He blinked, trying to clear his dim sight. Shadows moved against a lighter surface. Something large and black flew past—he heard another cracking—splintering—
“Out! Out of this trap!” That came at his ear. He was raised and carried between two others, his feet helplessly bumping against the ground.
They paused, holding him upright. The ground no longer swung sickeningly underfoot, yet still he waited for that to happen again. They were fumbling about his body, pulling a band tight under his arms. He was hauled aloft, the pressure of that band causing such agony that once more he plunged into a blackness of nothing at all save the blessed ceasing of torment.
“Ayyar—Ayyar—”
He lay in the hold of a ship, frozen, dead. He was Naill Renfro who had sold himself into labor on a distant world. But he had awakened before his time, and now he was dying deep in the emigrant capsule, his lungs denied air, his flesh freezing in the cold of space. He strove to fling out his hands, his arms, break open that coffin for a few moments of life—of—
Dark—but no longer cold. There was moisture in his mouth, soothing, more on his eyes, his face. They had heard him in the ship and had come to save him. Not death between the stars—but life!
He opened his eyes as that cooling substance was withdrawn. He could see—mistily—but still he could see!
No ship’s officer, no medico bent over him. An oval face, green of skin, large eyes set slantingly in it. A delicate face, in its way fair. No eyebrows, no lashes, no hair above the wide brow—
“Ayyar—” Those lips shaped a word.
Ayyar? Greeting, inquiry, name? He wanted to ask which, but he could not find the energy to speak.
Another figure behind the one bending over him rose out of the ground. Like unto the first—still different—
“How is he?”
“Awake, I think—” Doubt from that first one, the nearest.
“Ayyar?” The newcomer dropped beside him, a green hand passed before his eyes, and he watched it move.
“He sees!” There was satisfaction in that as the tester straightened. “Ayyar?” More demanding now.
Ayyar? Who, what, was Ayyar? Ayyar of Iftcan! Triumphantly his memory supplied so much. He—was—Ayyar! He was pleased, excited at that discovery.
“He knows—he is Ayyar once again!” The first of the green people—Green People? Iftin! Again his mind sluggishly supplied a name and knew it to be the proper one.
“Ayyar, we must go!”
The taller of the two drew him up and let him lean against his shoulder to look out dizzily on what lay below. The ground swung wildly and then steadied. Red and black, churned earth, stirred together as one might mix the ground if one were a giant and set to work with a paddle or a sword of force—
Sword? His hand went out—seeking. “Sword?” He was not sure he asked that aloud, but perhaps he did, for she who faced him, concern in her eyes, made answer swiftly:
“It is gone—when it met That. Kymon’s blade did not do as well in its time as that which Ayyar bore—”
“Later will come the weaving of legends,” he who supported Ayyar said. “Now let us go, if still we can.”
Another man came to aid him who held Ayyar. He looked from one to the other. Memory again gave Ayyar names.
“Jarvas—Kelemark—”
They smiled at him eagerly, as if that naming gave them pleasure. But the smiles did not last, for they must go down into the torn land and make their way through it.
Ayyar thought he dreamed sometimes as they made their slow and painful journey, for it seemed to him that once they hid in a cut in the ground as a hurtling thing, squeaking and groaning, rocketed by. And again they crouched among rocks as green people, like unto the Iftin, yet very different inwardly, struggled blindly, seizing upon one another with fierce tearing, or rushed headlong into rocks, making a wild, mad battlefield of a place where light hurt his eyes so he must close them tight. But none of this was real, nor did he fear what he saw.
The world began with a green covering. Thin was that covering, a small lacing of budding leaves along stem and branch, and through that delicate pattern came the silver of the moon to rest on his face. He breathed in subtle scents, and in him Ayyar awakened fully, so that though his body did not have the strength when he strove to move, yet his mind was clear, and he could recall the past—some of it.
His struggle to sit up must have summoned her, for Illylle came to him and knelt, carrying in her hand a wooden bottle. She gave him to drink, holding it quickly to his lips a second time when he would have asked questions. Once more the sap revived, and he let it do its work, coursing through his body. Then he braced himself up with his hands. They were in a glade of a forest or wood, and spring was there. Was this a dream—?
“Where are we?” he asked, for somehow it was important to be sure they were free of the burrows.
Illylle sat back upon her heels, smiling at him, one hand tamping the stopper well into the bottle.
“In the wilderness to the north.”
“Iftcan!”
“No. Iftcan is not and will not be again.” There was a shadow on her face. “It cannot be again, for a new rooting is needed, not a graft upon the old—”
Ayyar did not try to puzzle out her answer. For the time he was content they were in the woods again, Iftcan or no. But that content did not hold long. When the others came through the aisles of budding trees, he wanted to know more.
“We have won the victory against That,” Jarvas said. “Or rather the power granted by Thanth won it, for your sword—with its energy—ate to the center of the computer, burned it out. But That went mad when the controls were cut. And we do not yet know what remains. The false Iftin, the machines It took as servants—they, too, went mad and destroyed themselves. How it fares with those it captured, we do not yet know. A party has gone to the port. If they find the false off-worlders there and also uncontrollable, they will do what they can to take over. What has happened, how far the curse set upon Janus has passed—” He shook his head.
“This much is true. We have finished That for all time, for with Its heart burnt out It can never rebuild Itself again. The chaos It has left is wide wreckage. If we cannot free those It captured, and we may not be able to do so, then we have a second plan. We shall leave a tape at the port stating all that has happened and also beam an off-world distress signal. Our own secret that we are changelings—we shall keep yet awhile. But we can treat with any who come as natives of Janus. Only, until such arrive, we shall retreat overseas—if nothing can be done for the prisoners.”
He looked beyond Ayyar as if he sought something, to find it missing, and regretted that, but was willing to put aside his regret.
“Iftcan is gone, not to rise again. We do not know how much of Iftin past lies in the wreckage of the Waste and That’s domain. Perhaps with off-world aid we can learn. We shall raise a new nation, and one that will not have the canker of That eating at it. But for one day, one task. Seeding, growing cannot be hurried—to try that is to fail.”
He fell silent, and Ayyar, who must forget that he was ever Naill, lifted his head to the night wind. It was cool, sweet with all the promise of spring. They rested in the wreckage of a world, yet around them grew strong new life to which they were akin. And in him, just as that energy from the Mirror had risen, so did another renewing begin. Iftcan was dead to them, yes. But the Great Crowns would rise again, and there would be songs sung there of the remembrance of this time down a long, long trail of years, though legend might twist and turn the tale so that false would in time bury true.
“Iftin sword, Iftin hand,
Iftin heart, Iftin kind.
Forged in the dark,
Cooled by the moon,
Bane of evil, final doom.
Borne by a warrior who will stand
Before the Enemy, blade in hand—”
Illylle was singing, gaily, almost tenderly, as if her thoughts marched side by side, sword comrade with his. Ayyar shook his head.
“I am not Kymon, and I was not alone. No hero song for me.”
Jarvas laughed. “Leave judgment to the future. Now, shall we be about the needs of the present?”