Water—water running over rocks, downstream under an open sky—water to drink, to pour over his burning body. To lie in the midst of flowing water . . .
Naill crawled on hands and knees, his eyes narrowed slits against the terrible pain of light. But there were spaces of cool shadows where the light was muted, screened away, and those grew larger and larger.
Iftcan . . . The Larsh forces had attacked at moonrise, and some weakling had let them seep through the First Ring. So Iftcan had fallen, and the Larsh now hunted fugitives from the Towers.
Naill crouched in the greenish shadow, his hands covering his face. Iftcan . . . Larsh . . . Dreams? Reality? Water—he must have water! Shivering he crawled on between trees, his hand groping, his legs sinking into a muck of decaying leaves and earth. Over him leaves whispered until he could almost understand a slurring, alien speech.
Now he could hear it, the murmur of water, and it grew to a roaring in his ears. He half fell, half rolled, down a slope to the side of a pool into which water was fed by a miniature falls he could have spanned with his two hands. A gasping rush plunged him into that water, where he laved hands, head, the whole upper part of his feverish body. He gulped from his cupped palms, felt the liquid run down his parched throat, wash about him, until at last he squirmed back—to lie limply, staring up into a lace of leaf and branch overhead, a round circle of open sky far above.
Naill ran his hands across his face, up over his head. There was a mat of stuff left between his fingers when he brought them unsteadily down to eye level again. Hair . . . loose, wet hair!
It took him a long moment to realize what he held, to raise his hand again for a more thorough examination of his head. The soaking at the pool had driven some of the bewilderment from his mind. He was Naill Renfro, off-world laborer on Janus. He had been sick . . . was sick.
Now he sat up abruptly, a cold shiver shaking him. Those searching fingers had encountered only bare skin, save one more small patch of hair, which had fallen from his scalp at first touch.
What—what had happened to him? Once more his hands went to his head, slipped across skin bare of hair, touched at the sides, stiffened at what they found there. He crouched, knees pulled to his chest, half bent over, breathing hard. Then his eyes, still squinted against the pain of light, saw a second pool, smaller, fed by the larger, but still of surface, a mirror in which the drooping foliage about it was reflected.
He crawled to that, leaned over so his head and shoulders would be reflected there.
"No!" That denial was torn out of him in a word half a moan. Naill drove his fist at the surface of the pool, to break that lying mirror, to blot out the thing it reported. But the ripples died away, and again he saw—not clearly, but enough.
Naill's hands went to his head for a second touch—exploration, to verify the reflection. Hairless head—ears larger than human, with the upper tips sharply pointed and rising well above the top line of his skull. And—he held his shaking hands out before him, forcing his eyes wide open for that study—his skin, which should have been an even brown, was now green! That was no fault of the tree shade, no trick of Janusan sunlight. It was true—he was green!
The tatters of his shirt were long since gone, and his bare chest, shoulders, ribs—all were green. He did not need to pull away the ragged breeches still belted about him, or kick off his scuffed and battered boots, to know that hue was universal. What looked back at him from the pond mirror, what he could see with his eyes when he surveyed himself, was no longer human. He was Naill Renfro . . .
He was Ayyar . . .
Hands twisted, wrung, though he was unconscious of that despairing gesture. Ayyar of Iftcan, Lord of—of—Ky-Kyc. The Larsh had broken the First Ring—they were into the Inner Planting. This was the time of the Gray Leaf and there would be no other seeding.
Naill swayed back and forth. He made no sound, but in him there was a wailing he could not voice. An ending—an ending—the time foretold had come upon them—the ending. For the barbarian Larsh had not the secret. They could destroy but they could not re-seed. When Iftcan fell, so did the Older Race die and the light of life and knowledge go out of the world.
But he was Naill Renfro! Iftcan—Ayyar—Ky-Kyc—the Larsh. He shook his head, inched away from that mirror pool, tried to push out of his mind what he had seen there. He had a fever; he was simply delirious—that was it! His eyes—they hurt in the light, didn't they? They were playing tricks on him. That was it! It had to be!
Only now he no longer felt the burning heat consuming him. And he was hungry, very hungry. Slowly Naill got to his feet, found he could stand erect, walk. He stumbled along, scrambling up the small embankment down which splashed the miniature falls. There was a bush there, hung with puff-pods as big as his little finger. Mechanically he gathered them, popped them open with a snap, and eagerly stuffed the seeds they contained into his mouth. He had dealt with a full dozen of them before he began to wonder. How had he known they were edible? Also—when he opened them, why did he think he had done this many times before?
But of course he had. They were fussan, the hunters' friend, always to be counted upon at this time of the year, and he had feasted on them many times before. Naill paused, hurled that last pod from him as if its touch burned. He did not know about such things—he could not!
He collapsed on the ground again, quivering, his arms folded across his bent knees, his head forward on them, his body balled as if he wanted to pull back into nothingness, forgetfulness. Maybe if he slept once more, he would wake—truly wake. He slipped into the state he longed for. But when he lifted his head again, he was alert, his nostrils expanded, savoring, identifying scents, his ears picking up and naming the sources of sounds.
The hurtful sunlight was gone, the mist of twilight was balm to his eyes, and the soft shadows were no bar to seeing. Seeing! Naill could make out every rib of leaf, the network of veins across their surfaces—this was seeing such as he had never experienced before! Naill moved alertly, coming to his feet with a lithe readiness in what was almost one supple movement of muscles.
A borfund with cubs was feeding downstream. He did not need to see through the masking brush; his nose told him, and his ears picked up the crunch of double-toothed jaws moving greedily. And—aloft—there was a peecfren lying flat, belly to tree limb, watching him curiously. Borfund—peecfren. He repeated the names wonderingly in a low whisper. And his mind answered with mental pictures of living things he was sure he had never seen.
Then panic caught at him hard and heavy—as might the ray of a blaster. Blaster, that other part of him questioned—blaster? His hands flew to his head, clamping hard over those monstrous ears. Borfund—blaster . . . memories alien to each other warring in his mind.
He was Naill Renfro—he was the son of a Free Trader, born in space . . . Malani . . . the Dipple . . . Janus . . . sale to Kosburg. Kosburg . . . the garth: there was sanity. He must get away from here—back to where there were men . . . men.
Naill broke away from the streamside, began to trot, weaving a way between the trunks of trees, trees that grew larger and larger as he moved away from the open glade of the stream. He went without path guidance but with purpose. Somewhere—somewhere there was an end to trees. It was open and in the open were men—men of his own kind. This was a fever dream and he must prove it so!
Yet as he went, nose, ears, eyes reported to his brain, and his brain produced answers to scent, hearing, sight, which were not a part of Naill Renfro at all. His headlong flight slackened as he leaned panting against a tree bole. As his panicky breathing began to slow, his head came up again and he battled shakiness, fear. The soft whisper of breeze in the leaves, the warmth—the caress of that same wind against his bare chest and arms. . . . And now that feeling of content, that this was right, the way life should be. As if he, too, reached down roots into the earth underfoot, raised swaying branch arms to the sky—a kinship with the forest world.
But he went on, though at a soberer pace, schooling his unease. He stopped once to strip long, narrow leaves from a low-hanging branch, crushed them between his palms, and then inhaled deeply of the scent from their bruised surfaces. He felt clear headed, alert, tireless, and eager.
However, that eagerness was replaced by another emotion as he came into the hacked trace of the settlers' war against the wild. Wilting leaves, broken branches—Naill's nostrils twitched in a spasm of distaste. He was scowling and unaware of it. The smell of death, decay, where it did not belong, and with it another stink—of an alien life form, defiling yet familiar.
He traced that smell out of the clearing, through the thinning of brush racked and torn by the logs pulled through it. Then he was on the edge of a field, a field where the butts of forest giants still stood as raw and ugly monuments to the death dealt them weeks ago. Naill snarled at the spoilation, and within him grew the disinclination to advance any farther into the open.
Pinpoints of light pricked beyond. His gaze centered there, narrowed. That was a garth—Kosburg's? Dared he chance moving closer? Yet he must. He was a man . . . there were men. If he could see them, speak with them, then he would know that his eyes had deceived him back at the pool, that he was not—not that thing!
Though that need drove him forward, Naill did not go openly, nor did he realize that the action he took, seemingly by instinct, would have been totally foreign to Naill Renfro. His noiseless step—with a foot planted with infinite care, his crouching run from one bit of cover to the next—was that of a scout deep on a spying trip within the holdings of the enemy.
Always that stink was heavy in his nostrils, clogging up the air to sicken him, growing heavier the closer he drew to the farmstead. He was still a field away when the clamor broke out—the hounds! Their baying was a war cry. Somehow he knew—as well as if they had human speech and shouted—that he was the quarry. So he had been right in that long-ago guess: the garths kept those four-footed hunters as a threat to laborer runaways.
But Naill also remembered the custom at Kosburg's. The animals had not been loosed in the fields at night. There was too much chance of their disappearing on some game hunt into the forest and not returning. No, they patrolled inside the wall of the garth yard.
And this was Kosburg's right enough. Naill recognized the set of the big main house against the night sky. There was a place where an active man could climb the outer wall, look in at the top floor window of that building, avoiding a descent into the yard. Why he had this pressing need to do just that he could not have explained, but do it he must.
Though he flinched as the hounds bayed, he ran in a zigzag from shadow to shadow until his hands were on the stake wall near the house. He leaped, again not aware that his effort was far more powerful than any Naill Renfro could have made.
Killing trees to make shelters. Why did these people not know that trees could live and yet welcome indwellers? No—always this kind must kill, use dead things to pile about them until their lairs smelled—reeked of foul decay as did the pit of a hunting kalcrok!
The stench was almost more than he could bear, making his stomach protest. Yet he crouched before the incut which held an open window and looked into the lighted room beyond. He jerked and nearly lost his balance. That—that thing—two of them! They were monsters—as horrible as the smell of these dead lairs of theirs!
"Men" hammered one small part of his brain—or rather one man—the younger Kosburg—and a woman.
Monsters! The revulsion was sharp. Hairy as beasts—alien, not only in body but in mind. Looking at them now, Naill could in a way he could not understand savor their crooked thoughts, look into the narrowness of them. There was a wrongness every part of his own spirit rejected without pity.
The woman turned her head; her eyes by chance were on the window. Her mouth shaped into a distorted square. She screamed tearingly, and continued to scream with sharp, mindless cries.
Naill leaped outward, landing lightly on his feet. Just as he had been revolted, had rejected kinship with this species, so had the woman felt about him. He ran, away from the stench of the dead wood and the creatures who laired in it, heading for the forest with its clean shelter.
But his repudiation of the garth was not the end. An hour later he lay with heaving shoulders and laboring lungs, hearing still the belling of the hounds. They had brought them out, those garthdwellers, to pick up his trail across the fields. Only the fact that they had kept the dogs leashed had saved him. But, judging from the sounds, they had not ventured yet beyond the roughly cleared land. Were they waiting there for daylight?
Then would the settlers overcome their dislike of the forest and again put the hounds on his trail? Or would he be safe if he retreated farther into the deep woods? To go deeper, he would be lost to his own kind—alone . . . His own kind?
Spirit of Space—who were his kind now? Naill shivered. His revulsion for the garth was a real thing, as real as the heat of fever, the pain in his head. He could not go to those people and claim kinship—never again.
And that fact, standing stark and black in a chaotic world, had to be faced. Something terrible had happened to him—outside, inside. He was no longer Naill Renfro. Though he was not now looking at a strange reflection in a pool, he was looking inside him at what had taken over his mind as well as his body.
Ayyar . . . who was Ayyar? If he were not Naill Renfro, then he was Ayyar. And he had to know who—what—was Ayyar, to whom the forest was truly home, to whom there came strange memories in ragged tatters. He must find Ayyar.
To do that . . . where did one search for such a weird trail? Physically, in the aisles of the forest; mentally, where? Because Naill did not know, he got to his feet and started in the only direction of which he was sure—back to the pool where he had first seen the mirrored face of someone who was no longer Naill Renfro.
Now that he had admitted that much, more and more of the new person took over. He stopped, pulled at the fastenings on the heavy boots that weighed down his feet. Footgear should be so different—made of borfund hide, fitting snugly, reaching from sole of foot to just below the knee—hunters' boots, through which one could feel any inequality of footing, not these clumsy coverings that locked the foot in prison, away from the good earth.
He pulled in irritation at his breeches. These, too—formless, coarse—were wrong. Green-gray silky stuff which caressed the body—spider thread wound and woven, packed in stass buds and the whole pressed firm to dry and age—that made proper clothing for the wood. Iftcan . . . But the Larsh were there. Naill stumbled against a tree, stood rubbing his head. Never a clear memory, just bits and patches . . . tiny fearsome scenes of men like himself, a desperate, driven handful, fighting among trees, trees in which they dwelt, going down one by one before a rabble horde of wild men . . . scattered, broken. Somehow he knew that had been the end of his kind.
His kind? What was his kind? Who was Ayyar? He blundered on, though he knew where he was going, that he would come out at the pool side.
And he did, falling down by that quiet pocket, drinking again from his cupped hands, slapping the pool's bounty over his sweating body. The rill ribboning from the smaller mirror pool, that should drain into the river—and beyond the river. He drew a ragged breath. Beyond the river stood Iftcan, tall and beautiful, silver leaves and singing leaves—the tower trees of Iftcan!
But he was tired, so very tired. As he relaxed beside the water, that tiredness caught at him. His feet hurt; perhaps he should not have thrown away those imprisoning coverings—only he could no longer stand their touch. Water rippled about his feet as he lowered them into the pool, soothing away smart and burn. He rubbed them dry with handfuls of grass and curled up drowsily.
The sound brought Naill out of sleep so deep dreams did not reach it. He lay where he was for a moment wrenched out of ordinary time, every part of him questioning by senses far more specialized than any off-worlder's. He rolled under a bush and brought his head around to look skyward.
No sun yet—but the lighter sky of dawn. Against it that blot—man-made. A flyer from the port—small, two-man job—and coasting low. Naill Renfro's memory supplied that much. But why—how—?
Had Kosburg appealed for such help in his hunting? Why? Trying to answer that was folly. Soon it would be full day—and while Naill could travel in the gloom of the forest, he dared not try to face the open under the sun. Best move now: the river—with Iftcan across it. Were the wild ones still there? No, there was a dimness, a feeling that what had happened in Iftcan was long past. But that place drew Ayyar, and to its pull Naill Renfro made no discouraging answer.
He started downstream, keeping under the roof of the trees. Overhead he could follow the circling of the flyer by the waxing and waning of the engine purr. The pilot was hunting something right enough, swinging the machine in a steady pattern of rings over the forest. What he could see below, save a carpet of tree crowns, puzzled Naill. But the circling was too regular to doubt that the port pilot did have a definite purpose, which could only be a search.
The rill that was Naill's guide joined another stream, widened, developed a visible current. Water things swam, or popped into the flood from along the verge as he passed. He found another fussan bush, stripped its pods and munched the seeds as he went.
Then his nose warned danger—not the man smell, no, this was vile in another way. His mind supplied a murky picture of a danger that ran on many legs, lurked, hid, pounced on anything venturing into the forest strip it had appropriated as hunting territory. Naill leaped to catch at a low-hanging bough. Its elasticity helped to whip him up into the mass of the tree. And so he passed over that path with its evil smell, staying above and traveling from one tree limb to the next until the last taint of that odor was lost.
The day was on him, but the full dazzle of the sun did not reach here. Then he saw it blindingly bright before him, reflected from water, a sheet of swiftly running water. He shielded his eyes with his hands and tried to make out what lay on the opposite shore. Was there an Iftcan still?