SIXTEEN
IFTIN PRISON
“I thought”—Ashla’s tongue caressed her lips—”that I would long for nothing as much as I wished for water. But now I find hunger can also be a pain. And one cannot eat crystal. Is there no end to this stream or this place?”
“It looks as if we are coming to something now.” Naill had been striving to pierce the foggy mist, and the vague outline he had seen through its swirls appeared to remain firm in spite of the coming and going of that tenuous curtain.
What lay before them was a wall of crystal, stretching, as far as they could tell, clear across the valley. And the water guide which had led them there poured in a rush through a conduit in that wall far too small to provide an entrance to whatever space lay beyond. Ashla dropped down limply.
“I cannot go back. I am sorry, but I cannot go back.” She said that simply, her sober tone underlining her surrender to this last blow.
“Not back!” Naill went directly to the wall. The crystal was not smooth but studded with irregularities, pocked with hollows. This could be climbed—not by a one-handed man, perhaps, but Ashla might do it. “Not back,” he reiterated firmly, “but over! This is as rough as a ladder.”
She was drawn by his confidence to approach the wall. Then she glanced at him.
“And you? Do you sprout wings to bear you over?”
“No—but there is this.” Naill unslung the sword shoulder belt. “If you get to the top, hook this about one of those large projections. Then I will have a hand hold to bring me up in turn.”
Ashla regarded first the wall and then Naill doubtfully. He strove to break through her hesitancy.
“We must do it now, while we still have a measure of strength in us. Or do you wish to remain here bewailing our fate until hunger is a finish?”
To his surprise Ashla smiled at that, a joyless grimace stretching her gaunt face.
“As you point out, warrior, struggle is always better than surrender. I shall climb.”
Privately Naill was not sure that even with the aid of the belt he could make it. But this was their only chance. Judging by his own swimming head and weakened body, he was certain she was right; they could not now retrace their road down the valley.
Ashla climbed slowly and with caution, testing each hold before she entrusted her full weight to it. It seemed to Naill that the minutes of that climb lengthened into hours. Then her head and shoulders topped the edge of the wall and she was able to see over. Seconds later, her face alight and eager, she looked down at him.
“We were right! Here is true forest! We were right!”
Her report provided him with a last spurt of strength, enough to give him the necessary energy to reach the perch on which she now clung, her hands and the dangling belt at his service. Then they steadied one another as they gazed out over a section of welcoming gray-green, full of beckoning shadows. This was not Iftcan—it was not even the forest upon which the settlers preyed—but it was far closer to it than any land they had seen since they had entered the waste by the river.
Naill was not wholly conscious of anything save that green. Then the sudden rigidity of Ashla’s body against his own broke his absorption.
The girl’s head stretched forward on her shoulders. Her pointed ears flared wide from her skull, and her eyes were fixed in a probing stare on the forest before them.
“What is it?” Naill’s first surge of relief was erased by a thrust of alarm. He heard nothing, saw not even a leaf tremble in that waiting woodland. “Tell me—what is it?”
But he was too late. Ashla had already moved, swinging over the barrier on the far side, descending by a series of reckless holds and half falls that frightened him. Then, without a single backward glance—as if he had ceased to exist for her—she ran on across the small strip of powdered crystal sand to the trees and disappeared among them as if a green mouth had gulped her in.
“Ashla! Illylle!” Naill’s voice rang hollowly, a lonesome sound deadened and swallowed into a thin echo by some sonic property of this place. He dared not move as fast as she had. His descent was slow and clumsy, but at last he did reach the ground.
From this level the greenery ahead had a solid, forbidding look. Naill studied what he could see of it. Here, too, the mists trailed, one moment hiding, the next revealing a section. But this was true forest growth, he thought. And—Ashla had already gone that way. He strode over the small traces left by her running feet on the sand.
Outwardly this was the same forest as that beyond the crystal growth to the east. His ears now picked up the small muted sounds of insects and other life within its hold. Muted—that was it! This place was shadowed, reduced, in a fashion Naill could not define, from the life of the other woods he had walked.
His hunter’s eyes followed the signs of Ashla’s headlong passage—snapped twigs, torn leaves, the print of her boots in the soil. She must have burst on as if striving to reach some goal with no care for any obstacles in between. Why? Just another of those endless questions that were a part of this world.
Naill used the sword to beat and cut himself passage in the same direction the girl had taken. Then the point of that blade struck into the open, and he followed it—into a clearing.
Two—three—four of them, counting the one who faced Ashla. Four green-skinned, large-eared—changelings? Or Iftin of the true blood? They were all men, clad in ragged remains of the same forest dress as Naill had found in Iftsiga. Two of them wore shoulder-belted swords like his own. One had a wooden spear headed with a crystal point. Naill took that in, in a quick evaluation of the company.
Then the man before Ashla drew his full regard and, studying him, Naill forgot the rest.
The stranger was perhaps by an inch or so the tallest of the group, but he was not otherwise physically outstanding. It was . . . Naill tried to be objective, tried to understand why, when looking at this ragged, quiet man, he was moved to respect, ready to surrender some of his independence and will. There was only a moment of such desire before Naill fought it down.
“Who are you?” The man spoke and Naill was about to reply when he realized the question was not addressed to him but to Ashla.
“Illylle—and you are Jarvas.” She spoke with conviction, almost impatiently as one who found such a question stupid and unnecessary.
The man’s hand came up in a gesture of warning, as if to ward off her words. “I am Pate Sissions.”
“You are Jarvas—Mirrormaster!”
He moved then, swiftly. His hand clapped over her mouth, his right arm crushed her into captivity. Naill leaped out with ready sword.
Ashla fought wildly against her captor’s hold, useless as that was. They staggered together and Naill hesitated, afraid to strike Ashla. That hesitation was his own undoing. His instinct warned a fraction of a second too late. The wooden butt of the spear struck against the side of his head, sending him down.
Cool . . . green. . . . He lay on moss in Iftcan, and above him boughs made the autumn wind sing. Tonight there would be the Festival of Leaf Farewell and he would go into the Court of the Maidens for the choosing.
Maidens—one maiden . . . a thin face, wan, always a little tired and sad, Ashla—no, Illylle! Illylle—Ashla, name balanced name. Ashla was Illylle, Illylle Ashla.
“So—it is thus, little sister. Here we are as we were—and so we must remain until we win forth.”
Words out of the air. Naill made no sense of them. But he heard in answer, “I am Ashla—of the garths, then.”
“You are Ashla always—here. Do not forget it. And I am Pate, and this is Monro, and Derek, and Torry. And your impetuous young friend is Naill. We are off-worlders and settlers—no more, never any more than that.”
“But we are not. Just a look at us would seal that truth.”
“We are totally alien to this Power. It is the mind, the memory that mind holds, not the physical form that matters to it. Now It is doubtful, still uncertain concerning our identity. Once It learns the truth—”
“I understand.”
Naill knew that he did not. But he forced open his eyes, turned his head. He lay on a mat of leaves under a rough lean-to, looking out at a small fire around which sat the four men and Ashla. The man beside her turned his head, his eyes found Naill. He arose lithely and came to kneel beside the other.