1.

;       void, cold. Fold in the legs—do not move.
',       Cold—pain—the big one was using the prod again—pain.
Stand—jump—but it is cold—so——cold.

The small body edged between the two large woven bas-
I    kets uttered a mewing cry. Then one claw hand flew to
•    provide a gag against any more sound. But shivers continued
|    to shake the too thin body.

Cold—where is cold—where is pain?

^       The curled body jerked as if a tormenting lash had been
i    applied to the wrinkled greenish skin only too visible through
'.    the tatters which were not true clothing. No one had shouted
'    those words. Yet they had come as clear and loud as if
Russtif his ugly self were standing over the hider. In the
head—not in the ear. Talking in the head!
^      The small one tried to wedge even more out of sight, and
;    now the shudders of fear were worse.
;       Where is cold? Where is pain?

The demand came again, imperative—to be obeyed.
Wrinkled hands covered ears, but that did not keep the ques-
tions from opening like dry and curled leaves under the touch

1

2            .     Andre Norton

of water—an opening in the head. Once more the body

jerked—

Pain—Russtif was using the prod on the other side of the

tent wall, using it with the skill of a trained showman to stir
up a sulky or frightened beast. And, like the words out of the
air, the pain reached the lurker with a hot burst that brought a
second whimper.

"Here!"
There were legs beyond the crack where the small one

crouched—two pairs of them in space boots.

"No harm—there is nothing to fear."

A pallid tongue licked cracked lips. But there was some-
thing that made the fear less, lulled it a little. Beyond the
wall Russtif growled and spat threats. His anger and love of
tormenting that which could not fight back was like a spurt of

fire.

"Nothing to fear." Again the words spun into a mind that

had to listen even if the ears were stoppered against sound.
Nor did either pair of boots move toward or away from the
lurker. Crouch, wait for a hand to reach down and jerk out
the small body, perhaps cuff hard for being there—for exist-
ing at all.

But this was not Russtif and the boots did not move.
Slowly the head, covered with dry tangles of thick hair, came
up, drawn against all will by the new note—the very strange
note—in that mind voice. Large eyes looked up and out.

Very far from Russtif these two. There were always strang-
ers about, some of them as odd in their way as Russtif's
imprisoned performers. So it was not their difference, rather
the way they stood shoulder to shoulder looking down. Not
with disgust nor cruel curiosity but in another way the lurker

could not understand.

"Do not be afraid." It was the male who spoke now,
uttering words in the trade lingo that was common speech all

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR                 3

through this quarter which catered to the entertainment of
ship people.

He was very fair of skin and his hair was white—though
he was not an old man. Those eyebrows so pale even against
his skin ran up at the temples to join the hairline, and his
eyes were green, luminous as if there were tiny fires behind
each.

"There is nothing to fear." That was the other one, the
female, who spoke now. Beside the fairness of her compan-
ion she was a fire glowing—hair as red as one of Russtifs oil
lamps was braided and looped about her head to look like a
heavy crown. She was—

The small body uncoiled. Claw hands went out to the big
basket and drew the hunched body up as far as nature would
let it. For it was a very crooked body, hunched forward by a
misshapen burden at shoulder level, so that the head had to
be raised to an uncomfortable angle to see the other two at
all.

Arms and legs were thin, their greenish skin encrusted
with dirt. The mass of uncombed hair was black, gray with
dust at places, but black underneath.

"A child." It was the spaceman who said that aloud.
"What—"

The woman made a gesture with one hand. There was a
listening look about her. Could she hear Toggor, too?

"This one, yes," she said. "But also another. Is that not
so, little one?"

The answer was pulled out by the intent gaze of her
eyes—coming before thought muffled it with caution.

"He—Russtif—he would make Toggor play. It is cold—
too cold. Toggor hurts from the cold—from the pain whip."

"So?"

She stooped to set a hand beneath the chin of the small,
bent and maimed figure. From her touch, from the tips of her

4                   Andre Norton

fingers, something warm and good flooded right into the

shaking body.

"Toggor is what?"
"My—my friend." That was not quite the way of it either,

but they were the closest words could be found.

There was a hiss of breath from the man; the woman's lips
fitted tightly together. She was angry—not like Russtif, all
noise and quick to aim a blow—but neither was her anger

turned toward the one before her.

"We may have found what we seek." She spoke above

the bowed head to her companion. "And who are you?"

Again warmth flowed from her.

"The Dung one." Long ago had that name of the lowest

been accepted. There was no other. "I run errands. I do what
I can." A pride which was seldom felt made shoulders hunch

a little higher.

"For Russtif?" The man indicated the tent behind.

Dung shook his head. "Russtif has Jusas and Sem."

"Yet you are here."
"It is Toggor. I—I bring him—" The claw hand rumbled

in the front of the single ragged garment. Once more truth
was pulled forth by that warmth of the other. "I bring this."
He held an unwholesome-looking lump of stuff. "Russtif
does not feed Toggor enough. He wants him to fight for
food. Toggor will die"—the sharply pointed chin quivered

—"there!"

They could all hear the crackle of the prod and a rising

mutter of obscenities from beyond the tent wall.

"Toggor fights and they bet on him. Russtif never had so

good a clawed one before."

"So," the man said, "let us see this fighter, Maelen. Also

Russtif. He interests me."
The woman nodded. She dropped her hand from beneath

the pointed chin to lace a hold in the tatters which crossed the
bowed shoulder hump.

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR                 5

What did she want with Dung?

"Come." Her hold unchanging, she urged him forward
just behind the man who walked with the swing of one who
has spent most of his years in space, and who was now
heading toward the entrance to Russtif's domain at the other
end of the tent. Whether or not the lurker wished to accom-
pany them was not asked. There was no breaking that hold
which was drawing Dung along. Somehow the thought of
fighting for freedom had vanished.

There was the thick and nasty smell which was Russtif s—
one of uncleaned cages with weak and sickening captives—to
fill the nose as soon as they had pushed past the open flap.
Things rustled and squeaked until Russtif roared and the
silence of fear snapped down.

He was a big man who had once been proud of his strength
but now was entombed in rolls of greasy fat. His bare skull
shone with oil in the light of the lantern he had set on the
table where there was also a cage—Toggor's place of prison.
Now he looked up with a sullen scowl. Then that changed,
by a visible effort, into a showman's ingratiating grin.

"Gentle Fern, Gentle Homo, how can I serve you?" His
back was to the table now, and he had dropped the prod on
it. It was then he caught sight of Dung.

"Has the trash made some trouble?" He took a ponderous
step forward, his hand lifted as if to aim a blow at the

hunchback.

"What trouble is this one noted for making?" asked the

woman.
"A thief, a piece of walking dung, a monster like that?

Why, whatever comes to hand to upset honest people—"
"Such as Beastmerchant Russtif perhaps?" asked the man.
Russtifs smile slipped and slid but still he caught it.

"Such as me and everyone else. 1 caught this sewer scum

tampering with a cage just two eves ago. Luck was with him

6                   Andre Norton

then, or else he would have smarted for a good lessoning.
Trash should be thrown away and not come to annoy others."
"Opening a cage? Is perhaps the cage that one?" The man

pointed to the one on the table.

Russtifs smile did vanish then. With the hand in sight he
made a fist which might have fallen like a hammer blow on

the hunchback.

"Why do you wonder that. Gentle Homo? Has the trash

been spewing out some vomit that you would believe?"

"You have a fighting smux is what 1 believe," the woman
cut in, and Russtif hastened to draw on his showman's smirk

again.

"The best. Gentle Fern, the best! There have been stellars

wagered on this one—not just market coppers—and stellars
won!" He moved along the edge of the table now so they

could better view his possession.

The woman stooped a little so she could see most of what
looked like a ball of hairy rags squatting in the center of the
cage. Under her hold Dung gave a quick start and then stood
very still. She was mind speaking to Toggor. The smux did
not answer. It was as if he did not or would not listen.

"These be—good." Unknowingly at first. Dung's mind
reached out to become a part of that other steady stream of

reassurance.
Toggor's answer never came in words such as those that

had struck Dung. Rather it was feeling: pain, fear, and
sometimes but very seldom, a rough kind of contentment.
Thus Dung thought "good," even "help," which Toggor
somehow seized upon avidly, as if Dung had indeed flung

open his place of hopeless captivity.

The handful of legs folded tightly to the haired body was
visible. Those vicious-looking claws at the end of the first four
were clamped together as the creature answered Dung's reas-
surance rather than the more concise broadcast of the woman.

The smux was no tiling of beauty. Had he grown larger he

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR                 7

might have been such a monster as to set human kind to
flight. His body, covered with spiky hairs thick enough to
look like quills, was a grayish red like a fire coal smoldering
in ashes. Each quill was tipped also with a darker red as if
blood-dipped. There were eight of the long hairy legs, the
fore pairs equipped with claws which were sawtoothed on the
inner sides.

His body was two ovals attached, the smaller fore one to
larger hind one with a waist no thicker than two of his legs
held side by side. His eyes—all six of them—were now
retracted into his ball of head, concealing the stalks on which
they were mounted. All in all he was ugly, and, with that
ugliness, he gave off the promise of quick and vicious attack.

Now his abdomen dragged on the floor of the cage, and
Dung knew Toggor was both filthy and hungry. To be dropped
into a rounded half sphere with another of his kind and a
piece of raw meat flung in for a victory prize should arouse
every fighting instinct of the smux. At Dung's thrust of
thought he raised one foreleg and clicked the claw there in
entreaty—a friend had food.

Russtif kept his hand well away from the prod. Would he
dare to move when these two strangers were here? Dung did
not know, but breaking the long-held rule of his own sur-
vival, he wadded together the bit of offal he had sneaked
from behind the butcher's and, measuring the distance care-
fully, while Russtif was watching the woman, his small eyes
leering. Dung threw the bit of food into the cage. Toggor was
on it in an instant, grasping the unwholesome-looking piece
and bringing it to his mandibles.

Russtif roared and swung one of those hammer fists at
Dung, but it did not crash against the side of the hunchback's
head as he expected. It was the woman who swung her
lightly held captive out of the way, and it was the man whose
hand came down in a sharp chop across the beast seller's
wrist, bringing an angry cry out of him.




Andre Norton

"What you do?" Russtif seemed to swell as if his bulk had
suddenly increased.

"Nothing."

"Nothing? You let this trash throw poison to my smux and
it is nothing? Ho, let the wardens decide whether this is

nothing."
That Dung had not expected. That Russtif would allow the

law such interference was unheard of. Yet the beastmerchant
was slipping farther along the edge of the table, his eyes
turning from the spaceman standing at quiet ease, to Toggor,
to the woman, almost as if he expected they were about to
unite against him. Dung made a second attempt to wring free
of the grasp which had brought his misshapen body into the
tent, fruitlessly. Though that hand twisted in the rags across
the hump did not tighten, yet moving away was impossible.

"The smux—quote a price on it." That was not the man
but the woman who said that quietly. Russtif grinned a little,
showing broken, black, rotted teeth.

"There is no price for good fortune. Gentle Fern." He had
stopped his crabwise retreat from the two, standing now at
the end of the table with Toggor's cage between them. The
smux had finished the bit of near-carrion Dung had scraped
out of a discarded E tube and had closed himself once more
into ball form which was his only protection, since Russtif
had soaked the poison from his claws only an hour ago.

"There is always an end to good fortune," said the woman,
standing tall so that only the tips of her fingers touched
Dung, yet light as that touch was now, captivity remained.
"Also for everything there is a price. You have fought that
smux ten—double ten—triple ten times, starving it between
so that it will come to battle as you wish. There is a flicking
of life force in it now. Would you kill it rather than profit?"

Dung's dark tongue swept across pale lips. "Toggor." He
was not aware that he had spoken aloud until he heard his

own word.

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR

The spaceman moved his wrist out into the open, closer to
the lantern. That light showed a cal dial, its light steady. As
Russtif saw that, his small eyes held a new glitter. Every-
thing this off-worlder said was true. The smux was—or had
been—a strong contender, the best he had ever been able to
find. He had marked the day he had had it out of the hands of
the drunken crewman who had wanted to raise a stellar to see
him back to his ship, as a fortunate one for him. But who
knew how long the thing would continue to live? Russtif was
greedy, but there was an undercurrent of sly profit sense in
him, too.

"Off-worlders cannot run gaming," he pointed out. He
was absentmindedly rubbing the wrist the spacer had struck
with the fingers of his other hand.

"We have a license to buy," the woman cut in. "We do
not choose fighters as such, but only strange beings or
creatures."

Now Russtif made a wide gesture that took in the other
cages and prisoners. "Take then your choice. Gentle Fern;

we have such in abundance here. There is a hopper from
Grogon, a dry tongue sucker from Basil, a—"

"Smux from—from where, Beastmerchant? From which
world comes your lucky fighter?"

Russtif s thick shoulders arose in a shrug. "Who knows?
By the time such come—and they come seldom—they have
been traded perhaps a dozen times. And surely the thing itself
is not prepared to snicker out its home world. It fights—
fights to eat. It sleeps. It lives after a fashion, but no one can
bring charges that Russtif deals in a thinking species. These
are all below the official recording, and the records will tell
you so."

Dung could have protested. Alone among Russtif s cap-
tives had the hunchback made contact with Toggor. The
creature's mind pattern was different, very hard to follow. It
wove in and out when he tried to communicate more than the

10

Andre Norton

most primitive messages or emotions. Yet he was sure that
smux had more powers of thought than Russtif believed.

The spaceman tapped the edge of his cal dial with a
forefinger, the small click-click underlining the restlessness
of the caged creatures about. Russtif's own cal dial showed.

"The thing brings in a stellar—"

Now the woman laughed, and there was a note of scorn in
that sound. "A stellar a battle? And for how much longer? It
is weakening, is it not? At the last fight did it not nearly lose

a claw?"

Russtif s eyes narrowed. He stared at her insolently, though

he was careful to keep his voice at a respectful pitch as he

answered.

"I did not see you there among the wagerers. Gentle

Fern."

"Nor would you," she replied. "But I speak the truth."

Again Russtif shrugged. "A stellar this bit of ugliness did

win. And he will win again."

"Two stellars." That was from the spaceman and it came

crisply.

Dung gasped and then raised his stick-thin fingers to cover

his betraying mouth. Two stellars—it was a fortune beyond
imagining in the haunts of the outcasts where the hunchback

sheltered.

"Two stellars, um?" Russtif rolled the words around in his

mouth as if he could taste the sweetness of such an offer.
"Three." A brainsick fool who would make such an offer
could perhaps be edged upward yet again.

"Do not bargain." The woman's voice was not raised. It
was neither harsh nor threatening. Yet Dung shivered and
sunk his head lower, not wishing to see her face. Though the
hunchback had scurried away from threats all the years of
harsh memory he had never heard such a tone before. What
was this woman? Certainly some great lady, such as one
would never think might venture into such a hole. She should

PLIGHT IN YIKTOR                11

come carried on the shoulders of stout chair veeks with
outrunners and speakers-for-the-great in attendance. Who or
what was she?

The effect her order had on Russtif was made plain in the
way his fists fell upon the table and his eyes took on a
reddish glare. Dung expected to hear foul words ordering
these two out of the trader's sight. Yet no words came.
Instead, a purplish flush covered the beastmerchant's oily
jowls and he looked as one who might be choking on his own
spittle.

"Two stellars," the man said again, and his speech was as
quiet as the woman's, although with none of that compulsion
in it. Yet it was also not to be denied.

Russtif made a noise like the honk of an enraged grop, the
purpling color still in his cheeks waxing deeper. He gave a
sharp shove to the smux's cage, sending it skidding along the
greasy tabletop.

"Two stellars." He choked out the words with the same
enthusiasm he might have given had the offer been only
copper.

The man began tapping out on his cal the transfer from his
own holdings to Russtif s.

The skidding cage was about to dive over the edge of the
table. Dung's skeleton hand caught it, and for the first time
the hunchback dared to try to reach Toggor again.

"These are good." Anyone would be better than Russtif,
to be sure, but there was the additional promise in the mind
touch of the woman. One could not lie with thoughts as one
could with words.

The woman did not try to take the cage, but neither did she
loosen her hold on Dung's rags. Instead, she gave a slight
pull which brought him around and started him for the open
tent flap. Then they were out in the twilight where other
tents' smoky torches and impulse lamps gave a measure of
sight.

12 Andre Norton

A moment later the man joined them.

"Trouble?" The woman did not use speech, but had mind
touch that Dung found easy to catch.

The man could not laugh in that mind-to-mind communica-
tion, but there was something in his answer which was light
as laughter.

"Trouble? No, he will be slightly puzzled perhaps for a
space, and then congratulate himself on a bargain that he
made. I wish we could clear out that whole den of his."

"Think freedom?"

Dung caught not only words but a picture—a picture that
showed paws, and insectile legs, and tentacles looping through
wire, mastering the catches on the cages in the tent behind.
"Bend so—push. Go, little ones, go!"

Dung felt a touch on his own grime-blackened hand. The
smux had thrust a foreleg through the wire netting, was
grasping with a claw the catch of the cage. Like those in the
tent, Toggor had caught that message and was following the
promise that was like an order.

Gasping, Dung held the cage against his body. But that
gesture came too late. Toggor had already freed himself and
caught with all four claws at the rags across the pinched chest
of the hunchback. Dung dropped the cage, then nearly stum-
bled over it, except a strong hand caught at his bony shoul-
der, pulling the small figure back on balance.

Dung cupped both hands about Toggor, having no fear of
any cutting slash from those claws, for the smux fitted itself
into the hollows of his palms as if those were a safe home
nest. Now those hands swung out to the man who stood so
straight and tall that Dung had to stretch his neck painfully to
see his face, offering Toggor to him who had paid that
unbelievable sum to free the smux.

"Hold him well, little one. Bring him that we may tend
him—he still hungers and thirsts. And"—the mind speech

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR                13

was softer than any Dung had ever heard in a short hard
life—'' so do you."

Thus one who had always slunk through shadows now
walked as straight as an ungainly and broken body would
allow, a friend sheltered in hand and a stranger on either side
acting as if one was as tall and well formed as themselves. It
was beyond belief yet it was the truth!

2.

1 wice when they passed some patrolling guard, sent to
keep the peace among the dealers in the strange and rare who
gathered like an untidy fringe about any space port. Dung
hung back, and would even have dived for the shadows, but
for that grip on the rags across his hump, steering him
straight ahead until they passed the invisible boundary which
kept those in the Limits from the respectable portions of
town.

The lingering twilight was enough for Dung to see the
stares which greeted their party. Passersby, used to strange
sights issuing from the Limits, seemed to judge their small
group even stranger. Yet neither of the spacers appeared
aware of the comment they caused, and Dung was brought
along as one who had every right to walk there.

They came to one of the large shelters for travelers, light
beaming richly from its wide doorway, house guards on duty.
Dung, straining his neck upward, ready to twist away from a
blow or kick, saw that the guard on the right did move
forward a step as if to question their passage, but retreated
again when the spacers paid him no attention.

15

16 Andre Norton

Together the three crossed the wide lobby with its ring of
luxury shops, its throngs of people, making for one of the
transport plates Dung had heard of but had never seen. They
had it to themselves, other people drawing back as they
approached. Their carrier whirled upward and then sped into
one of the open hallways three stories above the lobby. It was
stomach-turning for Dung, who gulped and gulped again.
The invisible plastaglass sides did not give any suggestion of
protection.

Dung swallowed hard for the third time as they stopped
before a door and the spaceman put out a hand to press
against the lockplate, letting the door withdraw into the wall
to give them entrance. Toggor stirred and pushed against the
sudden involuntary tightening of Dung's hold. This was such
luxury as trash from the Limits had never seen. His mis-
shapen feet sunk into a thick carpet that was a lush green and
gave forth a tangy, spicy smell.

There was no smoking torch or lantern here. The walls
themselves glowed, and that glow grew more brilliant as the
door rolled shut behind them. A wide couch heaped with
cushions ran along the left-hand wall, and other cushions were
piled one upon the other at various points here and there—
each flanked by a low table or double sets of shelves on
which were a number of things Dung did not have time to
study, for that grasp on his rags drew him to one table which
the spaceman swept free of tapes and a queerly shaped bowl.

"Put the smux here." The woman did not use the mind
touch but the trade tongue, and loosed Dung to gesture to the
now clear surface. "Or will it run?"

Dung licked lips dry with that never-ending fear. They had
bought the smux. Perhaps Dung had only been necessary in
its transportation here. Now there might be no longer any
need for this one misshapen and twisted body.

Obediently his thin fingers uncupped and set the spike-
covered body in the place the woman had indicated.

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR                17

"Stay," Dung thought. "These are good." Though how
he could be sure of that!

Toggor crouched, drawn into a ball with legs hugging his
pulpy body. The eyestalks on his bristly head extended a
fraction with all the eyes facing outward and around, ready
for attack from any direction.

The man went to the wall and tapped on a row of buttons
there. There moved out a section on which sat a tray with a
number of small covered boxes and dishes. He brought the
tray to the table on which Toggor crouched.

"What does it eat?" Trade speech again.

Dung's own mouth watered and his belly pinched with
longing as the spaceman snapped off the lids of the dishes
and showed a variety of food.

"Meat," Dung said and stood, hands behind his own
body lest they move of themselves and snatch some of that
bounty.

"Well enough." The spaceman moved two of the dishes a
fraction closer to the smux, but Toggor made no attempt to
try their contents. That in-and-out pattern which could reach
Dung spelled out the smux's wariness.

"Toggor wishes to know where he must fight," Dung
interpreted.

"There is no fighting, only eating. Tell him so!" The
woman no longer had any hold on Dung, but her hand moved
to the upbent head, touched lightly between and above the
reddened eyes.

"No fight—eat." Dung strove to fit his thoughts to the
pattern Toggor could catch.

For a long moment it seemed the smux did not understand,
or, understanding, did not believe. Then a claw flew, with a
speed which made it hardly visible, to the nearest dish to
seize upon a cube within and transfer it to clashing mandibles.

When the smux had fed a second time and was now using
both foreclaws to empty the dish, the woman spoke again,

18

Andr6 Norton

this time no trade talk but words that were clear in Dung's

head.

"Eat you also. If there is other which you want, just say it

so."
Dung felt as Toggor must have moments earlier: that there

might be a threat to come. Why had he been brought here
and offered— But also, as it had with Toggor, hunger got the
better of wariness and he grabbed for a flat round of bread-
cake already spread with lumpy gor-berry jell. It was crammed
swiftly into mouth. His eyes were not on stalks, able to
watch all sides of the room, but Dung used them as best he
could while he ate, ate so fast that the taste of the food was
lost in the swift chewing and swallowing.

There seemed to be no trick. He ate more slowly when no
hand came forth to snatch away food, no foot raised to boot
his bag-of-bones body. In all the seasons Dung could remem-
ber never had he been offered freely such a wealth of food.

None but well-cleaned dishes were on that tray when smux
and Dung were done. The smux balled up, his legs wrapped
about his body. He might doze now for several hours. Dung
eyed the piles of cushions and wished he could do likewise.
But those who had brought him here were not yet through.

This time the spaceman caught Dung's shoulder and drew
his captive to a wall, over which he passed his hand. A
second door opened. There was a tight little room therein—no
cushions, nothing but bare walls and floor.

Ah, rightly had Dung feared them. He was to be shut up in
there. Twisting his body did no good; there was too strong a
hold on him. His rags tore as the spaceman stripped the
rotten cloth away from the hump, away from Dung's body.
Bare so that all the bruises mottling the greenish flesh could
be seen, the hunchback was placed well inside, and the door
closed before he could throw himself at it in one last despair-
ing attempt to escape imprisonment.

Out of the wall shot streams of water, warm against the

FLIGHT IN YlKTOR                 19

skin. Two metal arms unfolded from the shining surface of
the cell and caught him. To hold him under that flood to
drown? No, they were brushing down the small body, rub-
bing to dislodge the grime which had always been a part of
Dung. No more struggle. Standing still, a faint pleasure grew
within him—clean as never any such as Dung could be. Even
the wild matted hair was washed and combed back, its wet
and curling ends brushing the hump.

The skin of the hump was different from the rest of the
grimed hide which covered his body. He had never seen
himself in any mirror, but his fingers had long ago told him it
was thick and hard, almost like the covering on his nails,
with a ridge down the middle of the back which only by
painful contortion Dung could touch. Through it he had little
or no feeling.

The water shower died away, and the door which had
sealed came open again. But the spaceman did not drag Dung
forth. Rather, he stretched an arm above Dung's head and
pushed a thumb tight to the wall.

Water had come before, now it was wind, warm and
drying. Dung swung slowly around as he realized its pur-
pose. Even the hair which had lain so lankly back arose and
answered, to fly up and out.

Then the wind was cut off, and when Dung looked up in
disappointment the hand of the spaceman reached inside the
place of water and air, holding toward him a folded piece of
cloth. Dung took it and shook out a small robe, clean and
white and of a soft wooly texture unknown to any beggar in
the outer Limits.

To be fed, and clean, and wearing a whole garment—
Dung's wildest dreams had never taken him so far before.
Regretfully the claw fingers caressed the soft folds about the
top-heavy body. One walk into the night known to Dung, and
that covering would be snatched by the more powerful.

He came out of the washing place blinking. It had been a

20

Andr6 Norton

long time since tears had come to Dung. There was a far
memory of a time when sobs had choked his throat and shook
his body, when there had been pain and more pain. Then
there came the day when there was a door left unguarded
because Dung was a useless unknown thing, unneeded. Strength
had come, enough to creep away and begin life in the shad-
ows. But there had been a time before—so far away and dim
now. Being clean and clad again triggered that memory.
However, fast on it followed fear so deep that Dung dropped
to the floor, folding in upon himself, waiting again for what
had ended that other good time, blows and hurting in the
head with the threatening thoughts . . .

"Why do you so fear, little one?"

Dung would not look up. The words in his mind did not
hurt, but who cared what became of Limits trash or would
want to know the past of such a one?

"We wish to know, little one. And there is no need to

fear."

Dung struggled to raise his head the higher slantwise.
"I am Dung." He said it and thought it—thought the

vileness which had given him his name.

"Never so. You are what you believe, little one. Do you

call yourself by that name for filth?"

She was too clever, she guessed, she knew.
Now he allowed his hands to cover his face. His face, yes,
but who could hide thoughts? And both of these could pick
his thoughts out as Toggor picked scraps of meat from within

an orker shell.

"Farree?" She spoke that name aloud. Now they would
laugh and push him out the sooner into the coming night, the
outer Limits which would be the worse because he had left

for a space.

"Dung!" He corrected aloud, his voice rising squeakingly

high. "Dung!" If he did not claim that other name, perhaps
he would be allowed to escape all but the jeers.

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR                21

The woman dropped to her knees, bringing them near
face-to-face so he need not hold his head at such an angle
to view her. Her hands reached to gently touch the grotesque
shoulders.

"Farree. Hold by what birth gave you, little one. Do not
accept what unseeing ones force upon you."

Dung's head shook uncomfortably from side to side. What
did this one who lived in luxury know of what one faced in
the Limits?

"You are not of Grant's World?" It was the man who
spoke.

Dung shivered. In truth he did not know from where he
had come; the early days were so overlaid now by the terrors
and torments that had followed.

"I am Dung." He must hold to that, to do otherwise was
to stand bare of body and defenseless in a ring of Limits
bullies. He had seen the weak kicked and pummeled to death
for daring to show any spirit.

There was a pulling at the clean robe about him, and he
looked down to see Toggor catching hold with his foreclaws,
drawing himself up the cloth. Dung had never handled the
smux before this twilight, but there was nothing to frighten or
disgust him.

"Good." Not a word, a feeling projected by the smux and
filling him with warmth—it was like a burst of shouting. The
smux might be living for the moment, but he was triumphant
in the joys of that moment. Dung wished that he could share
the creature's relief and joy.

"You can, if you wish."

Dung stared at the woman fronting him still at his own
level.

"If with this stranger-brother you can communicate,
then—" She looked around and up at the man and straight-
away he opened another inner door of the room.

What came dancing into their presence then was a creature

22

Andre Norton

FLIGHT IN YlKTOR

23

the like of which Dung had never seen, although those who
dealt with strange life forms had given him his only shelter.
Among the bizarre his own affliction had seemed less

conspicuous.

"Yazz. I am Yazz." The words seeped into his mind as

the newcomer pranced around him, uttering sharp mouth

sounds into the bargain.

Its body was as tall as Dung, its head topping him. Four
slender, golden brown legs supported smoothly rounded flanks
and a sleek-haired barrel. The head was triangular. A mane
with a froth of frizzly hair near-covered its large eyes and
then rose to curve down its long, slender neck and shoulders.

Those eyes peering carefully at him were a bright red like
the gems a Lord-One might wear, and its muzzle was open far
enough to disclose gleamingly clean teeth of a golden yellow

several shades lighter than its coat.

It had a wisp of tail, which fluttered from side to side as it
stood, still now, viewing Dung. "What are you, brother
one?" Its head tilted a little to one side as it surveyed him.
"No, there are two of you." It had apparently sighted Toggor.

"Large, small. Different. What?"

The words came into Dung's mind smoothly but less forci-
bly than those of the man and the woman.

"I am . . ." Dung began to reply and then suddenly

hesitated. Never before had he had to explain what he was: a
wretched mistake in a world which named him trash. "I
am—me," he answered dully. "This"—he had taken the
smux into his two hands again—"is Toggor. He is a smux."

That he was answering the questions of what was mani-
festly an animal seemed now no stranger than anything else
which had happened since the two off-worlders had found

him.

"What do you do?" Yazz returned. The creature was

bubbling with what Dung realized very dimly was content—
happiness—though'to define happiness was beyond him.

What did he do? Fight to live and yet every day come
closer to the knowledge that for him there was little reason to
go on struggling at all. "I—live." He said that aloud, not in
thought.

"You live." It was not as if the woman was agreeing with
him, rather that she was confirming some necessary belief.
"Now comes a time when you may do more. Since you can
talk with the Little Ones—there is a place for you, Farree—"

"I am Dung," he corrected her again, but inside him there
was a small spark of wonder aflame. Did these two—could
they— He did not even want to think of the brightness which
might just be true.

But it would seem that this wonder of wonders might be
after all, for the man said then: "You have no kin, you are
apprenticed nowhere?"

Dung laughed, a broken cackle which had seldom left his
lips. "Who wants Dung? I am of the trash of the Limits."

The woman's hand suddenly laid fingers across his lips.
He could smell more strongly the spicy scent which seemed
as much a part of her as her skin or the glory of her hair.

"You are Farree. Say not that other name. And now you
arc apprenticed if you wish. We welcome one who can talk
with our small ones."

So it was that Dung became Farree, though to him it
remained like a dream from which he might awaken into the
despair of the real day. He ate voraciously what they pro-
vided, never knowing when they might tire of their careless
generosity. He learned to keep his body clean and to answer
to that other name, but he shrank from going out, from
leaving this refuge from all he had ever known.

Though these rooms in the towering rest place for travelers
were not the home of the two he had learned to call Lady
Maelen and Lord-One Krip (even though they objected to his
names of state), to him they were greater palaces than any of
the nobles' of Grant's World, whom he had only seen at a




24 Andre Norton

distance. No, this was only a temporary resting place; these
two were truly out of space. They had a ship of their own
finned down in the repair field where various changes on it
were being made. Strangest of all was the fact that these
changes were being made to accommodate bodies which
were not human nor even of human shape. They were to hold
in comfort animals!

Once or twice he wondered if they looked upon him also
as an animal, one with superior talents for communication.
But better to be an animal, with such a life as they were
giving him, than Dung. Always they talked to him as if he
were straight and tall and of as fair a body as they. At length
(though he never asked any questions, lest by doing so he
would offend) he learned that it was in their minds to gather
together animals, even such as Toggor, and to transport them
from world to world showing that indeed all life was kin and
that creatures were to be welcomed as brothers and sisters
rather than be kept in such slavery as Russtif had held the
smux.

So far they only had three such—for the venture depended,
Farree came swiftly to understand, on the ability to commu-
nicate by the mind touch. There was Yazz, who also had
been bought from a showman and remembered a past in the
high mountain country before she was entrapped by hunters;

there was the smux; and, kept in a hut near the ship, there
was a bartle the spacers named Bojor.

Had Farree not seen the bartle loosed from a chain and
coming to pay homage to Maelen by licking her feet, he
would have raced from the hut as fast as his bent legs would
carry him. For a bartle was one of the menaces in stories of
the early days on Grant's World. He had seen bartle claws
strung on ident disc chains and worn with pride by any
fortunate to have them.

When the bartle arose on his hind paws, he topped Lord-
One Krip. His body was massive enough to make three of the

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR                25

man's. This being the shedding season, great patches of
coarse hair lay on the floor of the hut, and the sleek underhide
shone through in green-gray spots.

The off-worlders visited the bartle for many hours each
day, the man grooming out the dead fur, both of them
communicating with the beast. Farree, who knew that only
one of those huge paws needed to descend on him to leave a
smear of broken bones and blood, kept his distance at first.
But, caught up in the mind exchange that held the other, he
began to think of the shaggy beast as another person—odd
and queer to be sure, but no different in that respect from
many of the aliens which he had viewed from hiding around
the port.

The alterations in the ship were slow, and soon Lord-One
Krip spent more time there, urging on the fitters, for it would
seem that for some reason he and the Lady Maelen wished to
be in space as soon as possible.

In space! Farree's thought shied away from that, and he
refused to think again into the future. Then he would be back
in the Limits again. This time—this time when there was no
more—

Sitting in the doorway of the bartle's place he had begun
that train of thought that he could no longer shove away.
They would go with the bartle, Toggor, and Yazz, and
he—he would—

"Come with us!"

Farree gave a start. His hands clenched and his head
swung at a painful angle so he could see the Lady Maelen's
face. He had thought her busy with clipping the bartle's
claws. The big beast had been biting at them, being no longer
able to wear them out upon the stones of the distant canyons.
No, she was not looking to Farree but he was sure that he had
caught that thought.

"You did. You come with us."

26

Andre Norton

"Off-world?" He swallowed, and it hurt as if his inner

throat was raw.

"If you wish it, it is so." She did not look at him even
now, but there was such certainty in her thought that he had

to accept that she meant it.

"If I wish—" He could not quite believe. This was more
of the dream from which he hoped there would be no more
waking. "If I wish—Lady—" His hands twisted the robe
across his misshapen breast. "There is no other wish in

me—''

"Then it is so." Now she did look at him, and she smiled.

He felt as if he were Yazz, and wished to creep close and
nuzzle at her hands and signal with a tail he did not have.

The dream was continuing!

"There is trouble again with Kem-fu." Lord-One Krip had
come up without Farree noting. "The fittings must be re-
laid." The man was frowning and tapping his fingertips on
his cal as he did, Farree knew, whenever he was disturbed.

"Yet he set those himself." Lady Maelen got to her feet.

"Why now this difficulty?"

"Ask me not. It was almost as if—" Farree saw the frown
on the man's face deepen. "As if," he continued after a
moment, "he was deliberately delaying us. And the moon—"

"Why would he deliberately delay us? There would be no

reason for it."

"No reason except Sehkmet and what was wrought there.

That was a raider snatch first, and, when we spoiled that
game and uncovered the great treasure, the Guild did not take
it kindly. It depends upon how far the true story has been
spread. And who was really behind that operation to loot the

tombs of the sleepers."

"But what would they get from us? Our share of the
finding fee is safe now, and they would have no chance at it.
What we do here has nothing to do with any Guild or raider
plotting. That is finished, and on Yiktor there is nothing

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR                27

which would draw them. They seek large returns, not the
looting of a small planet where lordling has fought lordling
until nothing flourishes to tempt even a Free Trader."

"Revenge, perhaps, or for us to furnish a lesson. I will
have the inspectors out before we up ship, and that is the
truth if I ever spoke it!"

The Lady Maelen smiled. "It is probably just that this
contractor deals with such a ship as he has never seen before.
Thus he goes slow and makes mistakes."

"The moon," returned Lord-One Krip shortly.

Now it was Lady Maelen's turn to frown. "We have
allowed time; surely we have allowed enough time."

"True enough, but time runs fast. We must lift ship in the
next seven days if we are to make it."

"Kem-fu—" Farree did not understand all this about
moons and treasure, but he did know much of what went on
in the Limits. "He loses much at the tables in the Go-far. It is
known that he is in debt to Gerog L'Kumb.''

Lord-One Krip looked down, startled. "What else do you
know, Farree? This is of importance. Great importance."

3.

1 hough Farree had half, or maybe more, of the lore of
the Limits collected mindwise, he had to do some sorting
before he answered.

"It is said . . ."He stopped. He wanted to be very careful
to separate rumor and what he knew from observation and
actual overhearing of news. Such a one as he was so much a
part of the general trash of the Limits that few watched their
tongues when he crouched or shuffled nearby.

"It is said," he began slowly once again, "that Gerog
L'Kumb has as much power in the Limits as the Lawspeakers
of the Great City. Yet he is seldom seen or heard to use it.
For one to speak his name is enough to make a desire an act.
He has his own eyes and ears everywhere. And, Lord-One—"

"Krip," the other corrected him mechanically.

"K-Krip." Farree stumbled over the saying of that name
without any honorifics. "If it be his wish to delay the work
upon your ship, then it will- be delayed. It is said that
oftentimes he does such until he is paid more, and then out of
the ground come the needed men and straightaway all is done
as was first ordered."

29

30

Andre Norton

"Extortion." The Lord-One's mouth became a thin line.
The Lady Maelen nodded. "And we are fit victims for
such a game. Perhaps that he also knows."

Farree drew as deep a breath as his constricted lungs would
allow. "Let this one," he said then, "put on rags and go
back to the Limits. To no one he matters, and that he has
been gone for days—that would not have been noted. While
he was sheltered by you, few here knew it, either. Is that not

so?"

"And if it has been noted and reported to the Lord of the

Limits, and you appeared again, what excuse—"

Farree lifted his head as far as he could. "There are Lords
in the upper town who keep twisted ones such as I for as long
as we afford them a certain amusement. When we are no
longer of interest we return to the Limits—if we are lucky."

"And if you are not lucky?" asked Lady Maelen.
Farree shivered and doubled his fists. "There are other
ways of amusement. Lady. To them such mistakes of birth

are to be used and discarded at will."

"I do not think that I like the customs here," she declared.
"So, little one, you could return to the Limits as one who has

served your purpose with us?"

"As long as 1 stay well away from Russtif, yes, that I

could do. And men talk before beasts—though you have
shown me that perhaps the beasts might also undo plans if
they met such great ones as you thereafter. In the Limits I am
such a one as is not worth as much as Toggor would win in a

battle match."

"I do not like it," she returned promptly. "To put you

into such danger as that—"

"Lady, I have had ten seasons in the Limits and still I

live." Farree held himself as erect as possible. "I am not
lacking in a game of peering and prying. If time is what you
fear, then it is best for you to use any tool to hand—such as

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR                31

Dung." For the first time in days he used his old name, the
one he had hoped to forget.

Lord-One Krip looked to the woman over Farree's upward-
straining head. "If this is meant to hold us planet down as he
thinks, the Guild may be behind it. They would not have
taken kindly to our interference with their looting on Sehkmet.
And if we are bucking the Guild—the sooner we know it the
better. What do you know of the Thieves Guild, Farree? And
are you still as willing to venture in, if it is a matter of theirs
this L'Kumb busies himself with now?"

The Thieves Guild! Farree's pointed tongue caressed his
lower lip. To go up against the all-powerful Guild—yes, that
was a different matter. Yet he believed that he could sink
once more into the Limits and pass from sight of anyone save
perhaps some grotesque scavenger such as he had been.

"You will take me, Lord-One, to the gate. Perhaps you
should drive me forth with kicks and curses, having discov-
ered that I stole from you. That would be as they expect."
He put a hand out to the door of the bartle's hut. "It is moon
dark for three nights, and the shadows are my old home. I
can listen very well."

A small body thudded against his own, and, as limited as
that force was, he near lost his balance. Toggor had crawled
out of Lady Maelen's belt pouch to spring at Farree. He
scuttled up to that unsightly hump and squatted in the narrow
hollow between head and shoulder. When the Lady reached
for him, he hissed sharply, warning her off.

Farree strove also to dislodge the smux, but the mental
contact came sharper and clearer than he had ever received it
before, as if the days spent with the off-worlders had honed a
weapon to an edge fit to shave a hair.

"Go with. Hide, but go with!"

The Lady drew back and nodded as if the smux was
suddenly one of her own kind with whom she was in full

Andre Norton

communication. Perhaps contact with the creature for some
days had given her that power. But Farree was afraid.

"Russtif—" He made a mental picture of the beast seller.

"No see—hide." With that the smux burrowed under the
edge of Farree's robe, his claw tips tickling as he made his
way from hump to breast and there settled himself, the stiff
bristles of his hair rasping Parree's skin as he clung to the
inside of the garment.

"So be it," the Lord-One said. "Two days we shall wait,
while I also shall try to discover why our work goes so
slowly. Then you will return, whether you have learned
anything or not." He slipped one of his long-fingered hands
under Farree's pointed chin and stared down into the hunch-
back's wide eyes with such command that Farree was forced
to agree, knowing well that he could not deny that order.
These two were not like any others he had known, and he
could not guess what form their control might take—even an
unrecognized molding of his own mind to obey.

He stood as soon as the Lord-One released him and scooped
up some of the dust and straw by the door, smearing it with a
careful hand down the fore of his robe.

"You shall shout evil after me, kick me forth—" he told
the Lord-One. "Do this with no lightness. Any who watch—as
you may be watched—must be deceived."

"Well enough!" The Lord-One reached down to grab his
knotted shoulder and hurled him out of the hut. As Farree
sprawled forward on the ground, one hand curved over the
hidden smux to protect it from harm, he felt the pain of a
well-placed kick. Loud in his ears were curses noted in the
trade lingo and others which must be in the Lord-One's own

tongue.

A booted toe scraped along the side of his tousled head,
and he uttered a cry of fear as he scuttled, first on hands and
knees, and then on his feet, away from the hut across the
field toward the gate. Behind him came the Lord-One, yell-


FLIGHT IN YIKTOR

ing curses and accusations that this was a thief no honest man
would want around, and when Farree slowed by the gate the
boot caught him again, this time in his side and with enough
force to leave a bruised hurt. The two guards on duty only
laughed, and one of them swung the stock of his gas rod,
thudding it home with such vigor above the hump that Farree
nearly lost his balance again.

He ran as he had run many times in the past, heading for
the nearest straggle of buildings marking the Limits. Out of
somewhere* a clod of hard earth struck his ear and brought
another cry out of him.

He scuttled between buildings, twice slipping in the noi-
some scum that marked all but the main ways of the Limits,
and kept on running until a sharp pain under his ribs brought
him up to hold a tent rope, gasping.

Though his robe was not tattered, it was bespattered with
dirt and foulness, and he believed that his appearance was
little better than when the lordly ones had led him forth from
this place of ever-abiding terror and despair.

However, his wits had not been dimmed along with the
cleanliness of his robe. Now, even as he breathed in gasps,
he looked about him, trying to fathom where to lurk to leam
what he had come to pick up. To keep well away from
Russtif's section of the Limits was also necessary.

This was a section of drinking booths ready to catch the
lower ranks from any ship which finned down on the landing
field. Though it was not alive with custom as it would be
later on, there were enough men in the shacks to make a din
that Farree found loud after his days in the upper town. He
dodged a staggering, singing couple who wavered out of the
nearest den and slunk along behind the crude buildings.

Toggor was riding right under his chin now, eyestalks were
extending over the collar of the robe. The smux seemed to be
watching their surroundings with a purpose, Farree thought,
equal to his own.

34

Andre Norton

He approached L'Kumb's gambling establishment and
squatted down near its door. There was an old superstition
which he loathed—that to rub the hump of such as he would
increase a man's luck. He had never willingly allowed it
before, but now he had a purpose in which he could accept
debasement. Thus, he squatted with his thin knees poked up,
both hands resting in the dust of the ground, his head turned
up as far as he could. His back was to the wall of the shack.
He tried to tune in the voices inside, but he found them too
muffled to follow—save for the cries brought about by suc-
cess or failure.

A man wearing the worn leather of a space officer—lighter
spots on the breast from which insignia had been ripped
away—trod purposefully forward. Farree recognized the type:

a planeted junior officer who had been fired from or missed
his ship and was on the downward road into the floating trash
of the Limits. He was darkly browned as became an off-
worlder—even his scalp, for it had either been shaved or he

was naturally hairless.

In spite of the evidence of his worn clothing, he did not
look like one of the lost. There were no dribbles of Graz
from the comers of his wide mouth and he walked with the
alert stride of one who had purpose in life. As he came,
Farree saw that he shot sharp glances about him, even over
his shoulders, as if he thought he might be under surveil-
lance. From one of the Limits guards who wanted a larger
bribe than could be gotten out of that shabby belt pouch? The
pouch was not flat, Farree saw, and he noted that the spacer's
hand was never far from it. Therefore he must be in funds—
and so would be welcome in L'Kumb's establishment.

Then those keen eyes, which seemed to belie the role the
other was playing, caught and held on Farree, and the spacer
swung a little out of his way, his hand dropping to thump the
hunchback sharply between his bowed shoulders.

"Wish me luck. Dung," He fumbled inside the vest he

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR                35

wore and from an inner pocket produced a bit, a section split
from a well-wom stellar, snapping it to the ground before
Farree's bare toes.

"Luck." Farree mouthed the word obediently but absently
for he was surprised. To his memory this off-worlder was a
stranger. How could he use the noisome name known to the
Limits? How many strangers might then have heard of Dung
and would mark his coming and going?

The man had already turned away and was passing through
the doorless entrance of the shack. Farree's hand closed over
the fragment of metal he had been thrown. Though he wanted
to hurl it from him, that gesture would be foolish. He needed
to eat if he stayed for any time in the Limits, and this would
provide him with a bowl of stew at Hangstna's tent, as long
as he was content to enter the kitchen half and bestow it on
Mug the waiter-bartender.

Toggor moved and wriggled out of the neck of Farree's
tunic, swinging down onto the hunchback's knee where he
squatted, retracting three of his eyestalks and whirling the
others about in a way which could make a viewer a little
dizzy to watch.

"What? What see?"

Perhaps his association with the two spacers and their
communication from mind to mind had strengthened Farree's
own powers. The swing of touch in and out that had always
been a part of his contact with Toggor was less, and he had
caught what was surely a question much more easily than he
ever had before. A thought of his own struck Farree, and he
touched the smux on his bristled back just below the head.
Could he use the small creature to go where he could not
venture without risking an end to his mission?

"Toggor see?" He shaped the message so that it was a
question, and promptly enough came the answer.

"Toggor see—what?"

"In." Farree jerked a claw thumb at the shed. "Hide—see?"

36                  Andre Norton

But it was not going to be easy. The smux drew together
into a ball as always when threatened by something greater
than himself. The sense of refusal struck without words to

center it.
It had been only a passing thought. Farree resigned himself

regretfully. All kinds of parasites and vermin roamed the
Limits—some of them deadly. He had fought twice for his
own life against the slashing-toothed vir that hunted in packs
and, when forced by hunger, were known to have set upon
sleeping drunks and left nothing but well-stripped bones behind.

For the first time Farree was startled himself. The smux
apparently had followed his chain of thought, though it had
not been deliberately aimed at him. For Toggor curled up
three eyestalks, turning one lidless appendage to watch the
door of the shack and the other two on Farree. The message
followed the direction of the pair of eyes.

"See—in—what?"

Yes, what? He was sure that he could not implant in the
smux's very alien mind the purpose of spying. But he could
try something as a test—a watch on the spacer who had just

entered, perhaps.

"See—him." He pictured as best he could the man who
had just thumped him for luck. "What he—do."

"Toggor be caught."

"Toggor small. Hide, watch." Farree scooped up a hand-
ful of the evil-smelling dust of this path between shacks and
poured it on the lifted edge of his already much befouled
robe, mounding it there with busy fingers. "Toggor covered
with this." All of the eyestalks had arisen again, and more
than half of them watched that dust sifting through the hunch-
back's fingers.

Farree did not add anything more. He was no Russtif to
command obedience from the smux. He had asked; now it
was up to Toggor whether the other would agree or not.

The smux reached out a foreclaw and dabbled it in the dust

PLIGHT IN YIKTOR                37

that Farree had mounded on the edge of his robe. The claw
scooped up a fraction and let it slide again through its hold.
Then brought up a second lot to toss it over the bristles on the
back.

Parree needed no other reply. Delicately, so as not to drop
any motes to irritate the outstanding eyes, he took up pinches
and spread them on the smux. The creature hopped from his
knee hold, landing out in the dust, and proceeded to draw in
his eyes and then roll across the ground. Moments later the
smux looked like a clod of earth.

Farree picked up the small creature carefully and set him
by the open doorway. Putting out foreclaws, Toggor pulled
himself in and out of sight.

Parree was suddenly rocked back by a wave of mixed fear
and rage. He would not have believed that so small a creature
could have projected that to him. There was a frazzled mind
picture a part of it, something dark and ugly and—

There was only one thing, he believed, that could have
brought that response out of the smux: Russtif!

Instant agreement sped thought-swift. The beast seller
was there—with a wavery figure that Farree thought might
have been the man he saw enter moments before. There was
a third bulk, but Farree could pick up no more than the fact
someone else was present.

Farree drew himself tight against the rotting timbers of the
shaky wall. When he put out a hand and scraped his nails
along it splinters loosened. If he could just—

"Near you?" he asked Toggor. He was sure that the smux
had not gone far into the room inside. And if those three
were in good sight then they must be not too far from the
partition against which he now huddled.

"Here," Toggor beamed in reply—though where "here"
could be Farree could not be sure.

He put an ear to the boards where he had scratched. But he
must also keep an eye for any passing by who might sight

38

Andre Norton

him. There were voices right enough and words—but not the
words of gamblers. He treasured what he might catch.

"—no pilot."

"See that remains so."

"Stellars, stellars like bits." That was Russtif; Farree
could never forget that growl.

"Tell—"

"Why share?" Russtif again.

"L'Kumb knows. Never get away with—"

"His plan—why always his?" That voice was raised a
little. There followed a thought which broke through Farree's
concentration.

"This one comes. Trouble moves—"

And come the smux did, slipping through the hole in the
board and leaping for the folds of Farree's robe. Then he
scrambled within at the neck.

"Bad one. Look. See."

Fear froze Farree in turn. He jerked back from the wall and
scrambled on hands and knees around to the back of the
shack. There he forced himself to halt and watch around the
comer he had put between himself and the alley. If the beast
seller had indeed sighted the smux, he might be issuing forth

to get him.

Russtif did come out, but he did not glance down the alley.
Tramping heavily across its mouth, he was gone. Farree's
heart ceased its leaping beat and settled down to steady
rhythm again. The animal dealer was followed by another
man—not the spacer Farree had wished luck but a tall fellow
wearing the uniform of a guard, one who stood for a heart-
stopping moment at the mouth of the alley. But he, too,
failed to glance down it. Rather, he looked after Russtif and
then shrugged at some thought and turned in the opposite

direction.

Farree settled down to wait for the spaceman. Somehow he
believed that this' off-worlder had importance to his own

FLIGHT IN YlKTOR

39

mission. He had to wait for quite a while—perhaps the man
was trying his luck after all.

When he came out he strode across the alley mouth in two
steps, but Farree had already planned ahead how he could
follow. There was a back way he had spied out and, though
his pace was not a run, he had learned to be fast in his own
way. Stones and blows had taught him much about the need
for speed.

He was always the length of a tent or a shack behind the
spacer, keeping to the shadow which had risen fast as the sun
had gone down. There was more activity on the "street,"
and that would grow with the night. As long as it was not
more than now, Farree could follow.

The man turned, heading along one of the crooked ways
that led through the Limits to, at length, give upon the
respectable streets of the upper town. If he crossed into that
Farree dared not follow. There he would be as visible to the
first passerby as a scarlet lurpa among dudan lilies. He was
growing breathless and tired also, for he was not used to long
stretches at his highest speed. And he had to pick always a
shadowed way which often led him off the right path.

To his relief the spacer did not cross over into the upper
town, rather turned in at the door of one of the more respect-
able buildings of the Limits—one which offered lodging to
such travelers as could still pay half a stellar each mom.
Rubbing his ribs where a sharp pain bit at him, Farree
hunched down in the nearest pool of shadow, unsure of his
next move. Why he had chosen to follow this stranger he was
still unsure, but the man was an off-worlder, a spacer plainly
down on his luck, for no spacer would stay planetside for
long if he could help it. Farree had heard the Lord-One Krip
say that their own ship needed a minimum of crew or it could
not raise. He had hired one crewman, a spacer who had been
planeted when the captain of a prospecting ship could not

40

Andre Norton

afford a needed rebuild. The crewman had been willing to
sign on for his own need to get to a more traffic-filled field
on another and richer world. Was this man Farree had fol-
lowed such a one?

4.

Vwuld he play the role of a beggar at the back of the rest
place? It was well known that the trash did this from time to
time. However, should the spacer sight him, the man might
think it was too much of a coincidence that he had seen
Farree by the gambling tent and saw him also here, more
than halfway across the Limits. What had he learned? Little
enough—that there was a reason why someone would have
difficulty in finding an off-world crew. There was only one
trying to hire such now—the Lord-One Krip.

Farree hesitated, trying to plan his next foray for knowl-
edge when he saw another come down the street, walking
boldly and swinging a silencing club. The guards had tanglers
and stunners, but most of them relied on their clubs to keep
order, preferring to leave a half-dead, beaten victim in the
street rather than take the time and trouble to bind and deliver
a prisoner to their general headquarters.

Farree squeezed backwards as far as he could go, careful
not to catch the eye of one trained to sight just such a
disturber of the uncertain peace as the hunchback was deemed
to be. He breathed slowly and shallowly, with as long a




41

42 Andr6 Norton FLIGHT IN YIKTOR 43

pause between each breath as he could manage. There was
the wreckage of a crate of more than usual substance pulled
into this space between two structures, and Farree made the
best use of that that he could.

The guard did not hesitate, turning directly into the rest
house as the spacer had earlier. Farree tried to think clearly.
Perhaps this one carried some message—one that would mean
much if he could report it to those who waited for him near
the port. But how might he worm his way into the building,
see those he must spy upon? Though it was now heavy
twilight and only the few and far between street lanterns gave
any glow, he knew better than to try and win past that
doorway yonder.

Bristles scraped against his chest. The smux—could Toggor
give him partial sight, a fraction of hearing, as he had at the
drinking hole? Farree put his hand gently into the front of his
befouled robe and felt the claws grip so that he could draw
the smux out.

Farree's night sight had been trained to the peak of what
his species could achieve during the years in the Limits.
There was coming and going in the crooked street now. And
at least four of the passersby turned into the rest house. He
watched for his chance and crossed to shelter once more
against a slimed wall, bringing out Toggor as soon as he
settled himself in the best shadow concealment he could find.
The smux's eyes were all up and out, fanning about his head
at their farthest extent.

"What—do?"

Toggor seemed free of any fear. Farree studied the wall
against which he crouched. The lowest story of the building
was stone, very old and fitted block upon block with crum-
bling mortar in between. It might once have been an impor-
tant building like those of the upper town. The second story
was squared timbers, also rough. Farree thought that his own
thin fingers could find openings there to draw himself up.

But the weight on his back was not meant for a climber, and
would hinder any such attempt.

Instead, the hunchback held the smux closer to his own
head as if the proximity would better broadcast the thought
he labored to send.

"Man." Laboriously he pictured as best he could the
spacer, not sure that the alien mind of the small creature
could pick up the identification. "Find in—" He patted the
stone of the wall with his other hand.

A little to his surprise the smux seemed almost eager to go,
climbing over his fingers to latch foreclaws into one of the
mortarless divisions between the blocks. Farree leaned as far
as he could backward to watch the creature climb easily aloft.
He reached the narrow sill of one of the slitlike windows. But
apparently there was no entrance there for him. Instead he
scrambled around to the wood and pulled up claw over claw.
Then he was gone!

Farree looked around wildly. Had Toggor lost grip and
fallen? No—there was a beam, not of thought, but emotion.
Hunger, hunt—the smux had come into the runway of a
vynate. Farree felt the bitterness of defeat. Once on the trail
of one of those pests he could not hope to turn Toggor aside.

But neither would he loose the thin thread of mind touch
that tied them together. The smux's hunger became strong
enough to make Farree's own belly rumble, and he thought
of a meat cake, rich, dripping with gravy, such as he had
eaten only that morning. Hunger—then the attack—

He shivered, still making himself share the frenzy of Toggor
as the smux tore into flesh, was spattered by blood, and then
feasted to the full. Never before had Farree shared minds
with a hunter, and he found his body trembling, his own
hands clawing out as if he were faced with good food. Now
the smux was satisfied. He must either summon it back
somehow or—




44                  Andr6 Norton

Would Toggor now wish to sleep after his kill? If so, how
could Farree retain any control over him?

He clasped and unclasped his fingers, drew a deep breath,
and probed.

Perhaps his very uneasiness added strength to that call, for
he reached the twittering mind of the small creature on the
first try.

"Eat. Good. Eat!"

Farree began to despair of getting below that satisfaction of
the successful hunt. He held on and kept trying though he
felt that the smux was finding him an irritation but apparently
not one Toggor could throw off. Deliberately Farree made his
demand.

"Find. Find the man." Into that order he tried to pour the
full extent of his mind hold.

"Eat!" The ecstasy of the hunt still held, and Farree could
have beaten the wall beside him in his frustration.

"Find!" There were beads of sweat on his narrow fore-
head, matting the heavy thatch of his hair. "Find."

His mind touch wavered in and out more and more. The
smux was caught up in his own world, triumphant, free to be
himself perhaps for the first time since he was captured.
What power could Farree raise which would bring Toggor
again under his control, light as that control was?

"Find!" Though he realized that it was dangerous, Farree
loosed his awareness of the world about him, built up the
picture of the spacer, and beamed it savagely to the creature
in the walls above. "Find!"

There were only the thinnest of threads uniting them now—
and those Farree could not be sure of. The smux might
continue where he was in the wall runways of the vermin,
hunting and slaying to eat. Why should Toggor answer or
want to come out again?

"Find!" Farree's full attention was on building that thread,
on attempting to rouse the smux out of his lethargy. Then,

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR                45

suddenly, the thread was broken. There was only emptiness.
Farree's head touched the wall up which Toggor had gone,
failure making him weak. The smux had chosen his own
way. He was gone!

Somehow Farree got to his feet. That the loss of the
creature was his fault he understood only too well. He had
been so intent on gaining his own ends that he had forgotten
he was dealing with an assistant who had really no common
interest with him. The smux could live for days, he was sure,
scouting the runways, a killer such as no vyn could escape.

"Find!" He sent a last desperate and despairing silent cry
into the nothingness where Toggor had been. Dared he wait
and hope? He could not make up his mind. The spacer and
the guard—there was manifestly a tie between them, one into
which Russtif was also drawn. Then, out of the nothingness,
there came a weak signal.

"Man!" That fuzzy picture was so bad it could have been
either the spacer or the guard. But Toggor had been set to
locate the spacer, so—

Wild with relief, Farree had to keep a tight grip on himself
to allow his thoughts to simmer down to calmness, then to
sharpen into the meet prod.

"What do—?" That he had been wrong about Toggor
made him feel a little dizzy.

"Man. Man."

Twice? Maybe that signified another meeting—the guard
and the spacer. If he only had a hearing hole such as he had
found back at the shack. A few words might make all the
difference!

Two fuzzy shapes were beamed to him now. They were
close together, facing one another. Then they grew sharper as
if the smux were making a supreme effort.

Anger. Anger and threat. The smux could not report words,
but the emotions he picked up were warning enough. What-
ever those two planned meant trouble. Trouble for the off-

46

Andre Norton

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR

47

worlders? Farree could not be sure, but he believed that it

pointed to such.
There was an alteration in the scene the smux projected.

One of the fuzzy figures stood up, disappeared out of range.
The other remained where he was—that was the spacer,
Farree was sure, since it was he Toggor had been sent to

track.

"Come." There was nothing further to be learned, Farree

was sure, as long as the smux could not provide him with

ears.

"Another comes," the creature on spy aloft returned.

"Show me. Show me this other as well as you can!"
Would that plea bring him anything? Toggor's sight was not
his, and what was clear to the smux was badly blurred for
him. Yet another figure did join the spacer now. To Farree's
joy there was a distinguishing mark to this one. He wore the
uniform of a spaceman, yes, but across the breast was a
splash of vivid color. Smux's sense of color was also not
human. He registered in shades of red and yellow seemingly,
having no other shade or hue to project. This splash was

yellow.

"Come!" He wanted to get Toggor away from the tempting

runways hidden in the inn's walls. Now he wondered if he
could draw the smux away from so rich a hunting ground.

There was someone coming out of the front door of the
inn, humming as if he were free of a burden. Farree cowered
as the guide went by. It was sheer luck that the man turned
north instead of south, heading toward the narrow way where

the Limits touched the upper town.

Toggor had broken off touch again. Parree could only hope
that that meant the smux was returning to him, not starting
another hunt. Twice more he beamed, "Come," without any
answer. It was dark enough now so that the wall above him
was shadowed. Those lanterns which lit the street did not
send any beam this rar back. And there was a hum of noise

carrying up from the other side where lay the bulk of the
Limits—that district was coming into its nightly life.

Then Farree saw movement within the shadow which lapped
against the wall. Before he had more time than to draw three
breaths the smux leaped from the sill of the narrow window
above to land on his hunched back, running lightly around to
burrow again into the neck opening of his robe.

Farree raised both hands and clasped them gently around
Toggor, so relieved that the smux had returned to him that he
could have gone forth humming as had the guard. Into his
mind shot an impression of two wavering figures moving out
from a room above. He crouched low in the dusk, his eyes
upon the doorway of the inn. Then they came: the spaceman
he had followed here, together with the other who wore the
badge, which was not as brilliant as Toggor had pictured it
for him but certainly was vivid.

Anyone in the Limits knew the meaning of that. Unlike the
one who accompanied him, this second off-worlder still be-
longed to some ship's company. Yet Farree was not knowl-
edgeable enough to know which.

Unlike the guard, the two headed downslope toward the
distant landing field, and Farree again slipped through the
pools of dusk between the lanterns, tracking them. He caught
words now and then, but they were not in trader lingo, and
he did not understand. Save that the spacers were talking
earnestly as they went.

They did not pause at the gaming places nor the drinking
dens but threaded a way straight for the port where the
brilliant lights about the ships provided a beacon against the
murky ways of the surrounding territory.

There were three ships on the landing apron, spaced well
apart. That which belonged to the off-worlders, Farree knew,
was the closest to the gates, and there was scaffolding about
its outer skin though no workmen were visible at this hour.
Beyond was a small Patrol skimmer, a messenger vessel




48

Andre Norton

which had landed only two days earlier with information for
the local League council. Beyond that stood a merchant-class
vessel, larger than that which the off-worlders had claimed,
with a battered, space-scoured insignia on one fin.

The two he followed passed the gate, and the guard there
asked no questions as they went on toward the ship under
reconstruction. Farree must follow them. But to get past the
light, which was full at the gates, and the guard there—could

he?

Hunkering down in a noisome pocket between two of the

nearer Limits tents, Farree bent his head forward until his
forehead rested on his crossed arms. He strove with frantic

need for an answer.

It was as if he whirled out into a space that was filled with
almost invisible ribbons floating and spinning, seeking the
right one to guide him to his needed goal. There were flashes
of thought, which he tried earnestly to shut out that he might

seek single-mindedly. Then—

"Little brother!" Not the muddled response he got from
Toggor, but as clear as if the words had been spoken in one

of his prick-pointed ears.

"In." Certainly he had little to report—only the two meet-
ings. Yet he also had a strong feeling that the news he carried
was needed, and there was little time. "Bring me in."

For a heart-shaking moment he thought that he had lost
contact—that it was as it was between him and Toggor—his
talent was too limited, too diffuse to hold. Then there came
strong and steady the answer: "Be ready—near the gate."

He went forward on all fours, feeling the prick of Toggor's
claws and bristle hair as the smux rode in the fore of his
robe. So he reached the edge of the shadows—beyond which
lay only the merciless light of the gate.

There was someone approaching from the opposite side,
and he saw the hood of a cloak slip back from the head of

FLIGHT IN YlKTOR                49

that brilliant hair as deep as any Milisand ruby in shade. The
Lady was coming for him herself.

She halted before the guard and spoke, the murmur of her
voice carrying but not her words. Her right hand was up, and
she twirled something between her fingers with a rhythmic
movement.

"Now!"

Farree had to trust. He ran forward on his spindly legs,
both hands pressed over the smux lest he lose Toggor. When
he stumbled over a stone and it moved with a click, the guard
did not look around. Then Farree dared the gate itself, put-
ting all his strength into a dash which carried him by the
Lady Maelen and the guard with a speed that near sent him
sprawling forward. But he kept to his feet and hurried toward
the hut where the bartle was housed.

Outside of that was the Lord-One Krip, and with him the
two men Farree had followed from the Limits. The hunch-
back pushed himself behind the hut, hoping that he had not
been sighted. Why the guard had not seen him when he was
in plain sight at the gate he could not guess.

He lay nearly flat now as Toggor climbed up and back to
squat upon his hump. The Lady was still at the gate, with the
guard listening to her as if his position depended upon her
words. But she had dropped her hand and the shining thing
had disappeared. Finally the man saluted and she turned
away, coming back toward the hut.

Farree drew a deep breath and huddled where he was. He
heard a little chirping call. The smux scrambled down and
scuttled to the fore of the hut, leaving Farree for a moment or
two a little angry that the creature would so readily obey that
summons from another.

"Well enough. If you bring a quittance from your captain
then we shall deal." That was the Lord-One Krip talking.
"We sign only until first planetfall, you understand."

"That is to my advantage also. Captain." It was a new

50

Andre Norton FLIGHT IN YIKTOR 51

voice—that of the spaceman who wore the insignia? "Also
the Dragon already carries a senior astrogator. When do you

lift?"

"Soon enough. See me tomorrow with your papers. And

yours, Quanhi—have you full clearance for hire?"

"I will bring a statement from the councilor. I am fit again
and want nothing more than to be free of Grant's World. Few
enough ships touch here to give me much chance."

"We will consider."
"Right enough!" Together, the two Farree had followed

turned and went back toward the field gate.

Farree crept around the side of the hut, putting it between
him and the gate. He made a last dash and took himself
inside before Lord-One and the Lady Maelen entered. The
bartle moved uneasily, and Farree heard a low growl out of
the dark. But another shape stood over him, licking at his

face—Yazz giving her usual exuberant welcome.

"What have you learned?" The Lady Maelen came first,
and at a twist of her fingers there was a dim light in the

hut.

What had he learned? Bits and pieces. Perhaps none really

were of importance. Yet Russtif had a place and a part, and
the dealer in beasts was for Farree the symbol of evil, an evil
that could reach out and touch these two. He could not have
found words to explain what the Lady and the Lord-One
meant to him, he could only offer all he could summon to

their service.

"Those who were there," he began in haste so his words

were almost a gabble. Then he caught hold of himself.
"One, he who wears no badge, met with Russtif and a guard.
They said—" He summoned the few words he had caught:

"No pilot—stay that way—stellars like bits—and L'Kumb—he
plans something. The badgeless one meets with a guard again
and then with he who wears a badge."

"Stellars like bits—" Lord-One Krip repeated. "Where
would such a speech be the truth?"

"On Sehkmet," the Lady Maelen returned promptly. "That
tale is one of the legends of the star lanes now."

"But that world is fully guarded. No raider, or even a
Guild-owned vessel, could set down anywhere there."

"Yet those who found it first could carry away information
of perhaps other finds—a danger we considered from the
first. And the clutching fingers of this Guild extend far.
Perhaps they think to plant one—two of their own among
us."

"We would read them."

"Would we?" the Lady Maelen asked then. "It is well
known that the Guild has access to many discoveries that
even the Patrol does not know. Remember, on Sehkmet there
were mind shields which we could not break."

"But those were—"

"Of the dead old ones, you would say? We cannot be sure
they do not otherwise exist. What mankind has once discov-
ered can be found again." She turned to Farree.

"You heard no more?"

He shook his head. "It is said that Russtif would link with
L'Kumb if he could. It was in a gambling hut that he met
with the badgeless one—"

"Pitor Dune of Chamblee, suffering with spotted fever,
was left here when his ship lifted four months ago. And this
other, Quanhi, who wishes a full berth for himself as
astrogator," the Lord-One Krip said slowly. "We have a half
crew at least. And now the rigger has his men on the jump to
get finished, saying frankly he must have the money."

"It links," the Lady Maelen said slowly. "We have had
trouble in finding men. Yiktor is no major base, even now
when the League plays more a role in her current history."

Lord-One Krip laughed. "Ah, but they do not know what
powers the Tnassa have—the Thassa and She Who Slept."




52 Andre Norton

The Lady shook her head almost violently. "Not so, Krip.
Nothing did I learn from her. She was—the real part of
her—long dead or gone elsewhere. I but banished the will
which kept her waiting. But we bewilder you, small one."

She smiled down at Farree. "Know that we are Thassa, a
people so old we have forgotten our beginnings. It was given
to us to find a mighty treasure of the Forerunners on the
planet Sehkmet and there was trouble there, for the Guild
would also plunder it. The Guild lost and the winning was
ours. We seek a ship of our own and so here we found
the Far Seeker for sale, one which will serve us well.
But the time is short. The three rings will shine on Yiktor
our home world, and to that world we must go. It is a tangled
tale in our past—you will have the hearing of it some
time."

"I?" Parree strove to lift his head higher. As if she knew
what frustration moved him, the Lady knelt and laid her
hands one on each shoulder.

"If you wish to come, little one, then it shall be so," she
repeated the earlier promise.

Farree drew a deep breath. To stride the stars as if he were
straight and strong and stood as tall as the Lord-One himself—
that was something he had not dared trust.

"Yes—oh, yes!" His own hands flew to his shoulders to
cover hers where they rested warm and welcoming. "Oh—
yes!" He could have shouted that aloud.

"So be it." She nodded. "Now let us think concerning
this man Quanhi who seems so willing to come—"

"He thinks we lift for Greater Marth," said Lord-One
Krip.

"Let him continue to think so. The voyage tape I hold
myself," she answered. "And we need no astrogator in truth
once the tape is locked in—only the port authorities require
we have one aboard. As for those trying some tricks with

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR

53

us-" Now it was her turn to laugh, raising her hand to
gesture to the rest of them, Farree, Yazz, and Bojor the bartle
as well as the smux clinging now to her own shoulder "I
think we may have some surprises for them."

5.

He whom Farree had spied upon came again to the
bartle's hut. The hunchback shrank to the rear of the hut,
trusting the big animal. Toggor sat on his shoulder, eyestalks
aloft, and beamed what Farree already guessed—that this was
the one he had watched.

The man was young, though it was always difficult to tell
the true age of any spacer since ship time and planet time
were different and those who spent most of their days within
the hulls of the sky ships did not age so swiftly. His badgeless
uniform was shabby, but he seemed clear-eyed and quick to
answer, not as if he were someone rightfully grounded.

"For the voyage only, Dune," Lord-One Krip repeated.
"And are there any more willing to take service?"

"I can get you twenty," returned Pitor Dune. "That you
would want them is another question. They may have been
grounded for more than illness or ill luck. Quanhi is, how-
ever, a good man."

"I have said we would take him, as you heard, but to
change ships in mid voyage—" Lord-One Krip began.

"May be the sign of an unsteady crewman, yes. What

55

56

Andre Norton

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR

57

excuse does he offer to you?" Lady Maelen asked of Dune.

She might be checking stories.

"None, except he can expect no further promotion within
the Dragon, and that is an outland trader which does not set
down on many worlds with larger ports and more traffic."

"We shall take him when he brings quittance," Lord-One
Krip returned. "In the meantime, you also bring your papers

as you promised."

The crewman started out across the field. On Parree's shoul-
der the smux moved, and the hunchback caught a fraction of
emotion once more—uncertainty, shadowed by fear. Behind
him Bojor gave a deep grunt. Instantly Lady Maelen turned
her head to observe the tall beast. Farree caught her

questioning concern.

It came as with the smux—no words, only the feeling of

wrongness, of the need for being aware.

"We are warned," the Lady commented. "It seems that
there is something about our new shipmate which the small
ones do not like." She was beaming soothingly, promising
that there would be no trouble with the strangers.
Once more Lord-One Krip questioned Farree.
"Russtif, yes. His interest I can understand. He was over-
paid for one of his slave things," the Lady mused. "Yet had
we bargained, that would have given him time to wonder, to

think . . ."
For the first time Farree dared question the off-worlder.

"Lady, he will think, does think. From him perhaps others

have learned."

She made a face and shrugged her shoulders. "I lose my

caution when I answer a help cry. Perhaps we were wrong.
But the man was ugly enough to have killed this little one."
She held out her hand, and the smux extended a long curl of

tongue to touch the tip of her finger.

"You have fitted the tape?" Lord-One Krip changed the

subject.

"Last night when the workmen left," she answered. "I
have learned much, and perhaps even this new body of mine
retained some level of knowledge. When we lift we do so for
Yiktor."

New body? wondered Farree. What story lay behind that?
But he dared not question now.

"There has certainly been a change in the fitters," her
companion returned. "They have kept on the job steadily this
afternoon. Tomorrow we can move Bojor aboard. By the
next sunrise we shall lift ship."

"Providing we get this astrogator Quanhi. But, Krip, of
this I am sure, we shall get him, and for no reason which
means us well. Our only protection is our sealed tape that
cannot be withdrawn by any except my own hand."

"And that tape was bought on Ballard. The Dragon last
raised from that world," the other answered her. "That is an
open port—"

She nodded. "If we go threatened from the left, we can
only hope for aid from the right. On no other world are such
tapes for sale, and we had to deal with those outside the law
of the League in order to get it. News travels near as fast as
thought. Ah, here comes our new shipmate and with him
Quanhi—you are sure that this is the one who met him in the
Limits, small one?"

The Lady moved aside a fraction from the doorway and
Farree could see out into the lighted field. He would be
certain of that emblazoned badge anywhere, but as for the
man—he could not be sure. So he reported.

"Quanhi," Lady Maelen repeated the name. "And of no
world—perhaps a Free Trader then."

"Not so," Lord-One Krip snapped. He was frowning
now, his attention all for the man coming toward them. "We
shall see how much this one desires to become one of the
crew," Lord-One Krip observed. "Stay in the shadows," he




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59

spoke now to the hunchback. "It is better that they do not see

you and perhaps speak of you."

Farree speedily hunkered back, Toggor riding on his shoul-
der. Bojor moved aside as if ordered, giving only a snuffing
sniff in the hunchback's direction. Yazz was lying full length,
lost in the shadows at the back of the hut.

The man from the other ship looked even younger in this
stronger light than the other—with an open expression which
Farree found hard to think of as belonging to a plotter. He
answered Lord-One Krip's questions freely and openly but—

In spite of the order given Farree and his own uneasiness,
he sent a single tendril, thread fine, toward the other's mind.

And he met—

Nothingness!

Not a barrier, not the swirl of alienness which marked the
smuK, the bartle, and Yazz. Simply an emptiness, as if no
one stood there at all. That was so frightening that, for a full
moment, he shivered and strove to the edge even farther
away. Yet when he opened the eyes he had squinted shut,
there was a man like any other walking the Limits or the

upper town.

He had heard tales—always told with gusto but never

believed—of how, on some distant world, there were beings
with the look of men but who were in truth machines. Those
would even think when properly supplied with the right
tapes, just as a ship could be guided, once in space, to a
chosen world. Was he now fronting one of those fearsome

things neither living nor dead?

Like their bargain with Dune, this other one was quickly
struck, but, as the astrogator left, Maelen spoke softly, using
a language Farree did not know. He heard harshness in the

Lord-One Krip's quick answer.
The Lady looked over her shoulder to where Farree crouched.

"Mind touch?"'

He knew what she meant and first shook his head and
then, fearing she could not see, answered in words.

"There was nothing. Nothing at all!"

"A shield," Lord-One Krip said then, "and that is surely
Guild. But if they knew us they also know that we would
detect such at once and be warned off."

"A machine one?" Farree ventured.

"What do you know of such?" Lady Maelen asked.

"Only stories," he answered. "No one believes them
true."

"Yet once such things were," she answered slowly. "Once
the Thassas knew such. But also I do not understand why
they would send us a well-shielded one."

"They may think that it is only with each other and with
the animal ones we can communicate," Lord-One Krip said
slowly. "Yet the Guild have the reputation of taking nothing
and no one on trust. There are many races and species in
space. The Zacanthans in their rolls of history have only a
partial listing of such and their attributes both physical and
mental. They did not even know of the Thassa until we met
on Yiktor. There may be many others—even a race born with
a natural mind shield. Still, it argues planning on their part.
This is a warning, for it goes with all we know of the
Guild."

The Thieves Guild had spread and entwined world after
world—where star rovers went, sooner or later the Guild
followed. They were reputed to be masters of strange knowl-
edge and devices which they stole or bought before the Patrol
realized that such existed.

Farree ran his tongue across his lips and then asked in a
small voice: ' 'Could it be known that time is of importance to
your plans, Lord-One, and that you would chance taking
whoever offered because of that?"

"Yes," Lord-One Krip replied, "that makes sense. How-




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61

ever, these two may have defenses or weapons of which we
know nothing. And to blast off with such aboard—"

Toggor moved. His eyestalks were all extended to the
farthest limit and swung so that they pointed after the man

who had just left.

A fuzzy picture in Farree's mind. One which the Lady
Maelen must have picked up as quickly as the hunchback.

"He is not a machine—that one," she said. "The smux
finds true life there and danger."

"Yazz, Bojor." The Lord-One looked to the two other

animals.

"Live. Like Yazz. Live," answered that one at once. The
bartle growled, sitting up on his broad and weighty haunches,
making gestures of holding something in his front paws.

"I think," Lady Maelen said slowly, "that we may have
our own warning alerts from directions which our new ship-
mates will not guess. They can accept animals performing
because of threats or promises, but not little ones who share
with us that true life of all that is equal in Molester's scales
of being. We shall mount our safeguards. You have made
your own lock installments on the cages?" She turned to

Lord-One Krip.

"Yes; we shall test them this night. It will serve that our
little ones are firmly housed and yet"—he smiled a little
grimly—"that will be only a cover."

Farree had been in the ship before, but that had been a
hurried visit and only to that section meant to house those the
Lady Maelen called her "little ones." Though she used the
same term for Farree himself, there was a difference which
was subtle but which he had caught. He was perhaps as
ignorant of worlds beyond this planet as the animals, or even
more so, for those had roved the wilds far beyond the Limits.
Yet to these two off-worlders he was common kin.

Now he lay in the bunk which had been assigned to him.
For the off-worldets and their live companions had chosen to

go within the ship though it was still fin down. However,
what he was thinking had nothing to do with the events of the
past two days. Rather he was caught up in what he had never
experienced before: a waking dream of wonder. That was
centered upon something he had seen in the Lady Maelen's
quarters.

A cube which seemed transparent and clear of any content—
one which was only slightly larger than what he could hold
comfortably in his two hands. When the Lady touched it,
there had come a swirl of color within as he watched in
astonishment. He might have been poised in the air above
another land—one so far different from the Limits that dream
was all he could find to call it.

There were wide plains—small within the limits of the
cube's space, yet the longer one looked at the scene the wider
those spread, as if one became smaller than a sand jumper
and had been pulled into the picture. There was green—great
stretches of green growing things, starred here and there with
brilliant splashes of color, some widely separated, some massed
together. Growing things also, but the like of which Farree
had never seen before.

Far down in his cramped memory something stirred even
as it had when they had asked his true name. Color, growing
things— There were none such in the Limits, yet he recog-
nized them for what they were instantly: a mantling of rich,
tall-growing grass and—flowers. Faltering memory produced
a name for him.

His nostrils expanded. Yet there was nothing save the air
of the ship to fill them. He had expected something else:

clean, strong, unlike the sour stench of the Limits. Why did
he think of that?

"Yiktor." The Lady Maelen's word had cut through his
searching of memory. "The Thassa wander wide over these
plains, though their own private place is near desert." She
was, he saw by an upward glance, concentrating on the cube




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63

with an intent stare. "We shall be in Yiktor! In the circling

of the rings."

The scene within the cube swirled again from clarity into a
fog of mingled color. Farree gave a small exclamation of
protest. But the cube did not clear entirely. Now there hung a
ball of light within it, and around that three distinct rings of

radiance grew and held.

He felt a greater wonder than even the flower-studded land
had given him. This was a thing out of the sky—a miracle of
light unlike any he could have imagined. The sight brought no
faint recognition with it; it was totally alien to anything he

even had heard described.
The Lady reached out long fingers and caressed the cube

as she had done at times the bartle and Yazz, as if she needed
the reassurance that they did exist. Farree felt a strong wave
which was both of sadness and of joy—though, before this
moment, he could not have believed two such diverse emo-
tions could be interwoven.

Then she lifted the cube and instantly the picture was
gone. She took a soft piece of spider silk and wrapped what
was now only a clear and colorless artifact, then placed it in

one of the wall compartments.

Farree longed to see again that flowery land, to feel that he
had been drawn into the dream and become a part of the

whole, accepted and at—at home—

"You saw," the Lady spoke slowly as she turned from the
compartment she had locked with her thumb seal. "Yiktor,
which I ..." Now her voice failed for an instant before she
added, "which I long for and to which we go."

She clasped her hands together, rubbing one over the other
as if some substance had escaped the cube to moisten her
fingers. "Yiktor," she breathed for the third time. Then her
glance wavered from the compartment door, and she looked
directly at Farree.

"You saw. But there was something else—you remem-
bered."

Oddly enough he felt suddenly threatened by her words. It
was as if her probe could pierce easily into an inner part of
him—a far inner part which cowered away from light and
knowledge. There was a growing pain within him, which he
found hard to handle.

"I did not remember," he countered quickly. "There was
always the Limits—just the Limits."

"Your kin—your father—your mother?" She was not going
to let him escape. But she need only keep mind touch with
him to know the answer to that. The Limits, always the
Limits—but then the man—

For the first time in years Farree was remembering the
man. He was only a shape, faceless, to be feared, yet all-
powerful. He had died drunken and Farree had fled. He
himself had been even smaller then, a misshapen lump of
flesh which no one could look upon except with distaste or
fear. Like Toggor, he had been alone. His kin? Who would
claim kin with such as he? He had never seen his like even
among the beggars, some self-mutilated to arouse pity. From
them he had kept apart, moved by the queer feeling that were
he to seek a place in their stinking, shambling guild he would
be, in a strange way, lost.

He was stronger than he looked, and there was a core of
determination within him to keep him going on his own.
How long had it been? The refuse of the Limits did not
reckon years, only seasons—hot and cold. And he did not
add those up.

Before he realized what she was about to do, Farree felt
the Lady's hands at the neck fastening of his robe. She pulled
at the cloth, bringing it down to bare his hump.

He flared with a thrust of sick anger. Then her mind
speech touched him quickly. At least she had not put hand to
that monstrous roll of flesh which he bore always with him.




64

Andr6 Norton

"This is no hurt, yet it looks as if it were old scarring."
She shook her head. "A healer I once was—a Moon Singer
who could bring good out of ill. And much have I seen of
bad wounds and injuries. The Thassa have their own dangers,
which do not equal those of other species. This looks more

like a shell—"

Farree jerked the cloth of his robe, fastened it tightly once
again. "No Singer can make me straight," he answered
sullenly.

But she did not let him go. Though she did not touch him
again, yet he realized that he must answer her. For the first
time he resented with more and more bitterness this mind tie
between them. What had once seemed to him to be an
opening gate to understanding now took on the bars of a

cage.

"No, I think not. But for everything there is a reason. Do
you suffer pain?"

He had to answer with the truth. "No—except the pain of
its weight. It grows heavier with the passing of time."
Against his will truth came out of his mind. He had suffered
the pain of kicks and cuffs aplenty, but the weight on his
shoulders which curved him forward had never hurt. There
was an itching which came at times, more often recently. He
had been driven once or twice by the force of that to rub his
back against the stone walls of the inn within the Limits.

"If you suffer pain, Farree," she addressed him now as
she might the Lord-One Krip, "come to me. Though I am an
exile from the Thassa, yet I still hold some power in these."
She held up her hands and flexed her fingers.

Now, as Farree lay circled on his side in his own place (for
he had been given a small cabin of his own, to his unvoiced
wonder), every bit of that came back to him. She had meant
it, and he knew also that it was an offer he could not take. Or
at least he thought at this moment that he could not. The

PLIGHT IN YlKTOR                65

burden was his own, and none but death might lift it from
him.

Yet he kept remembering the pictures in the cube and his
inner excitement grew. It was necessary for these two he held
in unbreakable awe and reverence to go to that world of
flowered plains and three-ringed moon, and they were taking
him with them.

That they took off a day later with two on board who must
be watched did not alarm Farree. He knew too well how to
keep wary eyes and those thoughts which tied the rest of that
company into a force none without mind touch might even
deduce existed.

He who had the mind shield could be seen, and the other,
though they were careful not to probe below his surface
thoughts, could well be open to search if it became neces-
sary. There had been a flare of protests from the astrogator
when he discovered that they were traveling by a sealed tape.
But on a privately owned ship that was not too uncommon,
and his arguments had been few enough.

It was Toggor who provided their first sentry. Though they
were in free-fall for a goodly space of time and Farree was
miserably sick and fought to conceal that fact, the smux
loosed its legs and swam in the air, catching at fittings for
anchorage from time to time.

The Lady Maelen stayed with Bojor, who suffered the
most for lack of proper weight and had to be constantly
reassured that this was not something that would last forever.

Once in hyperspace the weak gravity of the ship gave them
at least a chance for footing. Farree, out of some inner
uneasiness, made it a point to leam how to get about without
help—wishing that he had the smux's confidence.

There was no time except that rigidly marked by the ship's
instruments. They kept to a series of watches wherein either
Lord-One Krip or the Lady Maelen was on duty with one of
their hastily assembled crew. For Farree there were no stated

66

Andre Norton

duties, but he would lie on his bunk for unknown periods of
time, linked with Toggor, learning more and more how to
channel the smux's foggy sight so that he so went exploring
through the ship by that remote means.

Separated by division into watches which the off-worlders
had devised, there seemed to be no reason for the two

crewmen to get together. Nor did they.

It was during the tenth sleeping time that Farree awoke out
of a troubled doze. He did not know what had haunted him
so that he had not rested as deeply as he usually did. Then he
looked out into the middle of the small cabin and saw,
scuttling across the floor, Toggor, who had just pulled him-
self through the crack of the door. The smux's claws reached
up and Farree put his hand down for the creature to climb.

Just as Toggor had once registered pain and cold, so now
he registered again fear. Whipping up the hunchback's body,
he sought a hiding place at the neck of his robe.

Farree sat up and dangled his thin, stunted legs over the
side of the bunk, both hands over the smux's lump on his

breast.

"What—?" He began and then realized again that the

direct mind touch was not clear. Instead then he strove to
disentangle emotions. He got what startled him first and then

led to a flare of anger.

Toggor's picture was very fuzzy and it had been at floor
level. There was something which was clearly part of a
pilot's seat and then—then a boot, metal plated as were all in
space, swung out and over the questing eyestalks, aimed to
crush the smux. There was a quick flurry of movement,
which Farree could not untangle, but it was plain that one of
the crew had attempted, or had chanced, to nearly crush the
smux, who had fled in a burst of fear.

Which of the crewmen—and why?

Patiently Farree struggled to subdue that fear, to get through

the icy curtain of it for an answer.

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR                67

Crewman—he could get no clearer answer than that. To
Toggor perhaps both men looked alike. The fuzzy figure bent
over, trying to claw at the wall of the command cabin. At
least Toggor saw it so.

Farree had no idea of the duties aboard ship. The man
might have been busied at some regulation task. But he was
shaken enough by Toggor's report to try to raise Lord-One
Krip whose watch should be ending about now.

What he found with the mind touch—nothing!

That nothingness was as strong as it had been for Quanhi.
It was as if the off-worlder had ceased to exist.

The answer brought a fear as deep as Toggor's had been.
Farree swung off the bunk, reached in to one of the compart-
ments below. He brought out something which he had dis-
covered in his earlier exploration of the ship: a stunner. The
weapon was not made for hands as small and weak as his.
But he could carry it. Though his inability to take hold with
both hands would slow him on his travel through the weak
gravity, weapon held butt to his chest near the lump that
was Toggor, he left the cabin. Mentally he sought Bojor and
Yazz as he went. Both of them reported no trouble.

Lady Maelen—dare he try to reach her or would that
betray him in turn to the one with the mind lock?

larree scented it first in the central core, which held the
ladder rising from one level of the ship to the next. It came as
only a trace of a cloying sweetish odor which reminded him
instantly of the noisome stews of the Limits and had no place
in the sterile air of a space vessel. It wafted through the air
from ducts on the next level, and Farree felt dizzy as if he
floated out in some vast space with no ship to enclose or
support him.

The Lady Maelen! Her cabin was here. He reached the door
port and was stopped short. Across the surface, wedged well
into the frame, was a bar making a prison for one inside. He
put down the stunner. Then he swung his full weight on that
bar. It was immobile as if it had been welded into place.

Panting, he huddled there, daring to use mind touch. Though
he was sure that she whom he sought was inside, he touched—
nothing! Just as the same answer came to his search for
Lord-One Krip. Yet he could not believe that either of the
off-worlders was dead.

Not up to the pilot's central cabin—not yet. Taking up the
stunner, he pulled his distorted body down instead, seeking

69

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Andre Norton

the special quarters which had been installed for Bojor and
Yazz on the lower level. His eyes smarted and he felt a
burdening need for rest that he was sure was a part of the
drugged vapor which had been fed through the air duct.
However, as he went lower, trying to breathe as shallowly as
possible, the traces of that sickly sweetness vanished. By the
time he had reached the lower level all he could smell was
the odor of the bartle, the acrid scent of its shaggy fur.

"What happens?" Yazz's quick demand caught Farree as
he swung from the final hold on the ladder and approached
the cage of the larger animal. Pressed tightly to the wall
between them was Yazz, bright eyes ashine in the gloom of
this level, lips drawn back to show fangs near as formidable

as those of Bojor.

Farree came quickly forward.

"Trouble." He could only advance his own fears but that
was enough to alert both animals instantly.

There came a single yap of reply from Yazz, a deep-
chested growl from Bojor. Both of them now planted them-
selves, ready to issue forth were their doors opened. Outside
the ship, planetside, both would have been formidable oppo-
nents. Within the confines here, it was another matter. Farree
crouched down before the two animals and mind cast as well
as he could what he had discovered, intensifying his fear of
the pollutant in the air supply. Both of these were quicker to
touch than the smux, and the channel between them and the

hunchback was clearer.

"No food," came from Bojor. "Since last sleep no food."
Farree could guess the reason for that. To the crewmen
there would be no reason to feed either the bartle or Yazz,
the two animals having no value. The hunchback dragged
himself across to the far wall. There were the levers he had
seen tested and retested by the Lord-One Krip before they
had lifted from-Grant's World. He swung his weight on the

nearest and it gave, allowing to fall into both cage-cabins the
flat cakes of nutrient which were the voyage supplies.

Both animals wolfed down the food while Farree examined
the fastenings of the cages. Those had also been carefully
installed, and, though the builders had not realized it, pres-
sure on one side would allow those within to use a paw for
escape. Though Bojor had been cautioned against far roam-
ing in the ship.

Farree applied that pressure. Now the cages might look
intact but their occupants were free as they wished or needed
to be. There was a skittering sound and the hunchback swung
around, groping for the heavy weight of the stunner.

It was Toggor who came sliding down, one set of claws
hooked loosely about the woven metal rope which formed the
bannister for the ladder. All the smux's eyes were up and
open. From the small creature flooded excitement and fear,
but excitement was the stronger of those two emotions.

"What happens—" Farree beamed the question which
Yazz had earlier used to greet him.

Once more he was greeted with a fuzzy picture of the
crewman in the control cabin. Now that hazy figure was
pounding on one section of the wall, and from him, through
the smux, there flooded a raging anger and frustration.

Whatever he had tried to do in that place, he had not been
able to accomplish it, and he was in a murderous mood. •

"The Lord-One?" Farree asked then, picturing for himself
the best replica of the off-worlder he could hold in mind.

What returned to him was a door with a bar as firmly
across it as the one he had found sealing in the Lady Maelen.
Perhaps overcome by the narcotic in the airstream, Krip had
been downed and then imprisoned.

There had been only one of the crewmen in the smux's
sight. Where then was the other?

The rumble of the bartle's growl and a click-clack of fangs
from Yazz suggested they, too, had picked up Toggor's




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73

report. But if both the other-worlders had been sealed within
their cabins after being overcome, why and how had Farree
escaped?

Unless, Farree guessed, he seemed so negligible an oppo-
nent to the crewmen that they saw no reason to fear him and
he had been classed with the other of Maelen's little ones.
Well. He breathed deeply, inching forward to the ladder. No,
there was no taint of the gas here. He was free, as were
Toggor and the other two when they needed to make a move.

He had gone through the ship with Toggor and he knew it.
Each cabin, storage place, walkway, was impressed firmly on
his mind. Now, the stunner lying across his knees, he turned
once more to the smux who was surely the one of them best
suited to moving about unseen.

' 'Other man—'' He spoke that aloud in a low voice as well
as mind beamed. "Other one—"

A bit of the frustration of that one in the control cabin
remained with Farree now, even though his contact with the
smux was so limited. It would seem that the creature gained
something from his demand, for he returned to the ladder
rope down which he had come and began to climb.

There was another point which Farree must keep in mind:

undoubtedly both of the crewmen were armed, and probably
with far more potent weapons than the one he handled so
awkwardly. A force blade or a laser could end any confron-
tation before he began.

He—

With all the directness of a blow, touch came to his mind
then—the Lord-One Krip!

"Maelen?" A questing call sounded through his head as
if it had come to his ears as a great, rousing shout.

There was no answer. But Farree cut in: "Her cabin—it is
barred. Is yours also? Toggor reports it so."

"Farree!"

"Yes. I am free and with Yazz and Bojor. Toggor goes

aloft. One of the men has been trying to do something in the
control cabin but has failed. I do not know where the other
is—"

"Sleep gas. And you?"

"Must be too far beneath their notice," the hunchback
answered wryly.

"A force bar," came back quickly. "It must be detached.
Can you—"

Farree interrupted with what he saw as the truth. "I cannot
move while I do not know where they are—"

"Wait!"

He felt that also—the searching thought—though it was
not beamed at him. Once more Bojor growled and this time
raked his claws down the inner side of the door. Farree held
up a hand in a signal which apparently the large animal
understood.

"They are both shielded now," the Lord-One Krip aimed
at Farree again. "I cannot find them—"

"There is Toggor. He has gone to search above—"

Instantly the prisoner seized upon that. "Seek him. I will
feed you—seek him!"

Parree's whole twisted body quivered at what happened.
There flowed into his mind such power as he would not have
believed he could hold—nor did he try to contain it. Instead
he thought of the smux, picturing him tightly and allowing
that additional force to scrape along the path of his own
thought.

For the first time the picture he received in return was far
less fuzzed. At an odd angle, for the smux must be at floor
level and the others towered far over him, Toggor was again
surveying the control cabin. One of the men knelt on the
floor, and there were tools laid out. He was working on a
panel, which seemed to resist any attempt to loosen it.

"That is persona locked!" There was relief in Lord-One




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Anrfre Norton

Krip's thought. "They can never open it without wrecking
the tape there so that it cannot be used."

"What do they want?" Farree dared to ask. His head hurt
so that he was rubbing his forehead with one hand. To
provide a mind path for the Lord-One was like trying to
contain a burning river.

Abruptly, as if the other sensed his pain, that flood ceased
and he lost contact with the smux as quickly as if someone
had snapped a barrier between them.

"The voyage tape," came the answer. "They wish to
switch tapes. It can't be done. The lock answers only to—to

Maelen!"

There was anxiety to be felt, as if the Lord-One Krip had
seized upon a perilous answer. The Lady was a prisoner: they
might be able to force her to do what they had not been able
to accomplish. Farree wondered briefly why they had not
already tried that method.

"Perhaps they fear—" Lord-One Krip beamed. "There
are many tales of the powers of the Thassa, and she is a
Moon Singer. Since her duel with evil on Sehkmet there are
even more tales. Yet we cannot hope that rumor alone will
keep them from her."

"Yazz has fangs, elder brother." For the first time one of
the others interrupted.

Echoing that was another hot, half-formed thought—the
hazy rendering of an attack by the bartle on a barely realized
human figure.

"Not yet," Lord-One Krip answered with a direct order
through mind probe.

Farree resumed touch with the smux, and now that creature
was turning about in the control cabin. What the hunchback
caught was not the man still laboring futilely with the paneled
wall but another dimly projected picture of the second settled
in what Farree had been earlier told was the astrogator's seat.

It was, he decided, as if that second one was only waiting the
result of the first's labors to go into action on his own.

So they were both in the control cabin! He kept only a thin
tendril of connection with Toggor and began to edge up the
ladder, the stunner against his chest, one hand on the guide
lines to draw him on.

He passed the level which held his own cabin, panting
with the effort he must use to reach the next level, needing to
depend on his sole handhold to aid in negotiating the steps.
Unused to the weaker gravity and with no magnetic boots it
was a harder climb for him.

Once more he fronted the Lady's cabin with that pressure
bar in place. He laid his weapon down within hand's reach
and strove to move the barrier. It was beyond his strength, as
if it had been riveted in place. He tried mind touch, and this
time he did not meet the blank nothingness—rather a hazy,
fluctuating return which might have been that of someone
coming out of a deep sleep.

"Wake!" He pressed his own thought to the utmost strength.
"Wake!"

The return was stronger, the alert and forceful pattern
which he had come to associate with the Lady Maelen. She
had fully roused. Now her demand for information was nearly
as sharp as that of the Lord-One. It was he who gave her first
answers. Then she turned her mind send back full on Farree.

"The bar—how is it fixed?"

He squatted, stunner in hand, to study the locking barrier
and project the picture of it. So—and so—and so.

"Locked by persona!" flashed back an answer when he
had done. ' 'Now—''

But what she might have added was interrupted by a flash
from the smux.

Toggor had dropped away from the cabin, was coming
back down the handhold. The two in the control cabin were
on the move, apparently descending to the next level. Farree




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FLIGHT IN YIKTOR

77

himself skittered down the ladder and took refuge temporarily
by the door of his own cabin. If they came that far, he might
duck inside.

The odor of the sleep gas was gone from the level of Lady
Maelen's prison. Perhaps they had some way of filtering it
out of the air.

"We come." The united mind touch of Bojor and Yazz
reached the hunchback. Swiftly he countered their sugges-
tion. Neither animal could make a swift and easy ascent of
the ladder, and they both would be too easy for the crewmen
to pick off with either stunners or the fatal laser beamers.

Farree listened with his ears as well as his mind. Toggor had
not withdrawn to this level. Instead, those eyes on stalks
were watching the ladder near a closed door, which might
mark the cabin of the Lord-One. Would the crew members
believe that Krip was the one who held the information they
must have?

"Care—" A single word from the imprisoned man. Farree
had a fleeting impression that the Lord-One suspected these
two had in their power some way of judging or listening to
mind speech. Farree swiftly closed that channel but he kept
his thread of contact with Toggor. It might well be true that
the enemy could sense a human thought exchange but would
not suspect it between their prisoners and the animals.

He heard above the vibration in the ship's walls, which
remained a steady hum, a metallic clatter, and then voices
came down the well of the ladder.

"Don't try anything, Thassa. We have a mind lock. We
also have these. Those hands of yours—how would you like
a roasted finger? Or a charred ear—that should be enough to
scramble your thoughts, wouldn't it. Come out and get up to
the control cabin. We want that tape pocket opened—and
right now!"

"Persona set." That was Quanhi. "Clever, aren't you?

But what has been set can be unset just as quickly. Get
moving!"

They had the Lord-One with them—there followed the clip
of magnetic boots on the ladder. But it was the Lady Maelen
who had set that lock! How soon would they leam that and
return for her—perhaps leaving the Lord-One maimed as the
spacer had suggested?

Farree's anger burnt as it had before during his short life.
Before he had had to stifle it—had been helpless against
those who aroused it. Now—now there surely was something
he could do! He had the weapon to hand and Toggor to run
scout for him.

"And us. And us—"

That quick assurance came from below, surprising him
again with the eager anger which moved Bojor and Yazz.
The bartle—could the beast force the lock across the Lady's
door, releasing her?

"I come." Bojor's only half-sensed message, which Farree
had to strain his mind below the usual channel to intercept,
was almost as angry as a vocal growl.

"Not yet." The bulk of the animal and its difficulty with
the ladder might cause too much of a delay. Farree tapped his
stunner against the step above where he crouched and tried to
think.

Once more he made his way back to the level where the
Lady Maelen's door was barred. Holding the stunner and
continually glancing from ladder to door, Farree ran his hand
across it at his chin level. It was easy to feel the thumb
indentation of the persona lock was made to answer to one of
the crew and him only.

He had closed his mind, nor would he try to open to the
Lady lest they be checked upon by those others. Farree
stationed himself near the upper ladderway, his attention for
all that was above. Then he dared to give the signal to the
impatient two below.




78 Andre Norton

The passage of the thick-bodied bartle was a tight one and
preceded by a number of grunts and half-voiced growls. Then
the heavy shoulders and the tufted head appeared, and a
moment later Farree retreated up a step, leaving full posses-
sion of that level to Bojor.

Long talons were unsheathed and wound about the bar.
Farree watched the shoulders tense until their thick covering
of bristly hair stood erect, and knew the animal was exerting
its full strength.

At that same moment from overhead came an alert from
the smux: "One comes!"

Perhaps the enemy had already learned that only the Lady
had the true answer to their riddle and would bring her up to
taste their method of coaxing. Farree clung to the ladder,
wedging himself as best he could to the centermost part of it
where the steps were the widest. He lifted the stunner with
both his hands on the firing pin and waited.

Legs in dull gray spacer uniform appeared—then the rest
of Pitor Dune. There was nothing of the disreputable Limits
crawler about him now. Rather he swung down as if he were
the master of the ship.

Farree fired. He had not aimed at the head, but for the
center of the body, and a moment later the man folded in
upon himself and tumbled forward before the hunchback
could get out of the way. He heard the shout the half-
paralyzed man gave even as the body knocked him flat, both
of them landing against the shaggy flank of the bartle, who
growled and showed fangs.

The hunchback wriggled out from under the bruising weight
of the crewman and pushed him aside, farther along the
floor, toward Bojor. The bartle used teeth now as well as
talons to fight the stubborn hold of the bar.

A sudden thought caught Farree as he struggled away from
the man screaming oaths at him. He fought to enter the
bartle's mind with the plea to stand clear for a moment. Then

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR                79

he pushed and shoved the inert but cursing man to the
position before the door and hooked up one of his hands to
press the thumb in the hollow. There was a fifty-fifty chance
of this one being the warden.

But the bar did not yield, and Bojor, irritated at being
disturbed during his own efforts, swept both Farree and the
crewman aside with a powerful blow. The helpless man
slipped through the opening at the center of the ladder well
and was gone before the hunchback could move to stop him.

There came a shout from aloft: "What's to do? Is the
witch bitch out? Answer me. Dune." When there was no
answer, the ray of a laser clipped into molten droplets part
of the hand rope, seaming a line across the steps.

At the same time Farree tried to urge Bojor back out of the
line of fire. The creature gave a last deep grunt and the
stubborn bar loosened a fraction. Prying at that end, the
bartle was able to pull it fully free and allow the door to
open.

The Lady Maelen stood just within. She had a second
stunner in one hand, and there was a look of grim purpose on
her face. But she did not speak nor mind send an order—
rather signed with one hand. The bartle rumbled deep in his
throat once again and then moved cautiously back and onto
the ladder, pushing his bulk through the level opening to
descend. Farree, also obedient to that signal, set his crooked
back to the wall and waited for orders, his own stunner
ready.

"One of them is gone?" Her question came not mind to
mind but in a whisper so faint that it barely reached him. He
nodded and pointed down the ladder well.

"Listen, witch bitch," came a shout from above. "Do you
want your fancy man here to fry?"

"Do you wish," she called back, "to planet where we
have friends and then strive to explain where we are? Our
voyage is already past the turn point. Whether you would or

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81

no, you are now bound by the ship's tape, and nothing save a
destruction of the whole guide system will prevent it carrying
out its instructions. Do you wish to die in a drifting derelict?"

"Friends waiting?" The unseen captor above appeared to
catch upon only one of her arguments. "You have no friends,
witch bitch. You were exiled by your own people and cannot
return without breaking their laws again. Yes, see, I know
you, wearer of other bodies! Now, do you yield or do I cook

this fake Thassa of yours?"

"I swear to you by Molester, there is no way you can
change the tape. We have gone too long and too far." She
was standing very close to the upper ladderway, but out of
sight of the one who must be above, perhaps just above, as
the last call had sounded much closer.

"So it is Yiktor whether or no, that is what you would tell
me? Well enough, there are those on Yiktor who can take
charge of you as easily as I can cook this friend of yours.

Wait and see—''

But the gloating voice stopped almost in mid word. Instead
there followed a cry of disgust which became one of pain.
Down the ladder thudded a squat-barreled, ugly-looking weapon
which Farree knew was a laser. It hit against the edge of the
lower well and flew into the air, falling straight out of sight.

There was a second scream of pain fast becoming agony.
Then Farree saw Toggor swinging down the rope, his claws
gleaming bright scarlet and dripping greenish droplets. It had
been many days since the smux had been out of the hands of
Russtif. His venom had not been forcibly drawn. It might not
be enough to actually kill a man, but the pain from any smux
wound was, as Parree knew, intolerable.

"All clear!" There had been sounds of a brief struggle,
and now the Lady Maelen leapt for the ladder and started up

them, Farree following.

They found what they sought on the level below the pilot
cabin. On the Roor, one hand a brilliant scarlet as if it had

been scalded, lay Quanhi. His eyes were shut and the rest of
him limp. As first Maelen and then Farree came through, it
was to see Lord-One Krip backed against the wall, rubbing
one fist with the fingers of his other hand, and the knuckles
of that hand were skinned. Maelen turned, and, without a
word, played the stunner she carried straight upon the head of
the already unconscious man.

"Let him sleep in peace," she said. "But first—" She
knelt down and ran her fingers through the short dark hair of
their prisoner. "No webbing shield. There must be"—she
shook her own head as if she wanted to deny just what she
said—"an implant of some kind."

"Maybe they were mind washed," Lord-One Krip sug-
gested.

"This one was protected from the beginning. Pitor Dune
was not—at least on the surface. On ship he was. 1 wonder
where they wanted us to planet."




7,

iiKI

l^lot, I think, on Yiktor," the Lord-One returned. "But
they would expect us to land at the port and—"

She smiled a little then. "We shall surprise them. Into the
Dry Waste we shall go, if the tape proves true and he who set
it had no reason to lie. Also I scanned him as he took
payment. What he might have done is relay our navigation
points to another. That the arm—and ear—of the Guild are
long is well known."

"Manus Hnold gave his word," her companion returned.
"He is Free Trader—and they are used to keeping secret
landfalls which might have future use."

"We are close now to turnover, little kin," she said to
Farree. "Seek you now your own place, for with turnover
comes ship shift. And these others—" She looked down at
the man Lord-One Krip had silenced and beyond him to the
ladder well. From below still arose the dulled sound of
curses. "They must be put into stass also."

It was not easy, handling the limp bodies of the two
crewmen, though the bartle had strength enough—had there
been room—to toss them both easily about. But at length

84

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85

each was bound down with safety straps on his own bunk and
Bojor and Yazz were back in their cages, taking their own

precautions against the spill of turnover.

Toggor crept once more into the fore of Farree's robe and
lay flat as the Lady and the Lord-One went into the control
cabin and strapped down. The hunchback was in his own
cabin, the stunner made fast to the straps which were his
protection. He forced himself to relax and waited for the
queasiness and giddiness of the reentry into normal space. As
he lay there his mind was as busy as his body was inert.

The Guild. Its tentacles of power ran from star to star, per-
haps magnified by rumor, or perhaps not even rumor could
suggest the full tale of its controls. Where there was law,
there was also the Guild—that was a matter of balance, and it
had always been so as far as Farree knew. Each planet was
supposed to police itself, the Patrol only in command where
there was off-world interference or against independent worlds
where the Guild had carved out niches of "safe ports" for
itself. There were worlds where rumor said ships planeted
and exchanged cargoes that were not of the usual kind and
paid for in unknown ways. Wherever there was an unusual
find also—there the Guild appeared sooner or later,

His present companions had spoken of Sehkmet—of a Free
Trader forced by power failure to land on a supposedly dead
planet only to chance upon a vast treasure of Forerunner
artifacts and knowledge that was already being harvested by
the Guild. That the Guild would not take kindly to having
that operation broken up he could well believe. And Lord-
One Krip and the Lady Maelen had had a hand in that
breaking. He gave the small nod which was the only move-
ment his present bonds allowed him. Yes, the Guild could

well be after them.

He waited for the rise of fear within him. There was that
and a shiver of excitement, for he knew well that, had he
been given the same chance again, he would make the same

choice. To Lord-One Krip and the Lady he was not the scum
of the Limits, but one, Farree, to be trusted.

Turnover! He was pushed against the bunk, the padding
within it seeming suddenly leaden, far from the soft surface
on which he had rested a breath or two earlier. There was a
sharp pain in his head, and then the giddiness and nausea hit
together.

Later, the spasm past, he dared to loose the protecting
belts and ties and climb up to the pilot cabin, wedging his
small body into the seat of the corn officer they lacked. Both
the Lord-One Krip and the Lady Maelen were absorbed in
watching a screen, where pinpoints of light were growing
larger and larger as their ship bored on through normal space.

The Lady Maelen broke silence first. "We shall earth at
night, I think. The code—" She reached forward and the
fingers of her right hand sped across a board of buttons.
"That will see us past any orbital guard. We must hope that
that has not been changed."

Time passed, and then they were centering in on one of
those balls of light. Farree wriggled forward in his seat to
watch their goal come rushing toward them. They would
orbit twice, he had understood from the plans earlier made,
and then set down under mech-pilot on the, spot to which
their tape had pointed them across the star lanes.

It all seemed like a dream to him. The outer star-spangled
space was cold and lonely, he thought. And how could a
twist of ribbonlike metal bring them in without any action on
their part? To trust in such was a little more than he could
accept as the time grew short before they must set down.

At last he deliberately closed his eyes and turned his head
into the bargain. He did not want to see a world come
rushing up toward him. It seemed that he would spatter
against it as a fos-beetle spatted against a screen, unable to
waver in its flight to avoid the barrier.

A giant hand perhaps as large as the bartle's whole body




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87

pressed him down. There was a pain which shot through his
hump as if he had been slashed by a knife, and he tasted the
salt-sweet of blood in his mouth. Then darkness and nothing-
ness fell like the space between the star worlds.

"Farree," a voice called. Reluctantly he crawled back up
out of the darkness in answer. He looked up into the face of
the Lady Maelen. She passed a damp cloth over his nose and
mouth, and it showed the dark red of blood. He felt an ache
through his whole body, but he caught at the webbing of the
seat, which had been loosened, and drew himself up.

"I am all right," he made quick answer, refusing to let
them believe that he was merely a charge upon them, as if he
were indeed one of the "little ones"—those to whom cages

came as prisons.

He felt her probe and met it quickly. No, he wanted no
care, only to be treated as she would treat one of her own

straight-backed kind.

She drew back. "You are of our kind, Farree." She did

not speak that mind to mind but with her lips, as if she
acknowledged relationship by word instead of thought.

He did not try to answer her. One needed only to look at
him to know that she spoke in pity only, and the notion of
her pity brought a fierce surge of anger which he could not

voice.

Lord-One Krip was still seated in the captain's swinging

chair, and now his fingers played across the board which the
Lady Maelen had earlier used. Farree became aware of some-
thing else: the vibration that had been a part of him while
they were en route was gone. The ship was motionless and
silent. On the looking screen there were tall rises of bare
rock. They had indeed landed and, from the look of it, not at

any port.
There was a greenish light upon those rocks. Lady Maelen

took a step forward and touched the man's shoulder lightly.

Though no word or mind speech Farree could catch passed
between them, the scene outside the ship changed.

Gone were the light-touched rocks with their deep indenta-
tions of shadow. Instead they saw a moon in a sky which was
not dark. For around the globe of that gold-bright coin were
two rings of light, stark and clear. Beyond them, a hazy
surround of a third was yet but a palid shadow of the others.

The Lady Maelen flung her arms up as if she stood in the
open reaching to touch that wonder.

"Three rings—not yet but soon!" Her voice held a trium-
phant sound as if she had won through some hard battle to reach
this time and place.

"And where"—Lord-One Krip leaned back in his seat, his
still hands resting upon the edge of that board of many
buttons—"are we?"

"Sotrath will lend us light. If I only had long sight I
would—''

But the three in the cabin of the ship were not to hear her
words, for ringing into the mind of each of them came a
challenge, so clear and sharp that Farree reeled and saw that
even the Lord-One Krip had caught at the edge of the board,
holding so tensely that his grazed knuckles stood out as white
knobs.

"Who comes thus into the Quiet Places?"

For a long moment Farree thought that there would be no
answer. Then the reply came from the Lady Maelen.

"I am she who was judged, she whose rod of power was
taken from her. She who wore fur and fangs and—''

"And comes again in a new body! Whence got you that,
Singer who was and now is not?"

"Thus." There was a tingle in Farree's mind; that was the
only way he could describe it. No passage of thought, rather
a high sweet sound as if someone sang without words. How
long it continued he could not have afterwards said. It trailed




r

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89

up and up into notes he could not hear but which still fed that

tingle in his mind.

Once more that other voice spoke. It came from nowhere
but arrived with all the authority of a guard: "This is a thing
which must be thought upon. Not lightly are the People
answered by a flouting of their Law."

Lady Maelen bowed her head as if she stood before a
speaker and surrendered her will to that other.

"Let it lie upon the Scale of Molester. For such a judg-
ment I am ready. Those with me are guilty of naught save

striving to help—"

"All those with you?" resounded the voice. "What of the
two who lie prisoner in body within that ship?"

"They shall be delivered to the judgment of their own

kind."

"They are trespassers by your aid into a place which is

forbidden to all save the People and those they summon."

"Sotrath has summoned us. Three rings will shine and
then that which is crooked can be made straight—"

That which is crooked—straight!

Farree took a single step forward. Surely she did not mean
that! She and the Lord-One had picked him out of the Limits,
cast off his casing of Dung, but there was no magic in the
world—this or any other—that could straighten him, three

rings around an unknown moon or not!

There was a bitter taste in his mouth as he swallowed, not
bom of his blood this time but from his thoughts. Yet he was
given no time to sift those, for again the voice rang clear.

"Unto Molester shall it be, even as you have said, you

who are not—"

There was a kind of echo in his mind, but the words were

sharply cut off and Farree knew that the speaker had with-
drawn. Once more the picture screen in the control cabin
showed, not the sky, but towering cliffs about them. The
bright light of the moon brought those sharply into focus, and

the picture began slowly to move from right to left as if the
ship itself was turning on some giant spindle. The cliffs
ended. Before them now stretched a wide plain unbroken by
any growth higher than a few thick patches of dead-seeming
grass.

This was an empty land appearing only as a wasteland.
Then once more cliffs arose to wall them in. Lord-One Krip
leaned a little closer to the screen.

"This I have seen."

"He did well, that Hnold. We are within short distance to
the meeting place," Lady Maelen returned. There was warm
satisfaction in her voice. "Let me but go and all shall be
readied."

"Wait!" His hand went up as if to back his command.
"Look to the—"

He pressed thumb hard upon a button and the screen
ceased its turn. Before them were still tall cliffs under the
clear moonlight, but in the sky above the ragged edge of
those cliffs something moved, striking fire now and then
from the same moonlight.

"A flitter!"

The Lady Maelen's lips flattened against her teeth in a
grimace. She, too, leaned closer to the screen. "But this is
the Land of Beyond where only the Thassa move. And the
lordlings of the inner lands have no sky flight!"

"Others do," he returned grimly. "Such as those we have
on board."

"Wait and watch!" Her hand on his shoulder pushed him
fully down into his seat again.

The airborne transport came on, fully into the moonlight,
where the rocks seemed to reflect back the glory of the rings
to show the clearer what passed either on earth or through the
air. The craft had no riding lights, and yet it appeared to hold
a course that would bring it to their own landing place.




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Guild? But how could the two prisoners have summoned
such support?

"They were waiting," said Lord-One Krip in a low voice.

"That they could not have been!" she protested. "The
tape was unchanged and brought us—"

"Perhaps they expected their men might fail," he re-
turned. "They had ready then a secondary plan."

"Which will not serve them either." Her fingers dug into
his shoulder as she watched the oncoming flitter closely but
with no expression of alarm. "See!"

The small craft boring through the moonlight had nearly
reached the lip of the cliffs. Then it seemed to waver—
almost as if the same wind which rippled the grass patches
was strong enough to seize the flitter from the control of
those on board. The craft sideslipped to the right, drew level
with what Farree could believe was an effort, slipped again.
It near-skimmed the top of the cliff, and then it made an
abrupt turn and half circled to put itself back on the same
course it had followed toward them.

Only no longer was its flight swift and sure; it slipped from
one side to the other in jerky motion. The craft could have
been a bird netted by a sure fling of a hunter, struggling for
its freedom to no purpose.

So jerking and fighting the craft passed out of sight behind
a taller pinnacle of the cliff rise and was gone.

"The Thassa have their own defenses," the Lady Maelen
said. "None approach here unless they are of the blood or are
summoned. This is the Old Place and here lies the heart—"
She stopped suddenly and looked curiously abashed, as one
who talks of hidden things and then realizes her words can be
heard by those who have no right to listen.

"Will they crash?" Lord-One Krip asked in a level voice.

Now she frowned. "Not so. Our defenses are not to
destroy—not even any evil which may come. They will be
but diverted and also they will forget—"

"Not if they, too, are mind shielded."

She frowned. "I do not know. A shield is made to keep
out thought thrusts. It is not intended to stand up to the force
of the Elders acting together. We shall see how well any
man-made thing may last against the full force of the Thassa."

"Let us hope," he said in the same level tone, "that the
force is fully effective then. Do we go?"

"Not yet. With the dawn perhaps. Maybe then the sum-
mons will come. We cannot enter without that."

Farree lay once more curled on his own bunk with Toggor
squatting beside him. This was a long way from the Limits
yet. He rubbed his forehead. There was something—a pale
shadow of a shadow of a memory that once he had lain
within a ship before. Still, how could that be? His only clear
memory came from the noisome sink of the Limits and that
was all he thought he had ever known. He wondered—pushing
away that shadow which made him uneasy and aching—what
the dawn would bring. That Lord-One Krip was also uneasy
this night, he sensed. However, if there was any crack in the
confidence of the Lady Maelen he could not detect it. She
was restless, yes, but not as one who awaited trouble, rather
as one who would be out and doing—one who stood before a
door, impatient that it be opened to her.

He wondered about the Thassa and that voice out of no-
where. Had it perhaps rung out also in the minds of those in
the flitter, warning them off in a way they could not protest?
Or had it taken charge of their bodies as he had heard tales of
among the spacers, forcing them against their wills?

He thought and later he slept while, in his broken and
fleeting dreams, he looked upon a three-ringed moon and felt
power drawing him to—to—but to what he could not remem-
ber when he awakened.

It was Toggor tugging with a claw at one of the locks of
his unruly hair that brought him out of that drowse. The




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Andre Norton

smux radiated hunger, and Farree felt an answering empti-
ness in his own bent body. He slipped into the narrow slit of
the fresher and allowed the mist there to wash him, coming
out to a fresh robe and sandals. Then he went to the galley,
smelling, even before he opened the door, the fine odors of
food.

Lord-One Krip was at the table, an opened ration tin at
hand, but he was not eating. When Toggor gave a squeal and
leaped onto the table, he shoved the tin at the smux, who
clacked claws over it and immediately began to eat.

Farree was a little daunted that the other had made no sign
of seeing him nor given any greeting. But he got his own tin
and crawled up on the empty seat opposite the man, waiting
for him to break the silence between them.

"She is waiting still." Lord-One Krip might have been
talking to himself, for he did not look in Farree's direction at
all. "But what if . . ." He did not finish the question, and
Farree dared now to do it for him. After all, he was a part of
this company, too, and if trouble lay before them it was his
right to know.

"What if the—the voice—says we must leave?"

For the first time the man looked at him. There was the
crease of a frown between those upward-slanting brows.

"Then we go."

Greatly daring, Farree asked, "Where are we?"

"At the meeting place of the Thassa. You do not under-
stand, little brother." He clasped his hands before him on the
table. "I am not Thassa"—with the fingers on one hand he
pinched the skin on the back of the other—"though I now
wear a Thassa body."

"One does not wear bodies," Parree cut in sharply. "One
is a body." For a wild moment the thought of another body—
a straight, tall, humpless one—filled his mind. What if what he
had just denied was the truth and he could change? There

were many wonders on other worlds, but never had he heard
such as that!

"The Thassa wear bodies." He could see that Lord-One
Krip meant in truth what he said. "To become a Moon
Singer, a one of power among them—they change bodies
with animals, running wild on the land and learning from them
other scents and desires. I was a crewman on a free trader,
and here on Yiktor I was taken by a lordling who would have
of me the secrets from off-world—or else use me to wring
such from my captain. He gave my body to pain."

Farree hunched under the burden on his shoulders as if
rolling himself into a ball. He knew what Lord-One Krip
meant. Such had been his own portion.

"I was—damaged. Maelen was a Moon Singer and also
the leader of a troop of little ones—animals who gave shows
she devised. She saved me by singing me into a barsk."

Farree swallowed. "An animal?"

"An animal"—nodded the other—"one which was nota-
bly fierce and supposedly untameable. It was not one of hers
but one which had been captured and badly treated, and
which she was curing and trying to mind free. So did I live
on Yiktor for a space. But then there was a Thassa body—a
Kinsman to Maelen—a Thassa who had taken on animal
form but been killed in that form. His body was empty of
mind, for the animal transformed with him had gone mad.
So—I became Thassa—for my own body was judged dead by
my shipmates and spaced after they had taken off.

"For this act Maelen was condemned by the Thassa and
her wand of power taken from her. When she left this world
she, too, was an animal—and as such she traveled with me.
Until Sehkmet. There—well, there were bodies, very ancient
bodies, who could change at will. And one of them was a
woman. She would have ruled, but Maelen invaded her,
freed her captives and the inner core of evil which dominated
her, so her body became Maelen as you see her now. We




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95

have returned to Yiktor with this ship—for it has long been
Maelen's dream, as you know in a little—to become once
more a Moon Singer and then to go out among the stars with
her furred folk, proving to all that life is sacred and those
considered the lesser may, in their own way, surprise those
who see them as that.

"When Sotrath bears its three rings is a time of great
power, and we have waited for that to return. But now, just as
that flitter was guided from the inner land, so may we also be
sent on our way."

"She does not believe that." Farree did not know how he
knew that truth, but he was certain he did.

"She is—Maelen. Once a Singer under the moon, one
cannot be stripped of such powers easily. And on Sehkmet
she found a battle such as few even of her people must ever
have faced. Thus she believes what she wishes to believe—"

"Belief is a comfort and a weapon, a wand of power, and
a pointed laser.'' Maelen stood in the doorway of the cabin,
her eyes alight. The long cascade of hair, which she usually
kept tightly braided, flowed free around her shoulders, though
locks of it wavered a little, as if stirred to rise by some
magnet. Her drab ship's uniform was gone. Instead, she wore
breeches and boots of a russet color close to that of her hair.
Her shirt had a wide stiffened collar forming a tall fan behind
her head, and she had a sleeveless jacket of some yellow
wooly stuff which was not unlike fur.

Farree heard Lord-One Krip's breath come forth in a low
sound of wonder. The Lady Maelen turned slowly around as
if to allow them to view her. In the drabness of the ship she
was almost like a flame glowing with warmth, for that eager-
ness Farree had earlier sensed in her was now a consuming
fire.

"Come!" She beckoned to both of them. "The Thassa
gather. Soon we shall be summoned also."

She swung up to the control cabin, Lord-One Krip on her

heels, Farree moving more slowly behind. The screen was on
and they looked out into or onto a sun-drenched world. There
was life—no flitter in the skies, but rather there came at a
steady pace wagons with covered tops and huge earth-crushing
wheels pulled by teams of shaggy-coated four-legged animals
that plodded steadily onward at a ground-eating pace. Nor
could Farree see that any held the reins, any walk beside
them with a goad in hand. Rather the animals had the air of
being about a necessary business of their own.

The wagons were brightly painted, colors vivid, against
the dull gray countryside over which they plowed. Now he
could see figures on the front seats of some of the wagons,
though they were still too far away to be well viewed.

They were all headed for a break in the wall of the cliff,
one so regular in size Farree could almost believe it had been
squared off by some ancient intelligence. For as he looked
upon that roadway he had a feeling of age—of age and
forgotten story.

^ Then, once more, came that clear voice in his head: "The
Thassa gather. Come you who would speak."

Maelen threw back her head. She did not reply in that
wordless, voiceless sound but in a thought touch as firm and
clear: "We hear and we come!"




8.

1 hey stood out under the open sky, a wind rippling
around them, pushing at their bodies, making a flaming
banner of the Lady Maelen's hair. Behind them Yazz and
Bojor snuffled and snorted, their pleasure at being free of the
ship projecting a warmth reaching from mind to mind. The
wagons went their way still, and it seemed that not one
among them was interested enough in the ship even to look in
their direction. Perhaps strict order drew them forward. But
there were fewer of them now, a straggling end to the push of
that company.

The Lady Maelen led her companions toward that same
break in the cliff wall. And, as the sun slanted across the
rock, Farree, holding his head at the best angle his deformity
would allow, saw strange markings on the stone. As if once
there had been carvings there, now so worn away by time that
their ghosts alone still haunted the rock.

Beyond a narrow passage through the cliff lay another
open space, and there the wagons had been staked out, the
animals that had drawn them loosed to graze at will. Here
were squared openings set in patterns as if the rock itself had

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99

been mined for a city of dwellings. Again the ghostly mark-
ings ran across the yellowed stone. There were the people of
this company also, and after each wagon had taken its place
they headed toward one of the openings—larger, more wreathed

with the patterns.

Farree heard Lord-One Krip draw a deep breath.
"The gathering," he said as if he spoke his thought aloud.
"The gathering!" echoed the Lady Maelen but there was a
note of excitement in her voice, whereas Lord-One Krip
appeared to be less eager to take the way toward that open

doorway in the far wall of the cliff.

They were approached by some latecomers passing the
same way, but to Parree's bewilderment and growing unease
these Thassa ignored the party from the ship as if they did not
exist. But neither did either of his companions try to ex-
change greetings or even glances with those whose pace now

matched theirs.

So, of that company and yet apart, they came into a vast

assembly place within the rock. The floor underfoot inclined
gently to a center where was a dais, and on that stood four of
the Thassa. Farree studied them eagerly, hoping to read
something in their attitude which might token that the ship's
party was not trespassing but was to be welcomed.

But, though the four stood watching, their eyes appeared
to go above, beyond, or to either side, not toward the three
from the ship. The last of the Thassa split into two small
groups and took their stations on either side of the broad open
aisle which led down to the dais itself.

Now the Lady Maelen stopped short and stood, with Lord-
One Krip a little behind her and Farree still farther back,
aloof in that crowd of strangers where he felt more than ever

his crookedness.

It was not dark within this hall cave for there were globes

of light suspended overhead to provide the same light as the
moon had flung the night before across the outer world. Now

around them there raised song without words, entering into
one's very skin and bones, becoming a part of one.

It seemed to Farree that that song could put wings on the
listener, lift him up and away from the body, freeing the
innermost part of him to float and fly above all which tied
him to the earth. He forgot time, and space, and himself, and
was only what the song bore with it.

At last that died away in a slow sobbing as if the fading of
a people or a life was now a part of it. Farree smeared his
hand across his face and so wiped away tears—he who long
ago had learned that weeping availed nothing. It was the
dying of something great and wonderful, that last of the
singing, beyond his small power to describe, and it wrung
him, bringing with it all the feeling of alienness he had ever
known.

There was a tearing in his chest, and a fierce aching awoke
in his hump. He put his hands over his ears, trying to shut
out that dying song. Then he saw that one of those on the
dais had shifted the silver wand she bore in her hands.
The end of that pointed now in his direction just as he was
aware that she saw and knew him. Straightaway the sound
ended—for him—though he still half crouched, too aware of
the burden on his shoulders and the pain which held through
that. But he was released from the sorrow borne in the song.

The wand swung, pointed now to Maelen.

"What now is your tale—in this time and place—exile?"

It was the same voice which had questioned their landing,
ringing again in their heads.

Maelen moved forward. Lord-One Krip stepped up beside
her. If she faced a foe, then he, too, would front that
hostility. Not to be left behind, Farree followed, his head at a
straining angle to watch that company of four.

"Standing words cannot be altered. As was said here once
before to you who sang and then forfeited that right."




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101

Farree thought that that came from one of the two men
flanking the woman with the wand.

"The third ring waxes, the power rises." Maelen faced
them proudly with such a bearing as might a warrior waiting
for the first order to advance.

"It waxes—" That was the other woman. "Well, well—
the Old Ways are not to be denied. Speech is yours, you who
were once a Singer."

"I am Maelen."

"That is the truth. Yet you come wearing a new guise. Do
you again meddle as you once did with changing?"

Maelen threw open her arms as if she was so loosing all
shields she might hold against any of these.

"Read, Older Sister."

There was silence, so deep that it might have been that this
hall was now deserted. Yet Farree felt a stirring in his mind
at too high a level to follow. Thassa bespeaking Thassa, he
guessed—not for such as he to hear.

They stood motionless, all in that company, as if caught in
some twist of time unending, unchanging. Then the woman
who had challenged Maelen broke her statuelike stance and
turned her head, first right and then left. She might have been
speaking soundlessly to those with her, sitting in judgment.
But it was the other woman among the four who touched
minds now.

"You have been along a strange path, Singer-that-was.
There abides in you now that which we cannot assess—save
that you have used it as you could for the good of those who
trusted you. Singer, no. We cannot judge for you. You must
name yourself. Are you asking such a naming?"

"The third ring waxes," Maelen returned slowly. "No, I
ask not any power which does not come to me openly and is
earned. But I am still Thassa, and this thing which started on
another world and with another race is not yet ended. It will

again be my debt on the Scales, and Molester shall judge in
the end as all of us are judged."

"On the Scales then let it lie. You do not judge—"

"Am I still exile?"

"You are what you are, by your choice. Thassa is not
closed to you nor"—she now leveled the wand and pointed
at Lord-One Krip—"to you, once stranger, who have worn
our seeming well. Nor—"

Once more the wand centered on Parree. And he saw a
look of vast surprise cross her face, the rod quivering in her
hand.

"Go with Molester's Hand above you, small one," she
said slowly. "His Scales shall weigh you and in the end it
shall be the truth for you also."

He wondered at the way she said those words, as if she
pronounced some judgment. Yet one that was not a heavy
one for him. Perhaps, he thought, with a stab of the bitter-
ness that was always with him, her surprise was that such a
one as he had ventured into this company. Dung of the
Limits might have no place here. He dropped his head and
looked downward to his clawlike hands with the greenish
skin, his feet which were no better, looking too small and
weak to support that burden on his back. Thus he saw
Toggor's eyestalks looming out of the neck opening of his
robe, turning this way and that as if the smux must acquaint
himself with all this company and the moon-glow hall in
which they were gathered.

"You have not yet come into your inheritance." That
loud, clear voice rang in his head. "We are what Molester
shapes, and for each shape there is a reason and a duty—"

It was the bitterness which made him brave enough to
answer with the mind touch, "And if the shape is spoiled
in the making. Lady?"

"There is nothing save that which is ordained. You will
come into that which is yours at the proper time."




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103

He supposed she meant when he was dead, which was
hardly an encouraging message. Then he remembered Lord-
One Krip's own tale of how he had been, at a time of great
need, transferred by Thassa power into the body of an animal
and then into a man's form again. Could such work for him?
For the first time Parree thought seriously of that part of the
off-worider's story. Would it be better to run like Yazz on
four feet, or claw a way in Toggor's form, than to shamble as
Dung? That was a thought to consider.

However, though the words of the Thassa Elder might
promise change—what change and how? He breathed a little
faster and then became aware that around him the people
were starting to leave the hall within the cliff. Only Maelen
and Lord-One Krip did not move, and, seeing that, he also
stayed where he was.

The Elders did not leave the dais, but she of the wand
made a small beckoning gesture, and Maelen and Krip moved
toward her. Only Farree remained where he was, still be-
mused by that thought of another body, unburdened, four-
footed perhaps. Though where was even a beast that would
change places with such as he?

Those on the dais had come forward to face the two from
the ship, and again there was a flow of thought too high and
fast for Farree to catch. He dropped cross-legged on the stone
where he was, and Toggor climbed out to hold the folds of
his robe and project the feeling of hunger and impatience to

be fed.

Then the smux suddenly loosed hold on Farree and with a
leap reached the stone of the floor and caught a big-bodied
insect that had swung from circling about one of the moon
globes above, transferring the morsel to his mouth with a
message that such prey hardly made up for the hunger in
him.

"Come, Farree." Lord-One Krip looked back to him. "It
is back to the ship for us now."

Yet the Lady Maelen remained still with those leaders of
the Thassa as he rose to shamble after the off-worlder. No,
not an off-worlder here where he wore a Thassa body, what-
ever might lie within that.

"What do we—you"—he caught himself quickly not to
claim too such familiarity with the Lord-One—"do now?"

The man shrugged. "That remains with Maelen and the
temper of the Thassa, This she had longed to do—to return
here and be again a Singer, a companion to little ones with
fur and feathers."

"But—" The question Farree might have asked was swal-
lowed up by sound from the sky above them: the beat of a
flitter coming low above the valley which led to the hall,
swinging on toward the ship. Lord-One Krip began to run
and Farree could not keep up, only trotted along as best he
might. He noticed as he passed that none of those gathered
by the wagons looked skyward.

There was something here to which he could not put name,
but it made him feel that he was forcing his misshapen body
through a turgid flood which sought to cover and stifle him.

The flitter swept on, and he fought to follow Lord-One
Krip into the open where the ship stood. Was that strange
wave of strength broadcast from the airborne craft, or was it
some side issue of a protection summoned by the Thassa?

Farree stumbled around boulders, having twice to stop and
draw enough panting breaths to send him on. He could see
Lord-One Krip ahead but he, too, moved as if caught in some
flood that would wash him back instead of forward, a current
of power raised to keep him from his goal.

They reached the end of the valley, and there Krip halted,
the whole tense posture of his body showing that it was not
by his will. He was struggling still.

Farree felt a sudden push of new force against him, and he
could not breast it for himself. Rather he clung to another
boulder and stood as straight as he could, watching—almost




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105

certain now that this force came from the flitter and was not a

protection raised by the Thassa.

The flitter set down not far from their ship. Men issued
forth from the flitter. Two of them went toward the inclined
way leading from the smoking land about the fins into the
center of their ship, and two others took their places between
that and the open mouth of the canyon, standing with feet
slightly apart and weapons ready in their hands— That pres-
sure kept Krip and Farree away from them, helpless against

what they would do.

Once more his own shoulders' burden began to ache,
weighing him down, as if the pressure against him had
sought out his weakest portion of being and there centered
upon him. Lord-One Krip no longer struggled but stood
where he had been stopped, his arms folded across his chest.
Farree could feel the thrust of thought he hurled toward those
at the ship, though it was pure pressure in the mind, not

coherent words and phrases.

They were not gone long, those two who had invaded the
ship, and when they came back they had the former prisoners
with them, walking easily, not hampered any longer by then-
bonds. Then, together, those from the flitter and the two
others lined up before the ship's fins. One of those who had
gone aboard had in his hand what looked like a square box
which the downing sun caught and awoke into an eye-hurting
burst of light. He placed this carefully on the ground and

knelt beside it—

The. current of power that had entrapped them within the
canyon was in a single moment reversed. Farree gave a shout
of sheer astonishment and fear as he was swiftly drawn
forward in spite of his attempts to anchor himself to one or
another of the boulders his small body scraped by.

If that force reft him from anchorage, it was not as success-
ful with Lord-One Krip. Just as he had earlier striven to pass
some unseen barrier into the open, now he fought fiercely, as

attested by all the movements of his body, to remain now
where he was.

Farree had not the personal strength of the other. He
scraped stone painfully, looked vainly into the face of Krip as
he was drawn past the man. The Lord-One's features were
stark with effort. He looked to Farree and a single thought
passed from him to the other.

"Hold—where and how you can."

Only, if Krip was able to hold, there was no hope in any
such battle on Parree's part. He was aware only of a move-
ment at his breast. Toggor had leaped from his clawhold
there to seize upon the Lord-One's arm.

This desertion brought a new stab of fear. Parree never
knew how much the smux could guess or knew of the ways
of men. He had operated under Farree's urging in the ship
and back at the Limits. Now he might be acting on his own,
and his action brought home to Farree his own complete
helplessness.

In one last attempt to withstand that force, the hunchback
flung himself forward on his knees and caught with both
hands at a stunted scrub, striving to keep his hold, only to
have his fingers loose of themselves and make him scuttle
along on hands and feet like some unwieldy shell-encased
monster.

"One!" He heard that voice dimly and then a second.

"One, but the least of them!"

"Put it on alpha then—"

He had crawled until he could see their boots clearly.
Having once lost his feet, that treacherous wave of force kept
him low, so he came as a spirit-broken animal might slink to
Russtif at the crack of a whip.

"It is on alpha. 1 tell you we deal with the unknown.
And—"

There was a startled cry from one of Farree's captors. The
hunchback now sat within touching distance of that shining




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box. He was soaked with sweat from his fight against the
power, tasting blood in his mouth where he had bitten down
on his lip in that agony of struggle. But Parree looked up to
see he who knelt by the box, swaying back and forth, a look
of torment on his face. One hand was going forward to the
strange weapon, advancing plainly against his will.

One of the other men from the flitter gave a harsh excla-
mation and joined his fellow by the box, slicing a hand down
with vicious suddenness so that it struck against the wrist of
that groping one. There was a cry of pain and the first man
nursed his wrist against his body.

"Take off! While we can!" It was Quanhi who yelled
that. "They have strengths we don't know—"

"Nobody can withstand this." The one who attacked his
fellow said that grimly.

"No? I see Krip Vorlund over there still. Did you think to
bring him crawling to us like this?" The toe of a boot flashed
out to catch Farree in the ribs, and the pain drowned out the
pain he felt in his hump.

"There are Thassa here, and it is the cycle of the third
ring. No one on Yiktor goes up against them—"

"So we just go?" demanded the other.

"So we go, but not empty-handed. We have this one, and
perhaps he is less idiotic than he looks. Gompar knows what
questions to ask and how. He'll spill out his insides easily
enough."

It would seem that this speaker had command of the force,
because they did turn toward the flitter. Farree was picked up
and slung aboard, then a tangler was turned on him and
before he could hope to move the sticky cords had netted him
in.

He had already striven to reach the minds of those who had
taken him—and came up against the blankness of shields.
Now he was a small ball of misery and fear pushed to the

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR               107

back of the flitter where he lay, his hump rubbing painfully
against the wall, as the small craft arose with an upward leap.

None of those aboard paid him any more attention. He
made himself push aside panic and take stock of that com-
pany. Their former captives sat well to the back, crowded in
not too far from him, and the four who had come to their
rescue occupied the fore seats.

They were dressed uniformly, in space suits, and had their
hair bristle short as did most crewmen. The leader seemed to
be the man now at the controls of this small ship. It was
never easy to guess ages, but Farree thought that he was
younger than Quanhi. He had a seam of scar from one corner
of his mouth to his jawline. Otherwise there was nothing
about him to suggest that he was any different from any
crewman Farree had seen off duty in the Limits.

The man by him was, in spite of his spacer clothing, a
different type. Had Farree not seen him here, he would have
thought him a wealthy tourist, the kind who sometimes ven-
tured into the Limits for a thrill and then often complained
of thievery or ill-usage. He was stout—almost enough
so to appear bloated—and his features were of an unusual
smallness, squeezed together at the forefront of his head,
with a high, bulbous forehead and a neck which in the nape
was marked by two rolls of fat. It was on his knees that the
box of power rested, now fitted into a case. He kept running
his pudgy hand about its surface as if he felt chilled and this
kept warmth for him. His lips were pushed out in a petulant
pout, and it was plain that he was far from satisfied with their
just-past action, yet he made no protest in words.

There was no way that Farree could either see out of the
flitter or even mark the time they spent in the air. His bonds
allowed him no movement, and he could guess that what lay
ahead was nothing to try to anticipate.

They came in at last for a landing, which jarred Farree
again against the wall and would have brought a whimper of

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Andre Norton

pain from him had he not once more bitten down upon his
lip. To let any of these see that he was frightened would be
the last thing he would do. He clung fiercely to that, and for
a moment thought of how Lord-One Krip had told him of
running in the body of something called a barsk—so fierce an
animal that all feared it. What would happen if he could
claim now the claws, the strength, the bulk of Bojor?

However, there was no chance of that. He would remain
what he had always been: too weak and helpless a creature to
stand against anything thrust upon him. Even now, one picked
him up and slung him easily to another man waiting at the
hatch. And as that one carried him he got his first look at

what lay about him.
He was upon an open plain with no sign of the cliff which

had broken the other one. Instead a mound arose, plainly not
a natural one. On that was a broken, ragged heap of tumbled-
down stone walls while a tower in its middle pointed a finger
to sunset clouds. As much of a ruin as the place looked, there
were dwellers within. He saw movement along the near-
broken walls as he was carried up the incline to where the

tower stood.

A courtyard with walls and half-destroyed buildings verg-
ing on all four sides surrounded the tower, but it was to the
latter that he was carried. Then, being carelessly knocked
against the wall, he was transported upward to be tossed like
a bit of unwanted refuse into a narrow room with a wider arc
of wall narrowing to nearly a point where the door now

slammed into place, leaving him alone.

A window broke the arc of the far wall, but there was no
famishing here, only the bare stone that already had given
him bruises. He had landed on his back and the pain in his
hump awoke from an ache to a burning stab, until he man-
aged to roll over on one side, facing that high window where
all he could see was a narrow slit of sky.

For the first time since he had been taken, Parree had time

to think. It was plain that the Thassa part of Lord-One Krip
had managed to keep him from being swallowed up in the
same trap. But what could these who held him. Dung from
the Limits, hope to learn from him alone? He knew so little:

only that some time ago the Lord-One and the Lady Maelen
had helped to break up an operation of the Guild and could
still be in danger because the Guild could not allow its might
to be flouted easily, or because they had certain knowledge
which went beyond that particular action and which might
lead to another discovery.

Good enough reason for their capture and the attempts to
take over the ship. But Farree had not been with them during
that earlier exploit and certainly had no knowledge that could
be sifted out for the Guild's profit. Maybe they intended to
use him for a bargaining piece ...

Farree's mouth twisted wryly. What was he to the two of
the Thassa that they should risk anything in his behalf? True,
they had taken him out of the morass of the Limits. How-
ever, they had a feeling for helpless animals as he had
learned from their talk. But one did not risk all for an animal
and certainly he, Farree, could not rate any higher than that.
It would seem that he was now as much on his own as he had
always been in the Limits and with far less to help him here.




9,

It would seem that none were in a hurry to make what use
they could of him, for he continued to lie alone, wrapped by
the near-strangling cords of the tangler, in the tower room.
Hunger awoke in him and thirst, both of which he had known
too many times before to yield to now. He lay and watched
the scrap of sky, which was edged by the high window, and
he slept for a while or at least had no memory of the passing
time. It was dusk beyond the window when the door was at
last opened. Quanhi came in to stir him with one boot toe.

The spaceman pointed a laser on lowest beam at one
stretch of the tangler cords, and those straightaway began to
shrivel up until the ashy remnants fell away and Farree was
free of bonds. His whole body ached dully as the boot
reached out once more to prod at him.

"On your feet, Dung. You are needed."

His arms and legs were so numb from his bonds that he
found it almost more than he could do to get to his feet. But a
stubbornness in him would not let him crawl, and he made it,
though he wavered toward the wall of the room and had to
steady himself there.

Ill

112

Andre Norton

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR

113

"Move—or do you want a touch of this?" The spacer
twirled his laser, and Farree lurched forward. Though there
was the pain of returning full circulation and the ever-present
aching in his hump, he managed to keep his feet and go on.

Though the curve of a stair which hugged the wall, cracked
and worn as to steps, nearly defeated him, Farree at last
reached the ground level of the tower and was herded on into
another section of the ruin. His glimpse of the open before
entering the other building gave him a chance only to see that
there was indeed a force here—men coming and going, all of
them wearing space clothing.

However, the room he was now herded into might have
been lifted out of some Lord's holding back on Grant's
World. Hangings of a blue-copper cross-spinning covered the
ancient walls, and there was actually a matching carpet under
his feet. He was brought to a halt before a table of silvery
wood. Behind it were two folding chairs of tapestry and
precious gonder wood. The table itself had been recently
used for what Farree would have thought a feast, but the
soiled plates and cups had been pushed to the far end, and
now there were several boxes set out before the two men
seated there.

One was the overfleshed man from the flitter, and his
hands still caressed that box he had brought from the scene of
Farree's undoing, stroking it as if he so pleasured a pet
animal. His companion at the table was of a different pattern.
There was in his look, his every movement, an air of com-
mand that led Farree to believe he was fronting the leader of
this outlaw company. Though the face before him bore no
disfiguring scar nor was he high-nosed in manner like one of
the upper city Lords, Farree, after one meeting with those
eyes, shivered and longed to draw himself into a ball as
Toggor did when threatened.

It was the fat man who spoke first: "This is the one which
was drawn . . ."

Had there or had there not been a thread of uneasiness in
that? Farree thought he distinguished a suggestion that the fat
one was not as pleased with his capture as he might have
been.

"And the others?" the leader asked quietly, even mildly,
as if he lacked much interest in the proceedings.

For a moment the fat man was silent, and even his pudgy
hands ceased their gentling of the box. He pursed his lips as
if he searched for a proper word or would get one out of his
captive if he dared.

"The others?" the leader repeated in the same quiet tone.

"They withstood ..." The admission was dragged from
his companion, and Farree saw those hands tense on the box.

"Yes. The Thassa ..." The leader could have been
merely beginning an observation, but Farree was aware, by
his own feelings of tension and fear, that the fat man changed
position a fraction, nearly as if he winced.

"They are reputed to have more than one skill," the leader
continued after a pause. "How do you think they have
continued to exist for centuries of planet time with the Lords
of Yiktor both jealous and afraid?"

"We had none to test," the fat man said with a note of
defense in his voice. "Our material—"

"Was such as this?" the leader gestured toward Farree.

"He was with them the whole time." It was Quanhi who
volunteered that.

"They gather strange life forms for the showing, do they
not? What could they find more strange than this lump of
offal? You"—his hard eyes caught Farree's and held them
captive—"what were you to these Thassa?"

Farree had to moisten his lips with tongue tip twice before
he could find answer. "I helped with the animals, Lord-
One," he said in a hoarse whisper.

"Helped with? Or were one? Do you not know by now
that these Thassa consider themselves above the rest of us?"




114

Andre Norton

PLIGHT IN YIKTOR

115

"Commander." Again it was Quanhi who dared to inter-
rupt. "This one helped in taking back the ship—"

The leader gave a single bark of laughter that was more
like a burst of oath. "A mighty opponent indeed. I wonder
that you acknowledge his part in that."

"Commander." The man refused to be silenced. "He
speaks with thoughts like those others."

"Yes, as you have said before several times. Well, Dung,
can you read my thoughts now in your twisted head?"

"You are protected, Lord-One," Farree answered with the

truth.

"Just so—protected. But so were the two aboard that ship
and yet they fell into a Thassa trap. However, as you are not
Thassa, we need not take the precaution of silencing you. In
fact it is better not. Seek your friends—your masters—whatever
those witch people are to you, and beg for their help. I will
wager that such a call will bring nothing, but one can always
hope, and these Thassa are ridiculously mindful of their
own—even their animals. Now"—he leaned a little farther
across the table—"let us get to the matter of what Dung
knows about his betters. Why did Vorlund and the woman

come here?"

"I do not know." Farree barely got the words out of his
mouth when a heavy-handed blow from Quanhi sent him
forward to come up against the table edge with bruising

force.

"Let me fry a finger from him. Commander. Such a

reminder—"

The man at the table held up a hand which instantly
silenced the other. Farree might not now be able to read
minds but he could feel the emotions heating in this room and
that from Quanhi was a tinge of fear.

"Dung, do you know what these Thassa do with those
they take?" inquired the same low and level voice. "They
change people—men—into animals and animals into men.

Do you wish to find all that is you behind the hide and fleas
of, say, a zinder?"

He spoke of a mound of foul oozelike flesh which fed and
crawled and was an abomination in the eyes of all unfortu-
nate enough to meet it. Parree shivered. Not that he believed
that he—that anyone—would be so treated by those he had
met wearing the name of Thassa, but the picture of the
creature in his mind made him ill.

Apparently his shiver informed them that such a fear did
lie deep in him. But how wrong they were. To be an animal—a
swift, beautiful runner such as Yazz, a mound of strength and
courage like Bojor—to him who was Dung—what could be a
more welcome change?

"I see you understand me. Did you not know that they
would not keep such an abomination as you with them? You
would find yourself furred or feathered or caged soon enough.
Now, let us ask again: Why did Vorlund and the woman
come here? The Thassa have no ships, and that one which
brought you is too small to carry many. But only a few
recruits and they could cause us a problem—a small problem.
Did they ever mention the planet Sehkmet to you, humpback?"

Farree considered quickly. He could well pretend that the
fear of the animal transformation governed any answer. And
what did he have, in truth, to say? He was not sure why they
had come to Yiktor—save that the Lady Maelen was moved
by a pressing desire to set down here when the three-ringed
moon swung in the sky and that that had something to do
with her powers. He was having to think faster than he had
ever been pressed to do before, weighing one fact against a
supposition and a guess against a fact.

"They said only that there had been a great find there and
that they had something to do with it. It was a matter in the
past which they spoke little of."

"A matter of the past reaching well into the future—which
is now. Yes, something was found on Sehkmet, and they had




116

Andre Norton

a hand in it—those two." Though there was no change in the
Commander's set expression of half boredom and flagging
interest, still there was a note in his voice which suggested
that he might not be broadcasting fear now but rather anger.

"You read minds, I am told." He leaned forward a frac-
tion to look down into Parree's face only inches above the
top of the table. "Therefore you could know what they did
not say as well as what they said. Now what of that?"

The hunchback shook his head. "Lord-One, those can cut
off their thought by will even as you are shielded. I could
read only what they willed me to—the small things that they

thought it needful for me to know."

For a very long moment the other simply observed him.
The dark eyes were expressionless and there seemed to be no
surface life in them. It was as if the Guild leader could

shutter them at will.

"That could almost be the truth. Dung. Only I cannot be
sure, can I? We shall do some probing when Isfahan gets
here with the reader. There is nothing human which can hide
a thought from that. So you will share our hospitality for a
time. If you wish to bespeak your friends—"

Farree had already made a decision, the best he could

summon in the here and now.

"Lord-One, when that summoned"—he pointed at the
box the fat man still so jealousy guarded—"did I not come?
They did not, but saved themselves by their own ways.
Therefore why should I believe that they care now what

happens to such as me?"

"The truth again. The Thassa do not fight, nor war even
when they are attacked, but always withdraw. They will be in
no haste to rescue one who is as you—a misshapen thing out
from the slime, which they might have taken merely for an

experiment."

Perhaps that was the truth. Now that he was not near the

Lady Maelen or the Lord-One Krip, how could he be sure

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR               117

that it was not? He need only look down at what he could see
of himself and think a bitter truth or two. On Grant's World
he had had some value. What was he here but some refuse
swept up during their escape—of less worth than Yazz or
Bojor?

"I see that I have given you something to think about.
Consider it carefully. Return him into keeping."

Return him to the tower room they did, though they shoved
into his hands a roll of nearly stone-hard ration crisp and a
canteen of water. He ate slowly, chewing at the hard stuff
with caution lest he break a tooth. It would have been easier
to put some drug in that scant ration of water than in the roll
of hardened nutrient. There could be no sleep gas here, but
neither had they rebound him. It might be well that they
thought him so safely caged that they need take no such
precautions anymore.

He could not put his back against the wall; his hump was
still tender. Now he sat cross-legged in a comer of the room
farthest from the door and tried to think.

What he had gained when Lord-One Krip had told him of
the past and other hints garnered along the way—even what
his present captors had said—all linked together. There had
been a find—doubtless a big Forerunner one (such could
make the finder wealthy beyond dreams) on a world named
Sehkmet. The Guild had been busied with looting it when in
some way Krip Vorlund and the Lady Maelen had spoiled
their action. Now the Guild (and he did not doubt that the
Commander here was truly a Guild Veep of some stand-
ing) had a double reason for wanting to lay hands on the two
Thassa again: once for retribution and once to leam if there
were more such finds to be uncovered.

Nor did he doubt that the Guild controlled that which
would win their desires—first from him and then from the
Thassa. It was a well-known fact that the Guild was ever on
the search for new weapons—or old ones of lost and forgot-

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Andr6 Norton

ten races—which could be used with effect. This one which
had brought him into their hands was surely such. Yet Lord-
One Krip had been able to withstand its demanding call.

Thankfully there was little they could get out of him. He
was very glad that he had not been deep in any plans the
Thassa might have made. Certainly he could fight and he
would, testing his will to the uttermost. But in the end they
would wring him dry as one wrings a washing rag. That they
could and would use him as trap bait—that he also supposed
to be the truth. But he had no idea that any Thassa would
venture into the heart of enemy territory to have him out.
They had treated him well, near as if he were standing tall
and fully human. But . . .

He slowly turned his large head from side to side. Put that
shadow of hope out of mind. He had no chance of being
plucked out of the hands of the Guild. It was all he could do
to fight down the waves of dark fear that rolled over him
until he was breathing in small throat-hurting gasps and the
sweat rolled down his cheeks like tears.

There was no weapon. He had no Toggor this time to even
give him a hazy picture of what lay outside. His hands, thin
and long as they were, were only collections of brittle bones
that could be easily snapped by a single kick or blow. And
they had mentioned laser bums . . .

Farree's head fell forward until it rested on his drawn-up
knees. He wound his arms about his legs until he was near a
ball of distorted flesh and bone open to any attack which
might come. But his mind . . . ? Feeling very open to evil he
sent forth a questioning tendril of thought.

Time and time again that came against the blankness which
he knew marked a shielded man. There was no chance at all
of contacting any of them. Then he found a spark of thought—
not coherent but rather all emotion, and that emotion was
mainly hunger underlaid with wary fear.

An animal of some sort, perhaps the same type of vermin

as might be drawn to an inhabited building in the Limits. It
was a very limited mind, but it was not shielded. He saw so
little by its aid—only a dark run which he guessed was within
the walls. But he rode with it, beginning by very slow
sendings to build up the sensation of hunger which should
bring the creature he had netted out into the open.

Hunger—the kind of hunger he himself had known only
too often in the past. It was easy to think hunger—impress it
on the hurrying creature in the wall. There was thin light in
the haze of the run; the hunter must be approaching some exit
to the outside. Hunger! With the same pressure he had used
with Toggor he fed that need—hunger!

The creature was out of the wall into full light. But the
picture was so hazy he could not be sure just where it
was—within one of the buildings or clear in the open.
Hunger—food—feed! He bore down upon that order which
the minute brain of the hunter could hold.

There was a sudden leap which caught Farree by surprise.
And now—food—he could pick up every nuance of that
feeding, the tearing, the gulping—then—

There was a sudden sense of spinning, of falling, and at the
end—Farree withdrew touch in a hurry. That creature he had
"ridden" was nearly dead. He filled his lungs deeply, clasped
his hands upon his arms with a nail-cutting grip. Almost he
had gone into death! He could only believe that the forager
had been caught and killed. Yet—insofar as he was success-
ful—there was or had been one mind within these walls
which had not been shielded. He had not only found it but
made use of it after a fashion. Where there was one there
might be more.

Also—and this was something new he had gained—he had
not had to focus on a clear mental picture in order to make
contact, as he always had or thought he had had to do with
Toggor. Now, his eyes closed, his body still in that tense
ball, he began another search.




FLIGHT IN YlKTOR               121

Andre Norton

120

From the single window in the wall so far above his head
there was framed the sky. What life, other than Guild men in
flitters, rode that sky? Awkwardly at first and with little
success he thought of sky, and vaguely of a winged creature
which rode the winds there. He knew little or nothing of
birds. Their like did not abound in the Limits, save a few
lice-covered eaters of carrion haunting some of the darker
ways.

There was something about the—

A trace of thought! Farree poured all his strength into
touching that, wrapping about it, finding its source. This was
an air dweller, a flyer—and again it was hunger and the lust
for a hunt that moved the unknown. He strove to see, but the
difference in their sight organs was too much or—

It was as if someone had pressed a button. He could see:

the earth spread below him like a great floor. The buildings
on the knoll were a gray-black stain with flickers of light here
and there. He could—

"Who?"

The hunger and the desire to hunt had been cut off as
sharply as the change in vision had come to him. There
was—another!

"Thassa?" He thought that.

"Thassa." There was no mistaking the sharp assent which
came to his single-word question. "Who?"

Farree strove to mind picture himself in all his misshapen-
ness. He could not be sure if the other were to follow him as
he had followed the trace of the flying thing.

"Here!" That was no bird thought; rather it spoke in his
own mind even as he strove to contact it a second time.

"No!" He had respect for the Guild. Mind shielded they
might be, but in dealing with the Thassa they might also have
alarms that could betray such an entrance as much as if an
enemy of his captors rode into the gate.

"Not so." The answer came so firm and loud that Farree

uncoiled and looked sharply at the door, almost sure that had
been uttered aloud rather than by mind speech. "You are—"

There came no other word for a long breath or two. Then
with the same clear sharpness that mind voice said: "We are
on a level not well known—not known." There seemed to be
almost an aura of surprise in that. "They have their safe-
guards, but those are for minds such as theirs. They will not
know. What has happened?"

"Thassa you are," Parree thought back slowly. There was
no mistaking the kinship of this voice to the one which had
come to them earlier in the ship. "Why?"

"Why? Because you are open to us and all else is closed
save vermin of the walls and that which flies. Who are these
and what is their purpose?"

He was sure now that this was one of the four who had
stood in judgment over Maelen at the gathering. Perhaps the
one who had sealed his ears to that intolerable dirge that the
people had sung back in the audience chamber.

Though he would have wished the Lady Maelen that was
his own wish—though the Thassa meant hardly more to him
than a name, yet what was threatened touched those he knew.
He ordered his thoughts quickly and strove to relive in his
mind that meeting with the Commander.

"So." The mind voice had but that comment. "And they
think to perhaps use you as bait in some trap?"

"Which will not work," he answered quickly. "What am
I that any should venture for me here? But they bring other
machines—''

"Machines!" The other voice made that sound like an
oath. "Already they have profaned the Old Place with their
flyers, and now they would seek to use other things. But
have hope yourself, little one. I say this and it is never a
thing lightly promised, though you do not know us well
enough to understand that. The Song has been sung in your
hearing. Now you are under the wands of the Singers and




122

FLIGHT IN YlKTOR

Andre Norton

123

what comes to you also touches us. You are not forgotten.
Think you on that and be steady as you have been!"

Abruptly, as with the flying thing, the voice was gone, and
he had a strange sensation as if in some manner it had drawn
that which was the inner part of him a short way after it. But
no, that was no escape. He was still crouched here—Dung of
the Limits. He could not see that there was any hope of
escape. Were he on his home world, a number of things
would come to mind; here was nothing.

He wondered over that promise, if promise it had been.
From Maelen, he might have believed in it and taken heart
again. But from one he did not know—the many sorrows of
the past made him doubt. They might wish to help him, he
allowed that. But that they could do anything he did not

believe.
Thus it was his own fight. He thought of that creature that

had run in the walls—if there were many of them and if they
could all be aroused to attack some food supply. What might
he gain from such a skirmish? He had no idea but he filed
that possibility away. There was at least one flying thing he
had touched—though it might be wholly under the control of
the Thassa and might not be within reach again. If only he

had Bojor!

Though even if he could summon that giant to him he
doubted that he would. A laser would bring the bartle quick
and painful death and avail him nothing. Once more he rolled
himself into a ball and tried to shut out the thoughts from his

mind to sleep.

At first he thought that sleep was impossible. His mind
kept repeating that interview with the Commander and his
helplessness as a prisoner. But many times before he had
carried fears and torments into sleep, and this time it was also

in the past. This was as clear as a mind picture and very
vivid, so that he saw it all sharply and knew also that this
was no dream but a fragment of sleep-unlocked memory of a
time which seemed to him utterly far in the past.

He was crouched upon a bundle of dirty carpets watching
two men. One of them, wearing a crumpled and much stained
spacer's coverall, was—

"Lanti." The other man spoke the name even as it had
come to the dreaming Farree's mind and reached across the
stained table to catch a fistful of Lanti's shirt at the neck to
jerk up the head which rolled loosely on the man's shoulders.

Lanti's mouth was slack with a drool of spittle from one
comer, and his eyes turned up in his head. He breathed
noisily. The one who held him struck a sharp slap on each
side of the face.

"You blasted fool—answer me! Where did you planet
then?"

But the man who was Lanti only puffed his lips and then
snored. With a grunt of obscenities, the other let go of him
and allowed Lanti's head to fall forward onto the table. He
pounded a fist on that dirty board before him and then
reached within his own jerkin and pulled out a piece of cloth.
From its wrapping he shook out a scrap of something which
glittered and welcomed the light in the place.

Seeing that, the dream Farree made a small movement
forward and the man was instantly alert, turning to look at
him. Such was the expression of demand upon his hairy face
that the very small Farree gave a tiny whimpering cry and
waited helplessly for a blow to follow.

so.

However, he dreamed—not one of those broken and dis-
torted series of pictures that had been his uneasy nightmares




10.

1 he man in one lumbering movement came to stand over
him, scowling down at the small figure. He still held that
glittering scrap between two fingers but Farree did not look at
it.

"Dung." The big man slapped his face, even as he had
done to Lanti, rocking him over so he lay nearly facedown on
the filthy carpets. "What do you know about this? He has
dragged you about with him so you must have some value. Is
it that you know?"

He could sense the cruelty rising in the other. In one of
those huge hands his brittle bones would snap easily; he
could be turned into dead rubbish to be flung into the street.

"Far—" Almost he said the name which he must not.
Lanti would beat him again if he did. If this bravo did not
slay him first. "I—I know nothing, Lord-One." His voice
was a harsh croak hardly above a whisper.

The second blow fell, only this bully mistook his strength
and sent Farree speedily into unconsciousness. When he
awoke once more he was sore, so stiff and sore that the
slightest movement was a torment.

125

126

Andre Norton

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR

127

There was the gray light of morning around, but Lanti still
sprawled across the table, his face turned away. Of the other
man there was no sign. For several long moments, while
feeling came back to his legs and arms, Farree waited.

Outside this hut he could hear the normal sounds of mom-
ing: the groans and oaths of men on their way back to ships,
and the rattle of pots and pans in those eating places which
sold first meals. But the hut inside was utterly silent.

At last Farree moved, humping himself off the carpets,
daring to approach the table. That his first known enemy was
unaware was a gift of fortune he would not throw away. He
stood as tall as he might to survey Lanti. The bloated face
was a grayish color, the pouting lips blue.

Greatly daring, ready to dodge if the man awoke, Farree
put forth one hand to touch the other's dangling hand.

Slept? His flesh was cold. With even greater daring Farree
tried to sense the other. There was nothing there—none of
the faint traces of identity which one carried even into the
deepest of sleeps. Lanti was—dead!

If he were now found here! Farree scuttled to his noisome
carpet nest and brought out a square of cloth he had earlier
garnered. He moved around the table, his small hunched
form not unlike that of one of the sus-spiders, gathering up a
half-gnawed slab of bread, the tail end of a flat eel, not
pausing to eat, though his empty stomach yearned to be
filled, but ready to take the food with him. A weapon?
No—the two sheaths at Lanti's belt were empty. He had
already been plundered of both his force knife and his stun-
ner. Farree's only chance would lie in flight and hiding. He
did not know why the other man had abandoned him—but
perhaps he had discovered Lanti's death and had prudently
put a distance between them. All this end of the Limits knew
that Farree was Lanti's captive and the hunt might be up for
him now.

Clutching to him with one hand the bundle he had made of

the food, he slipped in the dawn light out of the hut and
sought the shadows, speeding at his best hobbling pace away
from the only place he had known on this world.

Before this world, before Lanti, what had there been? He
turned to that over and over again. Always to meet with dark
as if a part of his mind slept endlessly—or was reft from him
by some form of small death. Almost, once, he had remem-
bered—when he had seen that scrap of glittering stuff in the
bully's hand. But even then there had been a barrier.

He had always guessed that he must have come from
off-world, and he could not understand why Lanti had thought
to bring such a miserable creature with him. Farree must
have had some value beyond his own misshapen body. Some
value beyond—

Farree awoke. For a moment or two he was disoriented.
These chill stone walls about him—they were not of the
Limits—then, even as he blinked his eyes, all which had
happened came flooding back. The promise which had been
made that the Thassa would help. How much dared he count
on that?

He tried to school himself to forget it. Those to whom he
was now captive could bring to their aid things he was sure
the Thassa, with all their might of minds, had never thought
of. No, he dared not depend on promises.

By the window so far above him, he thought the sky was
that of morning. And he was very hungry and athirst. To
ask—to beat on that door hoping someone would hear
him— No, better to go without than perhaps make them
remember that they had him to hand.

He had just made this woeful decision when the door did
open and a man in a spacer's clothing, but one he had not
seen before, came in. In his left hand he carried one of those
cans of rations made for emergencies and in his right was a
stunner. He said nothing but gestured with the weapon.
Farree withdrew to the far wall and watched the other set




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FLIGHT IN YIKTOR               129

Andre Norton

down his burden and go out again. There was an audible thud
which he believed signalled a bar on the other side of the
door.

The ration was meant to be both food and drink. It was a
tasteless semiliquid, but he knew that it would strengthen
and revive him, and he devoured it to the last drop. That
done, he turned the container over and over in his hands.
Now, were this only some wild tale such as men told in their
cups he could put the can to good use as a weapon of sorts
and break out of his prison. Only this was no tale, it was the
truth, and he thought the only time he would see beyond that
door was when the Commander had some use for him. At
least they intended to keep him alive; the food proved that.

Bait for a trap?

Slowly, as carefully as if life itself depended upon it
(which might indeed be so), Farree sent out a mind touch,
not aiming it at anything human but keeping to the lowest
level he could reach. Within moments he found another of
the wall-living vermin. The creature was sleeping, and it was
easy enough to take over.

He slipped in and, the thing awoke, felt the hunger Farree
carefully suggested, and whipped into one of the runs in the
thick wall. What he received was hazy, very limited impres-
sions of, first, those tunnels familiar to his guide, and then a
sudden open space in which he could distinguish little, just
enough for him to identify furniture, some part of a room.

The craving for food was tempered by the animal's native
caution. As it made short rushes from one cover to the next,
Farree fought the other's alien field of vision for something
he could identify. There came a sensation of heat and he
believed that his scout was close to a fire, undoubtedly one
intended for cooking. Then the hazy glimpses which he could
not identify fully steadied and remained the same and he
believed that the creature crouched in some sheltered hiding
place.

Fear—a vigorous stab of it, filling all that small alien
mind—a smaller mind than Toggor's and of a different pat-
tern. Toggor! If he had only been able to bring the smux with
him into this captivity! All the mind touch which they had
used in the past would have given him a better chance to
work with this other-world creature whose very form was
unknown to him so that he could not build up a mind picture
that might clarify his probing. He wondered where the smux
was now. And somehow that loosed his hold on the vermin
from the walls and before he knew it he had sent out a
thought tendril which he knew would not be taken. Only—

It was!

Farree was not able to smother the sudden ejaculation of
astonishment as the familiar pattern of the smux was there. It
was very tenuous, to be sure, yet once touched it could not
be mistaken.

The Thassa—or the Lady Maelen or the Lord-One Krip—
must be very close for him to have picked up Toggor's send,
closer than was safe. As he had done with the bird, he
reached forth and strove to use Toggor for a connecting link.

If the Thassa or his late companions were there he could
not make the connection—there was only the smux. Still,
Toggor was growing clearer all the time as if he were ap-
proaching the ruins where the enemy had set up headquarters.

That the smux had made such a journey on his own Farree
could not believe. How ever long that trip in the flitter had
been, surely the Thassa had no comparable form of transpor-
tation which would bring Toggor. Still, there was no mistak-
ing the smux's mind and—

It was backed—strengthened—carried—not by any one
mental thrust but by a uniting. Farree had not the training nor
perhaps even the gift to sort out the will and the power that
projected the smux's own small range of thought. Nor could he
reach behind Toggor as he had with the skydweller. Yet there
was a new warmth rising in him. It was plain that Toggor




130

Andre Norton

FUGHT IN YlKTOR

131

was approaching, and that he would have a better ally here
than the native things which he could not picture and so
could not actually possess.

Farree closed down his mental link. He could not help but
believe it might just be possible that those who held him
could somehow sense such communication. Let Toggor get
within the right distance, and he could trace Farree by his
own gift without revealing his presence to those who held
this ruin as their own.

Now it was a matter of waiting. Farree found that impa-
tience was a hard goad to elude. He wanted so much to use
Toggor for eyes, to see what the smux would see, to feel—

He sat as upright as he could, his back awakening into the
same ache as had kept him company for the past few days, as
he strove to get to his feet under that window which was too
high for him to see from. Toggor—Toggor was suddenly
afraid.

He was—he was above ground, with no strong hold on
anything—being whirled through the air in a manner over
which he had no control—and he was crying out to Farree for
help and comfort—to be released.

Had he been picked up by someone of the Guild guard?
No, this severe fear came not from being handled but rather
from being not handled, swung along in an open space where
there were no good clawholds for safety's sake.

In the air? Had he been tossed? No, Farree could not feel
that he was so helpless as he would have been had he been
flung, say, over one of the ruinous walls. In the air, yet not
thrown.

There was a whirling of hazy sight and then—

Above in that single window there was a shadowing. A
bird—or at least a flying thing with feathers—had lighted
on the stone sill. It carried a squirming object fastened to a
cord about its neck and now it dipped its head and that cord
slipped off. Farree was beneath the window, his hands up-

raised, and with a desperate snatch he caught the smux as it
fell toward him.

There was a net about Toggor which Farree swiftly peeled
away. Once free, the smux caught his shirt front and swiftly
made his way to his favorite perch, inside the collar, his stalk
eyes extended to their farthest level for sight.

Farree tried to reach the smux with thought send but all he
received was a breathless, sickening sensation of being swung
through the air. Toggor had not yet recovered from his
journey. But there must have been some overwhelming rea-
son for the smux to have been sent to this prison, and Farree
knew that it might hinge upon a space of time, something to
be done as soon as possible.

There was no way out of here except the window, and the
flying creature, having delivered its burden, was gone.

The hunchback squatted down again in the comer of the
room from which he had best seen the door, and carefully
detached Toggor's hold, lifting the smux on his two palms so
that the eyes swung and arose on level with his own. Once
more he attempted to establish mind contact.

And this time he achieved a hazy impression of the Lady
Maelen. Also something else—that Toggor was rebelling
against some task which had been laid upon him. Exploration
of this place? Perhaps the rough stone outside the window
would provide clawholds either up or down. Farree thought
carefully and then pictured the vermin of the walls which he
had contacted earlier.

Immediately Toggor's attention was caught and riveted
upon that suggestion. As he had routed out his prey back at
the inn in the Limits, so was he ready to try the same here.
But Farree was loath to let the smux go. Though he had
touched minds—or rather scratched minds—with that runner
in the wallways, he had no idea of its size or natural arma-
ment. It might prove too much for the smux.

It was plain at once that the smux did not agree with him.




132 Andre Norton FLIGHT IN YIKTOR 133

A hunter's lust for the game welled up to possess most of
Toggor's mind.

Once more Farree crawled over to stand beneath the win-
dow, but the smux did, not loose his hold on the shirt. It was
plain that he had no thought of taking that way again. Then
how? There were no cracks in the walls of this tower wide 1
enough to take the smux, and the door fitted tightly to the |
floor so that every time it was opened it rasped harshly in
protest.

Just as Farree thought of that, the portal to his cell did
open and once more the guard appeared, but did not venture
any farther than the threshold. Toggor moved with the flash-
ing speed he could show upon occasion and was into the
shirt, well hidden, before the door was wide open.

Though the man held a stunner he had brought no food,
only beckoned to Farree to come to him, and the hunchback
obeyed. He foresaw another interview with the Commander
and perhaps worse to come. Somewhere along their path to
that questioning he must loose the smux. Thus he shambled
slowly, his head bent forward as one who had been broken in
spirit and planned nothing.

The guard waved him on to descend the crumbling stair,
and down this he went. He was only too aware of the
scrambling Toggor was doing in the shirt and hoped with all
his might that his guard would not see the movement.       (

Luckily the inside of this place was dusky enough to be I
full of shadows, which just now were comforting and promis-
ing. He felt the smux thrusting its way into his sleeve and
allowed his arm to dangle, refusing to wince as the clawed
feet dug into his flesh for the other's descent.

They had reached the ground floor, and the guard said in
trader tongue, "Wait, you!"

As if he were weak and tired, Farree leaned back against
the wall, holding the smux-supporting arm straight down. The
claws moved from one hold to another. Farree could only

hope that there was no trace of venom leakage from any of
those sharp tips. Then he felt Toggor loose all contact and
felt a soft plop against his leg in the shadows—the smux was
on the move.

Farree dare not watch that quick scuttle into the greater
dark. His guard was raising his free wrist to his lips and
reporting in code into a disc banded there. A moment later
he waved the hunchback on again and Farree had to go,
leaving Toggor to follow his own desires, not even having
any chance to impress on the smux what was necessary. But
perhaps those who had sent him had already done that.

Out of the door they went. The sunlight was so great a
burst of glare in this parched land that Farree had to shade his
eyes after the murk of the tower room.

"On with you. Dung." The barrel of the stunner struck the
hump hard and Farree had to bite his lips to keep from
screaming. The tenderness of the lump which burdened him
had been growing more with each day. He wondered if that
meant some ill he did not understand. Now he staggered a
step or two before he could control the wave of pain and walk
as best he might in the direction the guard pointed him.

The tower stood alone, not connected with the other ruins
about it. Most of the buildings were roofless, had even lost
half a story to time and wind and storm. Only the one he had
visited before was intact. There were some men lounging by
its door. Five he counted. But there was no way for him to
assess the full number of the enemy sheltering here.

"Here comes the luck piece, Jat!" Two of the lounging
men were playing pitch and toss with black and white count-
ers. He who spoke leaned forward as Farree approached,
holding out a stiff finger.

The hunchback longed to dodge that touch now but knew
deep within him that it would be best to keep hidden the fact
that his back burden was so tender. They might well make a




[

134 Andre Norton FLIGHT IN YlKTOR 135

torturous use of such knowledge. So he suffered the slap of
those fingers stoically and tried not to show any pain.

"Luck for all of us if we need it," one of the onlookers i
commented. "And need it we might."                    j

"Your lips are too loose, Deit," commented Farree's guard.
"Better not let the Veep hear you."

"I signed on for service, not sitting around in rock piles—we
all did."

"We all did," agreed the guard, "and you don't go back
on a sign-up. Not with him in there—" He gestured with an
outstretched thumb at the door just behind him.

"Get on with you!" Once more that punishing jab, but this
time high on his arm, and that was as nothing. Farree went
inside the building. Again he was surprised at the carpeting,
the hangings on the wall, the various bits of a less austere life
which the Veep of this company had carried for his own
comfort.

For the second time there were the two at the table: the
man in uniform and he who was so fat he bulged in sections
out of his chair. He was intent upon a small picture corn; the
Commander was more at ease, smoking a spice stick, the
scented air of which fought with the mustiness of the ancient
room.

Neither of the men paid any attention to the entrance of
Farree. He and his guard stood together back by the wall
until the fat man gave an impatient push to the viewer before
him.

"There is no silencer according to the reading, but this
will not reach into that valley."

"Nor will it ever," commented his companion. "These
Thassa have their own protections—''

The fat man pouted petulantly. "What kind of learning can
defeat a far viewer?" He put thumb and forefinger together
and clicked them against the silent screen.

"An efficient one it would seem." The Commander drew

deeply on the spice stick and then expelled a puff of bluish
smoke. "Is that not so, DUNG!" His voice lost all its calm
laziness and snapped as a leader might snap an order and
expect to be instantly obeyed.

Farree fought to remain steady. He had feared and hated
Russtif but that was nothing to the emotion this man raised in
him. He could feel the threat behind those words as if a whip
had been snapped in his direction and flaked a scrap of skin
from his cheek.

"I do not know what the Thassa can do." He offered the
truth but was afraid that it would not be accepted.

"Yet you have traveled with them, you have gone into
their forbidden valley. And they do not allow that to any they
do not believe is one with them. Or are you so weak and
poor a specimen of living thing that they treat you as they
would one of their 'little ones'—those beasts they gather
about them, changing places with them? Which are you,
Dung, man or beast? Perhaps they have already worked their
will upon you and in truth you might have claws and fangs.
Yet I do not believe that—not yet."

The fat man pushed aside the viewer with one hand and
looked also at Farree.

"Get to the truth," he said sulkily. "Verify him!"

Farree knew what he meant, and he had the greatest need
of holding on to himself, not to shiver and cry out. They
meant to use upon him one of the enforcing machines which
spacers told so many tales about. Within the influence of that
he could hold back nothing that these two wanted. They need
only ask their questions, and the machine would at once
betray and subvert any desire of his to keep information
hidden.

"Very well. It will be illuminating at least. Why do the
Thassa want you, Dung? You are a sorry specimen. But
perhaps for those who deal intimately with animals your
ugliness does not matter. We shall see."




136 Andr6 Norton FLIGHT IN YlKTOR 137

The Veep made a gesture with one hand, and before Farree
could move the guard beside him grabbed a handhold on his
shirt where it hunched across his tender hump, bringing, in
spite of all effort, a murmur at the pain. He was so swung to
the right and pushed down on the seat of a chair which
another of the spacer guards had jerked forward.

One of them held his head cruelly at a backward angle
while another one forced a silvery band well down on his
forehead and into his tangle of black hair. Wires ran from
this up into the space overhead. He could not tilt his head far
enough back to see where they ended. But now he was a
prisoner to a power he feared more and more as his helpless-
ness became so clear.

"What is your name?"

The fat man was the questioner.

"Farree."

"Farree?" There was a slight frown on the Commander's
face as if he were trying to capture a small thread of memory.

"What are you?"

"A hunchback." He made a true answer, trying to see if
he could so limit their knowledge gained from him.

"And what else?" The Commander leaned a little forward
on the table. He pointed his smoke stick straight at Farree as
if he could use it at his wish as a laser to send the other into
smoking refuse.

"Farree." That was also true. He held to the thought that
if he limited any answer to the exact question he might not be
so great a traitor after all.

"You were born in the Limits?"

"I do not know." Again the truth, and they could nor
reach behind that for something he did not know himself.

"A man knows where he is born, unless he is an idiot,"
puffed the fat man. "We do not believe you are an idiot."

"Why do you say you do not know?" The Commander
showed none of the irritation of the other, but he was the

more dangerous of the two and Farree had known that from
the beginning.

"I cannot remember."

"You were wiped?" The Commander no longer stared at
him so intently, but was looking over his head at whatever
there betrayed his speech as true or false.

Wiped—a memory erased for some reason. Was that the
truth which he had not faced during all the seasons in the
Limits?

"I do not know."

"What do you first remember?" The Commander had
back his gentle, ruthless voice.

Because he dared not try any tricks with the truth this time,
Farree spoke of that which had been in his dream—the death
of Lanti and his own escape into the jungle of the Limits.




11.

i(f

L/anti." Again the questioner repeated the name. He
looked to the fat man who was still running his fingers
around the edge of the visa-screen. That other shrugged.

"Who knows of the actions of one man among millions?"

"He had a purpose—"

"Do not we all unless we are being wiped into nothings?
A kidnapping?"

"How could this"—the Commander indicated Farree—"be
supposed to be anything worth the worry or a copper nick in
any market, Sulve? Unless he knows something. This bit of
something which was taken from Lanti—or which at least he
knew about—what was it?"

"1 do not know."

"You do not know!" parroted Sulve in his high voice.
"There seems to be very little that you do know, doesn't
there? Why did Vorlund and the woman take you with
them?"

Why had they? Because he had touched minds with the
smux? But he must keep Toggor out of this if it were
possible.

139

140

Andre Norton

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR

141

"Russtif dealt in wild creatures, they were hunting such,
and they discovered I could mind touch with some of them."

"Thassa reason right enough—perhaps." The Commander
scratched a thumbnail across his chin. "It is known that the
woman once showed trained beasts—and doubtless changed
bodies with them from time to time as she did on Sehkmet."

Sulve's fat hands were suddenly still. "This one?" he
jerked his fat-rolled chin toward Farree.

"No, the inquirer would have recorded that. Did they
promise you a new body, a furred one. Dung?"

"No."

"But you dealt with the animals, that is so? And still you
are human to the eighth—" The Commander's eyes had
traveled from Farree's face to a point hanging above him—
perhaps the indicator of this truth machine.

Human to the eighth point, Farree heard that clearly enough.
Not human to the tenth and full! He looked down at his
claw-thin hands and the greenish skin which covered them.
Was he then no freak of human kind, but something else—
something which was perhaps to all of these as Yazz and
Toggor were to him? He considered that and shivered. Per-
haps he was not so different from Yazz and Bojor as far as
the Thassa were concerned after all.

He tried to straighten a little and the burden on his shoul-
ders flashed a thrill of pain through him. Now the very
question they had asked him became all important: Who WAS

he?

"Why did they return to Yiktor? Was not the woman in

exile?" Sulve took up the questioning.

"I do not know." The truth, always the truth. The Lord-
One Krip had told him, but he had not yet heard it from the

Lady herself.

Both of the men were staring at the point above his head
now and a slight frown had returned to the Commander's
face.

"What said they of Sehkmet then?" he asked abruptly.

"That they had helped to find a place of the Forerunners—a
great treasure—and there were Guild men there who were
defeated."

"Nothing more?"

"Nothing." Farree made quick reply.

"Ah." The Commander picked up a tube lying on the
table before him, setting aside the smoke stick. He pointed it
at Farree and the hunchback gave a cry he could not smother
as a pain like a flow of skin-burning acid struck him full on.

"What said they of Sehkmet and this time the truth—"

"Only that the Lady Maelen is now wearing a body found
there—that she defeated something strange and not of flesh
and blood to claim it." Farree could not see that that was of
any importance, but it was the rest of the truth about the
past—something which these two might well know and so be
able to check his word.

"You see, you can remember when you are prodded," the
Commander commented. "Play no more games with me. Did
this Maelen and Vorlund return here to gather a force to
search elsewhere, hoping or knowing that such luck would
continue?''

"I do not know. There were three rings and power—"

"We all know of the blathering about the three rings,
Dung. And the Thassa have their own power. But this Maelen
possesses something else, does she not?"

He was turning that rod of torment around in his fingers,
playing with it as he divided his glances between Farree and
what was overhead.

"I do not know." Farree tried to brace himself for another
blast of that body-shaking pain. The frown was plainer on the
Commander's face.

"What you know, it seems, is very little if at all what is
needed. Let us take up the matter of Lanti."

For a moment it looked as if Sulve was going to protest,




142 Andre Norton

but if he was not in accord with his partner he did not voice
any objection.

"Who was Lanti?"

Once more Farree told the story of his first memory—of
the spacer who had died over a spilled drink and given him
freedom of a sort.

The Commander stubbed out his smoke stick. "In other
words. Dung, you know little or nothing which is of service
to us. Why should we keep you alive?"

Farree made no attempt to answer that. He had in him still
that core of belief which had not let him whine in the Limits
and which, even in spite of the pain, kept him from crying
out here. Human to the eight point only was he? Then he
would prove that his stock, whatever it might be, had some
rags of courage.

Sulve tapped those rolls of fat which were his fingers on
the edge of the viewer. "He is not worth two copper units—
not even one of inguaw wood."

"Perhaps not in himself. But as bait—yes, as bait. They
have been sending over those flying eyes of theirs. There
may be some merit in keeping him a while longer."

He clicked his fingers, and the same guard who had forced
the head circlet on Farree came to yank it off, his hair pulled
painfully in the process.

"The tower again," the Commander ordered. "And the
viewer for you, Sulve. If they come ahunting this misshapen
blotch, we can at least know it once when they are beyond
that impenetrable wall of theirs. They will not remain there
forever,"

"Time—" began the fat man.

"Time governs itself. We cannot thrust it forward nor
draw it back. They depend upon the third ring of that moon
of theirs. It may be only superstition, but I am inclined to
believe that it is more than that as far as the Thassa are

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR               143

concerned. Remember, they were an old stock before the first
lordling arose here to take land for himself."

"Worn out—"

"No!" The Commander shook his head firmly. "Do not
make the mistake of the untraveled, Sulve; you should know
better. Because a people does not huddle in cities, is not
tempted by trade goods, it need not be primitive. I have
heard much of the Thassa—and I do not believe that they are
in decline, but rather have passed into a new way of life by
their own virile choice."

A hard grip on Farree's arm dragged him near off his feet
so he had to scurry to keep up as he was led from the room
and across the broken pavement in the courtyard. They had
learned nothing from him about the Thassa, and what good
his memory of Lanti might serve he did not know. He dared
not try a cast for Toggor—Sulve might be able to pick that
up. Farree had heard many tales of the superior equipment the
Guild was supposed to use. And what good would the smux
do free in this place when the hunchback could not communi-
cate with him?

He was soon back in that room at the top of the tower,
flung into a corner and the door slammed against him, trying
still to keep his mind clear of any thought of Toggor. That
the small creature could unbar the door was impossible and
there was no willing bartle to be summoned this time.

Once more he hunkered down, his arms around his knees,
and allowed himself to think—not of the Thassa or the
Lord-One Krip or the Lady Maelen—but rather of his vivid
dream the night before and of Lanti and of who or what he
himself might be.

Points on the human-man-alien scale had been decided
long ago. There were creatures near the alien end of that
scale who possessed attributes that even a higher "man"
could not understand. Thus—

Eight points—and what did those points consist of? Some-

144 Andre Norton

what for his body form: he had two legs, two arms, a head,
and a humanoid body. He could be a crippled "man" as well
as an alien. His skin was greenish in tint, but that was
nothing, for the Thassa were white of skin and hair, and
these two who had just questioned him were space-browned
and had dark hair. He had seen "men" with two pairs of
arms, with the scaled skin of the Zacanthans and their lizardlike
neck frills, with the soft fur pelts of the Salarki and their
feline features. All came and went through space and no one
remarked at their differences.

But in all his seasons in the Limits he had never seen one
so bowed of body as himself. Why had Lanti had him? He
was sure he had come from off-world with that one and that
he had had some importance in Lanti's plans before the
spacer became so soaked in var juice that his mind was not
far from a mush. Therefore, if Farree had had importance
once—

And he had revealed that to the Guild!

Farree sat up, murmured at the pain of his back. But that
was not harsh enough to drive out of him the thought that he
had indeed revealed much to his interrogators. Not perhaps
the information which they had sought, but concerning him-
self. The Guild was noted for the thoroughness of any hunt
which might claim a profit. What had Lanti stumbled on
which had produced that incandescent rag of stuff which his
questioner had also shown to Farree?

That a report of all he had said would be referenced to the
Veep in charge of this sector he was sure. Then maybe they
would come for him again. They might have a way of
breaking a mind seal—though that could also mean his death.
What had he done, save make the truth perhaps more danger-
ous than he imagined?

Never had he felt, even in the worst times in the Limits, so
helpless. Then he had had some chance at mobility, been
able to run, to hide. Now he was trapped, and even though

FLIGHT IN YlKTOR               145

Toggor had come to him through the aid of the Thassa, that
meant little or nothing. Dared he try to touch minds now with
the smux, or did the Commander and Sulve have a blanket
over this place which would pick up any telepathic activity?
Since they were all shielded against that themselves, it would
seem that they were prepared to face such.

They could be reading him now as one would read some
message in a viewer, using a machine which he himself could
not detect. If so, they would expect—what?

Thassa first surely. Since they had reft him away from
those mind controllers, they would believe that he would try
to reach his late companions for aid. So—not Toggor! Rather
the Thassa in particular—build up a series of thoughts about
some imaginary feat being planned by those under their
three-ringed moon!

He had never tried such a thing before—that of false
thinking, of imagining that which was not so in such a way
that it could be taken for the truth. If it were possible about
the Thassa, why, so it could be with Lanti.

First, the Thassa. Yes. Some order to his thinking. Slowly
and tentatively he began to build up a mind picture of Lady
Maelen—of her commanding a body of beasts—and into that
he pushed all he knew of beasts, not only of Bojor who had
served them so well on board the ship but also others—some
such as he had seen in Russtif's cages and some which were
entirely imaginary but as monstrous as he could make them.
He thought of the Lady taking council with both Thassa and
the beasts.

So—Maelen was taking council with her furred and
feathered—and scaled—troops. They would come with the
night—surely with the night. He had been squatting with
eyes closed and putting all his effort into that mental picture
of what he was supposed to expect. But a sound cut through
his absorption, and he looked up to see a waving claw reach
within the window above and hook onto the inner stone.

146

Andre Norton

FLIGHT IN YlKTOR

147

Fiercely he strove to keep all thought of Toggor away—of
the Toggor that was—but suppose that Toggor was twenty, a
hundred times his present size; such with huge envisioned
claws would make an opponent worth reckoning with. Thus
Toggor might be used to menace this whole Guild operation—
as long as the subterfuge remained unbroken.

Now he opened his mind to Toggor and the usual hazy
in-and-out messages passed between them. The smux had
explored the lower reaches of the tower as well as what lay
above: a flat roof surrounded by a parapet, which had seemed
gigantic to Toggor but which Farree thought might be per-
haps only as high as a man's waist. If he had some way of
reaching the window, of climbing aloft, he might find him-
self a hiding place which would defeat them all—if he could
sink his thoughts into nothingness. But there was the distance
between him and that window. Could he only defeat that, he
was certain he could squeeze his body, in spite of the hump,
through.

Thinking carefully of a smux as large as Bojor on the
march to rescue him, Farree arose to run his thin fingers
across the surface of the wall. There were no holds between
the old stones. In this part of the ruins there was nothing that
he might climb to raise him to that door on the outer world.

He flexed his hands vainly and stared upward, defeated.
The door, barred and probably guarded, was the only way
out of here. He wheeled to face that and projected a picture
of the giant smux without, ready to break him free even as
the bartle had dealt with such a problem on the ship.

Toggor leaped from the wall to Farree's shoulder, bringing
an answering pain from his tender hump. The eyestalks of the
smux were all extended and he was staring at the door as if
expecting something from that direction.

There was! Farree heard the grate of the bar being drawn.
Then he moved. Gathering Toggor in both hands, he tossed
the smux through the air, and he landed, even as Farree had

planned, on the niched stone which formed the top of the
door opening.

The smux reversed himself quickly and hung by two claws
at the very edge of that shallow shelf, eyestalks retracted,
ready to drop. Farree hunkered down again like one without
hope, but he twisted his head around so he could see the
smux in action. There was already a greenish bead forming
on the foremost claw; the venom was coming.

A man slammed into the room, weapon in hand, and
swung that toward Farree just as Toggor loosed his hold on
the stone above and leaped for the back of the guard. There
was a flash of claws at the man's throat, almost too fast for
Farree to catch.

With a sharp cry only half uttered, the man staggered,
dropped his stunner to reach for his neck with both hands as
he wove back and forth on his feet, his face a grimace of pain
and fear. It was Farree's turn to jump, and he caught up the
stunner as the guard staggered on past, to bring up against the
far wall and fall to his knees, his hand still clutching at the
back of his neck. Toggor was already off that struggling
body. Farree swung the stunner around and pressed the but-
ton. The writhing man straightened with another muffled cry
and lay still, while Farree stumbled out of the door, the smux
clinging to him, and slammed that shut, thick and heavy
though it was.

He thrust the stunner through his belt and reached down
for the bar which was almost too much for him to manage.
However, at this time he could have accomplished miracles
he was sure, as he thrust it home in the slots awaiting it.

Now—

He crouched at the head of the stair looking down. With-
out knowing how many Guild men were here and where they
were stationed, to descend that stair, even armed, was more
than he dare try. Down? If there only was a way up!




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A dim picture cut into his mind: a section of vaguely
outlined wall and on it—

Farree swung around. The smux had left him, was at the
foot of that stretch of wall, reaching with its claws for
something. Spikes—there were spikes in the wall itself. Not
stairs but surely a way to mount the wall. As shadowed as
that was Farree thought he could sight the outline of an
opening, closed by a trapdoor, perhaps, but if barred it could
only be from this side.

The smux was already halfway up the wall, swinging from
one clawhold to the next. Farree set about following. He
tested each of the rust-covered holds before he put his weight
upon it, and, though the rust flaked off on his hands, there
was enough solid metal within to support his weight.

Then he was clinging with one hand and both feet as he set
his palm against the closed trapdoor in a push. The old wood
resisted. Farree, gritting his teeth, tried a second time and
felt a fraction of give. That was enough to encourage him.
Now he held on with his hands, arching his body so that it
pressed against the door. His hump was instantly aflame with
pain, but he refused to slack his attack, and at last the barrier
lifted enough for him to get one arm and shoulder through the
slit. It took but a moment or two then for him to crawl
forward and lie in the open air, the srtux pulling gently at the
long locks of his hair and uttering cheeping noises. His back
was bound by a band of agony so that he had to use every
fraction of determination to move again and allow the door
to fall into place behind him. The top of the tower was
covered by a mass of brush and dried grass, and he saw huge
bird droppings. It was a nest which might have been well
used for more than one season. There were bones too, cracked
and splintered, some quite large, which made him wonder
about the size of the nest builders if they used such animals
as their prey.

A skull rolled under his hand as he got unsteadily to his

feet and hoisted himself a little against the parapet to peer
down at the main body of the ruins. Below the outer wall
were two flitters, doubtless the air transport for those in
residence here. He saw two men making their way toward the
still-roofed building where he had been taken for interviews.
But, for the rest, there was nothing to show that the ruins
were at all occupied.

It was a dull day with no direct sunlight, yet he could sight
a shadow to the east which suggested that there lay the hills
and cliffs the Thassa claimed as their ancient territory. Dry
clumps of grass, with here and there a wind-twisted bush,
were gray instead of green, and there were a number of
outcrops of rock, some large and standing as if to suggest the
ruin he was in had had much older neighbors of which only a
few wind-chiseled remnants remained.

Temporarily he was safe, but lacking food and water he
could not remain where he was indefinitely. Nor could he
expect any help—in spite of all his brave imagining of an
hour earlier. Toggor scuttled back and forth through the
noisome remains of the big nest, the long-dead fronds and
branches cracking under his weight, small as that was. Farree
caught a flash among the fronds which gleamed even under
the dead gray of the sky and pulled out a knife with a
stone-set hilt. His find was still in a scabbard—rusted there,
perhaps, through long exposure to the weather. He worked at
it determinedly until he could draw it, and to his great
surprise found the blade dull but still only speckled here and
there by corrosion.

This lucky find sent him kicking aside the rest of the mess
and searching through what had sunk to the bottom of the
nest. There were more bones: three skulls which suggested
they had once served animals perhaps the size of Yazz. But
there were other things, too: a time-tattered strip of skin on
which were set medallions centered with blacked metal and
dust-layered stones—perhaps once a belt. There was a goblet




150 Andre Norton FLIGHT IN YIKTOR 151

of tarnished metal which he thought might be silver. A part
of a sword, only the hilt intact, the blade a lace of erosion.
He had heard of birds who sought bright things and laid them
in their nests, and this seemed to be such a hoard. Among the
objects also was a box wedged shut past his opening until he
hammered at it with the sword hilt and pried with the point of
the knife.

It came open at last, but what Farree found himself looking
at was a heaping of thick black powder. If that were the
remains of some treasure he could give no name to what it
had once been, and threw the box aside in disgust. Some of
the powder curled up in a puff to sprinkle over the matted
stuff of the nest which he had clawed away in his hunt.

There was an odd scent in the air, and then a tendril of
smoke arose from one of the besprinkled branches. A touch
of flame followed. Farree jumped back, realizing that the fire
would include all of the nest stuff unless he moved quickly.
He pushed the branches away as fast as he could from the
door which led downwards, knowing that if the worst fol-
lowed he could retreat. Probably right into the hands of his
captors, since surely this mounting fire on the roof of the
tower would be sighted by someone!

The stuff was tinder dry and crackled from branch to
branch with the running of flame. Where the powder had
fallen from the box there were larger bursts of glare—not red
or yellow, but violently green—and from this thick coils of
greenish smoke began to arise.

Farree squatted by the trapdoor. If he could stand the re-
flected heat from the burning nest he would be safer there
than down in the tower itself. He had pulled aside a number
of dried bones while rooting in the mass and these he piled
now beside him, breaking them into brittle slivers and short,
pointed pieces. If he did not have to withdraw he had ammu-
nition of sorts to pin the hands of those reaching for him, just
as he had still the stunner he had taken from the guard.

Thinking of that brief encounter he summoned Toggor to
him and induced the smux to run envenomed claws along the
points of his longer weapons, poisoning them as an added
weapon against any storming his place of refuge.

The heat of the fire was hard to face. Toggor crawled
within the breast of Farree's shirt and clung as if this youth's
body, hunched together as it now was, plus the distance of
the fire, would keep him from the shriveling scorch of the
flames.

That green smoke still shot skyward, though a breeze at a
higher level caught it and fashioned it into what looked like a
giant finger pointing toward the distant cliff land. If the
Thassa did have any sentries or scouts, they must be wonder-
ing at what activity now topped the ruins.

There was shouting from below. Farree fingered the stun-
ner and pulled closer to hand his collection of poisoned darts.
He now heard the pounding of feet on the stair within. The
magnetic-soled shoes of a spacer were not easy to mistake.
He could not count how many were in that storming party.
Could they even know that he was responsible? He had felt
no mind touch since he had been here aloft and now, in
another vain attempt to make a stand, he pictured Thassa—
Thassa and giant beasts on the march—even winged monsters
here aloft.




12.

1 he green smoke did not dissipate as a breeze swept over
his tower perch. Instead it appeared to grow thicker, though
it still slanted toward the distant cliffs. There were louder
sounds from below. Those who garrisoned this outpost were
gathering. He could see men running across the courtyard
toward the tower. Even Sulve appeared in the doorway of
the headquarters, his head turned up from his beefy shoulders
to watch the phenomenon above.

Farree waited beside the trapdoor. He even dared for a
moment to loose mind control, but all he encountered was a
low emission from Toggor and those holes in space which
marked the brain-shielded Guild men.

Now there was a puff like a small explosion, and Farree
saw that the fire had reached the box and was feeding greed-
ily on what was therein. Surely if any of the Thassa were on
sentry duty they could sight this pillar of rolling puffs. Though
what good that would do him, Farree had no notion.

Beside him the trapdoor heaved. He caught up one of the
envenomed splinters of bone and readied himself. The door
swung up and back from a mighty shove, and the barrel of a

153

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laser appeared in a hand. The one who held it remained as far
out of sight as he could, only, in order to keep his perch on
that ladder of spikes, he had to balance himself with one
outstretched hand against the frame of the door.

Farree struck and his blow went straight. There was a yell
of surprise and pain from below and both laser and hand
disappeared, the latter with the splinter still standing up in
flesh aquiver from the strength the hunchback had summoned
to plant it home.

The brilliant white of a laser beam lanced up into the air
but Farree had already taken refuge behind the upthrust door,
his only shelter. He thrust once more from behind that,
aiming blindly downward. Once more a longer bone spear he
had chosen went home.

Fire from the laser ignited more of the debris of the nest.
But though it glowed it seemed to be quickly extinguished by
the flames of green which were already consuming what was
left of the dried stuff.

Farree put his shoulder to the door and slammed it down.
They could easily bum their way through that, he knew. He
had no way of latching it from this side. So he squatted on its
surface, making himself the only possible lock. The poisoned
bone splinters had hit twice and the one or ones who had
been struck by them would have something to think about.

The fire in the nest was near burnt out, so strong had been
the gust from its first lighting. How long would he have
before they could force the door that even now trembled
under him? He knew that someone was pushing at it. Only
the awkward stance that must be held by anyone climbing up
those spikes of the ladder was in his favor.

Toggor crept out of his shirt and crouched on his shoulder.

"Farree?"

His name, not called aloud, but as clearly uttered in his
mind as if it had been shouted. Thassa—not only Thassa but
Lady Maelen herself! He took a deep breath. It sounded as

loud as if she stood before him, but he was sure that she
could not be out on the open land between this perch and the
cliffs—the Guild would keep too close a guard for that.

"Here." He made answer, suddenly reckless enough to do
that clearly, not caring at this moment whether any equip-
ment of the Guild was able to pick up his call. Then he
added, since his place of refuge was already known: "On the
tower."

"Who holds?"

She was keeping her questions to a minimum of revelation
and he would do the same: "Guild."

Though the fire was fast dying, the smoke showed no sign
of abating. Its green finger reached farther out and out over
the level land beyond the outer wall of the ruin. It was
curiously thick, not diffusing in the air even though he felt a
breeze against his cheek, an upspringing of wind which
should have torn it asunder.

"Where?" That demand was ever clearer.

"On the tower," he answered, once again.

"Stand ready."

Ready for what? he wondered. Surely the Thassa, weapon-
less as he had seen them, could not hope to overrun the ruin
and pluck him forth. But it was the behavior of the smoke
which astounded him.

The reaching finger suddenly curled back upon itself. As it
did, so it thickened, took on an almost solid quality. He felt
as if he could reach out and grasp a tangible handful of it.

Back it came toward the tower. He swallowed. There was
something ominous as well as unnatural about that return. He
had no desire to be caught by the rolling folds of the stuff.
But he could not retreat down the ladder. He still heard a
muffled clamor from below, and he might well meet a laser
head-on if he were to try even opening the door a crack. The
grayish sky overhead had darkened, but the smoke was very
plain against it. When it reached back as far as the outer




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walls of the ruin, the questing tip of that finger—or tongue—
began to settle, seeking the lower stories of the battered
buildings. At least it was not headed toward his own perch;

none of it had sprayed out in his direction.

He dared to get to his knees, still holding in both hands his
bone weapons, not crawling off the door, yet allowing him-
self a wider view of the smoke as it dipped down near to
ground level. The nest had been consumed, and the end of
the smoke before him had become only ragged tails which
arose to follow the body of it, as if they had been summoned
by order.

From, below came shouts, and the pressure on the door
beneath him was gone. He got to his feet, ready to drop his
full weight upon it if the need again arose, and looked down.

The smoke did not touch the ground, but hung above it at
about the height of a man's knees. And it was not dissipat-
ing. Rather it was like some shapeless animal hunting, ready
to engulf anything that moved. He saw Sulve draw back and
slam the door in the faces of two of the guards who cursed
and then ran for the dubious shelter of one of the roofless
buildings. No one ventured forth from the tower.

Now there was a heaving mass covering all the open space
of what had once been the courtyard. A sound brought
Farree's head up—made him look beyond the ruins to the
reaches of the land outside.

There was movement about the flitters which had been
parked there; he thought he saw a body being tossed to one
side, and strained to watch more carefully, though he was
held by the need for staying where he was, making a barrier
of the trapdoor.

Suddenly there was a sound which no one from the Limits
could ever mistake. The flitter was preparing to take to the
air. Farree squatted down once more. He had no idea what
that off-world ship might carry which could scoop him up
prisoner. Transferring his bone splinters to one hand he took

out the knife he had found in the debris, determined to do
what he could to defend himself.

The small craft spiraled upward into the evening sky.
Already the outer of the three moon rings was partly visible.
Farree wished that he had faith in it enough to believe that he
was going to come out of this unscathed. He waited, cold
with more than the rising winds of dusk, winds which made
no impression as yet on the smoke below but which grew
more and more chill and lashing here above.

From the sky the flitter was descending, and then from it
came the unmistakable mind send of the Lord-One Krip.

"Stand ready!"

Farree was sure that this was no trick of the Guild. A
man's voice might easily be imitated but he had never heard
that a thought pattern could be concealed. That was Krip
Vorlund overhead and he—he was to stand ready!

It was not too dark to see now that a rope ladder had fallen
from the belly of the flitter. Farree thrust his bone splinters
and the knife into his belt, settled Toggor with almost rough
haste within his shirt, and waited.

To climb a swinging ladder in the air—his mind flinched
from even imagining such a feat. But this was the way out he
had longed to find that until now there had been no hope of
discovering. The flitter hovered overhead, and he was able to
grasp the ropes in his hands. There was a third, he suddenly
discovered, one equipped with a hook, and he clasped that
into his belt before he started the dizzy ascent into the
evening sky.

"Hold tight!" As he clung desperately to the ladder the
flitter lifted and swung him on, through the air, toward the
outer wall and away from the trapdoor and whoever might try
to reach him now. The ropes cut his hands, so tight was his
grasp, and he dared not look down. Then he heard another
order: "Climb!"

At first Farree thought that he could never loosen his grip,




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never reach for the next hold bobbing above him. Somehow
his body obeyed, while his mind remained frozen by such
fear as he had never known before. Only climb he did.

There was a surge of power from the flitter, and now the
wind tore at him. A brilliant white beam cut through the air
where he had dangled only moments earlier. Someone was
alert, free of the ruins, and aiming a laser.

A hand reached down to him from the opening in the belly
of me flitter, promising safety. He was not even aware he
had climbed far enough for the hand to reach him. But
fingers gripped tightly at the cloth across his hump. The flesh
beneath answered with white-hot flashes of pain, but he was
dragged on up and into the flitter. He looked up into the face
of the Lady Maelen. She reached over his prone body and
pressed a lever which closed the opening as he remained
where he was, too weak with relief to move.

The small craft was shaking, and Farree guessed that it
was being driven to the full extent of its power away from the
ruined keep. Whether they were bound back into the Thassa
country of the high cliffs he could not tell.

For the moment he was content to lie where he was,
breathing heavily. Toggor crawled out of his shirt and squat-
ted on the deck beside his head, all eyestalks erect and turned
toward him as if the smux knew concern.

"We are descending now," the Lady Maelen said in trade
tongue. "We cannot enter the inner places in this off-world

craft."

The inner places? Had it taken so short a time to reach the
heart of the Thassa country? Apparently the swift flight of the
flitter had been even more speedy than he had imagined. For
they were setting down. As they bumped to a halt, which
jarred Parree's body and brought an answering thrill of pain
from his hump, the Lady Maelen moved to open the cockpit
door. But the Lord-One Krip did not rise from the pilot's
seat.

Instead he was leaning over the panel before him, drawing
his stunner. Reversing the weapon and making of it a club,
Lord-One Krip calmly hammered at the dials on the panel of
controls, splintering their protective covering, and then the
dials themselves, until he had bared a network of wiring
which he proceeded to tear loose and twist out of shape.

"It will be a long day—several of them—before this ever
flies again," he commented when he was done. "It is better
that we be on our way."

Once outside, they looked up. Evening was fast becoming
night but the sky was alive with the glory of the third ring,
and Farree saw the Lady Maelen gazing up at it, her hand
raising to gesture in the air as if she truly gathered that light
and brought inward a portion of it clasped between her palm
and fingers.

Before them was the entrance to the place of the hall.
There were heavy ruts in the soil, from the regiment of carts
that had passed that way before them. Lord-One Krip's touch
on his shoulder headed Farree in that direction.

Once more he came into that place where the cliffs them-
selves were honeycombed with the very ancient doorways
and the hand of time lay heavy on the half-arid land. But they
did not go to the hall again, rather made their way to a lesser
opening that was hardly higher than the heads of the two who
escorted Farree. Within the entrance to which there was no
bar or door shone a pale light which might be a portion of the
third ring blazoned proudly across the evening sky.

They were waiting there, the four who had stood on the
dais of the hall, though they were not standing in judgment
now. There was a subtle difference that Farree could sense
without being able to set name to it, but he thought that
whatever difference the Lady Maelen had had with these, the
leaders of her people, had either been resolved or postponed
to handle a more immediate problem.

"Welcome, little one." The voice he knew. It had cut into




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161

his thoughts too many times since this venture on Yiktor had
begun for him to mistake it, or the speaker: the woman who
stood a step before the other three.

"What have you learned that you could awake the Eor-fog?"

"The Eor-fog?" he repeated aloud in the trade tongue. All
at once fatigue hit him hard. He wanted nothing so much
as to curl up in sleep, a sleep without dreams, and remain
unwaking for a long, long time.

The mental picture which flashed into his mind in answer
to that question was of the thick green smoke which had
issued from the powder in the box. He replied speedily with
the truth, that he had found the box and that its contents had
had no meaning for him.

"A nesting place of the grok. But those have been gone
from here for many seasons. Fortune stands at your shoulder,
little one, that such a thing could have happened."

He thought that he could well echo her statement. Looking
back now, he could see that luck which had abided with him
in the time he had been captive to the Guild. Perhaps the old
superstition was the truth and his hump was a mark of
luck—though one he would do without if he could.

"They thought to use me for bait." He brought out his
only explanation for his remaining alive and in good condition.

"Yet the trap sprang on them," the Thassa leader said.

"They have lasers." He would not have her believe that
perhaps they had seen the last of that company in the ruins.
Whatever else the Thassa could mount in the way of offen-
sive weapons, he could not tell.

"They could well have great weapons," Lord-One Krip
spoke across his head in warning. "If they believe that we
control some major find—"

"They may have what they please," the woman returned
shortly. "Thassa control is now sealed to them."

Farree dared then to raise his voice in his own warning.
"They may have patience, too. And can your land"—he

thought of the arid country about—"give sustenance to all
your people indefinitely?"

"Perhaps not. But there are other places to hunt for olden
weapons besides a grok nest, little one."

He thought she was entirely too confident. As if she were
the Commander and her forces set to harry a people who
seemed, as far as he could determine, ready to depend upon
intangibles for defense. Though he remembered how the
flitter had been forced into another flight pattern the first time
it had flown a scouting mission near the Thassa valley.

"You are tired, little one. Rest safe and know that you
sleep within such a setting of sentries as those without have
never met before."

It was a dismissal, and he went willingly enough but
certainly not with a quiet mind. After his venture with the
smoke he could believe that there were unusual weapons
possible but that they might in the end triumph. He had lived
too many years in the Limits under the ever-abiding shadow
of the Guild where the indwellers spoke with awe and dread
of what that organization could do and had done in the past.
He still believed that the Thassa leaders were too confident.

But he went willingly with the Lord-One Krip to another
of the cave rooms and there ate of dried fruit and strips of
something which might be meat but which he believed was
not, drank his fill of a sparkling fluid which was more than
water but not a wine. Then he curled on a pile of mats with
Toggor still beside him and waited for the sleep he craved. It
was late in coming.

The Guild had wanted him for bait, yes. Almost the trap
might have sprung. He realized suddenly that he had never
really believed that the Lady Maelen and the Lord-One Krip
would come searching for him. Perhaps it was a matter of
duty for them, the same feeling of responsibility as he had for
Toggor—that they could not leave him in enemy hands. That
was the only reason he could accept.




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Had he been anything else to the Guild? Though he had
closed his eyes for sleep, what he saw again was out of his
vivid dream: Lanti sprawled across the table and that other
shaking him by the shoulder, drawing back in frustration and
disgust when he realized the former spacer was dead. That
scrap of stuff which the other had held—Farree tried to fasten
his memory on that, sift it for its value.

Only what he saw now in the wink of an eye, the draught
of a breath, was not the filthy hut of the Limits but some-
where else—

It was as if he were aloft again, swinging on the ladder,
only there was no fear in this essay into open space, flight
was something right and brought no fear. He looked down as
if he rode on the back of a bird, not in any flitter, for the free
air was all about him and he knew that he was here by his
will and not because he had no choice.

He was looking down upon a rippling land of brilliant
green: groves of trees whose leaves were clasped lightly
about gems of eye-pleasing color which he knew were flow-
ers or fruit. For the first time Farree could remember, he was
truly alive, feeling no telling weight upon his shoulders, able
to move his head freely. He was straight of body; without
touching his shoulders he knew this. This again must be a
dream, but one he clung to fiercely. If he never awakened
from it, then he was repaid for all the ills of the past.

He descended through the air, lightly, easily, depending
now he knew upon nothing but his own will and body. Grass
rose shoulder high about him and there was the sweet smell

- of—

It was the scent which broke the dream, pulled him back

into the grim reality of his own world. Yet it was a pleasant
scent, one which he knew. He opened his eyes and the Lady
Maelen was kneeling beside him.
There was a small furred creature on her shoulder, bobbing

its small head against her throat. Behind her Yazz stood,
tasseled tail aswing.

"Farree . . . who is Lanti?"

Before he had time to truly align his thoughts, he an-
swered. "I was with him. I think he brought me from another
world to the Limits—me and something else that was worth
more."

"Tell me," she urged.

He felt himself scowling. To have been awakened out of
that dream in order to recall bitter memories was—hurtful.

"How did you know of Lanti?" he demanded.

"I saw him."

Farree hunched his body together as he felt a flow of anger
beginning far inside him. "You were in my dream!" he
accused her. He had met them mind to mind, yes, but he had
never given them the right to monitor him without his knowl-
edge. What more had she read from him that he knew
nothing of? He felt as defenseless as he had in the hands of
the Commander. At least then they had used a machine and
had given him reason to know that he was about to be
invaded.

"You cried out," the Lady Maelen said slowly. "It was a
cry of hurt. I would have given you peace—that is all."

Perhaps she was right and had meant him only good, that
he would again feel at ease.

"No!" There was deep concern in her voice, and she put
out her hand as if she would gentle him as she might an
animal that had been ruthlessly abused.

Only he was no animal! He was as much a man as a
Thassa, even if he only held relationship by human standards
to the eighth point! Perhaps the Thassa themselves, for all
their humanoid appearance, were farther apart from the off-
worlders who used that scale than he knew.

"Please." He was not aware that he had shrunk from her
touch but maybe he had, for her band fell to her knee.




164 Andre Norton

"Please." She spoke the trade speech aloud; perhaps she
knew that to mind touch now was more than he would allow.
"Bad memories can lighten if they are shared."

"I have nothing to share." He pulled up and faced her
almost as if she had been sent by the Commander to win out
of him some last scrap of truth. "You know it all. I was with
Lanti in the Limits—beyond that there is no memory."

"You were erased?" She was studying him so intently that
he longed to be able to enter the wall of the stone chamber to
hide. There was a new alertness in her eyes.

"I do not know. I do not care." He said that with all the
fierce firmness he could summon. He saw that she would
accept it.

"It can be reversed, you know. If you should want—"

"I do not!"

She raised both hands so her fingertips touched her fore-
head in the way of an oddly formal salute.

"Your pardon, Farree. Know that all will respect your
barriers until you give them permission to do otherwise."

"It—is—well . . ." He stumbled a little over that. And
remained sitting until she was gone out of the chamber.
There was a small cluttering noise and he saw that Toggor
was climbing upon his knee. He drew one finger down the
back of the bristly shell which was the outer plating of the
smux. Did Toggor also know resentment at times when
Farree strove to catch his thoughts? What did the animals
which the Lady Maelen loved and companioned with—what
did they think of that companionship? He knew that Yazz and
Bojor welcomed her effusively after they had been separated
for a space—that they perhaps companioned with her by
choice. Perhaps they welcomed the fact that another life form
could communicate with them and that they were not frus-
trated by a lack of touch. He was no trainer nor owner of
animals. Only Toggor.

Now he put out his cupped hands and the smux climbed

PLIGHT IN YlKTOR

165

into the hollow. He raised them so that he could meet him
stalked eye to skull-enclosed one on a level.

"How is it, Toggor?" Tentatively Farree tried the mind
touch. "How is this for you? Do you feel that I am forcing
that on you which you would find freedom from? I am not
Russtif to hold you captive, either body or mind."

He received no thought no matter how hazy, only a feeling
of peace and contentment as the smux rocked a little from
one set of claws to another in his hands.

13.

rarree ate, he drank, he slept deeply and dreamlessly. If
those of the Guild made any foray into the country of the
Thassa, he knew nothing of it. When he at last awoke it was
to see a band of clear and clean moonlight across his short
legs, feel about him an ingathering of spirit. Had it been the
latter which had drawn him out of that deep sleep?

No thoughts touched him directly. Perhaps the Lady Maelen
had set a barrier to stop those, as she had promised that he
would not be asked more than he wished to give. But, even
though none had been sent to arouse him, he was as one
hearing distant and summoning music. For just a moment
there was a troubling deep in his mind as if something stirred
there which might flower if he let it. But instantly that same
barrier which he had striven to raise against the Thassa fell
into place and he was free.

There was a basin of water in a small side crevice of the
cave room and handsful of moss for towels. He shed his
sweat-dank clothing and washed the whole of his crooked
body. His hump was still unduly tender to the touch, it
also itched, as if his pain had abraded the thick, corrugated

167

168 Andre Norton FLIGHT IN YlKTOR 169

skin, and he was careful in his drying as far as he could
reach.

His shirt was so grimed he hated to re-cover his now clean
body with it. But he did not have to. Near the crevice he
found a small pair of breeches in the same pattern as those
the Thassa wore and a shirt, wide across the shoulders, which
gave room for his deformity. A chirping sound broke the
silence of the cave and he saw the smux, throwing a gro-
tesque shadow across the beam of moonlight as he came
toward him, eyestalks erect.

Once more Farree sensed the aura of well-being and con-
tentment which Toggor broadcast as he came. It would seem
that the smux was well pleased with these lodgings, bare as
they were. Farree reached for his belt to draw in the generous
folds of that shirt when sound rang about him.

It was like the deep note of a huge gong, and his body
vibrated with it. The boom did not seem to come from any
one place, rather as if it were truly born of the very air about
him. Three times it sounded, and he found himself moving
out of the cave room as one who had been summoned and
had no will except to obey.

He crossed the end of the valley, avoiding the sleeping
beasts. Above him stretched a sky, which he twisted his
small neck to see the more. There was the full circle of the
third ring, and when one looked at it from here it was no true
moonlight cast apart by some natural process of Sotrath
itself, but rather a rainbow-touched encasement of the lower-
ing moon. His flesh tingled, he felt alive to the last hair on
his overlarge head, to the smallest tip of nail on his claw
hands. It was as if the body he wore drank the radiance of
that light as he would drink, after a long thirst, water from a
clear fresh-flowing well.

The light appeared to draw the remainder of the ache from
his hump, though the itching of his skin under the shirt grew
worse until he longed to draw off the garment and use his

nails on his own skin. In spite of that discomfort, his sense of
well-being was acute.

There were none of the Thassa in sight. But he could hear
again their song, issuing from the hall ahead. Only this time
it was not a tale of loss and of long ages, but rather a cry of
welcome to something which gave life anew.

Almost he expected to be turned back as he drew into the
shadow of the long-eroded doorway. But there were no gate-
keepers nor sentries here. The way was open and he passed
on, drawn by the cadence of that song for which there were
no words he could understand, only the rising melody.

Then he saw that through some ingenious means the light
of the third ring was here also, banding across both the four
Thassa who stood on the dais and the others who had come to
gather below. In the glow their white hair held rainbow
sheen; they were each enshrined in an envelope of light
which made their bodies look almost tenuous, as if they were
now only shadows. No, shadows were of the dark—rather
wisps of iridescence.

He saw a Lady Maelen who was different. Her bright hair
stirred about her as if each lock had a vibrant spirit of its
own. The glow wrapped her round as it did all the others.

Farree halted inside the door and stood watching. Perhaps,
in spite of the drawing he had felt within him, he was not one
of these—perhaps it was better to keep his distance as a
stranger.

The itching on his back grew stronger. He found himself
rising on his toes, which were bare against the ancient stone,
almost as if he were reaching again for some skybome aid
which would swing him out across that company, lift him
even farther into the banded light. He flung his arms wide
and lifted his head as far as he could from his crooked
shoulders so that the moonglow touched his face. It was more
than light now—it was welcoming warmth, like the soft




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PLIGHT IN YIKTOR

171

pressure of a friend's hand sweeping aside the tangled hair on
his forehead.

His feet moved—rocking back and forth. He began to feel
the imprisonment in his misshapen body as a punishment,
something that kept him chained to crookedness and sorrow
when just ahead of him, inches beyond his reach, was all he
had longed for and never thought to have.

The song was dying away—the desire in him died with it.
He stood quiet now, and he could have wept that what had
been promised or offered he had not been able to take. He
was only Dung after all. There was bitterness in that which
came welling up inside him as part of that sensation of
irreparable loss.

There was silence now, and he stepped back under the
very arch of the doorway. What if he had blundered on a
secret thing and they were to find him here? He wanted to
give no offense.

"Welcome."

Clear in his head, as clear as that voice had ever been,
came the single word that Farree knew was to make him free
of that company. He did not know why, but again he was
drawn forward and now he walked slowly down toward the
dais. That which had emitted the glow of the ring was fading;

also, shadows gathered and lengthened. The Thassa no longer
stood each and every one robed in glory.

However, it had not been his presence which had broken
the spell. He knew that as he came hobbling forward. She
who stood behind and above the Lady Maelen was holding
out her wand. As if that had been one of the laser weapons of
the Guild there was a glow at its tip, and he truly thought that
he could trace a dim line of light straight from it centering
upon him.

Welcome he was. There was no chance to misunderstand
the wave of good wishing which arose from all that com-


pany. Then it broke as individuals and couples passed him
heading for the door. Yet he was still held and summoned.

The Lady Maelen and the Lord-One Krip had made no
move to leave. As Farree came level with them they fell in,
one to right, one to left of him, all three facing the four
Elders on the dais. She who had drawn him lifted her wand,
and he felt that drawing vanish. Yet he also knew that he was
not so excused from her presence.

"There is much in you, little one." Her thought speech
was pure and somehow musical as if some lost tone of the
night song still held in it. "Son-am draws you even as it
draws those who are sons and daughters of this earth. Yet
you are of different stock and have yet to come into your
heritage."

Out of all his bewilderment and unhappiness he dared to
ask her then: "Who am I—what am I, Great Lady?"

She shook her head a fraction and there was a twinkling of
the small crystalline gems which headed the pins holding her
mass of hair.

"Who are you? Ask that of yourself, little one—for your
like we have not seen before. What are you? That you must
also learn for yourself."

"I am—Dung!" Again something had seemed just within
his grasp and had eluded him.

"You are what you wish to be. Are you truly what you
have named yourself?" Her mind touch was quiet, like a
soothing hand laid across a child unhappy from a nightmare.

"I am—Farree!" He defied that other part of him which
was sourly bitter.

He saw the jewels glitter again as she gave the smallest of
nods.

"You are even more, as you shall know when the time
comes, little one. We have some of the farseeing, but we are
pledged not to use it for ourselves. We must not be led into
making choices, only face those clearly and alone of mind.




172 Andr6 Norton FLIGHT IN YlKTOR 173

But this I tell you, Farree—the time will come when you
shall truly know what you are and who. And it. will not be an
ill time—but a good!"

Some of the warmth which had been among the song's
notes and had flowed from the great third ring caressed him
softly again. He tried to bow, though with his twisted body it
was an awkward salute.

"For such farseeing as you give me—thanks. Lady."

"One does not give thanks for the truth. But there is
another matter for us now. Come!"

The other three who shared the dais turned as one and
started away, and he fell in behind while Maelen and Lord-
One Krip followed, Farree still between them. So they came
into a side passage of the hall and at last into a room which
was not all austere and comfortless stone but had around two
sides a bench padded with woven lengths. More such hung
across the bare stone of the walls. Again by some trick of the
long-ago builders there was an opening in the roof through
which fed the light of the third ring to give radiance to the
room, for there were crystals or gems set in patterns on the
flooring now flashing rays from one to another. Parree watched
them in wonder, hardly daring to step out upon such a
carpeting, as they winked in subtle patterns almost like the
lights upon the control board of a ship. Yet these were rocks
and gems, and they were far from any off-worlder thing.

The four Elders settled themselves on one bench and mo-
tioned the other three to take that nearer the door. He settled
down there between the Lady Maelen and Lord-One Krip.
Then one of the male Elders pointed with his rod to a portion
of the wall and it opened, coming forth from it, on a tray
transported as if by wings, a tall goblet which glistened with
life in the moonlight.

That was borne to Maelen. She accepted it and drank a
single mouthful; then she passed the cup to Farree and nod-
ded encouragingly. He drank and passed it on to Lord-One

Krip. Once he, too, had accepted and drank, the goblet
turned and was away again.

"It seems that these off-woriders who follow the lower
path are here well housed and intend to stay until they have
accomplished their purpose." He who looked to be the eldest
of the Elders broke the silence first.

"Perhaps it is we who have drawn this trouble upon our
people—" The Lady Maelen spoke in answer. "That we did
on another world in fear for our lives, and more than just our
lives, has sent ripples to Yiktor."

"They were here before," the woman who had spoken to
Farree said. "I know not what they seek, but we have our
own barriers and guards and they have not penetrated those—"

"Save when they sought to draw us forth." Lord-One Krip
spoke sharply. "Those machines were tuned to one persona
pattern, thus only Farree was forced to answer. Somewhere
they had prepared to so cage us."

All four of the Elders inclined their heads in agreement.

"Therefore the quicker we go, the less the threat—" he
continued. But the woman held up a hand in a gesture that
silenced him.

"We are the Thassa and the years lie many and heavy
behind us. Nor are we the less now because we have dis-
carded much which the off-world holds in high regard. We
cannot be hunted by their hounds—"

"Perhaps not, but you can be destroyed. And do not think
that such a thing is beyond the minds of those who try to hold
the gateway of your land. What they cannot take, they remove."

The faces of all four of the Elders were set sternly, and she
who seemed their first speaker slowly shook her head from
side to side.

"Let them try." There was such confidence in her words
that Farree did not know whether to accept them and be
content or whether to wonder at the disbelief of those who




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175-

had never been off-world and did not understand the spread-
ing and iron-handed power of the Guild.

"Their presence here can be reported." It was Lord-One
Krip who offered that. "The Patrol—"

Again her head moved right and then left. "They move
against the Thassa in their own lands. These come brazenly
to do what they will. We are not so far from our sources even
in these days that we cannot defend our own. Do you think
that these would retreat even if the three of you were taken
and laid at their feet?"

Lord-One Krip's mouth set and his shoulders squared as if
he were about to reach for a weapon.

"The tales concerning the Guild are many and black. I
cannot believe that any bargain they made would be honored.
But there is this—time may be against them. This is not yet a
world they control. Their nest in that ruin is the largest
consolidation now of their power here—else we would have
heard. Therefore a pact with them would buy—"

"Nothing!" Her word had the force of an aroused one's
oath. "We do not treat with such as these. However, they
may force us back into a path we forswore long ago—that
we would meet open force with open force. When we chose
what lies here"—she touched her forehead with the tip of
her finger and then spread out her hand level and empty
between them—"against what we might carry thus, the
balance shifted and the Scales of Molester were set anew. It
is our thought that these invaders, will not be easily turned
aside, bemused by illusion. You say they are mind guarded—
thus our first defense is negated. Very well, if illusion cannot
grip them, then we shall summon the power. These are the
hours of the third ring when the power ascends, and during
the height of it we must make our move. No—"

She looked straight at Farree and under that regard he felt
like a small crouched animal without any burrow in which to

hide, as if all he was was spread out before the four for their
reading.

"Picture," she ordered, "what you know of these men."

He began with that force which had drawn him forth from
shelter, compelling him to deliver himself to the enemy. He
continued with his trip in the flitter, his coming to the ruins,
and his imprisonment in the tower—then his meeting with the
Commander and Sulve. Then, for the first time he was
interrupted by a raised hand of one of the men.

"This Sulve has been heard of. He is outwardly a mer-
chant whose ship is in port for repairs."

"I believe him Guild," Farree answered. "They are sup-
posed to have their men in many places—mostly unknown."

"True enough," Lord-One Krip agreed.

"It matters not what he seems to be." The woman sounded
impatient now. "Let us know the rest."

So he told the story of his two interrogations, one under a
machine which would prove the truth or falsity of his an-
swers. There was a shade of another expression on the face
of the Elder, one Farree could not read.

"So they depend always on machines. They have no trained
Deliverer with them," she commented. "This machine"—she
spoke now to the Lord-One Krip—"such are in use off-world?"

"The Patrol are said to have them, and they are used by
the law on several worlds. But what is known to the law
sooner or later comes into Guild hands."

"I do not think," the Lady Maelen said, "that they could
read Thassa."

"They will not get a chance!" Again the male Elder
flashed with some heat.

"Can you," Farree began slowly, one part of him strug-
gling against the other which was all sober reason, "equip
one who is not Thassa with false information and plant him
to be retaken?"

For a long moment that seemed to stretch and stretch there




176 Andre Norton

was quiet in the room. He wanted to cry out he did not mean
what he had said, that there was no way he was going to be
trapped into returning into the hands of the Commander. For
there would be no games played then—his very mind might
be peeled and segmented so that the false would be made
plain enough to those whose powers he had feared and held
in awe all his life.

"I think . . . not!" That was Maelen. "There is Yiktor
itself to work for us."

"Perhaps." The woman made a dismissing gesture with
her hand. "But the full story is not yet told. What happened
then, little one?"

He told of the coming of the bird with Toggor, of how by
the smux's help he had set up the trap for the guard. Toggor,
as if he knew well he was being discussed, came out of
Farree's shirt to sit upon one of those knobby knees, his
eyestalks well up and all turned in the direction of the Elders.

For the rest Farree hurried over his climb to the tower top
and the nest there. When he spoke of finding the small box,
the man among the Elders who had not yet spoken leaned
forward and demanded: "There were symbols on this box—
you could read them?"

Farree shook his head. "It was very old—"

"That it was!" the man agreed. "We knew not that such
still existed. But if it was there, what else may still be ready
to hand?"

"How did you know how to use it?" again he asked
Farree.

"I did not. It was very old and worn. I forced it open, and
the powder in it touched the dried nest stuff and aflamed."

"So. The Scales dipped in your favor then. This is some-
thing to be thought on. Only yet your story has no end—give
us that, little one."

Farree spoke of his improvised weapons of bone and the
assault on his perch, of the strange cloud of smoke which,

FLIGHT IN YlKTOR

177

instead of being wafted away by the wind, had sunk into the
courtyard. Then he ended with the message of hope and the
coming of the flitter to bear him away.

"Well enough," the Elder who had questioned him about
the box said when he finished. "You gave them the truth and
it did not serve them; you have escaped them, therefore their
wrath, or that of their leader, will be great. I know that we
may look forward to some new attack on their part. And
since you are not Thassa and so vulnerable to what they may
launch in the form of controls . . ."He hesitated.

Farree moved a little on his seat. Uneasiness and wariness
arose within him. He had half offered, in spite of all good
reason, to be bait, even as the Guild had thought to use him.
But they had not accepted that from him. Now—now he must
make them understand.

"What if they set some control on me and I prove a key to
open your fortress?"

"Forewarned is forearmed," Lord-One Krip made answer.
His hand closed about Farree's upper arm and he kept a grip
there as if he feared that the hunchback was about to take off
forthwith to tempt the Commander and his men into the open.

"There are none that can touch you here now." The
Thassa Elder spoke with such conviction that Farree was
compelled to believe her. "We have a defense which has not
grown any the lesser through the years but stronger, as we
have learned more and more concerning our own powers of
self."

"They will not give up," Lord-One Krip said slowly.
"Even if we see them evacuate the ruins and seemingly
depart, we may be sure they have not given up."

"Nor shall we. There will be eyes aloft and eyes afield.
Those who go on two wings and those who trot on all fours
will keep them ever under eye."

Farree drew a deep breath. The bird which had brought
Toggor, Yazz, other animals either linked by mind to—or

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even exchanged with—a Thassa. What if all the Thassa
became one with the birds and the animals of this world?
How could those still in human guise know or prepare to
defend themselves against such an overthrow of all which
was natural by their own thinking? Hand clutched on hand
before him. What would it be like to have a fine, well-shaped
body like Yazz—to be free of the miserable itching burden
always on his back? Could this be done for him? His life as a
humanoid had not been such that he would not willingly
relinquish it for this other and freer guise.

"Not so!" She had read him, this Thassa Elder. "It is not
given for all to make great change. Even the Thassa cannot
do that as they please. Would you condemn Yazz to your

body then?"

Farree set teeth on his lip and bit hard. All his thoughts
had been for himself, that was the truth. No, he could not ask
that any—animal or man—take on the burden that he wore.

"You must be a Singer." The Lady Maelen must also
have caught those thoughts. "And there must also be to hand
one furred or feathered who needs the strength of man—one
hurt in mind or greatly beloved to the Singer. It is not an easy
thing like putting off one kind of clothing and assuming
another." She was kind, but he did not need her kindness, he
thought sourly for that moment.

"I have been thinking upon this matter of the Eor-fog,"
the other Thassa man spoke. "That such a weapon was left in
a grok nest is a mystery beyond all mysteries. It has been so
many tens of tens of tens of seasons since the last of the
weapons was destroyed. Certainly these ruins were built even
later as an outpost for the Lord Janger's land. Where did the
grok find that? There was nothing else?" He looked to

Farree.

"This"—the hunchback drew the knife from his belt
—"and a sword—I, think it was a sword—which was rusted

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR               179

past use. Some scraps of leather which might once have been
a belt. And bones—many bones."

"If Janger had come across any such arms," the woman
Elder commented, "he would not have been overrun during
the march of the clans. But there remains no record of usage.
Who knows where the grok came upon it? They are easily
attracted to all bright and shiny things. The cock brings them
to the nest to attract a hen to what he has built for her."

"The grok do not range too widely," answered her com-
panion. "This was a better hunting land then. And the nest
was old. It might well have been built in the first year Lord
Janger set his own masons to work. These lordlings look for
omens and fortune favors. The Lord Janger's war sign was a
screaming grok—he would have never had such driven from
his own inner keep. No, the box came from somewhere
near."

"You are saying?"

"Saying that perhaps there are other supplies here in the
heart of Thassa holdings—only waiting to be found!"

"There was the surrender of all!" the woman Elder
protested.

"Something might have been overlooked. I would advise
that, instead of setting all the seers upon actions of the
enemy, we put some to hunt those places where we have not
walked hereabouts—to see what time itself may have hidden
for future finding."

14.

Ploonglow was gone with the deepening of the dawn.
Farree stood in the valley of the Thassa watching a mustering
of the clans and then an outspreading of men, women, and
even children—each small group heading toward one of the
carven doorways in the cliffs. But he remained with Lord-
One Krip and the Lady Maelen and their place was apart: up
the throat of that canyon which led to the valley and to the
edge of the plain on which still stood the ship that had
brought them. By them danced Yazz on impatient feet, ready
to be gone; while Bojor hunched from side to side, swinging
his heavy head aloft as far as nature would allow it to reach,
the nostrils wide above the tooth-fringed muzzle as the crea-
ture tested the air.

That the Guild would have reason to explore their ship was
something they all agreed upon. Though there was nothing
within it that could possibly give any service to the Com-
mander's force—not now. Star maps, yes, but Yiktor had
been their true goal and on Yiktor they had landed. Whatever
other voyage tapes were in stock within would lead only to

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false trails, and so perhaps would serve better now than
weapons to confuse the enemy.

They did not enter the ship itself as that could prove a trap,
but took places behind the fallen rocks which lapped about
the foundations of the cliffs and so set themselves to wait and
watch. This waiting and watching left the mind open to
thought, and thought now plagued Farree. He kept returning
to that dream-released memory—the one of Lanti. Who was
he, and how had he come into the hands of that discredited
and disgraced spacer? For, thinking back, it was plain that
Lanti had had some reason to keep apart from the others of
his kind who came to enjoy the tawdry pleasures of the
Limits. The hunchback fought hard to fix on some point
further back in time than the spacer's confrontation with the
big man, striving to picture better that glittering scrap of
something which had brought that one to hunt out Lanti and
his captive. For he was certain that he, Farree, had not been
with the spacer of his own will.

Only, when he struggled so to remember, he came always
to a dark wall. What was sealed thereby he had no way of
telling. Perhaps it was best that he did not know. Yet, no
matter how many times he told himself that, the same num-
ber of reasons for remembering followed. Until he became
aware of something else.

From behind the rock which he had chosen for his vantage
point he could see the Lady Maelen and crouched behind her,
his jaws moving rhythmically as if he chewed upon cud, was
Bojor. There was a stir—not from them, rather in the warmth
of the desert air itself.

Down from the sky wheeled a flying thing which was
wide-pinioned and descended in a spiral, with only a few
flaps of wings to keep it on course. It was black, yet the light
struck rainbow points of color from the sleek fur on its body
and along its wings, which appeared clad in skin and hair
instead of feather wreathed.

FLIGHT IN YlKTOR

It landed on the very rock behind which the Lady had
taken refuge, and he could see that its head had no bill, rather
a sharp muzzle with a show of teeth to suggest that it was a
hunter and a formidable one. It was very large, perhaps its
head would near top Farree's were they to stand side by side.
It's second pair of limbs, which had been folded tightly
across the upper section of its body, unfolded and reached
out, naked claws showing, as if to menace the woman it now
faced.

There was a shrill cluttering sound and the wings flapped
noisily as if the creature wished to take off and was com-
pelled against its will to remain. Maelen's hands moved as
had the claws. Not reaching for the winged one but in a kind
of pounce and retreat pattern as if she played with some prey
in a cruel fashion.

There was mind send—but of such a pattern as Parree
could not follow. The thing took tiny steps that with the beat
of the wings raised it a fraction from the rock only to let it
drop again to its perch. Large eyes gleamed a brilliant gem-
flash green and the overlarge ears twitched back and forth.

At length one of those uneasy jumps did take it into the
air, and it beat its way up, to hang overhead, a wild flutter of
wings keeping it steady above the rock on which it had
perched. The Lady Maelen's right hand moved in a half
circle and the thing wheeled out, circling about the silent
tower of the star ship, once, twice, thrice before it was gone,
soaring up until it was only a speck in the sky, a speck which
headed toward the distant ruins if Farree could judge aright.
He believed that so another pair of eyes had been added to
their own scouting mission.

It was hot and grew hotter as the sun arose. This was a
barren land, where even the patches of bleached grass looked
dead on the root and fought a retreat against sand, gravel,
and rock. Toggor had early made plain his opinion of their
station by retreating into Parree's shirt, drawing in his eye-

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185

stalks and apparently going to sleep. The hunchback also
discovered that watching monotonously while nothing hap-
pened was a base for drowsiness. Since the departure of the
winged one there had been no movement beyond the cliffs of

the Thassa.

Thus it was almost with relief that he did see a dot in the
sky—the creature the Lady Maelen had dispatched? No—
there was no mistaking the sound. There was a flitter on the

wing.

Surely the spaceship and flitter would draw any attention,
whether it was the Guild who came now or some other
cruiser—perhaps even a local planet guard. He knew very
little of Yiktor save what he had learned from the Thassa, but
they were only a small handful now and kept to their own

barren land.

The flitter did not approach the downed ship straight, but
circled. Though, Parree noted, it kept its circle from invading
the air over the cliffs.

"C-2 double 3: Reply. Are you in trouble?"
It was not the clear mental call of the Thassa, but rather an
actual voice out of the air overhead. Surely a Guild detach-
ment would not use that approach! This flitter must serve
some local form of the law.

Parree looked questioningly to the Lady Maelen. She had
not moved. When he turned his head cautiously, he could see
no trace of motion in the Lord-One Krip. Whoever these
newcomers were, the Thassa wanted no contact with them.
"C-2 double 3: This is port command. Are you in trouble?"
The newcomers, lower now, could certainly see that the
downed ship's landing ramps were out.

"This is a type four planet. C-2 double 3—landing is
allowed at the control port only. What is your difficulty?"
That encircling approach the flitter had made was very
much closer to the ship now. The smaller craft was preparing
to set down. Farree saw movement ahead, a small body

flitting from one tangled growth of grass or standing stone to
the next, working its way purposefully toward the silent ship
and the newcomer. Too small for Yazz—and besides, that
prancing champion could not have made such a stealthy
advance. It must be some other one of the animals the Lady
Maelen could and did command. It squatted finally not far
from the ramp of the spaceship, and when it was still it
melted so into the background that Farree could not distin-
guish it at all.

The flitter set down and a figure got out, a stunner, plain
by the length of its barrel, in hand.

"We are coming in. This is control from Central Port."

The voice rang loudly. Farree thought that it came from
the flitter rather than the man who had landed, and was
magnified to a shout by some instrument on board.

There were two aground now. They did not advance toward
the ramp together but separated, weapons in full sight. One
remained at the foot of the entrance ramp while the other
climbed inside. There was a wait—the intruder must be
investigating the ship with caution. In time he returned and
gestured with an outflung arm so that his companion started
back to the flitter.

He did not make a straight track but swung in and out
across his first path, apparently in search of some track that
might have been left on the ground. Though it would take an
expert tracker, Farree was sure, to find any such.

The searcher halted and beckoned. His fellow ran down
the ramp to join him. Farree felt that as long as the control
men were present there was to be no attempt to attack the
Thassa. The Guild would lie low. Oddly enough, he felt no
confidence from this belief. Part of him wanted to front the
Guild again, to have done with the suspense.

The strangers inspected the ground thoroughly, one of
them even getting down on hands and knees as if he pos-
sessed Yazz's sense of smell and would hunt along their last




186 Andre Norton FLIGHT IN YIKTOR 187

trail—day old as it was. Finally the two gave up and returned
to the flitter, which took off—but not soon enough to miss
the return of the flying creature Maelen had sent out earlier.
The thing saw them and shied to the north, sailing to a
greater height, apparently making for cover.

It need not have feared. The flitter arose easily and turned
to go back the way it had come. Farree realized the gravity of
the craft's visit. Any ship that did not planet at the port
probably was, in their eyes, outside the law. They might
continue to fly patrols in this direction, waiting for the crew
of the deserted spaceship to return. Thus the Guild would
not move, nor could the Thassa show outside their valley for
fear of questioning. And all knew that the Thassa had nothing
to do with off-world ships. Not all the Thassa—

Farree wondered. Who knew about Lord-One Krip, who
had been a Free Trader? And what of the Lady Maelen?
Surely their story had caused talk on this portion of Yiktor.
But just as surely they had nothing to fear from the laws of
this or any other world. It was the Guild who must go
underground.

"Perhaps—" Lord-One Krip's mind touch came almost as
clearly as had the voice from the flitter. "Yes, my story is
known—probably to far too many here. Also what happened
on Sehkmet. The Guild have their own ties with the law. We
are better without allies."

As the flitter disappeared in the distance the Lady Maelen
straightened in her hiding place and Bojor moved back to
give her room. She leaned against the rock that sheltered her,
both palms against its rough surface, her head turned to the
north where the creature of the skies had disappeared.

Scrambling over the smaller rock came the furred one
Farree had only glimpsed when it had gone forward to scout
the landed flitter. It leaped for the Lady Maelen and she
caught it in her arms, cradling it against her breast as if it
were the child whose size it matched. Again Farree caught

only broken words of whatever message it delivered, as its
sending range was far above his own thread of mind exchange.

"It is true—" Now came her own send verifying. "Ista
'read' them. Those were not Guild, nor do they even know
that this is the heart of Thassa territory."

"What do they know?" Lord-One Krip broke out sharply.

"What they shall leam by their path of return flight." She
was smoothing the dark fur gently. "Ista put it in their minds
to swing northwest a little."

"The ruins—the Guild." Farree voiced what Lord-One
Krip must also be thinking. "They will see—"

"All which is open," Lady Maelen agreed.

"Which may be nothing," he returned. "The Guild will
have their own precautions and hidey-holes."

"Perhaps. I would like to know how swiftly they can take
to cover and whether they now have their flitters in hiding.
There is little place there to conceal those. This may well
bring another player into the game."

It would seem, however, that the visit and retreat of the
guard flitter was not to end their own attending to the empty
ship, for neither the Lady nor Lord-One Krip moved to
withdraw. And waiting without any prospect of someone
coming was a tedious thing, Farree discovered.

Toggor crawled out of his shirt and made raids where he
could crook a claw under a stone and turn it over, scooping
up grubs and insects so exposed. Farree ate his own rations
and drank sparingly from his water flask.

It was the coming of the winged one for the second time
that broke the dullness of the afternoon. Circling down, it
perched on a rock which brought it eye-to-eye in height with
the woman. This time Farree was not even able to catch the
faintest wave of whatever message passed between them. The
creature bobbed its head twice and a moment later took to the
air again.

Then came the Lady Maelen's send: "There has not been




188                 Andre Norton

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR

189

grok here for as long as the memories of the jam exist— ;

which means during at least one of our generations. But there
is a height in the north where they had a second nesting
place. Near that are caves. Also"—now she spoke slowly,
almost as if she were thinking her way through a problem— i
"those in the ruins have been seen twice scouting in that ;

direction, and what they must so seek is—"

"A storage place!" Lord-One Krip was quick to answer.

"There are none—or so I would have sworn. The Thassa
destroyed all that existed when they turned their backs on the
old knowledge and took to the roads and open places."       j

"A man would have said that Sehkmet was an empty '
world also—until raiders and the Guild proved that untrue,"
Lord-One Krip replied. "They have access to machines which
can give them readings. They may even have a sensitive
among them."

"A sensitive?" Farree broke in.

"One who can release energy in such a way as to spot,
either on a map or on the ground itself, objects which are
foreign to the land—things that have been handled and used
by some intelligent creature."

"Would not such a one have found the box?" Farree
ventured.

"Of a certainty he or she would—had they been searching.
But the ruins were of the plains people, and they depended
only on steel in their own two hands. Thus one of their old
holds would not have been explored. These—to them the
Thassa are a puzzle, a puzzle and a threat because they have
never been able to understand us. Thus they would go nosing
as closely as they could about the edges of our home place,
breaking the peace as they will discover."

The furred one the Lady Maelen had been nursing in her
arms suddenly came to life again, and she sat it down on the
rock where recently the jam had perched. It leaped once
more into the nearest clump of spike-armed bush and began

working its way back to the ship. Bojor sniffed and moved a
fraction from where he had been crouched upon his haunches.

Once more there was a distant dot in the sky, and the
far-off troubling of the air. A flitter—was it the same one?
—was returning. Parree caught Toggor and stuffed him again
inside his shirt so he would not lose track of the smux during
any quick move.

That craft made a wide circle about the sky-pointing ship,
but this time there came no shouted message from the sky. It
circled twice, and Farree could see that it bore no insignia.
This flitter must be from the Guild, though the boldness of
such an enterprise in the open light of day bothered him. It
argued confidence on the part of those inside, and confidence
on the part of the Guild meant arms and men ready to
withstand any attack.

The third circling was much closer in, and finally the flitter
set down at almost the same place that the guard ship had
earlier chosen. Three men descended from the cabin. All
were armed and moved cautiously, retreating toward the
ramp of the ship backwards, facing the cliffs as intently
as if they already knew that there were three sentries on duty
there. Three? No, more if one counted Yazz, who still crouched
in shelter with Lord-One Krip, and Bojor—as well as the
furred one in hiding now.

Once reaching the ramp one of the men darted up it, his
two fellows keeping guard. Then the second, and finally the
third. Were they there to search the ship as the guards had
done, or were they ready to raise?

Neither of the Thassa had moved. Parree, feeling more and
more like a child or one of the animals who could be roused
by command but did not have a voice in any plan, twisted
from one side to the other trying to keep those two in sight.

Farree could not tell the time as it passed. He expected
every moment to see the ramp rise, the ship take off. Surely
that was what had brought this party here. But there was no




Andre Norton

change. At last movement showed at the side lock and down
ran the three men, sprinting for the flitter as if pursued
by the bartle or some even more threatening beast.

"They have discovered the persona." Lord-One Krip's
message came with a faint suggestion of laughter. "It would
require a full production yard to breach that control lock."

"It would seem that they have also seen more than they
like," Lady Maelen answered. "Sadi projected well even
when there were mind locks against her. She showed them
one five times her own size and all teeth and talons at ready!
She makes an excellent guard. And if they used those weap-
ons of theirs, it was to no account."

Illusion? Farree wondered and was instantly answered.

"Illusion and not from one of us. Sadi projected what
would frighten her, and she did it on a mental length which
apparently their shields are not set to handle. See!"

The last of the men had barely reached the ground with a
flying leap from the ramp when there appeared behind them,
filling the full of the hatch door, a beast such as Farree had
never seen before. It was larger, leaner in bulk than the
bartle. Its head was split halfway along with a mouth which
sprouted two rows of fangs, spittle dripping from them as if
in anticipation of sinking home in frail flesh. The forefeet
which projected now onto the ramp were taloned with great
claws that looked as if they might rend apart the very enve-
lope of the ship's hull.

All three of the men were firing lasers, but the shaggy coat
of the apparition absorbed the worst of that attack easily and
took no hurt from one of the most formidable weapons
known to the space ways. One of the men broke and ran
faster, quickly followed by he who had stood beside him.
Only the third retreated in good order, still firing uselessly as
he went.

The huge menacing form at the head of the ramp pulled
back so that only the head with that murderous threat of fangs

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR

still protruded. There was a wait which Farree ticked off to
himself—twenty-five in whispered counting. Then the flitter
arose and began circling the pillar of the ship once again as if
Seeking another way in. Parree almost believed that they
might, should there be some opening, drop a man even as he
had been hoisted up from the top of the tower in the ruins.

But it would seem that there was no other way of penetrat-
ing the ship, and the flitter was not armed with anything
other than the weapons that had already been used to no
purpose.

Finally it winged away eastward. The massive head winked
out of being. Then the small furred creature Maelen had
earlier held and caressed came racing down the ramp and
across the land toward the Lady's rock.

"Well done!" Lord-One Krip called that aloud as if the
small beast could hear and understand. The Lady Maelen
stooped and caught the guard up in her arms for a second
holding and caressing.

She set the animal down on the rock before her, stroking
its upraised head.

"Sadi will watch with Yazz," she said, "and with the old
one here." She reached over to scratch behind Bojor's ears.
The big animal stretched his neck to the farthest so that she
could reach behind his jaw also. "I think that we had better
take thought to what lies northward—to that which has drawn
the interest of those others so much that they have already
made three trips in search of it." Her hand swung to point in
the direction where the jam had first appeared. "Nor do we
know what brought the Guild here in the first place. That we
ourselves have returned to Yiktor could not have been fore-
seen when they settled in. For that was done at a much earlier
time than our coming. Thassa memory is long—but is it long
enough when there was also a will to do away with some-
thing that was future danger? The Elders of another day may

192

Andre Norton

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR

193

have even memory-wiped our stock lest some be tempted to
return and use something which was not right for us."

That they considered the animals guard enough for the ship
seemed strange to Farree, but nothing or very little which the
Thassa did could he compare with the actions of those he
knew from the Limits days. He trudged back through the
canyon to where the temporary settlement of the rest of these
aliens was— Aliens? He was the alien here, even more di-
vided from the rest than he had been from most of the Limits

dwellers.

Yet he discovered, though he could not see that he contrib-
uted anything to their aid or defense, both the Lord-One Krip
and the Lady Maelen took it as a matter of course that he was
to be one of the party pointed north. They began the journey
at moonrise, with the glow of the third ring making the plain
almost day bright.

With them went a third Thassa, one Maskay, who, Farree
gathered, had roamed much in that direction and had contact
with the wildlife (hereabouts. It was difficult to tell age with
these people, but Farree thought him perhaps a generation
older than his other two companions. And the Lady Maelen
appeared to look to him to set the direction and the pace.

They halted before the rings were quite faded by the
coming of the grayish predawn light to encamp on the top of
a small rise where a trio of wind-twisted trees gave shelter.
There was a seep of water at the bottom of that knoll, though
it quickly funneled away in this arid land. This seemed to be
one of the landmarks Maskay knew well.

He stood under the downswing of one of the wide branches
and pointed on northward.

"It is another night's journey if we take to plains pace, and
then come the hills. That is a dry land and the spring at Two
Prong is of bitter water. Only the jam can live in those
heights."

"Yet you have been there. Kinsman," the Lady Maelen
said.

"When I was young and foolish, I went many places that
were strange. And little or nothing did I leam from such
wayfaring," he returned with a smile.

"Yet the jam live there and like all living things they must
have food and water—and—"

"Hush! And under cover. Down with you!" Lord-One
Krip swung out his arm and caught Maelen's waist, pulling
her down, while Maskay jerked back under the tree.

It was very plain to hear now—the thrum of the flitter.
Through the last haze of the third ring it bore across the sky.
Farree waited for it to hover above them, to sense by some
off-worlder equipment that they were here. But it passed
overhead well up in the sky and kept on to the north, exactly
as if the pilot had a definite goal in view.

"Guild!"

"Are you sure?" demanded Lady Maelen of Lord-One
Krip.

"There is a difference in the beat. That craft is not made
for short patrols but is a long-range flitter—for exploration."

"It flies"—Maskay put into words Farree's thought—"as
if those aboard it know where they would land and also as if
they must be there in a hurry."

"True. I wonder if they have found what they seek. If so it
is best we make the same discovery and as soon as possible."

Farree tried to stretch his head a little and then stopped,
warned by the pain in his back. His whole body ached from
the pace they had kept and he was not sure he could go
on—not without more rest. Yet he was also sure he was not
going to be left behind.







196

Andre Norton

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR

197

did not reach clear to the full heights on this side but ended
abruptly in a straight cliff wall that had no sign of any
opening. And Maskay had set out a half day ago to hunt
farther to the westward, setting the length of a night for his

explorations.

Farree found himself drowsing in spite of the need for
sentry go. They had hurried after the sky craft when it had
been sighted yesterday, but he had found it hard going with
his shorter legs and the weight of his hump. Though he
would not have voiced any complaint even if they tried to
wring it out of him, now his body was one ache, and he felt
as if he could not force himself to any further effort at all.

The barren lands which surrounded the heart of the Thassa
country had given way to coarse grass and woods scattered
here and .there. Here in the mountains was growth also,
wind-gnarled trees for the most part, growing in pockets. Par
above there was the bluish-white shadow of snow early fallen
or late thawed—it could be either.

One of the jams drifted across the gap between them and
the flitter to hunker down on the rocks that concealed the
Lady Maelen. That the creature was reporting, perhaps from
Maskay, Farree was sure, and a moment later the mind touch

aroused him.

"There is nothing above save a road which is now encased
in ice. It seems that those look in the wrong direction for
their treasure. It may well lie on this side." She passed along
the report and her own interpretation.

"But the way here leads nowhere—only to barren rock,"
he dared to protest wearily.

"What seems ban-en rock," she corrected.

Illusions again? He would not deny that the ancients of her
race might have set such to cover their trail. But how to make

sure of that?

"I go, before those others and Maskay return." It was

Lord-One Krip who, answered.

"You could be seen—"

"If I walk, yes. But if I creep ..."

Farree had hunched around to face that trail. Perhaps it had
originally been cut into the stone on purpose to give fair
footing, perhaps it had been so worn below the surface about
it by countless feet over a period of uncountable years, but it
was plain that it was now a trough. The hunchback looked to
Lord-One Krip. His body was slender, but even if he moved
on hands and knees he certainly would show up to any
watching this side of the cliff. Though he shrank from what
he was impulsively agreeing to do, Farree cut in: "To creep
is what I have done most of my life. Dust me well with the
soil." He was already scraping up his own handfuls and
smearing it across the backs of his legs and across his hips,
leaving the tenderness of his hump to the last. ' 'I can make it
best."

The Lady Maelen turned her head and looked at him as
one who is weighing one thought against the other. Then
slowly she nodded.

"There is something in what you say, Farree."

He had so wanted her to refuse instead of accept that once
more that old cord of bitterness awoke in him. They were
willing to use him even as they used the jam, the bartle, any
and all of the life on this world. The rainbow of the rising
third ring swept over him and it seemed to bring with it a
soothing. Even his painful hump felt a touch of coolness—
which could not be the truth, as since when had a radiance of
light had substance?

Farree shucked off his belt bag and tossed some more of
the gravelly soil on his back, biting his lip against the tender-
ness of the hump, the small flashes of pain he felt when
anything touched it now.

He crawled on his belly until the upward slope of that path
faced him. Then he asked the question that he should have
voiced earlier.




198

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR               199

Andre Norton

"If there is illusion, how may it be broken?"

"Try to pierce it," she answered him. "Illusion can distort
sight but not touch—unless the one who tries to break it is
totally under control."

Fair enough, he thought. His deluded eyes would at least
serve him until he reached the solid wall at the top—or the
wall that only appeared solid. He began to crawl, the rock
harsh against his hands, panting a little with the effort of
keeping as flat as he could in the depression of the way.

He went slowly, with many pauses, hoping that if the one
with the flitter had any long-seeing glass trained on this side
it would show only a portion of his hump—a rock bedded
against rocks.

Sotrath climbed above the horizon and the three rings
were clearly defined, the elusive third spreading glory over
all the land. Flecks of glitter answered from the stone under
him, the wall ahead.

On and on he went and then froze and flattened himself to
the stone as a warning reached him from below.

"The others are returning."

He was tempted to look for himself, but there remained the
matter of time. The Guild men could well try this side of the
cliff now, having been baffled on the other. So he strove to
speed up his crawl and yet not reveal that anything moved
there. He lay during one of his periods of stillness, his
pointed chin resting on his crooked arm as he looked ahead.
To his relief it seemed that the wall was not too far above.
Now he felt the pinch of claw on his shoulder and remem-
bered that Toggor had not been left behind. Could the smux
be sent ahead to prospect for an opening? Did an illusion
fashioned to deceive the eyes of his species also confuse
animals? He did not know, but the knowledge that the smux
was still with him was a warming one.

The path up which he hunched his way was leveling out.
Yes, he could see the wall before him. The path, if path it

really was, ended abruptly at its foot. He was out on a level
space. Putting up a hand he chirped to Toggor, and the smux
obediently climbed into his palm and turned toward the stone.
He lowered it.

On Farree inched until he was within touching distance of
the wall. For a moment he hesitated. To his eyes it was so
firm a barrier that he could not believe it was illusion only.

He put out his hand and his palm met solid substance. But
it would be necessary for him to test it fully from one border
of the sunken roadway to the other.

Edging along, he began at the outer side, Toggor clawing
along beside his hand. Not here—nor here—nor— He stopped
with a gasp of astonishment and fear. Before he touched the
fourth time, Toggor was gone. One moment he had been
there brushing the side of Farree's hand and the next he had
disappeared!

Frantically the hunchback struck the wall at the same point
where he was sure the smux had vanished. There was a solid
surface right enough, but there was also a crack through
which he could feel a slight stir of cold air. Quickly he traced
that crack. It ran only for a short distance, but where it ended
there was a second crack, this ascending vertically. He re-
turned and felt his way back, found another vertical crack.
There was certainly a sealed opening, perhaps a door. He
thumped it, hoping for some give in it. There was none.
Perhaps he was too near the ground to move it, or perhaps it
was sealed past any of their forcing!

He lay with his head close to the crack and tried to search
out Toggor with the mind touch. The return was very faint,
as if the smux answered from some great distance, but at
least he was alive and within, though Farree would not have
believed that crack wide enough to admit him.

Still lying with his head against the wall, he mind sent his
discovery to the Lady Maelen. The rainbow of the third ring
washed over him, brightening those flecks of glitter in the




200

Andre Norton

FLIGHT IN YlKTOR

201

rock. In fact, as he glanced up the wall against which he now I
lay, he could see that the speckles were drawing together to |
form a dim pattern, or perhaps awaking one which had been |.
deliberately set there generations ago.                      *

"I come." That was the Lady Maelen.

Farree turned his head a little and saw her, lying belly fast
to the stone, as he had, and pulling herself forward a few
inches at a time. Even so, it was not long until she took his
place by the unseen door as he edged back to give her room.

Her hands went out in a wider sweep than his could equal

and then she nodded.

"It is true. There is a door here and—" She lay now on
her back and looked up at the surface of the wall where those
particles appeared to move together and outline to form
shapes of their own. "There is here an illusion set. But, by
the Third Ring, 0 Sotrath, to Thee thanks of heart and mind!
By this Third Ring of Thine we can see!"

She began to hum, so faint a sound that it was hardly as
loud as the clatter of Toggor's claws on the rock. Farree once
more felt the power of that singing.

The glittering bits waxed brighter—taking on the rainbow
hues of the ring itself, now red, now blue, now green, now
yellow—or a swirling mixture of them all together. But as
they gathered to make lines and curves on the surface of the
wall, Lord-One Krip sent a thrusting thought.

"They are aboard the flitter—and it is rising in this

direction!"

That warning from below was as sharply clear as if it had
been shouted aloud. Yet the Lady Maelen did not move, nor
was there a falter in the low sound which issued from her
lips. More and more did the pattern clear on the door in the
rainbow sparks of light. And that light now outlined the
portal itself. It promised an opening of a size to let the three

of them enter abreast.

Now the p,oise of the flitter was loud enough to drown out

the sound of her song even though he lay beside her as flat as
he could push his body. He did not turn his head to watch the
enemy—not yet—for the wonder of that design of lights held
him entranced.

"They come."

The second quick warning was not needed, for the drone
of the flitter rolled above the cliff and echoed and reechoed
from the rocks thereabout. Now Farree did lever himself up
and face about in time to see the forward, upward sweep of
the craft. It might well be that the two of them had already
been sighted and were easy game for those on board. He
waited, shrinking inside, for the flash of a laser beam to cut
out at them.

The light of the third ring was a mist growing ever stronger.
Perhaps in that they were not as good targets as Farree
feared. He was aware of movement beside him, of the Lady
Maelen getting to her knees and then her feet, still facing the
closed door in the cliff as if she had all the time in the world
to deduce its secret and need fear no interruption in that task.

He scrambled up in turn, his back now to her and the door,
facing outward. Small as he was, he could not protect her
whole body with his, but he would do the best he could.

The flitter was heading straight for them, as if it meant to
crash against the cliff and crush the both of them. But at the
last possible moment it swerved in an almost perpendicular
climb that carried it up to the mountaintop beyond.

Surely they had been sighted! Farree could not understand
why they had not been cut down, at least with a stunner.
Perhaps those thought to let Maelen open the way for them
and then take them.

He glanced back at the woman: Her arms spread wide, she
was touching with the tips of her fingers this and then that of
the circling patterns of color her singing had brought forth.
But there was no answer. At last her mind send, as strong as
Lord-One Krip's warning, rang out.




PLIGHT IN YIKTOR               203

Andre Norton

202

"Come! This is Thassa sealed and in this body it will not
answer to me. Come!"

He sprinted up the road which had been such a laborious
climb for the other two and faced the doorway between
Maelen and the stones. She set her own hands upon the backs
of his and moved them from place to place in a swinging
pattern. At that moment Farree had little hope that Maelen's
suggestion would bring any success. He turned his head
upward as far as he might to see where the flitter had
vanished in that last upward swoop.

The sound of the craft still echoed loudly in his ears, and
he could only hear at intervals the hum of song that Maelen
still wrought to open the door.

Back and forth Lord-One Krip's hands moved under her
control. Then—at last—there was a grating. The sound of
stone scraping stone—of something long held moving again.
A crack appeared, not as the thin line the ring outlined but as
a darker space. Forward moved that layer of wall and Maelen
pulled Lord-One Krip to the right side, Farree taking three
steps to their one to join them. Outward it moved but not far,
as if the disuse of centuries had so frozen it that there could
be no real release. But there was an area of dark. The Lady
Maelen, dropping her hold on her companion, squeezed
through it, Krip following closely on her heels, and after
them Farree.

His hump scraped the stone in spite of his turning sidewise
and the pain of it made him gasp and stumble. Then he was
in the dark where only a pale radiance of the ring reached in
from the outer world.

Maelen had swung about, and Lord-One Krip reached out
a long arm and jerked Farree to stand beside him as the hum
broke into words—a chant which sealed the entrance to this
place of darkness, leaving them in a lightless place of age-old
stone.

Then there was the gleam of light again. Par softer, and
more limited as to reach, then the radiance without. How-
ever, they could soon see after a fashion by the small globe
balanced on the Lady Maelen's palm. Farree felt a clutch on
his breeches and reached down to scoop up Toggor.

The Lady Maelen tossed the globe of light and Lord-One
Krip caught it deftly. She was breathing in small, fast gasps
as if she had been running, and there were beads of sweat
trickling down her face like tears.

Lord-One Krip held out the globe and swept it from side to
side, but all they could see were rock walls shading off into
clouding shadow and a dark opening before them where
perhaps the road they followed continued on into the heart of
the mountain.

"They may have a distort with them," Lord-One Krip
said. "If so, it will not take them long to—"

"Ah, but we shall not wait!" There was purpose and
power in her answer, even though she stumbled when she
took a step forward. Farree caught one of her dangling hands,
set it upon his shoulder in spite of the ache of his hump, and
stood ready to be her support. To his satisfaction she ac-
cepted his aid, and he felt her lean against him as they moved
on, Lord-One Krip with the globe of light going ahead.

Perhaps it was because the third ring's beam did not reach
here, or because that which had been awakened by its gleam
had been only on the outer door, but here there were no
glittering bits on the walls to add to that limited light. The
stone, though it showed the marks of tools here and there,
was otherwise bare.

Their road ran straight for a space and then began an
upward slope. At first the incline was not enough to cause
them any difficulty as to footing. Even as he climbed, taking
what he could of Maelen's weight, Farree was listening.

If those hunting them did have a distort, they could open
this way as easily as an innkeeper could slash open a melon.




204 Andre Norton

Then a sweep ahead with stunner or laser would bring the
three all into Guild hands. He was glad of that upward slope
for that very reason.

As they went that became more pronounced. Until Lord-
One Krip, crowding against the right-hand wall, lit pockets
chiseled there, meant surely for fingergrips. Farree steered
the Lady Maelen until she laced fingers in the nearest. He
could no longer support her and climb, as he had to stretch
nearly tiptoe to set his hand in any of the holds, for these
were hacked nearly shoulder-height for Thassa.

Their retreat slowed nearly to the same crawl which had
sent him up the outer road. The Lady Maelen, nearly drained
of strength by her singing, shifted from one hold to the next
with obvious difficulty, though she made no complaint. Fi-
nally Lord-One Krip stopped short and said: "Take this and
the lead, Farree. I will see to Maelen."

He obediently crowded past the other two, obliged to hold
to them before he could accept the globe and use his other
hand for the wall. Steeper still grew the road. So far they
moved in a silence broken only by the sound of heavy
breathing or the faint swish of some article of clothing against
the wall.

Toggor climbed to Farree's shoulder and extended all eye-
stalks, staring ahead as if he could either pierce the dark so or
was trying to. It was a chiller from him that brought Farree to
a stop. The smux saw or scented something ahead.

"Stay!" For the first time he took it upon himself to order
those two who had commanded his life since they had met in
the Limits. "There is something ahead." It was Lord-One
Krip's strength the Lady Maelen needed now, and not his
lesser aid.

Farree pulled himself forward at the same slow speed with
which he had climbed the road without, expecting any mo-
ment to see the way before him once more walled, and he
wondered if the Lady Maelen could sing again an open door.

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR               205

What the limited light of the globe showed him moments
later was a stair leading up. Only down the side of this
trickled moisture which had stained the stone with encrusta-
tions and given life to some strange and ominous-looking
growths pallidly yellow and dankly gray in the globe light.
There was movement in one such growth as the light fell
across it. A thing of thin spotted wings flew up nearly in
Farree's face.

"There is a stair," he called behind. "But it is wet here,
and the footing may be even worse—there is water. ..."

"We come," was the only answer Lord-One Krip made.
Farree realized that, in truth, they had no choice but to go
forward.

He waited by the foot of that stair and only when the other
two reached him did he take the first step, grimacing with
disgust as his fingers found the next handgrip half full of a
growth which gave forth a putrid smell as he could not help
but crush it.

So they went, slow step by step. Luckily the treads were
wide and gave them room to stop now and again for a
breather. There seemed to be no end to that upward climb.
However, after a space the seepage ceased and they were free
of the fetid growths and those slimy things which lived
among them, eyeless hunters of the dark.

Again it was Toggor who gave warning of a change in
their road, chittering in Farree's ear. He passed a warning to
the other two. It had seemed to him that the Lady Maelen,
instead of gaining strength as she was aided along, was
slowly failing even more. Now here was a major test for
them all.

A crevice rent the road before them, leaving only a small
space where the three huddled together as they looked
ahead. There provision had been made for travelers but it was
not one which Farree wanted to try.

Reaching out into the dark, in the center of the way, was a

206

Andre Norton

FLIGHT IN YlKTOR

207

span just wide enough for one person at a time to walk. That
stretched into a dark where the globe, no matter how far
Parree tried to reach with it, did not show them a far side.

He had taken command of their going since the climb
began, but dare he lead them over that narrow strip of rock
above a chasm? He was not sure. Yet neither could he give
the Lady Maelen any help—it must be he to go first.

Already he felt top-heavy and weak of leg. Could he better
crawl than try to shamble at his usual pace across? He
fumbled with the globe and then plucked Toggor from his
position on the hunched shoulder. Tucking the globe into me
front of his shirt, Farree placed the smux beside it, giving one
clear order. He felt the movement of the foreclaws against his
skin and knew that the smux had grasped the ball of light,
would hold it with all the safety Parree was able to devise.

Dropping to all fours, the hunchback ventured out on that
bridge. He arose again to a sitting position, his feet stuck far
out on either side, his fingers gripping the stone with a grasp
which scraped his skin painfully. So he pulled himself along
with nothing but the very muffled light to show mere inches

before him.

As it had in his trip up the sunken road, time seemed to
reach forever. There was no end to his scraping advance. His
hands were cut and sore, his body ached from the stretching
he must do. Yet there was something stirring far back in his
mind. Not a feeling that he had done such a journey before—
not a distinct memory—but rather that there was a far better
way of accomplishing such a journey if he could only remember
how. That blocked recall was something which weighed him
down now when it was most necessary that he keep a clear

mind.
There was an end to the bridge at last. He edged forward,

wiping his bleeding hands against his shirt, to make a scram-
bling half-fall onto a wide space which was indeed the lip of
the rift and seemed, solid before him.

He ripped the globe out of his shirt with a speed that
brought Toggor with it. The smux dropped to the stone while
Farree used the globe, getting to his feet and walking a bit
forward, hardly daring to believe there was this solid flooring
beneath his feet.

He did not go far, but swung around and did which it took
all his strength of will to accomplish, squatted once more to
make a return journey, with the light again at the fore of his
shirt—Toggor ordered to keep it so as he himself lurched,
handhold by handhold, out into the open on the narrow span.

He met them near halfway across. Lady Maelen seated and
hitching herself along in the same position he had chosen,
Lord-One Krip behind to steady her. Now Farree was forced
to go backwards, so offering them what light he could and
holding fast only to his contact with Toggor, urging the smux
to give all possible assistance with the light.




16.

ILven the third ring's spectacular radiance did not reach
this far down into the gloom. They had gone through the
mountain upward, across that dangerous open of bridge, to
come out upon, another ledge perch. The bulk of a second
peak overtopped them so they were deep in the shadows
here. They made the full round of the ledge and found only
one place where there seemed to be a promise for descent,
though that way was by a narrowed thread of footpath nearly
as daunting as the bridge they had mastered in the caverns
behind.

What lay in the dark depths of the rift into which they
might descend they had no idea. Had they indeed come to the
end of any road of escape? Lord-One Krip took up the fading
globe of light and made for that dubious path to explore the
possibility of their getting into the depths.

Lady Maelen sat with her back against the wall, her eyes
closed as if she had not yet recovered the strength she had
expended in the opening of the door. Farree prowled up and
down the perch they shared in a vain attempt to forget his
back. Something, perhaps it was his journey across the bridge,

210

Andre Norton

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR

211

had started in his hump, not only the fierce ache which he
felt all through his body, but also an intolerable itching, so
that he wished to shuck off his shirt and score his own flesh
with his broken nails. He could not sit still and endure this.

Toggor clacked claws across the stone and bent all eye-
stalks to survey the path ahead. When Farree passed near him
he gave one of his flying leaps and caught hold of the
hunchback's arm, climbing quickly to his shoulder.

Farree could no longer see even the faint gleam of the
globe on the path. Either that roadway had taken a turn—or
perhaps the light had at last failed and Lord-One Krip was
feeling his way step by step down the slope. To remain
where they were if the pursuit was up behind them was
folly. To be caught on that perilous way was perhaps even
more, yet the uneasiness which filled Farree made him con-
sider that the less of dangers.

"Lady"—he approached Maelen—"can you walk or

descend?"
She turned her head slowly and eyed him as if he had

recalled her from some long journey.

"They come?"

He attempted to send a probe back through the roadway of
the mountain but picked up nothing—not even the deadening
defense which marked those wearing their protection against

mind send.

"I read nothing. But the longer we stay here—"
"Yes." Even her voice sounded as if it came out of the

dregs of fatigue. "I will try."
He lingered beside her as she crept to the head of that

narrow downward path. She did not attempt to get to her

feet. Farree leaned forward to catch, as tightly as he could, a

hold upon her belt.

So linked, they made their way after the vanished Krip at a
slow pace, with frequent halts. Farree kept one hand locked
upon her belt and the other feeling for handholds along the

walls. To his great thankfulness he discovered that there were
such, perhaps chiseled by the same makers who had left the
similar aids within the inner passages.

The strain on his shoulders brought the fiery pain back
again but it was better than just to sit or stand waiting—for
what he had no idea.

They came to a place where the trail they crept along
doubled back upon itself in a risky curve around which they
crept or scraped a painful way. It was there that disaster
struck.

The Lady Maelen must have trusted a loose stone for
anchorage. She cried out and slid toward the edge. Farree
braced himself, not knowing whether he could hold or not.
She was kicking her legs, striving to find some purchase as
he anchored himself desperately. His left fingers were deep
in one of the handholds—those of his right hand laced to her
belt. However, he had to stand and take the strain of the
increasing weight of her body, made worse by her frenzied
attempts to find a hold for herself.

The pain across his twisted shoulders was so intense he
might have been caught in the full beam of a flamer, unable
to help himself, unable to hold her long.

There was a sensation of being torn in two—of agony. He
felt as if the skin over his hump had parted. Still he held.
And, through what seemed to be his blood drumming in his
ears, he heard a cry.

"All right—I have her."

He was clamped into the linkage he had set himself. To
free his fingers from the hold on her belt was more than he
could do at that moment. There was liquid running down his
back, spattering into a pool between his legs. He could not
let go even if he would.

Then the weight which was the Lady Maelen no longer
pulled him sidewise. Other fingers plucked at his fingers on
her belt, prying them loose one by one. He had fallen to all




212

Andre Norton

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR

213

fours when that strain had gone. Now he toppled forward, to
lie face down, his shirt wet through, though there was no
longer pain in his back.

He was hardly aware when there was a grip on his hand
which now dangled over the edge of the path. The night air
bit with a chill tooth at his back through what seemed to be
rents in his shirt. But before he lapsed into semiconscious-
ness he felt a hold on first his wrist and then the upper part of
his arm, drawing him away from the rim of the depths. For a
moment he fought that, but the strength had gone out of him
and he had to loose his hold to that grip and the sideward
pull.

Then he was down from the path, on a surface which
might be another ledge or at least was much wider than the
way he had taken with the Lady Maelen. That pain which
had centered so in his hump was gone—instead there was a
furious itching. He twisted out of the hold upon him and got
to his knees, stretching backward with both arms to claw at
the burden on his shoulder. At first he thought it was the shirt
which tore beneath his raking nails and then he knew it was
skin, thin tatters of skin!

There was pain, but it was nothing compared to what he
had felt earlier. More and more he raked at that loosened
skin, felt it rip and fall away from his body. There was under
it something which moved, arose—as if for all these years he
had carried some other living entity on his back.

The thin light of the globe was before him. He did not look
up, only pulled and tore until that which he had carried for so
long was released. It moved seemingly of its own accord. He
raised his head now, could raise it higher than he ever
remembered doing. Muscles he had no knowledge of moved,
seemingly by insinct. That on his back was unfolding—
stretching—no longer in more than a few quirks of cramped
pain—reaching outward.

"Winged!" He heard Lord-One Krip's voice with a strong
note of awe in it. "He is winged!"

Muscles moved again, stretching in a new way. He felt a
sweep of air about his small body and he dared to reach back
again with one hand. What he touched was like the softest of
down laid over taut skin.

Winged? Was he? How could such a thing be? Somehow
he stumbled up to his feet. That which had weighed upon him
all his remembered life was gone. He cautiously thought of
wings and tried to move such if it were true that he had them.

There was a wide sweep through the air behind him. A
small smart of pain as if something had scraped on an edge of
rock. Now he longed to see!

Before him lay the globe of light. Across it he could see
the faces of those he had followed—and there was awe on
both. Again he raised one hand—then the other—and ex-
plored by touch. There were extensions from his body right
enough. They felt slightly damp, and he had the sensation
that they must be fanned in the air to take moisture from
them. How did wings feel—if they sprouted from one's own
body?

Who—WHAT was he now? Oh, what was he?

He edged halfway around so that those others might see
the better.

"Is it true?" he demanded, wondering rather if he were
unconscious from some fall back on the trail and this was all
the result of feverish imagination.

"It is true!" the Lady Maelen assured him. "Your hump
held wings—they are growing larger—"

"But—I am not a bird!" There were also flying reptiles
and perhaps even weirder things on the many worlds from
star to star. But his was a man's body—or at least humanoid.
And in all his years of listening to travelers' tales in the
Limits (and very strange some of those had been) he had
never heard of a winged man.




214 Andre Norton

Once more he fanned those straightening wings (they
must, he decided, have been closely cramped within that
hump) and felt his whole body lift a little. Frightened, he
clapped them together. He had no idea of flight, and he
thought that that must be learned. Yet in him now moved the
wish to take to the air—to spiral out into the dusk, up into the
circle of the third ring which was a glory now far overhead.

Even his neck felt odd, and he had to rub at it. He was
able to lift it high, to hold it straight as he never had before.
No more peering out on the world from a painful angle.

Then, as if a hand had reached forth and touched him on
the shoulder in warning, he remembered what they fled and
where they were.

"Down"—he looked to Lord-One Krip—"we must get
down."

"We are down," the other answered. "This is the bottom
of the gulf. And—but come and see for yourself."

A few steps on and Farree discovered he must keep the
wings furled if he would walk, and he dared not try to fly,
not yet. They were once more on a road or else a smooth
stretch which was flanked here and there by stones fallen
from the heights around. There were in walls about them the
same kind of doorways chiseled into the stuff of the cliffs on
either side as he had seen in the Valley of the Thassa, though
this did not widen but was a narrow way between two
chiseled walls.

Their small light could show them no more than those
openings were too regular to be natural and they seemed to
go on and on. In the darkness ahead, where the light from the
globe could not penetrate, anything might be waiting, and
Farree forced his mind to turn from what now was on his
shoulders to search out any hint of a living thing before them.

He picked up small anonymous stirrings that were certainly
animal or bird and were too far from the general thought
pattern for him to follow. But of anything stronger, more

PLIGHT IN YIKTOR               215

threatening, there was not a hint now. Lord-One Krip, the
globe half-muffled in his hand, led again, but Lady Maelen
clung to his belt rather than accept Farree's assistance and
the winged man was alone. Cautiously as he went he fanned
the wings slightly, not daring to trust to them but sure that
they needed that stretching and drying. He had peeled the rest
of the rags of the shirt from his body and used those to sop
up the runnels of moisture which dripped down his shoulders
across his chest, which was no longer squeezed forward but
was slowly coming into line with his shoulder points.

Winged! What was he then: some species so far removed
from those with whom he now traveled that they would find
him utterly unnatural? He watched the two moving through
the dark, outlined only by the feeble glow of the light, and
wondered what would happen to him now. In some ways he
longed once more for the familiar weight on his back, the old
knowledge that he was handicapped by something that could
be understood.

Now he needs must keep those new appendages clipped
close lest they scrape against the stones between which many
times they had to squeeze a narrow passage. Yet they went so
slowly, perhaps because of the Lady Maelen's deep fatigue,
that his awkwardness had time to disappear. With each step
he took there was a new confidence rising in him.

The fact that this rift among the heights must once have
had meaning grew more and more evident the farther they
went. The dark openings on either side were so cleanly cut
that he knew them to be of the same fashioning as those in
the valley where the Thassa had their meeting place. What
lay within those portals the two he followed apparently had
no desire to see, for their path was ever on.

They came at last to a place where the narrow slit widened
out into something which was a sky-roofed valley. Yet not
one like unto that of the Thassa meeting ground, for here the
desert aridity was lacking.

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FLIGHT IN YlKTOR

217

Above the radiance of Sotrath and the third ring was once
more open, and the land before them was brightly illumi-
nated. There was the glisten of moon rings on water, for
the whole center of this basin appeared to be a lake. That
body of liquid was buttressed about by a thick cloak of
vegetation such as Farree had seen nowhere else on this world.

Large growths of trees which supported looping and tight
vines made a wall about the lake. Farree, without ever think-
ing of what he did, eager only to see ahead, used his wings
for the first time—fanning the air and leaving the ground.

He immediately discovered that flying was an art that must
be practiced, as any other exercise. His initial soaring was
too abrupt and carried him up too far, the rhythmic beat of
his newbom wings was something he had not mastered, and
he made leaps in the air rather than sustained flight.

Still, those leaps had been enough to show him that the
lake encircled an island that was so centrally placed that it
might have been the pupil in a great unblinking eye. On that
island there were walls and a tower not too unlike that from
which the flitter had lifted him days earlier.

His two companions made no attempt to force a path into
the thickly cloaking growth but had collapsed rather than
seated themselves on the last space of open ground before
that dense stem and branch began. The Lady Maelen sat with
her head turned up to the sky, her eyes fixed upon the glory
of the third ring, her mouth a little open as if she now drank
sip by sip from the brilliance. As Farree watched, perching a
little above the two on a last outcropping of fallen rock, she
stretched wide her arms as one waiting to embrace something
or someone before her.

Lord-One Krip sat with upturned face also, but his eyes
were not on the glory in the sky but on Farree, as the winged
one realized. And there was wonder in his face which was
slowly overcome by an expression of purpose.

"What lies beyond?" he spoke rather than thought. Per-


haps he feared that thought send might interrupt what the
Lady Maelen was doing.

"A lake and on an isle, in a ruin, a tower." Farree
answered promptly.

"Can you reach it over that?" Lord-One Krip motioned
toward the thick intertwining of the growth. It was only too
plain that without some form of cutting tool they could not
hope to blast a path farther on.

"I can try." But still Farree was distrustful of those wings.
They were too new, too far removed from all he had ever
knowledge of, for him to truly believe that they could be
successfully used to climb into the sky more than on the short
soarings he had already attempted with more than a little
bemusement and uneasiness.

Purposefully now he fanned them slowly, turned his head
as far as he could to sight their sweep. They were not
feathered—he had already determined that with his hands
reaching behind him—rather they seemed to be covered with
a skin which had a soft, velvety texture almost like close-
shorn fine hair. Now he stood and dared to take a small leap
into the sky using the wings to support and sustain him. He
had discovered a bit of the beat which would lift him and
applied that rhythm.

Up he went into the splendor of the ring-bright night.
When he was sure, having rounded in a circle over the other
two, he ventured out above the growth, fearing to have his
wings fail and let him fall down into the matted vegetation.
But awkward as he was, he was learning with every move-
ment he tried, more and more of what it took to steady
himself in the air, to do what humanoids had always wanted:

reach the clouds.

Only there were no clouds here—just the darkness of that
tangled wood which ringed the lake, the sparkle of the water
which reflected the third ring, and the island beyond.

Out over the lake he beat his way, not trying any high




218 Andr6 Norton

soaring as yet. Then he was above the island. There was
growth here, too, but not a matted wall of it such as grew on
the shore. Here were tall plants scattered in clumps, heavy
with flowers wide open as if the moon instead of the sun
brought them their nourishment. From them came a heavy
perfume so that Farree, as he flew over them, felt as though
he bathed in the scent. And his mental search brought no hint
of life here.

He came in, to settle on the wall which ringed the tower.
Now that he was close he could see that time had not struck
so heavily here as it had on that castle where the Guild had
taken up their den. Rather this surface was smoother than any
stone he knew of and it was near white in color, veined
darkly with straggling rivers of lines and splotches. There was
glitter, too, from points along those paths of darker shades,
and when he touched a near one he felt a roughness as if
there were some other thing, perhaps a gem, inset in the
veining.

Along that wall he walked, using the wings to steady and
balance himself, looking down into the interior of the place
which was wide open to the glory of Sotrath. There were no
other buildings within. Only that tower, and it was thickly
agleam with the sparks of fire such as passed beneath his
feet.

He had kicked off his boots before he had taken off, and
under the long-hardened soles of his feet he felt small sparks
of heat, as if every one of those small stones was a flare of a
tiny fire. Having made a complete round of the outer wall, he
dared to glide down to the pavement below. As he had noted
from aloft, here the small bright stones were set in patterns,
not following any twist of veining. And each was different.
As he landed in one such design, which was a concentric
series of circles, there came that which almost sent him
soaring again. A flap of wings did carry him upward so that
his feet no longer touched the stone, for out of somewhere—

PLIGHT IN YIKTOR

219

the tower, the very sky above him—there had sounded a
sharp note of sound as if he had struck two knife blades
together.

He waited, his head turned from side to side, watching,
mind seeking. The sound echoed and died. There was no
answer that he could detect. But he was suspicious of those
patterns now—some kind of alarm? Or was it a greeting
meant to assure some people long dead? There had been
Thassa-like caves along the road to the valley, but the tower
seemed unlike their form of building.

The side of the tower which faced him had the dark
opening of a door, though there was no sign of any windows
on any level. To enter so might mean that he was an unwary
smux venturing into a trap.

Smux! He had all but forgotten Toggor during the wonder
of his transformation. But the smux was still with him now,
claws tightly clipping his belt. Having received no intima-
tions of life from the tower he applied touch to Toggor to see
if the smux could pick up something too subtle, too far from
his own species's mental processes to record. But the result
was that Toggor knew nothing.

A wing-assisted leap took Farree from the circle which had
brought forth that answer to the very edge about the foot of
the tower where he noted the patterns did not reach. There he
settled once again. There was a faint reflection of the moon
and ring light. Enough to show him that there was no door
here to bar passage. But the dusk which lay within was
daunting. He had been foolish not to bring with him the
globe. Even if he could see only a few steps ahead, he would
not shrink so from investigating it.

Smux—send Toggor in again? But the creature's night
sight was little better than his own. When he hunted within
the walls for prey he used scent organs. And here the con-
stant small breezes brought the overpowering odor of the
flowers to kill any such clue.

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR

Andre Norton

220

221

There was no use lingering here—Farree would either
completely explore this structure or he would have to return
with the admission that he had been routed by fear. But he
did not even have the slight advantage his wings gave him in

the open!

Clapping those together and furling them as far as he
could, Farree took a deep breath and started into the tower.
He half expected a second warning of sound, perhaps even
the snap of a trap. But what he did meet was a firm barrier
of—nothingness.

He could not see—he could only feel as he passed his
hands up and down that barrier as stout as any double-locked
door. Yet he saw through and beyond it as far as the light
penetrated and there was nothing—though his hands told him
there was. At last he loosed Toggor but the smux was also
baffled by a barrier he could not penetrate. So—the builders
here had their guards after all. Perhaps this one had been
alerted by his own touching of the pattern in the pavement

without.
However, as he had learned in the Guild fort, there was

always the roof. Urging Toggor to fasten himself once more
to his belt, Farree stepped back far enough to get wingspread
and then leaped upwards, with the beat of the wings indeed
carrying him to where he could grasp the parapet of the

tower.

Here, too, there were patterns on the surface. Farree could
see no hint among them of any trapdoor such as had been his
salvation before. He did not propose to get down and go
exploring, not without knowing more of what he faced. Thus
he set himself to studying the patterns, setting them firmly in

mind.

That done, he sought out with mind reach, and the Lady
Maelen, strong and clear as she had ever been, caught his
cast and answered. He told her of the courtyard below, of the
invisible door bar, and now of these patterns aloft.

"Show me," came her calm answer.

Trying to picture each in turn, he began with the one
immediately below his perch on the parapet. It went so and
so and so. While the one beyond that was thus, and this, and
that. Thus he strove to set up the clearest mental pictures he
could.

He felt her growing astonishment, her excitement. "Thus
and thus?" came her demand with a newly mentalized design.

Farree looked, but that design was lacking. He returned
that message and could sense her disappointment.

"Then this or this?"

Part of that surely—yes! But not as entire as she pictured it
for him.

"Below. Look to the court below!" came her order then.
As he had crouched on the wall and surveyed the patterns
from a lower point, now did he again, moving with care
along the parapet so that he might view all below for'her.
Some were so intricate in their convolutions that it was
difficult for him to sort out their beginnings and endings.

"It is a maze," she returned. "But I must see for myself. I
have to see."

"I cannot carry you," Farree pointed out. That his strength
had not been great enough to hold her from slipping on
the trail was a fact. Also, he did not believe that she and
Lord-One Krip could fight their way through that wood and
across the water.

"You can carry that which I may use." Back came her
answer in a rush. "Come for it, Farree, come for that!"




17.

I* arree winged back across the band of tangled vegetation
and set foot on the ground not far from the two who waited.
Lord-One Krip was busy with that bag which had been
clipped to his belt through all their journeying. What he
brought out now was not food as Farree had expected but
rather a shining square of what seemed to be bright metal,
well polished and no bigger than Farree's own hand.

He rubbed his fingers across the upper surface as if to
remove some unseen covering and passed it to the Lady
Maelen, who held it firmly and looked to Farree.

"Those patterns," she said, "are protective devices of a
sort, yet they do not follow those which I have learned. I
must see them."

Farree shifted on his perch. The more he looked at the
entangled maze of dark greenery before them, the less he
couid conceive of cutting any path through that without any
tools. Perhaps a laser might clear the way but otherwise—

"Look." She was holding up that square of metal. "Have
you seen one of these before? The tourists use them for
recording sights they wish to remember clearly. It works

223

224 Andre Norton

thus—or better have Krip show you, since this is not a thing
ofThassa world."

He had taken the square back from her and now flipped it
over to show two impressions on the back into which a man's
forefingers might fit. "Let the reflection of what you would
preserve so show in the mirror and then press here. Wait for
the count of five and press again at this other spot and then it
will clear and you can move to the next. It is simple and
there is room for twenty shots before the power is exhausted
and it must be recharged."

Lord-One Krip held it out and Farree accepted it gingerly.
Yes, it sounded simple enough but he was unused to such
off-world wonders and he only hoped that he could follow
those directions without failure. Also there was something
else to mind. He stood up, the picture square in his hands.
He did not look to the tower in the lake, the very top of
which was visible from where he stood, but rather back along
the way they had come. Those who followed—surely they
must be nearing now the end of that road through the moun-
tain and might arrive at any moment. What then? Did they
have time for such a task as they had set him now? What if
those others could crouch in the rubble of the way and take
both of the Thassa with their long-range weapons?

"Not so," Lord-One Krip answered his unasked question.
"We keep guard and they, as always, will betray themselves
by the nothingness their mind shields project."

"Still they will come—" Farree was as certain of that as
he was now aware that he wore wings. Nor did he believe
that even those could carry their prey away from those who
followed.

"And we shall go," Lord-One Krip returned, "into that—"
he gestured to the thick growth ahead.

"There is no way!"

The Lady Maelen smiled. "As long as the third ring holds,
I have power, though my people would not have it so.

FLIGHT IN YlKTOR

225

However, since I have returned I have discovered it is not
only the wand which controls, but rather the will and energy
of the one who uses such. Yes, we can go but not from here.
We shall move on to the north so that we give them no hint
of what we have done. But you, winged brother, have that
which will serve us best." She nodded toward the thing he
now held.

Since he had no argument which would stand against her
determination and self-confidence, Farree took off once more,
rising above the screen of the thick brush and trees, heading
for the island in the lake.

Only, as he winged so he felt naked and open to attack by
the Guild hounds sniffing on their trail who could easily
pluck him down with one laser blast. And he was glad when
he settled again on the tower, a point from which he was sure
he could record the best.

Slowly and with all the care he could summon he held the
square of metal out over the first selection of the patterns
below and pressed the depressions, counting aloud. He moved
around the parapet of the tower, making sure that his record—if
he was truly recording something—took in all those whirls,
spirals, triangles, and arcs below. Having made the full
circuit which would set those in order, he turned to the ones
on the roofs and added them to his store.

They did not have much longer before Sotrath was gone
and the third ring with it. Already that was fading into the
grayish murk which preceded the sunrise. Clutching the pic-
ture taker to him, he arose aloft far enough above the lake as
to hope to catch sight of the other two. But there was nothing
in the place where he had left them nor anything to be seen
along the northern edge of the forest ring. He dropped, to
skim just a little above the tallest of the trees in that jungle,
looking and then daring to send a mind call.

"The lake," came his answer. "Wait by the lake."

There was a ring of light gravel or sand between the edge

226

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227

of that jungle and the water. To that he dropped, folding his
wings, still being surprised at how completely those crimped
into place. There was yet some aching through his shoulders,
but he judged that was from the use of muscles which had not
been called into duty before and that it would vanish the
longer he made use of his new appendages. The silent,
undisturbed surface of the lake drew him now and he looked
down into its surface as he might into a mirror.

He was— Farree could hardly believe what he saw there.
For all his days he had gone misshapen and maimed among
other life. Now he was complete. The tips of the wings arose
a good five hands above that head which he was able to hold
completely aloft. And the wings themselves were not dull but
were covered with a satin-shining surface on which were dots
and designs of a light green, the color of his skin. They were
more magnificent, he thought, with the first swelling pride in
himself that he had ever known, than any Lord's cloak of
war or office.

He swung out farther over the water to see the better, and
knew with every minute, every movement he was more and
more what nature had always intended him to be. But what
was he? Surely he had never been bom on Grant's World, or
someone in the Limits would have recognized him for what I
he was. Lanti—had he taken him there? For what reasons? I
Unless he had been meant to be sold to such as Russtif as a
curiosity for showing after brutal training. There was some-
thing about his wings which brought a flash of memory. That
brilliant scrap which the other Limits rogue had brought to
Lanti too late to get an explanation. A piece of—wing!.
Surely that had been a piece of wing!

He felt cold. Perhaps it was from the predawn wind which
had come to ruffle the mirror surface of the lake. But it might
have been inside his small, spare body. Winged people hunted
for their wings! It would not be the first time according to the
legends often repeated in the Limits that a sentient race—and

plenty of animals, too—had been wiped out for some special
gain on the part of an off-worlder band. Maybe even Lanti
had taken him to raise his own pair of wings so when the
time came they could be harvested. Perhaps the spacer had
wished to impress the Guild with treasure which was a part of
Farree. Now that cold filled him, and he dropped back upon

the apron of gravel between water and wood. To be hunted
for his wings!

"Farree." The sharp mind call alerted him out of that
momentary nightmare but he did not take to the sky. Stay on
the ground, caution warned him, not let himself be seen by
any hunter who had broken out of the mountain ways and
now cast about for a fresh trail.

He saw, to his amazement, a quiver in that green wall, a
lifting of branch, an uncoiling of vine, and then the Lord-One
Krip came out into the open, leading Lady Maelen by one
hand. She walked with her eyes open and staring ahead as
one might walk mindlessly after some great shock. But she
was also singing—a murmur of sound which had in its tempo
something of the rustle of leaves, the scrape of branch against
branch under a light wind. Ft would seem that even as her
singing had wrought miracles in other places, even among

the rocks, here it had tamed the ring jungle enough to let
them through.

She pulled free of her companion's grasp and turned to
face the woods from which they had just emerged. Now she
held both hands out, palm up and empty, and her singing
arose through a flight of notes such as might be caroled by a
bird, then came to an end.

Lord-One Krip had already reached Farree and was hold-
ing out his hand for the mirror picture maker which the other
surrendered to him with the hope that his use had been good
enough to answer their questions.

The Lady Maelen, once more looking aware of what lay
about her, came quickly over the pebbly beach to them.




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229

Lord-One Krip had touched a place on the rim of the mirror,
and now there appeared from the side of that square a strip of
colored designs which certainly resembled those Farree had
aimed to take with his mirror device. As this unrolled, the
Lady Maelen laid it out on the gravel, pulling it straight
before crouching down to inspect it closely. Sometimes she
lifted a fingertip to trace one of those patterns as if to impress

it the stronger on her memory.

"It is truly a locking," she observed. "As strong in its
way, Krip, as those persona locks off-worlders use for their
most precious possessions. Here and here"—she made quick
stabs with her finger—"are markings I have knowledge of—
these are close to what is so used today. But others." She
shook her head. "I can only guess that if one passes over
them without proper preparation the result may be perilous

indeed."

"What does all this protect?" Lord-One Krip put into

words the first question in Farree's own mind.

"Something of the Thassa—but not of our time," she
replied. "Here may be what those others have been seeking."

And these traps"—Lord-One Krip swept a hand above
the roll of pictures now lying flat upon the ground—"will
keep them from entering and finding what they seek?"

She shook her head slowly. "How can we be sure? This
was made to warn off those of Yiktor. Will it also work
against off-worlders of whom perhaps those who set it never
guessed might try their success against the barriers?"

"So what defense have we left against them?" he proceeded.

Her hands arose and sketched a gesture which might have
expressed helplessness. "We can only wait and see."

But Farree was not ready to accept that answer—the first
he had ever had from her which carried no certainty, only

confusion in it.

"How would one unlock this"—it was his turn to ges-
ture—"if it was known?"

"It is a code of sorts," she explained. "One must move
from pattern to pattern in a certain sequence and then it will
open."

"And that invisible door will be gone?"

She nodded. "But the code was devised by those long
gone, and there could be a hundred, even a thousand differ-
ent sequences—the trying might go on for years, many
seasons—and those who searched could come no nearer to
success. There is nothing even in the far legends of the
Thassa—those which are known to every Singer—which men-
tions such a find as this."

It was Farree's turn to study the strip of pictures. Those he
sought were at the very end. "These four are patterns on the
roof—are they any closer to the ones you know?''

She leaned forward. The gray of early morning light since
the fading of the rings had deepened, and she squinted and
then shook her head. "I cannot tell as yet. There is not
enough light."

Lord-One Krip had arisen. "Let us get under cover," he
said. "They could not have brought a flitter through the
mountain way but they may have a course-setting device with
them, and that would give them air support once they set it
within this valley."

Withdraw they did under the fringe of trees beyond that
ribbon of beach. There they huddled, not too far from each
other, easing their tired bodies from the night's labor and
travel. They drew lots for first sentry go and Farree had the
shortest. He found his wings most difficult to manage, even
when furled to the smallest and tightest extent it was possible
to set upon them, and he had to push clear to the edge of
their cover in order to have room.

The sun arose, almost reluctantly, and the glitter of the
water as it had lain under the third ring was now a glare
against which he had to shade his eyes. He chewed on one of




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231

the strips of journey food, finding it dry and tasteless, and
listened intently for any sound of approach by air.

Even though he tried to keep his attention for what lay
about and above him, he could not help now and then
looking to the tower on the island, wondering if, under the
sun, those complex patterns set in the stone were any clearer.
Certainly they dared not attempt to solve the code now—-the
Lady Maelen had pointed out—as that might be a task which
would take them long to solve, if ever. He found himself
wondering what traps awaited those who did not know the
secret at all. He was about to leam.

There were a continued rustling from the layer of jungle as
if the plants therein were restless and were changing their
positions. But there were no bird calls, no cry of beast, nor
chirp of insect. The sullen green growth might have been
bare of any life except that of its own.

At times that continued rustling took on the sound of a
muttered conversation, one which he could almost follow.
Then he shook his head vigorously and moved about a little,
thinking that it was lulling him into sleep.

The interruption came from a distance and he had plenty of
time to reach out and touch Lord-One Krip's shoulder, the
Thassa coming into instant awareness at that warning as if he
had been only lying conscious with his eyes closed.

"Flitter!" Farree mind sent as if he could be overheard by
the enemy even at this great distance. He jerked a thrust
toward the south—that narrow rift through which they had

come into this valley.

In turn Lord-One Krip aroused the Lady Maelen, and the
three of them drew a little more together, listening. There
seemed to be no search pattern on the part of the air craft. By
a continued and ever louder sound it was headed straight for
the lake, no pattern of circling to pick up a trail.

"Back!" Lord-One Krip urged. The Lady Maelen was
already burrowing into the bushes, and under the sound of

the flitter Farree thought he could still hear the hum of her
voice as if she once more used a Singer skill to help penetrate
the jungle growth. That seemed useless—perhaps it would only
work under the radiance of the ring—for he saw a branch
spring back at her face, and, only because she threw up an
arm, were those thorn marks on her forearm instead of across
her very eyes.

At least they were under the edging of the wood and the
gravel behind showed no discernible track. Though the off-
worlders had their own ways of trailing, rumored machines
and devices that picked up fugitives by their body heat when
they were close enough.

The flitter was out cruising above the lake. Now it circled
in a tight orbit around the tower. If they did know where
the three lay in scant cover, they seemed to wish to learn
more of the building they had chanced upon, for the craft
made a third circle. Then it held steady about the tower and a
ladder, such as Farree himself had once used to escape,
tumbled out of a hatch in its belly.

Down that swung a man while another crouched at the
exit, a laser across his arm at the ready, waiting to cover the
journey of his comrade. The invader must have made some
suggestions, for the flitter swung forward a fraction, and now
he was descending past the roof of the tower into the pat-
terned courtyard. He disappeared behind the wall, and a
second explorer took his place on the ladder.

Sound—sudden, both sharp and deafening—cloaked even
the clatter of the off-world engine. Then a rainbow of light
fanned upward. All that glory of the third ring might have
been condensed in that.

"No! Do not look!" The Lady Maelen's thought reached
Farree and only half-consciously he obeyed, bending his arm
across his eyes.

He felt a warmth which was not that of sunlight but rather
arose to near the torment of a fire as if he had set his hand to




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233

pick up a coal from a brazier, and his wings quivered under
that fiery assault. The heat which reached them in such a
flash must have been a hundredfold worse within that walled

courtyard.

Farree heard a scream that lasted only for a second and
then was blasted away by the deafening sound rising to a
crescendo. What luck had attended him last night when he
might have encountered that same trap!

The heat seemed to hold for a long time, but he heard the
sound die away and with it the noise of the flitter, in full
retreat after losing two of its crew to whatever disaster was

the guardian of the tower.

A scent reached the three under the edge of the wood—not
of the moon flowers which had perfumed the night, but a

horrible stench of meat burnt to a crisp.

"They are gone," Lord-One Krip said. Farree wondered
why he had not tried to track them himself by mind touch,
catching that emptiness which was a shrouded mind.

"They will be back," the Lord-One Krip added a moment
later. "They will not let this puzzle be."

"Have they anything which can unlock the code?" asked
the Lady Maelen. "Have you ever heard of such?"

"No. But that does not mean that they do not possess one.
The Guild have knowledge beyond that of any Free Trader
such as I was. There are stories enough of, what they have

achieved."

"Then we must do our best. If this thing which is guarded

here is by the will of ancient Thassa, they must not have it!"

She crept on her hands and knees out of the shadow of the
bush which had left the scarlet wounds down her arm and
reached again for the pictures that had issued from the mir-
ror. Now she turned her attention from those of the courtyard
to the patterns Farree had found on the roof of the tower.
With her forefinger she traced one design after another.

"They would put their most formidable weapon in the

courtyard," she said slowly. "I do not think that they would
much expect any to enter from the air. Thus these are the
important ones for us." And her finger went once more over
the designs, and she was humming again but not the lazy
half-sleepy sound which she had uttered in defense against
the jungle belt.

"We cannot dare to try until the moon rises—"

"By then," Farree interrupted, "those may be back with
something to open that tower as one opens a bra-crab shell."

She nodded. "That is so. Time lies on their side of the
balance. But I cannot believe that the Scales of Molester are
so weighed against us who would save patterns of time and
space and not blast them into nonexistence. We must wait
through the day, save our strength—"

"I cannot carry you to the tower and there is the lake to
cross," Farree pointed out. He wondered if they would dare
to swim—could they swim? The arid country which seemed
home to the Thassa might not have given them any reason for
the sport. And though Lord-One Krip had been first a Free
Trader Spacer, certainly he would have had little enough
reason to perfect such a skill either.

"I know," she returned and there was a troubled note in
her voice.

"A rope"—Lord-One Krip was looking back into the
gloom of the jungle—"one of those lianas, were it tough
enough, or a weaving of vines—''

"They live," Lady Maelen told him quickly, "with more
of a real life than any rooted thing I have seen before."

"But they also die." He pointed in two places where the
full roundness of life had shrunken away and there were
brownish loops which were plainly dead or near that state.
"Can the dead protest?"

"I do not know," she answered frankly. "It is of impor-
tance, this rope of yours?"

"It is the only way, I think, of reaching the island," he




234                Andre Norton

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235

returned firmly. Though Farree could not see any reason for
such confidence.

"Ah, well—" She arose and went to where one of those
dead coils spanned a tree from branch to branch. Slowly she
raised her hand and set it on the brown surface, tugging at it
a fraction. Nothing around her moved or strove to make her
pay for her audacity. She pulled harder and began her hum-
ming song. Within a few moments the arc of the dead vine
was free of the branches, looping to the ground and beyond
out on the gravel of the beach. Lord-One Krip was on it
instantly. So she wrought with two other vines, and they
were in time laid along the surface of the beach in lengths
beyond the height of the tower itself, or so Farree believed.

"Leaves." Lord-One Krip stood up from stretching the
last of those vines in place. "Such a leaf as that." Again he
pointed to a bush standing taller than his own head. The
bottom leaves of that plant—the ones reaching out over the
beach—were also spotted with brown and plainly dying.
Their hard, thick sides were rolled up so that they formed a
half tube and were large enough for the Thassa to lie upon.
"Can these be detached also?"

The Lady Maelen went to the plant and knelt as it towered
over her. Her singing became another series of notes, and
Farree thought he could almost read a petition into that. Then
she leaned forward and set a hand to either side of the leaf
and strove to draw it to her. There was no movement save the
constant tensing of her body. At least, as it had been with the
dead vines, the growth itself made no attack. Then the rotted
core of the leaf gave away suddenly so that she sprawled
backward, the broken stem dripping with a black liquid
which gave off the foul odor of decay.

When a second leaf had been so released from a similar
plant Lord-One Krip set them all to work, braiding the tough
vine lengths into one knobby rope. When he had done, he
took one of the long leaves down to the water and floated it,

throwing himself facedown upon it and pushing out a little
from the shore. Though it bobbed downward under his weight,
yet it supported his head and shoulders above water.

"This"—he indicated the rope—"well fastened to a rock
over there"—his wide gesture indicated the island—"can
be used to draw us through the water."

He would be trusting a great deal to dead vegetation,
Farree thought, but there was a small chance that such might
work. His own part of the task was simple compared to
theirs. What if they reached the water and the flitter returned?

He had great respect for the Lady Maelen's third ring
powers, but this they must do now and the sun gave them
nothing but light. However, the trial must be made.

With the end of the coil fastened to his belt he soared up
and out across the lake, heading directly for a fringe of rocks
before the wall of the courtyard. Once there he hastened to
make fast the rope's end to the most slender of those rocks.
Lord-One Krip had to wade into the water a little, holding the
other end, but it did reach, and he was tugging hard on it,
testing its stability.

The Lady Maelen came first, lying in her curled leaf with
both hands overhead on the rope, pulling herself along.
Against a troubled and current-riven water she would not
have succeeded, but the pull across the calm surface, though
it seemed to take endless time, was at last accomplished, and
Farree flew back with the rope's end to the waiting Krip.

For the second time a leaf made that hardly believable
voyage and then, the rope coiled about Farree's arm, the
three of them stood before the wall surrounding the courtyard.




18.

a arree crouched on the top of the wall and determinedly
did not look to the two twisted burnt things that lay before
the invisible door. A laser had fallen from the charred claws
of one to skid across the courtyard against the wall not too far
away. Could he manage to reach the small strip of pavement
there which was free of pattern and retrieve it? The thought
of such a weapon for their defense was irresistible. He laid
aside the rope which he had carried up and gestured toward
the two below, off before they might object.

Down he fluttered, not sure yet of his wing power but
impatient to get his hands on the weapon. He made a swoop,
gasped suddenly as he lengthened out with his body parallel
to the ground, and managed to claw up the butt end of the
laser, climbing up into the air and then bouncing over the
wall top to the two Thassa below. He offered the weapon to
Lord-One Krip, who reached for it quickly.

Now, whether his weight on the end of the rope would be
anchorage enough he did not know. In the end he picked that
up and did not try to fasten it on the wall but spiralled over to
the tower where he could anchor it on one of the jutting bits

237

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239

of the parapet. Then he returned to the wall top where they

speedily joined him.
The Lady Maelen lay down and edged along that length of

banter top until she could see the pattern which had been the
fatal trap for the Guild men. Farree could sense her aversion
to what she saw there, but he also knew that she was driven
by duty to consider what manner of trap that was—if she
could equate it with something her people still had knowl-
edge of.

"Force released," she said slowly. "After all these tens of

tens of tens of seasons that which was set answered."
"But I landed there earlier and nothing happened," Farree

commented.

"By luck you must have touched a pattern which was not

one set for defense."
He studied the designs carefully. Yes, he had stood at the

edge of a crimson circle a foot or so away from the square of
wavy blue lines which had been the downfall of the dead men

below.

"Dare we cross?" Lord-One Krip wanted to know.

With a pointing finger the Lady Maelen was tracing in the
air the patterns between them and the narrow edging of plain

stone about the foundation of the tower.

"I do not know. There is a maze there, a curve here, a
suggestion of a code. But without full knowledge ..." She
shifted her sight toward the two bodies and shivered. "They
will be back," she said then as if speaking thoughts aloud.

"With enough power to blast the place open," Lord-One
Krip returned. "Perhaps they will so trigger that as to destroy

all of this wholly."

She shook her head. "They want this too much. Or what

they think it holds. Remember Sehkmet. They have traced
us—some of them—believing we can uncover such another
cache for their taking. Now on Thassa world they have found

this. Their first defeat was a small one in their eyes. They
will be ready to follow through."

"Look you"—Farree gave a tug to the rope against which
he had been pitting his full strength—"can you use this to
swing across and land by the tower, then climb?"

Lord-One Krip stood up and eyed the rope and its tower
anchor with narrowed eyes. "One can try."

His hand twitched the rope out of Farree's hold and bent
its own strength in a grip which kept it taut, then jerked at it.
The rope held. He clasped it tightly and swung down and out
across the treacherous pavement, descending so far that Farree
was afraid his feet would scrape across the inlaid stones.
Then he was at the foot of the tower and was climbing. His
feet set to the wall itself, his arms extending one above the
other, he used the rope to raise him. They watched him,
tense and frozen, until he was at the parapet and over. Then
Farree leapt into the air and spanned the distance between
them with the aid of his wings, caught the end of the rope,
and bore it back to the Lady Maelen.

For the second time he witnessed the dangerous swing
past the dead and saw her being drawn up by the man on the
tower. He whirred across and was there to meet her.

For a long moment she leaned against the parapet until her
breath steadied, but she was staring down at the patterns now
revealed below- her.

"The third ring," she said slowly. "These are markings
very old—if I had time I could perhaps trace a key to this
locking. But we must have Sotrath above us when we try."

Lord-One Krip looked to the sky. "There are hours before
we shall have that. They may well be back long before the
third ring shines."

She shrugged. "In that we must take our chance. If they

come—"

"He will come." Farree knew that as well as if it had been




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Andre Norton

240

announced out of the air above his head. "Their leader will

make this his own venture."

Lord-One Krip nodded. "That it seems we must chance. If
he is the regular Guild Veep he will make sure of his
armament, of no more losses such as he has suffered here.

And—"
Toggor suddenly turned from the place he had climbed to

on the parapet, his eyestalks out to their full limit, his gaze
on the shore from whence they had come. If Farree had
caught that message, so had the Thassa. Beyond the maze
ring of vegetation the enemy moved. Those who had fol-
lowed them through the mountain were now prepared to

batter a way through the tangled growth.

"Yes." The Lady Maelen nodded. "However—" She,
too, had wheeled about to face the growing barrier and now
she planted both hands palm down on a curling line of vivid
green set with yellow stars of gems which crawled toward
them as part of the tower pattern. She knelt so, unable to see
now above the parapet, though she faced in the same direc-
tion as Toggor.

"Feed me!" she commanded fiercely. "Feed!"
The Lord-One Krip went down on one knee, his hand
cupping the point of her shoulder, his other hand reaching out
toward Farree. Not knowing just what was to be done, the
winged man settled down, awkwardly now because of his
wings, but placing one hand within those groping fingers
which caught on his with a painful grasp.

Farree gasped. Something was being drawn from his body,
flowing on to Lord-One Krip, then presumedly to the Lady
Maelen. Her face was so tense and set the flesh seemed but a
shallow covering to her bones. She began to sing, first in the
low hum he had heard her use to force a path from the
growth—then the notes scaled up, grew louder, some ringing
out as if she had beaten a gong rather than used her voice to

shape them. In the day she sang—would the power without
the moon answer?

Though Farree had knelt to take Lord-One Krip's hand, he
could see above the parapet against which his shoulder rubbed.
Suddenly it was as if a storm cloud had released a wave of
wind instead of water. The growth tossed. He could see
branches move, vines writhe, some even appearing to unknot
themselves and toss loose ends in the air, darting about like
the heads of scaled things. This wild rippling ran in both
directions. He believed he could even sight bits of leaf and
vine which broke loose and wafted along on the surface of
that wind out of nowhere.

Farree felt the energy drain from him. Something he had
never known existed was being tapped and going through his
hold upon the Thassa to sustain that desperate song. He put
his other hand to the parapet where Toggor crouched. Now
he saw that the smux was rocking back and forth, clacking
his larger claws together in part rhythm with the song.

For a while it held loud and steady, and then it began to
slow. He could see the drops of sweat running down the
Lady Maelen's cheeks, felt her fight to keep on. However,
there came an end at last. She swayed and would have fallen
had not Lord-One Krip seized her, snatching his hand from
Parree and pulling her back against him for her support. A
last bit of song, hardly above a whisper, came from her lips
and then, eyes closed, mouth gaping, she lay limp in his
hold.

The wind or stirring out of nowhere died. Farree tried hard
to pick up that nothingness which was the mark of the
shielded enemy. There! He had touched one—quickly he
searched but there seemed to be no others. Toggor had sunk
down, drawn in his eyestalks as he did when he must rest.

Rest! Parree leaned sidewise against the stone, his wings
together and folded, an ache in his head and a feeling of
emptiness inside him. He was as hollow now as if he had




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FLIGHT IN YlKTOR

243

been squeezed by some great hand and flung aside to lie

without substance.
For how long that lasted he could not tell. There was a

feeble stirring in his mind that they must be again on guard
ready for death coming from the skies. Yet he must have
slept, for he awoke from that place of nothingness with a
hand shaking him, and then Lord-One Krip forced into his
hold some of the rations which they had relied upon so
long—dry and tasteless, yet he choked mouthfuls down.

The sun no longer burned down upon them but sped across
the sky into red sunset clouds, and the Lady Maelen was
sitting up, turning her head slowly from one side to the other
as if she had awakened out of a dream and could not recog-
nize where she was. Then recognition came back to her eyes

and she smiled wearily.

"Let Sotrath rise," she said slowly, "then we shall see
whether, though I am wandless, I am still too lacking in the
Gift to do what must be done. At least this day past I have
wrought more than 1 would have believed possible. This is

truly a place of power."

"Lacking!" Lord-One Krip burst out. "When you awoke

the woods rang ..."
Her smile grew a little stronger. "Yes, that 1 did. I am still

a Singer.''

"One of the mighty ones!" Lord-One Krip said forcibly.

"Let them try to deny you your due now!"

"Hush." She put her hand to his lips. "I do what I can,
but to claim full mastery is false." She reached out to touch
that line set in the stones, to fit fingertip to each of the stones
in it. "That this answered the three of us after all the lost
time—that is not my mastery but that of those great ones who

set it here."

"And those who hunt us?" Farree sputtered through dry

crumbs.

"Ask that of them." She pointed toward the wood. "They
are a greater barrier than even I could guess. Look!"

She pointed now to the eastern sky where the dusk crept
down like a curtain. Showing just a tip about it was a thing of
glitter which he had come to cherish. The third ring was
beginning to rise—the time of the Thassa power at its height
was coming!

It seemed to Farree that the dusk came more swiftly than
usual. As if the very longing of the Lady Maelen had the
power to summon up Sotrath and the moon rings. Yet she did
not look to the sky but ran her hands up the curving side of
one pattern and down the arabesque of another as if her touch
could find what she sought quicker than her sight. Perhaps
that was so far; just as she had chosen certain stones to rub
when she sang their partnership to the woods, now did she
settle at last at the farther side of the roof, waving the other
two to the blank border beside the parapet while she settled
herself on her knees, leaning well forward so that the palms
of her hand each cupped a series of three greenish stones
which gleamed the brighter as the third ring crept up the sky
behind her head.

Once more she began to sing—this time no hum without
words, but rather a chant that accented some syllables with
the beat of a drum. That sound gripped Farree and perhaps
also the Lord-One Krip, for Farree noted that the spaceman's
hands were opening and closing, where they hung by his
sides, in time to that beat in words.

Farree had begun to believe that indeed she could accom-
plish great things by her words alone. He had seen sound
shatter crystals once or twice in the Limits, when some
sleight-of-hand dealer was showing off skills. Why then could
such not pick up the resonance of a voice at proper pitch and
be moved by it as was a lock with a key laid into its proper
slot?

By the time Sotrath itself was showing on the horizon and




244

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FLIGHT IN YlKTOR

245

the arc of the third ring well advanced, bringing rainbows of
light from the pavement, she did indeed achieve what she had
set to do. There was another sound across the beat of her
voice and before her a dark outline framed a good section of

the roof.

Her voice arose in a triumphant crescendo and the block so

outlined was sucked downward out of their sight.

Farree gave a cry, clapping his hands to his head. Into his
mind there burst such a flash or lash of sights and sounds, of
places and people, he felt that his very head would split
open, not being able to hold or control this wave of other-
ness. Lord-One Krip likewise doubled near over as if some
mighty blow had sent him reeling, and his hands also clawed
over his ears; while the Lady Maelen crouched low, her face
drawn and contorted into grimaces, her whole body tensed

and resisting.

It was, Farree decided, as if a whole world of different
thought had been launched at them. He fought, trying to set
in his mind a wall behind which that that was he himself

could crouch protected.

Half expecting a company of Thassa or their like to come
boiling up through the door, a company the Lady Maelen had
sung into their defenses, Farree could see only the dark
oblong at their feet, and in that nothing moved nor climbed to

meet them.

Wall! Think a wall! Farree's wings moved without con-
scious thought and he was up—into the night, soaring above
the top of the tower. Yet those hundreds, thousands of thoughts
(though they were a little muffled) beat at him. He thought a
wall, barrier so tight set that nothing could breach it. As he
circled on wings about the tower, unwilling to desert those
two who did not have his advantage for a quick escape, he
was aware that the thought stream was thinning, that now
only a trickle of such came through.

The Lady Maelen was on her feet, though Lord-One Krip

still crouched low, his head swinging from side to side as if
the very weight of that storm of thought was launched against
him in one wave after another. The Lady Maelen held forth
the light globe which had guided them through the mountain
passage, and that gathered to it the ring's glory until she had
cupped a great ball of fire. With that hand stretched before
her, she approached the opening, looking down into the
depths beneath.

What she saw there Farree could not imagine. When he
watched her prepare to descend through that opening he
swooped, determined to catch her before she was swallowed
up by that maelstrom of mind speech. But he was too late,
and, in spite of all his efforts, the clamor caught him again,
driving him in self-protection to the edge of the parapet
where he strove to shake the Lord-One Krip into action.

Only, it would appear that the man was also still caught in
the invisible storm they had loosed. He moaned a little, and
his eyes had turned upward in his head so that the whites
were visible.

Had he been able to manage the other's weight Farree
would have hoisted him up, gotten him away from that
perilous open door. Now he could only stay beside him,
strive to move in his own mental picture of a wall set against
the flood.

The light beamed upward from the opening. He did not
think he could have entered, even with his mind at rest. It
was not big enough to take his spread of wings no matter
how much he could try to compress those. But for the Lady
Maelen to go alone into that place! Urgently he shook Lord-
One Krip until the other's head flopped forward and back-
ward on his shoulders. Then he felt the other begin to gain
control, and a moment later the man's eyes were turned up to
meet his.

"The . . . m-minds," he stammered, "they are—"




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246

247

"Can such a place hold an army?" demanded Farree.

"Whence comes all this?"

"Memories, all the thoughts—of a race!" Lord-One Krip
straightened in his hold, and Farree released him.

"She's gone—down there! I cannot reach her. Can you?"

Farree demanded.

"Not now. If I loose—I am lost."

Yet they both crept on hands and knees, one on either side
of the trapdoor, striving to see what did lie below. Whether
that wave of mind touch that had been building for genera-
tions could be loosed suddenly without disaster Farree did not
know, but he felt that the pressure against his mental wall
was less than it had been. And now he could see.

The Lady Maelen stood below a short ladder, and around
her body there was an aura of the light from the globe—perhaps

that served as her defense.

About her also were racks towering side to side, leaving
only the small space where the ladder had given her entrance.
And the racks were filled with a series of blocks which pul-
sated with rainbow colors in a mixture that hurt the eyes
almost as much as the wave of mind touch had near toppled
their other senses. Scarlet, vivid orange, green in five or six
violent shades, blue the same—violet to purple. It was

unbelievable.
She was just standing there, her head slowly swinging

from side to side, her face a mask in which not even her eyes
moved—like one asleep who yet walked.

Before either of them could move, she shifted the ball into
her left hand and with the right she reached out toward one of

the racks.

"No!" Lord-One Krip cried out, and Farree could have

echoed him. But if she heard, that protest had no meaning for
her. Her fingers closed about a cube which was gem-bright in
green, and she plucked it out of the serried ranks of its like
and held it to the level of her eyes. It was as if she both saw

and heard something in its heart which kept her mazed. Then
swiftly she stored it back with its fellows and turned to the
ladder, coming up to them in haste.

Under the light of the third ring her own gleaming hair, her
ivory-pale skin, took on ripples of the lights, but she still
walked as one in a trance. Lord-One Krip reached for her as
she came within grasping distance, pulled her up toward him
as if he needs must draw her out of some great trap.

She did not try to throw off his hold, but she turned with
it, holding her globe up to the glory of the third ring and then
lowering it to focus its beams on the very stones she had used
to open the door. And her chant sounded clear in the night
air, the drumbeat of the unknown words harsher and faster as
if now she worked against time itself.

Even as that aperture had opened so now it closed. Only
when that was done did she look to the two of them as if she
knew them again.

"Down. We must get down. To the courtyard!" She
pushed away from Lord-One Krip and indicated that treacher-
ous pavement below.

"It is"—Farree swinging upward dared to look again at
the two huddled bodies below—"a trap."

"Yes," she agreed. "And it must be reset—reset for
greater prey! I must do that, by the third ring!"

With the aid of the vine rope they made it. She waved
Lord-One Krip away and pointed to certain lines of the patterns.

"Walk so and so." She motioned. "Get to the other wall
and up! We may have very little time. Those others will
come." It was as if she had knowledge they did not share.

Lord-One Krip stared at her for a long moment and then
did as she had told him. Farree flew to give them an escape
route, knotting the vine this time to a hard rock near the
shore and feeding the free end into the courtyard. But Lord-
One Krip would retreat no farther than the wall itself.

The Lady Maelen was singing again. She did not approach




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Andre Norton

the part of the designs where lay the dead off-woriders, but
she paced other sections, showing great care where she trod,
and sang the same harsh song she had used to close the door
above. Three times she rounded the tower and each time the
uneasiness in Farree rose. He felt Toggor crowd tightly against
him, and the fear in the smux fed his own.

Then, having trod on the pattern before all the four walls,
the Lady Maelen ran toward them. Lord-One Krip caught her
and tossed her body a little upward so that she clutched the
vine rope at a higher level. Then he was hard behind her as
she climbed and slid down to the other side.

"It is done." She was panting, her body sleekly wet with
sweat, her face drawn and haggard. "And none too soon—
The rocks—those—take shelter—"

She did not have to utter any warning. They had already
heard the beat of the flitter in the sky, saw riding lights like
the eyes of a vast insect coming down the valley even as it

had earlier flown.

They lay belly down behind the screen of rocks, Farree
crimping his wings into the smallest possible space. On the
flitter came, and he heard the Lady Maelen: "They know
something. Surely they would not come under the ring. But
no Thassa would deal with them. What secret has been
betrayed that they hunt so?" It was as if she asked that
question of the world at large.

Over swung the air craft. It hung at hover, and this time
dropped two from its belly onto the top of the tower. At least
they had learned that much from their abortive earlier attempt.

"Yes." The Lady Maelen's voice was only a breath of
whisper, and then she added, "Now, let it be now!"

As to what followed Farree could never afterwards settle in
his own mind. It was as if the rays of the third ring awoke to
life every gemlike stone so that beams of raw and eye-
burning color flashed out. Not only at the men who had
landed on the roof but upwards far enough to transfix the

FLIGHT IN YlKTOR

249

flitter in turn. Farree thought he heard screams—he was
never sure because it all happened so suddenly.

But the beams of gem light became flamelike and they
licked about the flitter, drawing it down into their heart fire.
Then the tower itself quivered and blazed until he dared not
look at it any longer. It—it melted! There was no other way
he could describe what happened, for its sides grew soft as
thray wax under the sun and spun oddly outward in droplets—
though none of those sped beyond the courtyard wall. But
the tower sank and was gone, and the lights failed so only
that of the third ring held. There came sobbing from where
the Lady Maelen lay, and Lord-One Krip edged closer to take
her into his arms.

"They are ... dead," she stammered, "they are dead and
with them all their knowledge. It is a second death and
one—one which I delivered to them!"

Farree answered, "But they were Guild and—"

"Not the Guild, those are dead of their own greed. It
was—the ancient memories—those stored lest Thassa need
the weight of them again. But they had their own defense,
and that I set. You do not understand. We were once so great
a people that the Guild, all off-world could not have troubled
us. Then it was chosen that we should take another path. But
there were those who argued that all knowledge should not be
wiped from the face of Yiktor. So they set the memory tower
and each memory was stored there—all the knowledge of
untold time which we cannot count in seasons or Sotrath
rings anymore. All of it gone—and by my doing!" She was
weeping now, and her head fell forward onto Lord-One
Krip's shoulder.

They stood again in the great hall that Farree had first seen
after the landing on Yiktor. The Lady Maelen was a little
before them, facing those leaders of her people, her head
proudly high. There had been a reading of minds, and she it

250

Andre Norton

was who insisted upon judgment. Now it was the elder of the
women who spoke.

"Always you have gone your own way, Maelen. And
always trouble and sorrow comes from it. So the great mem-
ories are gone. Well, none can bring them back. Nor"—she
spoke more slowly now—"since there are those who would
take them for a bitter use, can we wish them so. But we say
to you a second time, Kinswoman, there is no place for you,
by three rings or two. You are no longer Thassa but some-
thing else—we know not what. Nor can you slip within the
shell of the people. Come to us when you desire but do not
hope to stay—for there is that within you which cannot be
fitted into our life again any more than a flower can be fitted
back into the tight curl of a bud. We do not exile you—"

"No," the Lady Maelen said slowly. "That I have done
for myself. I am grateful that you do not turn from me."

"There is this—" The woman held forth a wand which
one of the men had handed to her.

"No, that I leave also. I am no longer a Moon Singer,
Elder. I sang death to the past—"

"You did as it seemed fit. But, yes, the wand is not a part
of the future for you. And you are wise in your own way.
Where do you go now?"

"Out to the stars!"

"And the enemy who would trace you?"

"Perhaps dead, perhaps alive. But that is a matter for the

future—"

"And you, Krip Vorlund?"

He took a step forward until he stood equal with Maelen to
confront them all.

"Where she goes thus do I also."

The Elder nodded and then looked to Farree, whose wings
moved wide to show the gleaming patches on them.

"And you, little brother?"

He drew a deep breath and voiced it now, just as it had

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR

251

come to him from the moment that those spans of glory had
broken from his ugliness.

"I would find my world—"

"So be it. And we wish you three well. You have done
what was to be done—hold it not in your memories as any
evil. Time turns awry and straight in many ways. We grant
you time as a companion, and may it serve you well."

Farree opened and closed his wings, his head held high
now. Time—there was time always ahead, even though a
man could hold nothing but now in his two hands. He would
have his chosen now—he vowed that. Suddenly he felt his
hand taken by the Lady Maelen and he realized that his time
would be their time also. For the first time in his life he was
warmly content.