“Iftsiga dies; by what means we shall learn. But in its dying, may it also fight against those who destroy it. Thus—”
He and Illylle went, one to each wall, laying their hands against the tree’s now shuddering surface, to speak almost as one:
“Let your spirit not depart gladly, Great One,
But harshly to those who come.
Of all the days, may this be the worst
For those who ill use you.
Die in battle; make of your branches swords,
Of your twigs needles to tear,
Of your sap poison to burn,
Of your trunk a crushing weight.
Die as you have lived, Ift-friend, Ift-protector,
That your seedlings may spring anew.
This be our promise, Iftsiga—
Your seed shall sprout with ours.
Ift-blood, sap-blood, shall be as one.
Ift to tree, tree to Ift!”
Around them the tree swayed; a sound came from trunk and branch that was not a groan but rather the growl of beast aroused.
Then Jarvas gave his orders. “We must know the enemy, whence he comes, what he strives to do here. Scouts to east and north! And you, Sower of the Seed”—to Illylle he gave the old title—”to that which is our help, to the Mirror, that mayhap you can call upon what lies there to our aid—”
She shook her head slowly. “Once I did so, yes, but twice perhaps not. Illylle is not wholly Illylle. I have too many memories not rooted in Ift. But what I can do, I shall. And”—she faced them—”brothers, let not death choose you. Ill-faced may be our stars, but still are we the new seeds, do not forget that!”
It was night, the time of the Iftin, as they came into the open. Around them was a flow of movement. Peecfrens slid swiftly along branches, leaping in bounds from one limb to another, their fur silver in the moonlight. Borfunds grunted and snorted below. Flying things sought the air. All the Forest dwellers were on the move. Most of them had roused from hibernation, but they were alert. None of them need Iftin fear. But other things, deadly enemies, might also be on the move.
“Hooo-ruurrru—”
It was a welcome cry that was also a querulous complaint. A large bird settled beside the Iftin, turning its tufted head to survey them sleepily, sullenly. The quarrin was an old hunting companion. Ayyar opened his mind to its thoughts.
“Break—tear—kill!” Red savagery answered him.
“Who?”
“Things that crawl! Hunt the false ones! Kill, kill, always kill!”
“Why—?”
The quarrin hissed, was gone on wide-spread wings.
“Things that crawl,” Rizak repeated. “Earth-grubbers?” Out of his off-world past he made tentative identification.
Machines could alter the face of any planet, given the time and the determination of human will. But such machines were few on Janus. This world of trees had been settled by the Sky Lovers, a dour religious sect who worked with their hands and with the aid of animals, refusing to allow machines anywhere but at the port site. Earth-grubbers were not for Janus. Unless, since the Iftin had sought their winter sleep, some powerful change had been wrought in the world they wished to reclaim as their own.
“The port lies northeast,” Kelemark said. “But why would they be using machines? The forces there keep within their own boundaries. And—in the winter—the Settlers would not be hunting ‘monsters.'”
No, the Settlers on the garths would not stir after those they called “monsters” and who enticed hunters into the Forest.
“The garthmen would not use machines.” Lokatath spoke positively. He had been one of them before the Green Sick change.
“Guessing will not provide us with the truth,” Ayyar-Naill returned. He had been a soldier; his answer was action.
“Do not play your life too boldly,” Illylle called after him.
He smiled at her. “I have been knocking on the door of death since I first walked this world. But I do not throw aside a sword when I go to face the kalcrok,” he said, naming the most fearsome of the Forest enemies.
“Split up,” Jarvas said as they moved through the frosted vegetation. “Then return to the Way to the Mirror. I think that is our safeguard.”
They became a part of the Forest, each to find his own path north and east. Fewer animals passed now; some moving sluggishly as if their awaking from hibernation had been so recent they had not had a chance to drink sap.
Ayyar’s nostrils expanded, cataloguing scents, wary for the stink of kalcrok. There was the stench of man to beware of also—for man to an Iftin was an offense, carrying with him the smell of the death he dealt to Forest life—and perhaps they must now quest also for the odor of machines.
Kalcrok he did not scent. But man—yes—there was the taint of man on the air, to be easily trailed. He passed two of the Great Crowns, but these were bone-white, long since dead—probably from the time the Larsh stormed Iftcan. Ayyar had been one of the defenders, but no small spark of memory remained past his first standing to arms. Had that first Ayyar “died” during that attack? They had no knowledge of how the personalities they now wore had been set within the treasure traps and then transferred by the Green Sick to off-world men and women. But Ayyar had been a captain of the city guard in the old days and now it would seem that Ayyar-Naill must play the same role.
The smell of man now mingled with an even worse stench as a pre-dawn wind puffed about him. It was the smell of burning, such as the garthmen did to clear their lands.
Dawn was near. Ayyar reached into an inner pocket of his green-brown-silver tunic. Kelemark, who had once been the medico known as Torry Ladion, had devised a daytime aid for light-dazzled Iftin eyes, goggles made of several layers of dried leaves. So equipped they could travel in all but the brightest sunlight.
That thick stench of burning could mask the odor of men. He must now depend upon sight. Around him the saplings, the brush, were leafless. Patches of blue-tinted snow lay in shadows. The air warmed as tendrils of smoke wove ribbons of mist from smoldering mats of blackened fibers. He looked through a shriveled screen into widespread desolation and again his lips were a-snarl.
When they had gone to sleep, the river had divided the remnants of Iftcan from the land of the garths. But now burnt paths stretched well back into the Forest. Each ran spear straight from a heat beam. This was no garth work, but that of machines. Why? The officials at the port had no reason to clear land, in fact they were forbidden to.
Ayyar flitted along the edge of the ash-powdered strip, now and then covering nose and mouth with his hand as he passed some noisome pocket. The beaming had not been at random, but laid down with definite purpose. It was plainly meant as an assault against the whole of the Forest.
He now fronted open charred ground on which stood a machine, a dark box squatting sullenly on treads to take it across rough and broken ground. Farther off was an earth-grubber, its snout at present raised and motionless, but behind it lay soil, gouged and ravaged.
Dawn was very bright to Iftin eyes. Even with the goggles on Ayyar squinted. Beyond the machines was a hemisphere, as if the tortured soil had breathed forth a stained, dun-colored bubble. A camp!
Again this was no garthman’s shelter, but the kind the port men brought with them. Ayyar called upon Naill memory as he searched for any official symbol that might identify the camp.
After the discovery of Janus the planet had been given to the Karbon Combine for exploitation, almost a hundred years ago. But they had done little with it. Then a galactic struggle, which had torn apart old alliances, devastated worlds, and made of Naill Renfro one of the homeless wanderers, had given the Sky Lovers a chance to buy out the Karbon interest, since the Combine had gone bankrupt. The war had given a death blow to many thrusts of space expansion and cut back for a time mankind’s outward flow. Janus, with its wide, thickly forested continents, its narrow seas, its lack of any outstanding natural riches, had been easily relinquished to those who wanted it as a homeland.
Once it was assigned to the garthdwellers, off-world powers would have no reason to meddle with the planet. Their jurisdiction extended no farther than the port. Yet now they were carrying on a systematic battle against the Forest.
There was no symbol on the bubble-tent, or on the other two smaller ones nearer the river. Ayyar settled himself to wait and watch. He knew the danger of over-confidence; yet he was sure that no man in that camp, or any garth of the tree-hating Settlers, could match an Ift in woodcraft. The dogs of the garths were to be feared, but here he did not smell dog.