“What about Illylle? Does she also furnish you with such aid?”
“Yes—knowledge of animals, foes to dread . . . of certain plants to eat, to use in healing”—Ashla frowned—”and some that may be weapons. But—Illylle was once a person of power. She knew of the Mirror, and she had a right to stand above it and evoke—evoke what lies within its waters. I think she was in some manner a Speaker of her people, one with weapons and tools not to be seen or felt. And it is in this place that I sense that the most, because I want to hold those weapons.”
“Against what?” Naill demanded.
Her frown grew. “I do not know!” Her hands went again to her head. “It is locked in here, I know it is! And it is very important that I remember what Illylle knew. There is danger here—worse danger than the flamer, or the hounds and the garth hunters. It has rested a long time—or slept—or waited with patience . . . and now—” Dropping her hands, she faced Naill with a dawning horror far back in her eyes, and her voice sank to the faintest thread as she finished that warning. “It would—feed.”
Naill found himself listening, not with just his ears, but with all of him—as the hunted listen for the snuffling of a hound. Yet he knew that no animal, no man, threatened them. It was something older, far more powerful, far more complex than any life form he had known before. Was it already out there, teasing them? Or had it not yet awakened, become aware that what it so long had hungered for was now within reach?
“The White Forest!” Illylle spoke now, and Ayyar’s fear flared at that name. “This is the Fringe of the White Forest!”
“Iftin sword, Iftin hand,
Iftin heart, Iftin kind.
Forged in dark, cooled by moon,
Borne by warrior who will stand
When Ring breaks and tree tower falls—
Iftin sword—Iftin brand!”
His voice trailed into silence from the rich swing of that chant, a chant that carried in its cadence the march of feet, the clash of swords, the purr of tree drums.
“Iftin sword!” she echoed, and with a swift movement drew the blade he had found at Iftsiga. ” ‘Forged in dark, cooled by moon!’ If it were so—if it were only so!”
“That was part of Ayyar memory,” Naill told her. “Do you know its meaning?”
“A little—only a little. It is a prophecy, a promise—made to an Iftin hero in the Blue Leaf day. And it was fulfilled. But that was in the Blue Leaf, and our leaf is Gray and withered.” She turned the blade over and over in her hands, studying it closely. “This was a key at the Guard Way—we saw that, both of us. Perhaps it is more than a key. Perhaps it is the blade of Kymon, or akin to that blade. If so, it has a power in its own substance. Illylle, Illylle—let me know more!” That last was a cry that was close to a sob.
Naill took the sword from her. True—he had watched that green spark flare on the tip of the blade and the symbol glow in reply on the keystone of the arch. But in his hand he could see no more than a finely made weapon.
“What did Kymon do? Was he the hero of the prophecy?”
“Yes . . . it was so long ago—dim in memory. He dared the White Forest and won the Peace of the Iftcan, so that those of his blood could tower the Great Trees. And that which nourished the White Forest was bound by the Oath of Forgetting and Side-sitting. Then the Blue Leaf became the Green, and still the Oath held between Iftin and That Which Abode Apart. But when the Green Leaf was at its falling, the Iftin were fewer and That Which Abode stirred. The Oath was called aloud before Iftcan, so that the waste dared not advance. Only the Larsh—who had not sworn the Oath, because in the day of its uttering they could not mouth words—answered That Which Abode and came into Its light. And so they were established as a nation and grew the greater as the Iftin grew less.
“When the Gray Leaf budded, once more That Which Abode stirred and the Towers of Iftcan were shaken. The Oath was spoken and the Burning Light could not pass. But the Larsh, who had not given the Oath, became Its hands, Its weapons, and the Larsh were many, the Iftin so few, so very few . . . ” Her hands were up before her, slightly cupped, fingers apart. Almost, Naill could see her try to hold water that trickled away to be swallowed up by thirsty earth. And in him Ayyar responded with a vast surge of anger and despair.
“Then came the end of Iftcan and the end of the Iftin. There was no more Oath-binding and That Which Abode was freed to do as It willed with Its servants—the Larsh.”
“And this is the memory of Illylle?” Naill asked softly.
“This is the remembering of Illylle, though it comes to me dimly as one sees through hot bars of sunlight. Now—the Larsh. . . . Is this the Day of the Larsh, the Night of the Iftin having passed?”
“I think that perhaps the Day of the Larsh has also passed away. There is no tale of them since the first off-world ship put down on Janus a hundred planet years ago.”
“The Larsh may be gone, but that which sent them has not! Old powers linger in this land!” Her voice grew stronger. “This may not be the blade that was forged by Kymon, carried by him into the great Sword-feasting of the White Forest. But within me is the knowledge that it has its power, and”—she paused, then nodded, as if she had been reassured by some voice or thought Naill could not share—”that you have a part in what is to come, a part of purpose. Now—it is well into day, and day is the time of That Which Abode. We must have rest. Give me the sword, Ayyar-Naill, and do you sleep, for in me there is a stir, and perhaps I can remember more—whereas if I sleep, I may lose—”
Her certainty was such that he could not protest. As Naill settled himself on the ground, the disconnected story she had told held in his mind—Kymon, a hero who had forced the Oath upon the Enemy, so that the trees of Iftcan could harbor his people, and the ages that that Oath had held back a burning, pitiless white light, until the Iftin grew too few—too few and too thin of blood-line, too burdened with ancient memory to maintain their fortress and their lives against the battering waves of Larsh, new-come from the beast and daring in their youthful ignorance, their fostered hate, to destroy that which they could never build, stamp out what they did not understand. Yes, Ayyar memory told him, she had the truth of that . . . Illylle-Ashla, Mirror Watcher that was.
FOURTEEN
CAPTURED
The bared blade lay across his knee, his good hand resting ready on its hilt. Naill sat quietly. Outside the vegetation-filled cut, the land was baking hot under a blazing sun. But here, within the trunk of the petrified tree, he could see. And always there was hearing to depend upon for warning. Ashla slept now, curled on her side, droplets of sweat gathering on her forehead. For if the eye-blinding glare of the sunlight did not reach here, the heat it generated did.
He had nothing to do but listen and stare out at the stretch of gully. Where the sun reached in splotches, the thick, fleshy growths opened, flattened out their leaves, ate. Naill watched insects, small creeping things, blunder onto those leaves, stick fast, be slowly absorbed into the unwholesome surfaces. This was a place alien to man in its very nature.
The country of the forest had been closed to the settlers, feared and hated by them, but home to the Iftin. This was a land closed to all life, save that which had been conquered—or had bargained and accepted the Enemy’s terms. To Naill’s eyes it was dead or dying. But that was not the truth. No, the life of the waste was merely frighteningly different.
Ayyar had given him hunter’s ears, a forester’s sixth sense. Now Naill was conscious of a stir, a kind of awareness. Then he caught a clicking, regular—faint at first, then louder, then fainter again. As if something had passed along the upper rim of the gully, something that had no reason to slink, or creep—something patrolling on sentry go.
Perhaps he was allowing his imagination too free rein. Yet Naill’s senses were as certain of that as if he actually watched the thing pass there. The fugitives were to be kept in the pocket until—? That “until” might mean many things—an attack in force, a break on their part, the coming of higher authority.