The light grew stronger. He glanced back now and then at the Forest. The dead Great Crowns were bones. Around their huge trunks, roots spread out in high buttresses, taller by far than his head, dark caverns between their walls. In the old days one beat upon those, and the call would be repeated, so that in moments signals ran from one end of Iftcan to the other. But if one sounded such an alarm today, who was to answer? Unless troubled ghosts would gather, unable to defend their graves. Scraps of Ayyar memory stirred.
“Take into your hand a dead warrior’s sword and beware, lest his spirit come to claim it—and you!”
Naill had such a sword. It lay smooth and straight against him now, its hilt ready to his hand, its baldric across his shoulder. Naill had taken the sword, so he was Ayyar, to be claimed by Ayyar’s battles.
There was movement at the nearer of the bubble shelters. A man came out. It was no garthman—he wore no brush of beard, nor their sad-dull, coarse clothing. He had on the uniform of port security. Then this was an official expedition. What had happened during Iftin slumber?
Ayyar measured by eye the distance to the machines, to the camp. The ground was far too clear to risk any advance on his part. And that physical and mental change that had so forcibly altered Naill into Ayyar had also planted deep in him a revulsion toward his former species. Even to plan close contact with them made him giddy with waves of sickness.
Yet the only means of learning the truth was to get within listening distance of those men. And once they manned the machines he would not dare to linger—there was too good a chance of being caught by the sweep of a heat beam.
More men came out of the sleeping quarters. Two wore guards’ uniforms, the others the clothing of port workmen. But, Ayyar noted, they all went armed. Not with the stunners that were the usual planet side weapons—but with blasters, only issued on inhabited worlds under the most imperiled conditions! That was another reason to keep well out of range. Iftin swords were not equal to blasters.
The men went into another bubble—mess, probably. Then Ayyar heard the hum of a flitter. He froze under his change-color cloak. It was coming from the port and would set down not too far from his place of concealment.
Two men dropped from its cabin door. They walked, not to the camp, but to the beamer, one of them sighting along the dead paths it had cleared.
“—take us months to char this off. There is a whole continent to clear!”
He who did the sighting glanced over his shoulder. “We cannot wait for off-world help. You saw the Smatchz garth. And that was the third. As long as they have these forests for cover, we cannot track them.”
“But what are they?”
The other shrugged. “Ask me after we catch one. As far as their word is concerned they are green devils. I”—he hesitated, running one hand along the ray tube almost caressingly—”was on Fenris and Lanthor during the war—and the Smatchz garth was worse than anything there. We face the hardest kind of war, hit and run attacks where the enemy has all the advantage. The only way to drive those green demons out is to blast away their cover!”
“Well, the sooner we get to it then . . .”
They turned back to the camp. Ayyar watched them stop a little way from the shelters. There was a shimmer in the air; they stepped forward, once more the shimmer—but it was behind them. A force field! The camp was ringed by a force field! Which meant that those inside that barrier were guarded against some greatly feared danger.
Green demons from the forest? Ayyar glanced down at his own slender hand, at its green flesh. Could they have meant Iftin? No, that could not be. The only Iftin, except for those wintering across the South Sea, were those who had sheltered in Iftsiga. The “green demons” could not be Iftin—but then who or what?
II
For the Iftin there was an older, greater-to-be-feared Enemy than any from garth or port, That Which Abides. Of old the Larsh had been Its army, issuing forth from the noisome Waste. Yet in that same grim desert stood an Ift refuge, the sanctuary of the Mirror of Thanth. Now under the sun, That’s weapon, Ayyar entered the time-worn road leading to the crater-cradle Mirror.
Could they summon again the Power of Thanth? Illylle and Jarvas had called up that force months ago, to battle by storm and flood the servants of That, pinning the Enemy back into Its own place. And the flood that had spilled over the rock lips of the Mirror has washed across part of the waste, cleansing much of it from evil.
So much the Mirror had done for them. What more it might accomplish they did not know. Could it be used against off-world men and machines, bound by no natural law of Janus? To each planet its own mysteries, powers that were tools or weapons for its natives, but that had no meaning for invaders from other stars. To the Iftin, the Mirror and that which acted through it were things of majesty and force. To others this might only be a lake of water in a basin of rock.
“Ayyar—”
He raised his head, for his eyes had been on the age-worn pavement under foot.
“Kelemark,” he acknowledged. So he was not the first here.
As Ayyar, Kelemark wore cloak and pack and carried sword. But over his arm lay a length of cloth, stained and torn. From it came a smell that wrinkled Ayyar’s nose.
It was a smell, not of man, nor the taint of machine—this was something else—insidious. So, having once filled his nostrils, the smell remained to poison each following breath. Yet otherwise that rag appeared a portion of Iftin cloak, for it was green-brown-silver, each color flowing into the other.
“What—?” Ayyar pointed to it.
“I found it caught on a thorn bush.” Kelemark stretched out his arm. Suddenly the rag writhed, twisted as if it had life. With a startled exclamation Kelemark threw it from him. Now the odor was stronger, and they both moved back, standing instinctively on guard.
Ayyar’s sword was out, though he did not remember drawing it. He held the blade, not with its point to an invisible foe, but gripping it just below the hilt, slanted skyward.
“Iftin sword, Iftin brand—
Light fails, Iftin stand.
Cool of dark, fire of noon—
Green of tree, evil’s doom!”
From his mixed memory came those words, as did the movements of his sword, back and forth, up and down. He was no Mirrormaster, nor Sower, nor Tender, nor Guardian—but a warrior. However, there were ancient safeguards against That as all men knew.
Now the sword he held blazed and dripped green fire, and those droplets ran along the ground to encircle the rag. Yet the fire did not destroy; it only enwalled. He heard a cry from the stairway that led to the Mirror, the thud of running feet.
Illylle came in haste, and with her, Jarvas. But when they saw what lay upon the pavement, fire imprisoned, they halted.
“Who found this and where?” Jarvas asked.
“It was caught in a thorn bush near the burning,” Kelemark answered. “I thought—I feared it was of ours. Then, when I picked it forth, I knew it was not, but that it was important.”
Illylle dropped to her knees, staring at the rag. From her belt pouch she brought a white sliver of wood as long as her first finger. Though water had ofttimes washed this way, yet still were there pockets of sand, and one of these was nearby. She pointed the end of her sliver to that which lay within the ring of fire; then she touched that same end to the sand.
Her hold was loose, merely designed to keep the sliver erect. Now it moved, marking the sand. And the symbol that appeared there was a tree with three large leaves—Ift! But the sliver was not yet done, for it jerked between Illylle’s supporting fingers, scoring out the leaves it had just drawn, altering them into angular bare branches.
Ayyar studied the marks. Those sharp branches, he had seen their like before.
“Ift—not—Ift—but of the Enemy!” Jarvas half whispered. “What is the meaning of this?”
He looked to Illylle who studied the drawing on the sand. She shook her head.
“This”—she pointed to the rag—”has the semblance of Ift. Yet it is of the White Forest! I do not understand.” She dropped the sliver and put her hand to her head. “So little can I remember! If we were of the true blood, more would be clear. But of this I am sure, what lies there is wholly evil and a weaving of deception.”