Maelen directed the boy priests who carried some boxes from the van to set them along the steps, and I noted that they continued to glance at me with some awe. When they had done, Maelen dismissed them with thanks and sat down on the lowest step. I lost no time in joining her.
“Well?” There was only one thing I wanted to know —had she gained any news of Oskold’s men and that which they were transporting.
“They have not passed this way,” she answered me. “Nor was I sure they would. If they needed to apprise their lord of what had happened they would have gone eastward and thus come on the other road which leads to the Valley.”
“You seem very sure they want to get to this Valley.”
Maelen put her hands to either side of my barsk head and raised it so she could better look into my eyes,
“Accept this, star rover: of the ways of the people of Yiktor I do know much. They are set to patterns which they do not break, not when there is naught to endanger them. Rest assured Oskold or his men will not alter this pattern. One way or another they shall bring that which belongs to you to the Valley.”
“Ah, Freesha, so it is true.”
The voice behind us rang in my ears as if Maelen spoke and I was startled, for this was the first time I bad “heard” so as to understand except through her intermediacy. I jerked out of her hold and snarled involuntarily as I looked up the steps.
A man in priestly robes stood there. He was old, bent a little, leaning on a support which was more staff of office than cane, for it was almost as tall as his age-bared skull. His face was open, yet that of a man who had seen so much of sorrow that he would be colored with its gray wash to the end of his days. Only now he smiled, and in his smile was the sweetness of one to whom compassion was the greatest of virtues.
“You have brought a marvel indeed.” He came down a step and in turn Maelen sped to join him, setting her arm under his in support. That aloofness which stood always between her and the plainsmen vanished and there was respect in her tone as she made answer.
“I bring a barsk, yes, Eldest Brother. Jorth, show your manners!”
Thus the first of the tricks we had worked out together was shown to the guardian of the temple as I bowed my head thrice and then barked my deepest. And gently, with the same smile, the priest inclined his head to me in answer.
“Go with the love and care of Umphra, brother of the upper ways,” he said.
The beliefs of the Free Traders are few, and we seldom express them, even among ourselves. At ship’s swearing, or when taking a permanent life companion, or when accepting a foster child into one’s household-yes, we have oaths and powers we call upon as witness.
I think that all living things with intelligence recognize THAT WHICH LIES ABOVE AND BEYOND. They must or be ever lost and driven by their inner fears and doubts beyond the endurance of their spirit. We give respect to gods of other worlds, for they are but man-distorted images of that which stands ever behind such faulty windows into the unknown. Now, in this man who had given his life to the service of such a god, I saw one who walked closely to the Great Truth as he saw it, and perhaps it was indeed a truth, if not one in which my people believed. Thus, forgetting the skin which covered me, I bowed my head as I would to those who have my respect.
And when I raised it to look once more in his face, I saw that his smile was gone; rather did he look at me very intently, as one might view some new thing which caught the full attention.
“What we know of the barsk,” he said as if he spoke to himself, “is very little, and most of that, ill, having been sifted through the screen of fear. Perhaps there is much we should learn.”
“My little people are not quite like those of their wild kin.” Maelen spoke swiftly and I read both unease and warning in the half-thought she shot at me, a warning that this was one who had some of the inner sight and whose suspicions must not be aroused.
Thus I barked and snapped at an insect buzzing overhead and then went to join the others at the pool, hoping I had done my best to cover any lapse I had unwittingly made.
Maelen lingered with the priest and they spoke together in a murmur which did not reach my ears. Also she had shut off mind-communication with me and this I did not like. But I dared not try to listen in that manner either.
In the early evening we gave our show to all the villagers who could crowd into the court, repeating it twice so that all could see, using the porch of the temple for our stage, the boy priests helping Maelen arrange the few properties we used. They did this with such practiced skill that I guessed this was not the first time this had happened, though why Maelen would have come this way before, I did not know.
The acts were less elaborate than those which her other troop had presented at the fair. Now Tantacka sat on her haunches and thumped a drum to which Borba and Vors danced and marched. Simmle leaped over a series of ascending bars, prancing on her hind legs, answered questions from the audience with barks, played a small musical instrument by pressing on large keys with her forepaws. And I sat up, bowed, and did the other small tricks we had planned. I think my appearance alone would have been enough, for the villagers were startled. I wondered more and more at the fearsome reputation my host body held in this country.
When we had done we went back to our cages, and for once I did not demur at being so housed. I was as thoroughly weary as if I had labored man-fashion throughout a day.
But I had discovered that a barsk’s sleep was not like that of a man. It did not last the night through, but was a series of short naps, between which I lay awake and alert, keenly aware through nose and ear of all that went on outside the curtains of the van. During one such wakeful spell I heard a stir in the fore part where Maelen had a couch she used in bad weather or when it was not possible to sleep in the open.
Light, so thin it seemed only a very pallid and weak reflection of her moon globe, filtered through a curtain slit. The latch of my cage had not been dropped. I was free to come and go, though I knew the danger of doing so in the village. Now I nosed open the door and moved to set my eyes to that slit.
On her bed place Maelen sat cross-legged, her eyes closed. One might have thought she slept, but her body moved from the waist slowly back and forth, as if in time to music I could not hear. Nor could I reach her mind, for when I strove to do so, I came against a tight barrier with the force of one running headlong into a fort wall.
Her lips were slightly parted and I caught a sound, the faintest whisper of sound issuing from them. She was singing—or was she? I could not be sure whether it was song, or some muttered invocation, even some plaint. Her hands rested on her knees, but between forefinger and forefinger her silver rod made a taut bridge, and it was from that the faint light beamed.
Around me, as I watched, the air held a kind of electric charge. My mane roughened and raised, there was a tingling along my hide, a prickling in my nose, We men of the ships have our kind of power and energies, but we never deny the fact that there are others elsewhere whom we do not understand and cannot control. For the art of controlling such may be a matter of birth and not of learning.
This was power, but whether she called it to her or whether she sent it forth, I did not know. And in that moment of my watching I was strongly aware she was alien, far more alien than I had believed.
She was silent after a space, and the tingling in the air began to ebb. Then with a sigh her head fell forward, and she jerked as one awakening, to place the now dim rod under her head as she stretched herself on the couch. The light was gone and I was sure she slept.