Here I could give when challenged no reason for my wayfaring. Danger or no, this night I must summon the power, for to run on headlong would be the sheerest folly.
I brought out Borba and Vors and sent them to seek what we needed, safety and solitude, not too far from the road. They were back well before twilight, pattering in from different directions. Borba had what was wanted. The van must remain some distance away from the spot, but there was concealment in a thicket of luk weed, which could be pulled and tangled about to hide it.
The kasi I freed to graze in the dell Borba led us to, setting upon them a no-stray thought, for there was plenty of water in a pool fed by a small falls, and fresh plaken growing knee-high in clumps. I could not shift the barsk cage, so I set the sleep thought deep for its inhabitant and took the others with me.
We ate of the supplies I had brought, for strength of body must back strength of mind in what I must do at moon-rise. Then I said “guard” to my little people and they melted into the shadows to obey.
I fed rest thoughts to my mind as best I could, though the Rings worked against such a pattern. Still, that would heighten my putting forth when the hour came. And when the moon found our hillside pocket I was ready.
With the wand I traced out the shield and go design in the level sand beside the pool, using white stones from the gravel of its bed to point the ends of the three curves. And the moon globe, mounted on a flat stone so that its rays shone over that area, gave all the light I needed. I began the Shield Song and sang it, watching the spiraling upward of the visible power from my stones. And then I came to the Go Plea and closed my eyes upon the outer world that I might better see the inner.
When one evokes the power with as little conscious guide as now I did, one accepts what is shown without hold or selection, thus learning in bits and pieces what must afterward be fitted together. So it was with me— for I was as if suspended in the air some distance above a small fort, no more than a portal sentry place. I looked down into that with the eyes of the mind, not those of the body.
Osokun I saw there, and also the off-worlder Krip Vorlung. And I saw what was done to the off-worlder by the orders of Osokun. Then there came a messenger riding, and Osokun and his men mounted and went forth in the dawn light.
The off-worlder I could not reach. Between us stood a barrier I might have breached with effort, but I felt that I had neither time at this moment nor dared I waste the strength such effort would cost me. I could see the spirit which dwelt within him and that it was strong and not easily vanquished. What I could do for him I could, moving certain forces this way and that so that he would be favored by fortune rather than hindered, though all initial effort must be his own.
Then I returned from that place which was not wholly one with Yiktor but shared it only in part. The dawn was very bright and my moon globe pale and wan. For the present I had my answer, not to go on, but wait where I was. And ofttimes waiting is by far the greater burden.
There passed a long day. We slept by turns, my little people and I. I longed to know how well I had wrought for him who lay in that fort across the land. But, though I be singer, I am not of the Old Ones who can aim their sight at command around half the world if the need arises.
I went to the van and tended the barsk. It awoke and ate of food, lapped at water, but only because my will held it to that nourishment. It was no longer savagely twisted of mind, but now apathetic. It would not care for its own needs had I not set it to such action. Malec was right, I thought sorrowfully, there was naught to do save set it free on the White Road-yet I could not bring myself to that. It was as if some command I could not understand had been laid upon me.
Night came, but past its middle the moon was veiled, dark clouds gathered and spun wide nets to choke the stars, those suns that nourish worlds we cannot see. And I thought again of what it would mean to walk alien worlds, see strange animals and people, learn ever more about all the wonders which are the gem-dreams of Molaster. And I sang a little, not one of the great power songs, but such words as lift the heart, strengthen the will, give meat and drink to the spirit. My little ones came to me in the darkness of the night, and I eased their hearts and turned outward their thoughts.
There was a storm threatening before dawn, so no real dawn broke the dismal hold upon the hills. We found a small place in the wall of our dell where we could wait under an overhang of stone, and huddled there together while thunder strode drumming from height to height, the lash of lightning urging it on. I have seen such storms in the uplands of the Thassa, but not heretofore so close to the plains.
In such torments of the sky, time and man are lost, the power to think grows dim. There was the warmth of furred bodies close about me, and I crooned to soothe them. For so much I was glad, that I could busy myself so to put aside my own unease.
At length the worst of that assault from sky upon earth died away. I was moved then by a message of the power, not a clear sending, just a suggestion weaving in and out of mind-pattern. With my little ones I went to the poolside and there rescued the moon globe from a stone now encircled by rising water. I went down the dale to a place where the grass was less thick and there were outcrops of stone. On one of these I set up the moon globe, alight once more as if it could serve as a beacon. But for what, or whom, I was not yet sure. The belief grew in me that he whom I sought would be so drawn, providing such fortune as I had spun for him had been of tight enough thread.
Simmle growled and rose to her feet, showing her teeth in a snarl. Borba and Vors lifted their heads, crests flattened, ready to do battle, while Tantacka shifted her weight from left to right and back again on her broad pawed forefeet, rumbling deep in her throat so her warning was more vibration than audible sound.
Down the slope wavered a figure, pulling itself onward by grasping bush and sapling, going to the knees, yet always rising doggedly to advance, until at last it fell and slid limply down into the circle of moon-globe radiance, mud encasing much of its length. I stooped and gripped a shoulder, exerted my strength to turn over that flaccid body.
The face was mud-splattered, cut, bruised, swollen, yet the one I had expected to see. The off-worlder had won out of Osokun’s hold and through the hills. Now I was ready to repay my debt—but how? For it was well like he had come from one danger into another equally as great. We stood on the border of Oskold’s land where none would gainsay his orders—or rather I stood, and Krip Vorlund lay in a swound now so deep that I could not probe it. Like the barsk, he slept and perhaps was the better for fleeing the here and now. And so passed much of that day.
KRIP VORLUND
VIII
THERE WAS A SINGING, low and sweet, a croon which sounded in my ears as the wind which the space-borne so seldom feel on their bodies. And from whatever place Krip Vorlund had gone into hiding, I was pulled back to be one again, body and spirit locked together. When I opened my eyes to look about me, it was upon a strange company. Still, their strangeness did not truly amaze me; it was as if I had expected to see each and every one of them—girl’s face with silver hair escaping about it from the hood of a cloak, furred muzzles with bright animal eyes glistening inquisitively about them.
“You are—Maelen—” My voice surprised me, for it was a hoarse croaking.
She of the hood nodded. “I am Maelen.” But she spoke absently and her head turned as if she stared beyond in search of something she feared to see. All the other heads swung also, and from them came snarls and growls, low and rumbling, each differently pitched. My drowsy content vanished, apprehension awoke.