She raised the half-seen mirror to her lips, breathed upon it. Then holding it at eye level she concentrated.
Yurth-if there was Yurth. here then that call would bring, should bring. . . .
Elossa could see the disc only as an object between her fingers. She had never tried before to use it in such an absence of light. There was-no, she was not mistaken! The disc grew warm-it was activated!
Yurth! Urgently she beamed out that call. No answer, though she put into her mind-send all the strength she could summon. If Yurth had ever been here then her people were now gone. Dare she try Raski? As Elossa hesitated, the memory of the Mouth was sharp in her mind. Better not play with forces she did not understand. That looping shadow tongue which had near taken Stans was something beyond her own knowledge. Regretfully she clasped the mirror between her palms, loosed all concentration, then stowed it carefully away.
There was a lighting of the sky beginning, and, judging by that, they were indeed facing north. How long did they have before the first storms of the cold season would close in? Though the Yurth had their log huts and stone caves, their storage houses, yet that season was never easy for them. She and Stans had no supplies, no shelter as yet. Both must now be their primary concern.
Dawn broke at last and Elossa could see the new land lying below, for the passage in which they had sheltered part of the night fronted on a slope well above the floor of a valley. Unlike the wide expanse which had held the destroyed city, this was relatively narrow. But it ran east and west and she was sure that she caught a glimpse of a stream of some size forming a ribbon down its center. There was growth of dark vegetation on the lower slopes, rising to stunted trees. But there was something unwholesome about the look of that.
Still a source of water was important. Only, where there was any stream, they could also expect to find a come and go of life. Sargon, such as had already near made an end to her over mountain, and kindred beasts of the heights might well roam here. Stans carried a hunter’s weapons, she had nothing save her staff. Nor had she ever taken life herself.
“Darksome. . . .” Stans moved out to join her. “This is no country to welcome the traveler. Yet there is water. So it may well be good hunting territory.”
They left the entrance to the tunnel to proceed down slope. Without any spoken agreement they both made good use of all cover as they went, while Elossa opened her mind a little, striving to pick up any hint of life.
“Two-horns-” She spoke in a whisper gauged just to reach the ears of the man moving hardly an arm’s distance away.
He shot her a startled glance.
“To the west.” She pointed with her chin. “There are four-they graze.”
He nodded swiftly and turned in the direction she had indicated. His crossbow was in his hands. Elossa felt a little sick. At least she had not tolled a helpless animal within striking distance. But her betrayal was little the less. How true was it that one was allowed to slay in order to live? She could defend herself against attack-but a two horn was no attacker. She. . . . No, in this much she must face the necessity of breaking her own creed. To starve because one would not kill-a stronger person might face that rule, she fell far short of such strength.
Also, since this was of her doing, she must force herself to watch. So, like Stans, she slipped along.
The brush which cloaked the slope gave way to a stand of grass which waved tips near as tall as the shoulders of the animals who grazed there. Four two-horns. Elossa had read the emanations of life forces aright. There was one female, a half-grown yearling, and two males-one with the wide-curved horns of a herd leader of more than ten seasons.
Stans shot. The younger male gave a convulsive leap forward, a red stream shooting from its throat. The other male cried aloud in a great bellow and herded the female and her yearling before him into flight. The wounded animal had fallen to its knees as the bolt in its jugular drained it of blood. Stans raced on, knife in hand, to swiftly end its struggles.
Sick at what she had seen, Elossa made herself advance to where the Raski was busy butchering the kill. She stooped and thrust her fingers into the congealing blood. Then she drew on her forehead the scarlet sign of her sin. So must she wear that for all to note until in some manner she might atone. She looked around to see the Raski, pausing in his bloody work, watching her action with open amazement.
“It is through me the innocent had died,” she said, not wanting to explain her shame, but knowing that she must “So must I wear a killer’s blood token.”
His surprise did not lighten. “This is meat, we must have it or die. There are no fields to be harvested here, no fruit ripe for the picking. Do not the Yurth eat meat? If not so, how do they live?”
“We live,” she said bleakly. “And we kill. But never must we let ourselves forget that in killing we take on ever the burden which is part of the death of another, be it man or animal.”
“You did not blood yourself with the sargon,” he commented.
“No, for then the fight was equal-life risked against life-and that is left upon the balance of the First Principle, not upon any better skill or trick of ours.”
Stans shook his head and his expression was still one of bafflement.
“Yurth ways-” He shrugged. “It remains, we can eat.”
“Dare we light a fire?” The girl looked on to the end of the meadow which bordered on the stream. Across that swift flow of water (and it was swift, bearing with it sticks, masses of wrack as if there had been a storm somewhere higher up and the hurrying flood had picked up much debris along the way) there were standing rocks and sand, none of the vegetation which grew on this side.
“What do your Yurth talents tell you?” he countered. “If you can so find a beast to give us food without searching far, can you not also tell us whether we are alone here?” He sat back on his heels, his face impassive.
Elossa could not be really convinced whether he asked that without latent hostility. They were so different in their heritage-dare she ever be certain that there did not lie some other motive under any speech he made to her?
She hesitated. To reveal her weaknesses when she could not be sure of this Raski-that might be the height of stupidity. Yet she must not, on the other hand, claim powers which in a time of emergency she could not summon. That might well be worse in the future than admitting now there were limits to what she could do.
“If I use such a mind-search,” Elossa said slowly, “and there is a mind equally trained within range, then instantly that other will know of me-or us.”
“It would be a Yurth mind which could do so, would it not?” he asked. “Do you then fear your own people?”
“I travel with a Raski.” She picked the first excuse she could light upon. “They do not hate nor fear your kind, but I would be so strange because of that.”
“Yes, even as I company with Yurth!” He nodded. “Most of my own blood would send such a bolt as this-” He touched what he had taken from the wound-”through me without question.”
She made her decision, mainly for the reason that hunger was strong in her; still she could not think of putting raw flesh into her mouth. A poor reason, in which the needs of her body overrode all else, yet the body must be fed or the mind also would perish.
Kneeling a little away from where Stans had gone back to his butchery, Elossa again brought out her mirror. The sun was up now, and the surface of the disc she held was bright as it had not been in the night time. She looked down into the pool of light, for that was what it seemed to become in her hold.
“Yurth!” She aimed the thought sharply into the disc. “Show me Yurth!”
There was-yes! It came-a rippling on the surface of the disc. Then she saw-but very faint and hard to define-a figure which might have been that which had fronted them in the corridor. Her mind-send reached out and out. Life. . . far. . . . But was it Yurth? She met no answering spark of mind. It was more like Raski-closed, unknowing.