not see that? I cannot leave Samera! The new wife—she is the keeper of the House Rule now. Me she hated, and to Samera she was unkind always, for we are children of the first wife. While I was there I could stand between her and Samera. But now—now Samera is alone, and she is too young to be alone!”
“To Samera you are now a monster. It was she who put those hunters on our trail.” Naill spoke the truth brutally, because it was the truth.
“That may be so. But still—I cannot leave Samera!” And he knew she was set in her stubbornness. “There is no need for you to go back with me,” she continued. “I can hide in the forest, try to reach her by night.”
“She would not come with you. She would be afraid.”
“She would know me, and knowing me, she would not fear.”
“And how would you get into the garth yard at night, find a child kept indoors? The hounds—watchers—they will be alert now for anyone coming from the forest.”
“I know only that I cannot leave Samera—she will be lost without me.”
“Listen—I am telling you the truth, Illylle. We are no longer of the same breed as your sister. You will not know her as you did; she will not know you.” Naill spoke out of the wisdom he had gathered upon his return to Kosburg’s. This girl would feel the same revulsion.
“In this I am still Ashla, not Illylle. I go for Samera!”
Naill set his teeth as he remade and shouldered a smaller pack. “Then, let us go.”
“For you there is no need,” she told him quickly.
“There is a need—we go together or not at all.”
TWELVE
FIRE HUNT
“Tell me—why do you do this?” Slim in the forest dress, Ashla was almost one with the twilight shadows as she halted briefly between two drooping-branched trees. So much had she bent to Naill’s will that they had gone west for a space instead of directly south, that they might approach the Himmer garth from that direction, thus taking what precautions they could against any sentries along the Fringe.
“Why do you seek Samera?” Naill countered.
“She is my sister. For her I am responsible.”
“You are Ift, I am Ift—in that much we are now kin.”
“Not blood kin,” she protested. “You can go on to the sea, find those others who you spoke of. This is no work of yours.”
“Can I?” Naill asked deliberately. “Am I sure there are others of the Iftin after all? What proof have I? Some tracks, too loosely set to be sure of more than that something walked erect through sand and on earth; a signal on a cliff already burned to ash when I reached it; sight of a log floating out to sea. . . . No, I have seen no Iftin—I have only guessed and pieced together a story, and what I guessed may be very wrong.”
He heard her breath catch, saw her head turn toward him.
“But there have been others with the Green Sick—others left such as we.”
“How many?” he pressed.
Ashla shook her head. “I do not know. The illness was a punishment sent to sinners. No garth wished to publish the guilt of its people aloud. We would hear whispers of this one and that struck down. But of my own knowledge I do not know of more than five.”
“Five—from this district alone?”
“From the south Fringe line—and that was in five years.”
“A steady drain—but why?” He repeated the old question. “I wonder. . . . How many in all the years since a first off-world landing was made here? And are all those now . . . Iftin?”
“You are free to search and see,” Ashla pointed out swiftly.
“I am not free. I stay with the Ift I have found. But in return I ask one promise.”
Her chin lifted. “With Samera there, I promise nothing!”
“Then just listen. If you find that what you wish is impossible—that you cannot reach her, or that she will not come—then will you go without lingering?”
“You are so very sure she will not come with me. Why?”
“I cannot make you understand with words—you will see for yourself.”
“She will come—if I can reach her!” Ashla’s confidence was unshaken. “The dusk is now full. May we not go now?”
Hoorurr had vanished when they had taken the road to the Mirror two days earlier. Naill wished for the quarrin now. With the bird scouting before them, an invasion of the garth would not have seemed quite so foolhardy. But lacking Hoorurr, they must depend upon their own eyes, ears, noses.
He had earlier forced one concession from Ashla; that she would follow his orders in the woods until they reached the fields. And the girl kept that promise faithfully, obeying his commands and copying as well as she could his woodscraft. There was no moon showing tonight, and the softness of coming rain was again in the air.
“The cold may close in early this year,” Ashla observed as they crouched together in a thicket. “When there are many severe rainstorms earlier, that is so.”
“How early can it come?”
“Perhaps within twenty days now, a sleetstorm, after that others, each worse. . . .”
Naill shelved that future worry for the action at hand. “Listen!” His hand on her shoulder was a signal for quiet. The yap of a hound . . . they heard it clearly.
“From the garth,” she whispered.
Naill’s tension did not ease. One dog might be at the homestead; that did not mean that others were not patrolling the fields, accompanying a human guard. He said as much.
“No. To those the forest at night is a place of terrors. And Himmer is a cautious man; he will have all in the holding, the gates barred.”
“But you plan to enter there.” Naill thrust home the folly of her proposed move.
For the first time since she had made her decision at the foot of the Mirror stairway, Ashla’s resolution showed a small crack. “But . . . I must.” What began hesitantly ended in the firmness of a vow.
“Where in the house would Samera be?” Naill recalled his own expedition at Kosburg’s when he had looked upon beings with whom he no longer had any common ground.
“All the little girls—they sleep together in the loft. It has two windows.” Ashla sat back on her heels, plainly attempting to visualize what she described. “Ah—” She turned to him eagerly. “First there is the covered shed where there are two phas colts. And from the roof of that, it would be easy to reach the window. Then I can call Samera—”
“And if she sees you?”
After a moment of silence her answer came, a small ragged note disturbing her former confidence. “You mean—she will fear me—cry out as she did at the hut? But perhaps it was you she feared then. Me—I am Ashla who loves her! She would not fear me! And also, it is dark in the loft; they have no light there. She will hear my voice, and of that she will not be afraid.”