“And what way is that?” she demanded. Already she had pulled well ahead of him on into the Waste, her impatience a goad.
“Does not the Enemy have the false Iftin? Are they not to the eye even as we?”
He had caught her attention. She looked back at him, a frown on her face.
“The false Iftin—but how—?”
“They are sent out to raid from whatever camp That keeps. They come and go—if we can track a returning pack, join it as stragglers—”
“They do not live as we, cannot That detect the difference?”
“We must take our chances. But they are no more, and they may be less than the perils we may encounter going blindly. There is no reason not to try this.”
“And where will you find them?”
“They have been raiding across the river. Lokatath was with those who pursued them, garthmen caught in turn by the compelling of That. Therefore, if we strike southwest we may cross their trail.”
Her frown deepened. “It is not good to waste time for something so uncertain.”
“For us all the future is uncertain. But, in this, accept warrior wisdom, Sower of the Seed. One does not run blindly into a kalcrok’s den because of a need for haste. And to my mind it is better to enter into That’s city by our will, rather than Its, if that may be.”
She yielded to his arguments, but reluctantly, and they went south, still also to the west. The day remained overcast, clouds serving them by so much. Ayyar remembered those glittering points he had sighted from the road, but they came upon nothing that could have given off those flashes. Finally they crossed the deep-rutted tracks which were the trail of That’s captives.
Ayyar watched the sky, fearing to sight one of the flying servants. But so far they appeared to move through a deserted land. At last he asked:
“Do you know what we must do when, or if, we reach That?”
“This only do I know, that we are in the service of the Mirror. It is my hope that when we reach that last moment we shall be moved in a pattern that will serve for good.”
Tradition granted Kymon more knowledge of his battle. If he had been merely a tool to carry one force to face another, legend did not say it. But legends were the shadows, not the mirrors of truth. And it might well have been that the hero of the White Forest had walked even as they, uncertain and unenlightened.
Ayyar’s nostrils took in a new scent. Ah, in so much he had guessed rightly. False Iftin had passed. With wytes or alone? The answer to that might make a wide difference to any would-be trailer.
“They—” Illylle’s voice was a half-whisper. Ayyar nodded, signaled her to silence.
A little more to the west—yes, the scent grew stronger, almost a thick reek! But which way had they gone—eastward-traveling raiders would not serve their purpose. He slid cautiously around a rocky outcrop, saw narrow boot prints in the soil—west! Again he signed to Illylle and looked ahead with a scout’s eye.
Here the Waste was cut by gullies, with curiously shaped stone outcrops on guard along their rims or at their mouths. It would seem that time and weather erosion alone could not have sculptured those grotesque boulders, that some purposeful hand had pointed up the suggestion of a demonic face or beast. This was a land that had nothing in common with the Forest. It might have been on another planet altogether.
The soil underfoot was not quite sand, but it was barren of plants save for where, here and there, some bunch of long dead roots protruded from the side of a small rise in a way that made them seem to be clutching, misshapen tentacles. And here and there, uncovered by the wind, were patches of ground very hard and dark, so encrusted that a stone falling upon them gave forth a metallic ring. Ayyar was reminded of the scars left by thruster blast on space fields. But these patches were too small, too scattered, to be the marks of some ancient port, whatever strange activity they stood monument to.
A red thing with a scaled body surveyed them with bubble eyes set high on its narrow head and then skittered away between two stones. Ayyar watched it go suspiciously. He feared that all life here could in some way report to the ruler of the Waste, make known the passing of any who were not servants of That. But on the other hand birds, beasts and scaled things had shared the Forest yet been apart from Iftcan and those who dwelt there.
“It is a wild thing only.” Illylle must have guessed his thought.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Do not those who serve That give off the shadow of their master? Though it is well to suspect all within this land. I wonder—”
“Concerning what?”
“What do you propose to do when we see this quarry we now trail? False Iftin certainly will not accept us. And they will—”
Ayyar swept her back, holding her half imprisoned against the gully side with his body as he listened, sniffed the air. The reek of false Iftin was suddenly so nose-filling as to make him gag. They must be very close to those they sought, and he had better have a quick and efficacious answer to the question Illylle proposed. She squirmed around to face in the same direction, her body rigid against his. Then she spoke in the thinnest of whispers:
“Just beyond that projection—”
The wall of the gully thrust out here in a sharp promontory. Behind that was an excellent site for an ambush. Ayyar searched the face of the wall against which they stood. One of the bunches of dried roots stuck out there within grasping distance; with such aid he might be able to climb above. He pointed to the crest and Illylle’s eyes narrowed as she measured the distance in turn. It all depended upon his ability to make that climb undetected. To spread himself against the wall as a clear target was not good to think about.
Illylle drew her sword. She gestured for Ayyar to stay where he was, but she need not have made that warning signal for surprise kept him still. Along the blade of the Iftin weapon, seemingly coming from the hand curled about its hilt, ran a series of sparkling ripples, silver as the questing finger of Thanth. Now the girl swung the weapon back and forth, its tip up-pointed. She did not turn her eyes from the sword, but her lips shaped a word:
“Go!”
Ayyar jumped and his hand closed about the roots. They held against the pull of his weight. Then his other hand dug deep into the soil, and he climbed. Belly down he crawled along the rim. Illylle leaned forward. Now and then her sword dropped its shimmering point, and to his eyes it appeared that she had to make a great effort to force it up again. What she did he could not guess, but at least he had won to this advantage without being a target for attack.
Now he could see the other side of the buttress. Green, hairless head, tall pointed ears, Iftin cloak outspread—and in its hands no sword—but a barreled object not unlike a blaster. And with, Ayyar did not in the least doubt, perhaps the same force as that off-world weapon.
The creature’s head was held high, though it was not searching with its eyes the rim of the cut. Instead that head was shaking slowly from side to side, even as Illylle wove her blade. And its eyes stared blankly at the stone against which it crouched.
Ayyar freed his own sword, though what effect that might have against the metal under the robot’s concealing “flesh” he did not know. Only, the moment the hilt was in his hand, the silver ripple he had seen on Illylle’s blade dripped from his own fingers. Not memory, but some command deep within launched him into action. He raised the sword so that its point was aimed at the false Ift’s head. Ripples spread down and down until it would seem that what made them must drip onto that green covered skull below. And with the ripples there was a drawing within him, a feeling that some inner strength of his own went surging along that conducting blade.
The false Ift jerked, raised high upon its toes, and then fell forward, its limbs loose. On the ground it continued to jerk at intervals but it made no move to rise. Ayyar slammed his sword back into the sheath, a little afraid of the weakening ebb.
In a last spasm the Ift raised a little from the ground, fell heavily back. Ayyar slid down not too far from it. When it no longer moved, he approached it cautiously. The barreled weapon had been released from its grip during that last convulsion and he stooped, would have picked it up, when Illylle’s order came.