Elossa settled into a deliberate pattern of even breathing to steady her nerves. That her dream had been one of the important ones she did not doubt. Nor did it begin to blur and fade from her mind after the fashion of most dreams. She had witnessed the destruction of part of a city. But the reason why she had been given this vision she did not know.
She took into hands the seeing disc, being half minded to try a search. Did that city-or had it-ever existed here? Had that road she followed to the pass been the one time had nearly erased? She longed to know. Yet prudence counseled no, she must not again use her talent until she was sure within herself that she had an ample supply of energy.
Slowly she settled back, her hands crossed upon her breast under the folds of her cloak, and clasped in her right one the disc. But she did not fall again into slumber. The memory of her dream was like the dull aching of a tooth, prodding at her mind, plucking at her imagination.
Why and where, when and how? There was nothing in all the teaching she had absorbed from early childhood which suggested the existence of any such city, either past or present. The Yurth did not gather in large cities. Their life, to the outer eye, was primitive and rough. What they did inwardly was something very different. While the Raski, for all their liking to gather in towns and the city of the King-Head, had certainly produced nothing to equal what she had seen in her dream.
No, this was a mystery, and mysteries both drew and repelled her. Something lay within the mountains which was of importance-the very fact of the Pilgrimage testified to that. What would she find? Elossa looked upon the rising moon and strove to put her mind into the serene order demanded by her kind.
4.
With the coming of day Elossa filled her water bottle, ate sparingly of her supplies, and began to climb again. The freshness of the mountain air drove away some of the shadow which had overhung the day before. There was only fleeting thought of the man below. She had done for him all that she could, the rest depended upon his own strength. To attempt to contact him now might betray herself and her mission.
On and on, the climb was a sharp one. She did not set a fast pace, conserving her energy by seeking out those places which were most easy to pass. Here the wind was chill. Already there were scarves of white snow along the upper peaks. Late summer, early autumn on the plains turned to winter here.
Once when she paused to rest, surveying curiously what lay about her, there was a quick flash of memory. Not too far ahead the rise of rock walls was such as she had seen before. She crouched on a narrow ledge she had been following because it gave good footholds and arose along the slope as if it had been chiseled there to offer a path.
However, this ledge was of natural formation. What lay beyond her perch came from the hands of men, or at least it had been built to answer the demands of intelligence equal to human. There stretched the remains of a roadway.
Surely this could be the same road she had seen leaving the foothills, while before it now lay the pass of her dream. Elossa hesitated. A dream of guidance, showing her where she must go? Or a dream of warning, to say this is not your path? She had no hint of which it might be. To try to learn she summoned the memory of the dream.
In that the road had not been a tumble of broken stone, but firm and whole. Though she had not actually trod upon it, yet it furnished her with a guide. Also a dream, for all the horror of the burning, dying city, had not seemed a threat to her. It was a sending, she decided. Though it had not been beamed by any one of her people, she would have recognized instantly the technique. Therefore. . . . A past shadow?
The theory and explanation of those was as familiar to her as her own name. Acts which aroused great emotion on the part of the actors could impress upon the scene of those acts pictorial representation of the events. These emanations might be picked up a long time later by any whose nature left them open to such reception. She had seen in the past the shadows of three of the King-Head’s forces who had gone to then: death from a rog attack. Yet those deaths had occurred generations before her own birth. And how much greater the death of a city would be-to imprint the agony of that loss upon the site!
Elossa dropped her head into her hands, forcing away the dream memory, reaching out for the compulsion tie which had brought her on the Pilgrimage. That was there, and it pointed her to the mountain gap! Gathering up her bag and staff, she descended to the ancient road and doggedly continued along that to the pass. She was farther than the length of her staff along that way before she swayed, set her teeth grimly upon her lip.
Though she retreated behind a thought barrier, that was no safe refuge as far as emotion was concerned. It was as if she were now buffeted by unseen blows, all sent to force her into retreat. What lay here had no substance, but to approach was like forcing a way through a knee-high swift current designed to sweep her from her feet.
More than wind flowed through the pass. Anger came, as deep and fierce as the mindless rage of the rog and the sargon, a cry for-for vengeance. Elossa was not aware that her progress became unsteady, that she reeled from one side of the way to the other.
Pulled forward, pushed back-it would seem that the forces here were near evenly balanced and she was the plaything of them both. But she did win forward, even though it was but a step, a half step, length at a time. Breath filled her lungs only in painful gasps. The entire world had narrowed to the broken road, and on that only a few lengths ahead.
Elossa fought. She was so enmeshed now in those two forces she could sense that she dared not even attempt to free herself. No, this she must see until the end.
On and up. Her own breathing filled her ears. Pain looped around her ribs ever more tightly. She would plant her staff in some crack a little before her, and then, by main effort, drag herself to that spot, look ahead for another anchor.
Time itself left her. This might have been morning, or hours near sunset, one day or the next. Beyond and around her now flowed life and time. She was near spent with every step.
At last she stumbled into a pocket of absolute stillness. So quick was the cessation of those two forces which had used her as an arena that she collapsed against a rock, hardly able to keep on her feet.
The girl was only aware of the heavy pounding of her heart, the rasping sound of her breathing. She felt as emptied of strength as she had after she had expended the talent to aid the Raski hunter.
At length Elossa raised her head. Then that harsh, heavy breathing caught in her throat. She was not alone!
Her efforts had brought her to the other end of the pass. As in her dream, mist curdled on the down slope, cutting out all view of the way below and beyond. But, stark against that mist, fronting her. . . .
In spite of control Elossa uttered a cry of terror, fear welled in her. She clutched the staff which could be her only weapon. A length of wood to use against-that?
In form it was roughly human. At least it stood erect on two limbs, held two more before it. One of those was half hidden behind the oval of a shield which covered it near throat to thighs. The other, a seared paw, still possessed enough charred bone of fingers to clasp a sword hilt. A skull, blackened by fire, to which strips of burnt flesh still clung here and there, was overshadowed by a helm.
It-it had no eyes left-yet it saw! Its helmed head was turned in her direction. Nothing, no one of her species who had been so burned could live! Yet this, this thing stood erect, the teeth of that horrible skull bared in what seemed to Elossa to be a grin of mockery, born from recognition of her own fear and loathing.
Nothing could live so! She drew several short breaths to steady her nerves. If this thing could not live (and reason came flooding back to her to make that assurance) then it was a thought form. . . .