In the morning we left Yim-Sin, with the villagers cheering us out, shouting their desire for our return. We took a road which climbed and climbed. These were not hills we faced now, but rather mountains. The air was chill and Maelen wore her cloak, but when I took my place beside her on the seat I found my thick pelt needed no cover. The scents here were exciting and I found awaking in me time and again the Strong desire to leap from my perch and run to the timbered slopes, in search of I know not what.
“We come now into barsk country,” she told me with a laugh. “But I would not advise you to take advantage of your wish to see it better, Jorth. For, though some part of you is native here, you would speedily be at a disadvantage.”
“Why do all look upon a barsk in your company as so strange and rare?” I asked.
“Because, though the barsk is known, in another way it is not. If that sounds to be a riddle, perhaps it is. Men of the high slopes, of whom there are few—though the Thassa haunt the mountain-caught clouds by choice —have slain the barsk, which in rum hunts them with cunning and patience. There are many legends about the barsk, Jorth, and it is credited with almost as much power as men set into the hands of the Thassa. Many fords have coveted a caged barsk, only to discover—if they are able to find one—it either gains its freedom and then takes dire vengeance upon man and herd, or else it wills itself to death. For it does not accept any curtailment of its freedom. The spirit which wore your body was so willing itself when the exchange was made.”
I shivered. “And if that will succeeds?” I demanded.
Maelen hastened to reassure me. “It will not, there Was a limit set upon it in exchange. Your body will not die, Krip Vorlund—it will not be a discarded husk when you find it.”
“Now,” she shifted to another subject, “there is the Watch post of Yultravan. But most of the people must be in harvest on the slopes. We shall not stop. But before the sentries see you, it would be well for you to be caged.”
Reluctantly I climbed back and found my cage. Maelen exchanged greetings with two armored men who came from a small shelter beside the road. One of them lifted the curtain at the tail of the van to glance within, so I kept well in the back of the cage to escape notice. Again I thought they knew her as if she had made this journey before.
That night we camped in the open once more, and Maelen brewed a pot of liquid which gave forth such enticing odor that we all gathered around the fire to sniff longingly. I admit that I gulped my portion with no more manners than the real barsk might have displayed under the circumstances. Anticipation had ridden me during the day’s journeying, for I knew that we were very close to our goal. But when I settled in my cage that night-Maelen deeming it safer for some reason that we all rest inside the van—1 went immediately to sleep and this time did not waken.
We roused in the first of the dawn light and broke our fast on some crumbled cakes which were a mingling of grain and dried bits of meat. Then once more the van started upward. This time the slope was steeper, so that the kasi bent their shoulders to the yoke with visible effort. We stopped now and then to let them breathe, Maelen putting small weights she carried to block the backward roll of the wheels.
But we did not pause for a regular nooning, again sharing out cakes and lapping from bowls filled from Maelen’s water bottle. It was midaftemoon when we reached the top of the grade. Now the road descended through a cut between two heights. But what lay below was veiled by drifting mists, which only now and then parted to give a blurred hint of the depths.
“The Valley,” Maelen said, and her voice was flat, wrung dry of emotion. “Stay with the van, we must keep strictly to the road. There are barriers and safeguards here which cannot be seen.”
She gave the command to the kasi, and the van crawled on down into that place of mists and mystery.
MAELEN
X
“LOOK WITH UNCLOUDED EYES upon your own desires,” say the Old Ones when they speak among the Thassa. But one may believe all his thoughts clear, his motives open, and yet be moved by some hidden compulsion, as my little ones obey my wand when there is need for me to raise its power. Was my hidden desire awakened when I left Yrjar, virtuously telling myself and Malec that I went only to obey the law of the scales? If it was, then it was indeed deeply hidden.
Or did it spring to life after I had broken oath and sent the off-worlder from his own body into that of the barsk, that act sowing the seed? Or do any of us move, save by some design of Molaster’s far beyond our understanding? To the Old Ones such an argument as that is blasphemy, for they hold that each is answerable for his own acts—though they sometimes take into consideration the motivation for those acts, when it is a strong one.
But the thought was already near to fruition in Yim-Sin, so that I was knowing and yet denying it. When the priest Okyen had speech with me privately, he had ill news and left me with despair and futile anger to chew upon. So when we traveled on, coming ever nearer the Valley where many hopes are buried, I was constantly under assault by temptation, even though I could not believe that naught but ill might come of it.
It was very difficult for me to occupy my mind with the plight of Krip Vorlund during those hours, and I determined that once we found what he sought, I would make the exchange speedily to lay this temptation. Nor would I trust myself to think upon the one who abode there and whose days were surely numbered.
We came down from the lip of the Valley, through the chill mists which cloud it, into that portion which is allowed to those from outside. I answered the off-worlder’s questions as shortly as I could, still wrestling with myself. It was near sundown when we pulled into the outer court of the great temple, that which is for visitors. The guard priest came to greet us. I knew his face, but I could not set name to it—there is a kind of merciful forgetting allowed one at times—and this was the man who had greeted me here on a different occasion I tried not to recall. I asked to speak with Orkamor, only to be told he was busy and could not receive me. We took the van into the second courtyard and I released the kasi and fed and watered my little people. But Krip Vorlund asked me questions by mind-touch and some I could not answer.
We had lighted the moon globes by the van when a third-rank priest came to say Orkamor would see me. Krip Vorlund wished to go with me. He was impatient with all save finding and being united with his body. But I had to tell him that I must prepare Orkamor for what would happen and explain carefully, lest our story be thought wild raving. This he could accept.
Did it move stronger in me then, the belief that I need only act and much of the burden I had carried so long would be resolved? If it did, I still had the courage to resist.
Orkamor is not a young man and the burdens on him are a weighty load which grow heavier with the years, not lighter. Nor is he like the Thassa with their stronger, longer-lived bodies. So that each time I meet him, he seems to me even more shrunken, wasted, shadowy. Yet in him bums so strong a flame of will, and the need to answer need, that the spirit waxes while the fleshy envelope which holds it shrivels. After the first moments one sees only the spirit and not the man form that wears it.
“Welcome, sister.” His voice was tired that night, thin and fluting as if it, too, had been used too much and too long.
I bowed my head above mv wand. There are few the Thassa give full reverence to, besides their own Old Ones. But Orkamor deserves greatly of all Yiktor.
“Eldest Brother, peace and good.” I made the Three Signs with my wand.
“Peace and good,” he returned, and this time his voice was stronger, deeper, as if he battled away weariness with his will. “But we need no sooth-words between us, sister, I cannot tell you all is well.”