“Growing things?” wondered one part of Ayyar’s mind. This was winter; there should be no green here—anywhere. Another trap of That with bait no Ift could resist once he had journeyed through the Waste? No, that was one thing which That could not produce by Its will—a counterfeit of true life real enough to deceive the Forest dwellers.
There was a lighting of the sky, or was it intensified radiance from the east? In either case it turned the crystal into a fire about them. Illylle’s hold upon him tightened again, and Ayyar knew without any voiced complaint that her eyes suffered from the glare. How much longer—?
The shards vanished, pulverized in two beaten tracks, ground down to pave a roadway. Ayyar was tempted to turn into that road, to follow it. But the scent lay ahead. He looked up and down that road. On it nothing moved—yet—
“On!” Illylle pulled at him. “Let us go—”
They crossed that open space and then passed, while Ayyar closed the way behind them with chunks of crystal. Wytes hunted by scent, but other patrolling sentries here might only scout by eye. Luckily, on this side of the beaten road the wreckage of the Forest was thinner.
Then there was a dip in the ground, and they looked down into greenery. Illylle loosened her grip on Ayyar—held out her hands.
“Tell me true,” she whispered, “oh, tell me true—are those trees?”
They were not Forest giants. In fact they were far removed from the growth of Iftcan. But that they were trees and bore leaves in winter, he could not deny, though why they grew in the midst of territory which belonged to That, he could not guess.
Illylle turned her head. Her leaf goggles effectively masked her eyes and the greater portion of her face, but her mouth smiled as he had not seen it do in days.
“Do you not understand? That could not grow Its own works without the force of true growth somewhere to draw upon. There must always be a seed, even if what is drawn out of it is unnatural. This is the seed from which the Enemy’s White Forest grew, the energy on which it fed when it was small. But because that was false, it died when the Wrath of Thanth touched it. But the true seed was nourished, not slain in that hour. Nor, having once used it so, could That destroy it.”
Where she got that knowledge Ayyar did not know, nor even if it was true, though he knew that she believed it so. However, there was no denying this refuge of green in the midst of a desert of death, and they needed it as a man dying of hunger and thirst needs food and drink. So, with only the remnants of caution acting as a brake upon their need and their eagerness, they went down to be swallowed up in the shade of leaf and bough. Illylle dropped, to lie upon her back, her arms outspread, her fingers digging deep into the rich earth as if they were now rootlets to sustain and feed her.
Food—drink— Ayyar leaned his back against a tree trunk, and nothing he could now remember had ever felt as good as the toughness of that rough bark. He had known the need for neither since he had left the Mirror, nor did he now. The scent, the sounds, the feel of the wood were enough to renew his strength, his confidence—
“That road”—he began thinking aloud—”that must be the way the off-worlders and the machines passed. But any Ift on it—unless a false one—”
“Ahhhh—” She sighed. “Here it is difficult to think. One must give oneself up to feeling, just to being—”
Ayyar was tempted even as she, but that inheritance from the Ayyar who had been Captain of the First Ring, a warrior in a desperate lost war, was his conscience now. They could believe welcome of this wood, surrender themselves to its healing, and be lost to the mission that had brought them here. No, somehow the road must provide them— Ayyar’s thoughts hesitated, changed direction. This was a safe place in which he could leave Illylle! He did not know how far her eyes had recovered, but he suspected that now he must act without any responsibility for another. If he scouted along the road, he must do it alone, fortified by the belief that she was safe.
How to tell her? She was moving, bracing herself up on her arms. Some of the contentment was gone from her face, a shadow veiled the brightness.
“How well can you see?”
She sat upright; her hands came slowly, plainly unwillingly, to the leaf goggles. She took them off, turned her head from left to right, her lower lip caught childishly between her teeth.
“It is dim, still dim.”
“Then you shall stay here for the present—”
“But we were both chosen to carry—”
“I do not say,” he compromised, “that in the end we shall not both go. But first I must scout the road ahead—”
“In the day? Even my poor eyes can mark that.” She pointed to a sun finger creeping into their green nest. “With the broken Forest to make the glare a hundredfold worse?”
“Be sure I will not move in folly. I would but see the road and if aught travels it by day. If I find the sun too great a torment, I shall return.”
He put on his goggles and reclimbed the hill from the clean green into the hard glare of the Waste. The sun was up above the horizon, but as yet it did not pierce too keenly into the places where he crept, careful of every move, lest he cut hand, foot, or body on the jagged bits of the ruined trees.
He heard crunching sounds and pushed forward, lying in a small space between two piles of rubble. And he had been not a moment too soon in his coming, for there was travel on the road. Ayyar was past surprise at anything he saw here. Also this newcomer he knew of old. A space suit, its face plate fogged so that none knew what was within, or if anything was, stumped stolidly along headed east.
Ayyar lay very still. Once before, that thing or its twin had found and taken them captive, using the off-world weapons clamped to its belt. Was it coming to round them up a second time? He waited fatalistically to see it turn aside from the road, come clumping to his hiding place. So sure was he that this would happen that he blinked after it in disbelief as it continued along the track.
Then to his amazement, a second such apparition appeared. Space suit? He thought so. But the proportions of this had never been designed to fit a form of humanoid build. It was short, squat, abnormally broad across the n the small skiff at the water’s edge they settled him and paddled out to the opening in that log. He could not climb in; they had to use a sling to bring him in.
He tried to whisper, but they would not pause to listen. Instead they carried him down a wood-walled passage and into a cabin, which was like unto one of Iftsiga’s chambers. Its comfort closed about him as a cloak might shelter one against the bitterness of a storm wind. So he sighed with relief as they laid him on a bunk.
Then Kelemark bent over him, and there was a time of darkness, which was good, which he welcomed, pushing aside thought—
Illylle? Into that warm dark came first the saying of a name, and Ayyar stirred unhappily, reluctant to acknowledge the need to answer. He tasted sweet warmth, healing his dry mouth, his aching throat as he swallowed. Through his body spread new energy and well-being. It was as if he again quaffed Iftsiga’s blood.
“What of Illylle?”
Ayyar opened his eyes. Jarvas stood by his side, his eyes intent and searching, as if he could see into Ayyar’s skull, bring out the answer to his question.
“She lies in hiding—I could not wake her,” he replied. “It was thus—”
Once launched into his story, the words came easily. Ayyar discovered that he could build pictures for the others’ seeing, beginning with the journey from the Mirror into the Waste. He told of their finding the true wood within the Enemy’s territory and how they sheltered there. Of Illylle’s giving to him that which had been set in her by the power of the Mirror, of his journey in the suit, and of what else he had learned in the burrows.
He was aware as he spoke that others gathered behind Jarvas, listening to his words. But it was to the Mirrormaster that he told this tale, for to him in that company Jarvas was the leader.
When he described the mirror patterns and their use, the evil wood of illusion, the false tree and the company under its roots, Ayyar heard their quickened breathing. Then he was interrupted for the first time. One who was behind Jarvas spoke, and his tone carried authority.