The thing coming along the trail moved swiftly, but it did not seem to walk or run on normal feet. He aimed and fired at the fat bulk.
The burst of needler ray lit up the trail. He heard a wailing that screeched up the scale until human ears could no longer detect it. But his body, his head, was pierced through and through by the sonic vibrations the thing was now emitting. He fired again, though this time, tormented by that vibration, he could not be sure he aimed true.
It threshed about, beating at the growth, flattening and tearing at bushes in its agony. Then that terrible sound ended, and it lay still, though Andas had caution enough not to believe it was yet dead.
"You have a needler!" Kai-Kaus had crowded beside him. "We have not seen one for seasons now."
If crossbows were the best armament the loyal forces had in plenty, Andas did not wonder at the other's pessimistic attitude toward fighting the monster below.
"I'll lay another shot—" He was aiming when Yolyos spoke.
"The thing is dead. Have you a torch? We had better look upon this enemy so that we know it again," he said to Kai-Kaus.
"Here is your light." They turned their heads. Halfway down the ladder from the sleeping platform was Shara, in one hand a brand glowing red. She twirled this a little, and the fire came alive, giving them a source of light in the dark.
"My thanks, lady!" Kai-Kaus caught the brand from her.
"Is there anything else waiting down there?" Andas asked Yolyos.
"The stink overlays much. But I pick up nothing save the life forms that are harmless. I think this thing hunted alone."
Kai-Kaus made no objection when Andas descended the ladder behind him. The realization that the newcomers had the superior weapons had done much to allay his sense of responsibility for his ruler.
On the ground the smell was so terrible that Yolyos held his nose, gasping. Almost, if with lesser reason, Andas could have duplicated that gesture. But he forced himself to prod the white thing now curled into a half ball in its final convulsion.
He stared down as Kai-Kaus swung the torch close, and then he backed away, his shoulders heaving in a rising nausea he could not control. Thus, he leaned against a sapling along the trail and lost all his earlier supper.
Yolyos reeled away in turn. Andas saw him run for the ladder and pull himself up, as if the thing had come alive. Nor were the two foresters long behind him, though they waited at the ladder foot, urging Andas up before them.
The sight of that—that thing—had been such as to almost paralyze his mind for moments. Anyone familiar with tapes made by star travelers (and his father had had a fine collection of such, which he had known from childhood) was aware that there were many strange—even horrifying—life forms in the galaxy. But never had Andas seen anything to equal what lay in the forest of his own world.
Unclean? It was more than unclean. It was so heavy with evil and filth that it seemed impossible for it to have held life. Yet there was a teasing sense that he had viewed something like it before—not exactly like, but near enough that this tantalizing resemblance now made him uneasy.
From whence it had come, he had no clue. Was it even native to any of the planets of the empire? He hoped not. He trusted that such spawn had never developed under the sun he knew. Yet, there was that familiarity—
"In the name of the First Ancestress"—Yolyos's voice was a little muffled by the hands still clapped across his nose, as if he could so strain the stench from the night air—"what is that thing?"
"I do not know—" Andas was beginning when a memory far buried came to the surface of his mind. "An eloplan—but it can't be!"
"An eloplan from the garden of the Old Woman." Shara cut across his denial. "An eloplan and something else—worse. She has more than gardeners serving her. She has the Nessi Magi—"
After seeing that dead thing, he could believe anything. But that any Magi, no matter how far from the true light, could serve the Old Woman—that was a contradiction of terms. The Magi were male, and their training forced them to keep to their own sex all their knowledge. The Old Woman could and would receive only the worship of women, women who had such natures that they were known as hers almost from their birth hours. Magi and the Old Woman—no!
"The Nessi Magi"—Shara could have been reading his thoughts—"are apart. They entered into an alliance with the Old Woman just after Kidaya began her ensorcellment of the Emperor. They acted truly as if their minds were turned about in their skulls, so they thought entirely differently. It was one of those three who brought about the death of the Emperor. And twice have they tried to set a sending on you. Do you not remember that, my lord?" Her voice was a warning, and he was aware that this was one of the things he must appear to know.
"With Nessi knowledge, creatures such as the night crawlers could be bred. We have no information concerning what they were, are, able to do. It was always research that interested the Nessi."
Andas forced himself to consider what he had seen dead as rationally as he could in the light of her suggestion. An eloplan—mobile at certain times of the year, able to travel from one favorable rooting ground to another—was a vegetable curiosity. He had seen small captive ones in the exotic palace gardens.
But this had been no plant—it had had a head. Andas clamped his teeth together and willed fiercely not to be sick again. This had been partly—horribly—human! And if the Nessi Magi were responsible for such, they must be rooted out, exterminated, and all their unholy knowledge eradicated with them.
"You said night crawlers," he said to Kai-Kaus. "There are more of these things?"
It was Ikiui who answered. He had been eying Andas with awed recognition as the prince stood in the light of the torch, and he saluted as he spoke.
"Lord, there are at least four loosed in the forest this night. All the warm-blooded creatures flee before them. They are driving out the game."
"And you know from whence they come?"
"Only that they move from the east. Nor do they turn aside, save to feed. Also, they are, I think, directed."
"How so?"
"There was a water loffin they surprised, and it ran past them east. One of the crawlers started after it. I—" He put his hands to his head as if in memory of some hurt. "In my head there was a pain. The crawler reared and cried out as if it were angry, yet it came back from the loffin trail."
"And where were you to watch this?"
"In the vineways above. I would not have been trailed, but there was a place where the vines did not run. When I came to earth, that one hunted me."
"As if you might have been sighted and that creature sent to make sure of you? There was a skimmer overhead then?"
"No. And if so, no one aboard could have seen through the veil of trees. Whatever spy is used was closer than the air above the forest."
"Close indeed." Yolyos still held his nose with one hand so his speech sounded odd. "Prince, that is not a good thing to look upon, but I think you should examine it again. I caught a glimpse of something—though I may not have seen aright."
The last thing Andas wanted was to approach the kill again, but he did not disdain the importance of Yolyos's suggestion. Very reluctantly he descended, Kai-Kaus coming with the torch. The Salariki remained behind at Andas's order—this ordeal was doubly hard for him.
That fat worm body still lay in the coil it had assumed upon death, but not so tightly. Andas took the torch from Kai-Kaus and forced himself to view the thing with searching intensity, though he gulped and fought nausea.
The light held steady on the round of body just behind the head. Luckily the head itself had dropped forward, to lie face down, so he did not have to view that. He spoke to Kai-Kaus.
"Hold steady, and give me your skinning knife!"
It took every bit of resolution Andas could summon to work with the knife, hacking free what was embedded in the fetid flesh, until he could stand it no longer and ripped and pulled in a frenzy that brought loose a bespattered device, trai
ling horribly befouled wiring from the body of the creature.
Andas set his trophy on the ground and grabbed at leaves and grass to wipe it off as best he could. But he would have to take it with him, and his flesh shrank from touching it. Still he would not ask Kai-Kaus to do it for him.
At length he managed to wrap leaves about it and carried it up to the tree fort. Laid out on the floor, it proved to be a complex machine, probably of the electronic order. And his knowledge of such was less than adequate. He looked inquiringly to Yolyos, but the Salariki made a gesture of denial.
"I am no tech, Prince. But I would venture to say this is no simple thing. And undoubtedly it was used to control the creature."
"Could it be something of the mercenaries?" Andas asked.
"More likely Nessi," Shara returned. "But I would not believe they could make such a device now with most of the empire in ruins. Such technology is the result of highly specialized manufacturing. We have no factories or labs left. And I do not believe that the Drak Mount has either—it is a place given wholly to war."
"What of the Valley of Bones?" Andas had been poking at the box with the point of the hunting knife, taking care not to touch it directly.
He heard a whistle of breath from the others. One did not mention that name directly. It was so great a taboo that for him to break it was almost as if he shouted a curse in a place of honor.
"Kidaya is of the Old Woman's kin," he said slowly, making that a statement rather than a question, but watching Shara to make sure he did not make a mistake. "Perhaps it was she who brought the Nessi and her mistress together. And what better place would they find in which to hide their misbegotten experiments than the valley? I begin to think that it is not to the Drak Mount we should face, but in another direction!"
"My lord"—Kai-Kaus spoke up then—"we cannot stand against the Old Woman."
"So have we always been taught," agreed Andas. "And there was method in that teaching. The Old Woman is a woman's thing, and they have mysteries no male can understand. But if such mysteries now shadow this land, we must do as Akmedu did in his time—carry war to that heart."
He was still staring at the box that might mean so much, yet he was aware that all save Yolyos had withdrawn from him a step or two. Pledged they might be to the Emperor's cause, still he might discover that there were none to back him in this. But in his mind it was proven as true, as if he had tapes to support the idea that he was right—the war spread from the fortress held by the off-worlders, but it fed upon the flaw in his own people, from their clinging to custom, their long conditioning.
There had always been a strong strain of mysticism in his race. In some this took the form of formal religion, or a delving into philosophy, or experimentation with esper. With others it followed a darker trend—to such things as the worship of the Old Woman, the researches of the Nessi. It was in him, too—when he had reacted to the ring he had taken from Abena.
But he would have to set aside beliefs and fears if he was going into this battle. Men—and women—who had been ground down to the extremity of these foresters, of Shara, half starved as she was, perhaps did not have the inner will to break old bounds. They would be easy prey for such devil's tricks as the crawlers.
Perhaps because he was not fully one with them—and he had Yolyos who was not of them at all—he would have a chance. But it might be that he would be forced to take that chance alone.
Andas dropped the knife. He reached within his coverall and brought out the key. It shown ruddily in the torch light. And he kept it in his right hand. But with the left he freed the ring and drew it from that pocket in his closed fist, holding it well away from the key—for they still stood in his mind as opposite poles of light and dark, good and evil.
Then he gave an exclamation, for the cool metal circlet in his fist was not cool any longer. He opened his hand. On his palm lay the ring. And it glowed—but from no reflected torchlight. It was the gleam of life. And at the same time the device he had dug out of the crawler gave a spark of flame and began a low humming.
-15-
"A seer ring!" Shara drew away farther yet.
At her cry the others, except for the Salariki, stared at him.
"A seer ring." Deliberately Andas confirmed her identification. "One I took from a handmaiden of the Old Woman when she sought to use it to my betrayal. But think you that I could also hold this"—he raised the key so that they could see it clearly—"if I had surrendered my will to such a ring?"
Perhaps the foresters did not know the key, but Shara would surely understand. She had witnessed the other Andas's reaction to it.
"He is right," she said after a moment. "This is the key to the heart. But to bear it together with the ring—"
"The ring must be destroyed. But how can that be done until I find a place in which it can be forever hid?" Andas countered. "Bury it in the ground, throw it into a chasm or lake, and can you say that there will not be those whose nature will draw them to it? Also, perhaps it can be made to aid us—"
"Look at it!" Shara had been watching the ring. Andas did indeed look.
The milky-white setting showed a thickening swirl of color—something was coming through! But he had done nothing to summon—Andas raised the key between him and the ring as a protection, the only one he could think of.
"Back," he ordered, "out of line with this!"
The others were only too ready to obey, pulling away as if he had a live flamer in his hand, one about to spew destruction.
"Throw it away!" Shara cried. "My lord, meddle not with the things of that she-devil!"
Every instinct in Andas agreed with her. Yet he held tight command over his desires and continued to hold the ring. At that moment it spelled contact with the core of the enemy force. And all he could learn would be to his advantage. But he did flip the glowing circlet about so that he was not looking into the setting, but rather down from above, while it was focused on the device from the crawler.
In addition to sputtering sparks from that device, the wires he had ripped loose came alive, writhing on the floor as if they still governed movements in the body from which they had been pulled. The ring was now yellow-green, and in it moved, not the picture he had expected, but a series of spark impulses that made tiny patterns. But those came and vanished so quickly that he could not be sure of any.
"The question is"—Yolyos had not withdrawn as the others and now squatted on his heels by Andas, watching those sparks—"is that broadcasting or receiving? Does the ring activate that device, or the unit the ring? And can such a broadcast be picked up elsewhere?"
He was interrupted by Ikiui. "Listen, my lord!"
He need not have warned them, for it was plain to hear—that wailing that could be heard in the night, yet rang in one's head.
"Crawlers—more than one!" Kai-Kaus had gone on hands and knees to the entrance for the ladder. "They are coming—"
"The ring! Perhaps it called them!" cried Shara.
Andas closed his fist again about it and almost cried out at the heat radiating from the metal. He slipped it back in hiding.
"Perhaps this is for the best." Yolyos had drawn his needler. "I would rather meet those things on a field of my choosing than loose in the woods. Summon them in and pick them off—as we do the goop in the great hunts!"
"You are right!" With only crossbows for defense, the crawling horrors might seem menaces to the foresters. But faced with superior weapons, they could be disposed of with what appeared now to Andas as ease. And to have them gathered in one place for slaughter—
He dropped a hand on Kai-Kaus's shoulder. "Is there a way we can set an ambush above that trail—pick them off as they come?"
"For us perhaps, my lord. But you are not trained so—"
"Just show me a stable perch."
"If we have time." There was a new eagerness in Kai-Kaus's face. Their triumph over one of the weird beasts had given him confidence.
Shara moved into Andas's path. "M
y lord, you bear the ring, and you would go to meet those things which answer to it. I beg of you, do not leave with what may be a break in your defenses! You do not know how that acts, only that it has been alerted by the device which directs the crawlers. What if it can compel you to meet them on their own ground?"
"It did not before."
"Then, my lord, you had not deliberately exposed it. It was not 'alive'—not until you held it before that device. But alive it has powers."
Was it the old superstition working in her, or was her warning a legitimate one? Before he could decide, Yolyos closed in on the other side.
"A suggestion, Prince. If that ring is bait, let it be bait indeed. Set it or suspend it so as to pull them to our best advantage."
Andas was reluctant to let the ring out of his control. From the first he had feared that if he loosed it, it might escape him altogether. But Shara's warning influenced him somewhat. After all, to battle enemy forces holding that which might prove traitor was folly. And Yolyos's suggestion had good logic.
"The stranger lord is right, my lord," Ikiui agreed. "Use it for bait."
Andas left it to the foresters to select the proper ambush, and they moved swiftly. The wailing, which had only been a faint cry at first, was growing louder. Also the forest itself had come alive about them, its inhabitants fleeing a common doom as they might have run before a fire. Bushes threshed, flying things cried with small hoots and flutings, and there was a scurrying on the ground beneath their trees.
The prince discovered that the foresters were indeed right in mistrusting his ability aloft. He had to be pushed and shoved along one of the tree branches that supported the platform to reach another lower limb, which was not so comfortable and swayed under him. Kai-Kaus passed him a length of vine rope made fast to the tree trunk, so that he had a lifeline.
He was slightly irritated to learn that the Salariki was far more surefooted in his limb travel, having little or no difficulty in scrambling aloft in another tree across the trail. Andas knotted the ring, testing the fastening over and over again, before he allowed the vine end to which it was tied to drop. The glow of the set increased in color as it swayed back and forth. And now that wailing was silenced.