“There is nothing close.” She slipped the disc back into its carrying place.
“Good enough. There is drift along the stream-dry enough to give us a good fire, and also that which will not cause much smoke.”
Leaving him to finish his bloody task, Elossa went down to the water and began to gather those bone-white, water-polished sticks which had caught in the rocks above the present rise of the water, though, she noted, that was creeping higher now even as she watched.
They roasted chunks of the meat speared on sharpened pieces of drift and held over the flames. Elossa forced herself to eat, applying mental discipline against her half nausea. Stans was licking his fingers one by one as he spoke disjointedly:
“We should smoke what we can-to carry with us.”
He had said only that when Elossa was on her feet staring across the stream at the other rock-covered bank. Just as the strange Yurth and the face had both appeared without warning in the passage, so now had a figure winked into sight there.
She gasped. Not Yurth as she had half expected. Like Stans the man was dark skinned, dark haired. But-his face! He wore a living countenance of flesh and bone but it was still the one of Atturn. Nor was his clothing the hide garments of the hunter, even the clumsy ill- woven robes of the city men, or the primitive armor of the Raski soldiers who patrolled the plains.
His body was covered with a black, tight-fitting suit, not unlike those worn by the Yurth in their shipboard life, save that the black was scrolled over by patterns in red as if so drawn by some point dipped in fresh blood. Those patterns glowed, waned, and glowed again, their brightness speeding from one part of the body they helped to clothe to another. From his shoulders hung a short cloak of the blood red, and that was patterned in black, reversing the order of that on his other clothing. His head was surmounted by a towering crest of either thick black hair set in some invisible helm, or else his own locks stiffened and allowed to grow to a height of more than a foot above his skull. In all he was the most barbaric figure Elossa had ever seen.
Instinctively she had sent forth a mind-probe. And met-nothing.
The stranger raised his hand and pointed, while his lips-the thickish, sneering lips of the Mouth of Atturn-shaped words which sounded heavily through the air as if the words themselves were bolts from some weapon dispatched to bring down the two on the other side of the river.
“Raski, si lar dit!”
Stans cried out. The appearance of the man had caught him kneeling, now he was on his feet in a half crouch, his hand tightly grasping the hilt of his knife. Like the stranger who wore Atturn’s face his features were alive, but his expression was that of defiance.
“Philbur!” He made of the name of his house a battle cry. It was as if he met red hate with a rage as great and overpowering.
Without clear thought Elossa’s hand grabbed her mirror from its hiding place, the swift jerk of her pull breaking the cord which held it. Then, swinging it by what was left of that cord, she spun it through the air.
Was what happened then chance alone or some intervention of power she did not realize she could call upon? A beam of searing red fire had shot from the pointed finger of he who wore Atturn’s face. It struck full on the disc of the mirror and was reflected back-its force of beam increased. The black and red figure vanished.
15.
“Who was that?” Elossa found words first, Stans was still staring bemused at where that stranger had stood.
“It was-no!” He flung up one hand in an emphatic gesture of denial. “It could not be that!” Now he turned his head a little to look at the girl and his look of astonishment was still plain. “Time does not stop-a man dead these half thousand years cannot walk!”
“Walk.” She gazed at the mirror which had so providently, almost impossibly, deflected whatever it was the stranger would have hurled at Stans. The disc was cracked, darkened. A vigorous rubbing against her cloak did not free it from that discoloration. Without even trying it she could be sure it was now useless for her purposes. “Walk,” she repeated explosively, “that strove to kill!” For Elossa did not doubt in the least that had that beam of light struck Stans he would have been as dead as she would have been had the Yurth weapon in the corridor cooked her flesh from her charred bones.
“It was Karn of the House of Philbur-he who ruled in Kal-Hath-Tan. He is-was-of my blood, or I of his. But he died with the city! It is so-all men know it! Yet, you saw him, did you not? Tell me-” His voice was near a fierce shout-”you did see him!”
“I saw a man-a Raski if you say he is so-in black and red, but he wore the face of the Mouth of Atturn and you said you did not know it.”
Stans rubbed his hand across his forehead. He was visibly more shaken than she had yet seen him.
“I know-what do I know-or not know?” He cried that question, not to her, she knew, but to the world around them. “I am no longer sure of anything.”
Then he took a leap in her direction, and, before the girl could move, he had seized her shoulders in a hurtful grip and was shaking her as if he would so reduce her to a kind of slavery.
“Was this of your doing, Yurth? All know you can tangle and play with minds, as a true man can toss pebbles to his liking. Have you so tossed my thoughts, bewitched my eyes-made me see what is not?”
The girl fought him, tearing herself free by the very fury of her resistance. Then she backed away, holding up to hint at eye level the blackened and near destroyed mirror of seeing.
“He did that-with the beam that he threw! Think you, Raski, how would you have been served had this not deflected that power!”
Starts’ scowl did not lighten but his eyes did flicker at the disc.
“I do not know what he would have done,” he said sullenly. “This is an evil land and-”
He got no further. They came boiling out of the rocks across the water, splashing through, some of them covering the distance between with huge leaps. Not Yurth, not Raski. . . . Elossa gave a cry of horror, so alien were these creatures to any normal life that she knew.
Twisted bodies, limbs too long or too short, heads with horribly misshapen features-a nightmare of distorted things which vaguely aped the human yet were totally monstrous. It was this alien horror which kept both Elossa and Stans from instant defense. Also the creatures attacked without a sound, surging on in a wave over the water toward them.
Elossa stopped to catch up her staff; Stans still had his hunting knife to hand. But they had no chance. Evil smelling bodies ringed them in, hands which had four fingers, six, boneless tentacles for digits, seized upon them, dragged them down. The terrible revulsion which filled Elossa as she looked upon their distorted and deformed bodies and faces weakened her. She fought, but it was as if nausea weighted her limbs, deadened her powers of constructive thought.
They poured over the two by the fire like an irresistible wave, bearing them to earth. Elossa shuddered at the touch of their unwholesome flesh against her own. The fetid odor they wore like a second skin made it hard for her to breathe, she had to fight to regain consciousness. There were bonds pulled cruelly tight about her wrists and ankles. Still one of the creatures squatted on her, using the force of its weight to keep her quiet.
And the worst of that (Elossa had to close her eyes against the horror of that leering, drooling thing) was that it was obviously female. For their attackers wore but little clothing-scraps of filthy stuff about their loins the extent of their body coverings, the females among them as aggressive and bestial as the males.
The silence in which their attack had been carried out was broken now. Grunts, whistles, noises not even as intelligent as sounds made by far more cleanly living animals broke out in an unintelligible chorus.
Elossa, the center of one circle of captors, could see nothing of the Raski. She forced herself to look at these ringing her in. While they indulged meanwhile in small torments, pulling viciously at her hair, tweaking her flesh until the nails-of those which had nails- near met, leaving raw marks which bled a little.