The Yurth had marched in silence, speaking neither to their prisoners nor each other. Elossa had come to feel a shrinking from contact with any of them. They might well be only hollow shells of the people she had known, sent to obey the will of some other, without a spirit of their own remaining in their bodies.
At least those bodies remained human in their need for food and water. For supplies were produced and shared with their prisoners, unbound for the purpose, but watched closely while they gnawed on lengths of what seemed dried meat, as hard to chew as wood, and allowed to drink from journey bottles. Even the water had a strange, stale taste as if it had been in those storage containers for a long time.
“Where do you take us?” In the general silence of that camp Stans’ voice rang out unusually loud. He had spoken to the Yurth who was rebinding his hands.
The man might have been deaf for he did not even glance up as he tested the last knot with grim efficiency before he turned away. Now the Raski looked to Elossa.
“They are of your stock, surely they will answer you.” There was an odd note in his voice. Almost, Elossa thought, as if he had already identified her wholly with his enemies, in spite of the outward trappings of captivity which she wore.
She moistened her lips and launched the one appeal she had thought upon during that dusty journey to reach this place. To do this before a Raski went against all her conditioning from birth-Yurth affairs were theirs only. Still she must break through to these of her kin; that need had become the most important thing in her whole world.
Again she ran her tongue over her lips; her mouth, in spite of the water she had drunk, felt bone dry, as if she could not shape any words.
But this must be done-she had to know. So she began the chant in words so old that even their meaning was now forgotten. Out of some very dun past had those words come, and their birth must have been of abiding importance to all which was Yurth for the fact still remained that they must learn them, intelligible or no.
“In the beginning,” she said in that tongue now forgotten, “was created Heaven and Yurth,” (that last was the only understandable word in her chant), “and there man took being and. . . .”
On sped the words, faster now and uttered with more power and authority. And-yes! One of the Yurth, one wearing the clothing like her own, had turned his head to look at her. There was the fault trace of puzzlement dawning in his blank face. She saw his lips move. Then his voice joined hers in the chant, lower, less strong, halting at times.
But when she had done he saw her, really saw her! It was as if she had shaken out of sleep this one, if not the others. His eyes swept from her face down to the wrists again bound, the end of that cording looping out to twist about the arm of another of the guards. The attention in his expression became hopelessness.
“To Yurth the burden of the Sin.” He spoke harshly as might a man who had not used his voice for a long time. “We pay, Yurth, we pay.”
She leaned forward. None of the others had appeared to note that he had spoken.
“To whom does Yurth pay?” She tried to keep her voice as level as might one carrying on a usual conversation.
“To Atturn.” His last faint trace of interest flickered out. Now he turned away and got to his feet.
She sent a mind-probe with all the force she could summon, determined to break through the barrier she had found, to reach the real man within the shell. Maybe she troubled him a fraction, for his head did turn once more in her direction. Then he strode off into the growing dusk.
“So Yurth pays,” commented Stans.
“To Atturn,” she snapped in return, desolated at her failure when she had begun to think that she might have actually learned more. “Perhaps to your Karn.” She ended, not because she believed what she said. “But if Atturn rules, why does a Raski go in bonds?” she flung at him in conclusion.
“Perhaps we shall soon have a chance to learn.” He showed heat to match her own.
With the dark the Yurth settled themselves for sleep, each captive placed carefully between two of their guards, cords looping them in contact so that Elossa guessed that the least move on her part would alert either one or the other, or both, of the men who boxed her in. He who had spoken to her was across the fire and settled early, his eyes closed, as if the last thing he wanted to see was Elossa herself.
She slept at last, rousing once to see one of the Yurth feeding the fire from a pile of sticks which had been stacked there waiting for their coming. Stans was only a dark form nearly engulfed in the shadows and she could not tell whether he waked or slept.
There was an uneasiness in her now which made her adverse to any casting of mind-seek. That these Yurth were perhaps bound to another’s will was the only explanation which made sense to her. The “Burden” which the ship had loosed on her had ridden her people heavily for generations, that was true. But that it had reduced any to this state was not normal-Yurth normal. He and the others who had worn the clothing like her own-were they those who had earlier made the Pilgrimage and had never returned? Instead of death in the mountains they had found this life-in-death.
But there were the others who wore the ship’s clothing. It had certainly been too many years since the crash of their spacer and the death of Kal-Hath-Tan for any of them to have lived to this time-again, unless someone had found the secret of prolonging life far past any scale of yean: known to Elossa’s reckoning. Had there been another ship, a later one?
There was such a surge of excitement through her at that thought that she had to will herself fiercely to lie still. It was the same excitement and racing of the blood which had visited her when she had watched in the wrecked ship the scenes taken in space before the crash.
Another ship-a later one-perhaps sent to find Yurth, to take them home. Home? Where was home then? Lying here she could see the stars strewn across the sky. Was one of them the sun which warmed the fields and hills of Yurth Home?
She drew a deep breath and then that excitement changed.
Those around her, she knew they were not free. If they had come to save, then they in turn had been caught in some trap and made captive. Yet they could not have been conditioned by the machines in the ship as all those of her own blood and kin had been. She longed to be able to crawl over to Stans, to shake him awake if he did indeed sleep, force him somehow to tell her more of Atturn, of the Karn who had stood wearing Atturn’s face and who had launched the fire bolt at them, who might have set upon them the monstrous creatures who had pulled them down. There was too much she did not know, could not know when the mind- seek refused to serve her.
Shortly after dawn, having eaten meagerly again of the dry stuff and been allowed to drink, they were marched on steadily across the plains. Stans walked well ahead of her. He seemed unsteady on his feet and now and then the Yurth beside him put out a hand to aid him with the impersonal manner of a machine doing some set duty.
They halted at intervals to rest, and were offered water at each such halt. The dry grass grew long here, sweeping to their knees and Elossa could trace no path in it. Still the party certainly moved as if they trod some well known trail and did not have to fear getting lost.
There was something about the horizon ahead, a kind of haziness she could not account for. But shortly before noon, or so she judged it to be by the sun, they reached the explanation for that. The plain ended almost abruptly in a cliff. It would seem that this level country was really a large plateau and to proceed they must descend to a country lying below, a far different country.
Whereas the plain forecast the swift coming of winter, the growth they now looked down on was lush, thick with leaves as it might be at the height of a good growing summer. Trees stood so close together that all one could really see for the most part was their tops, the leaves ruffled by gentle winds.