Children of the Gates (32 page)

16

She did not have long to so wonder for the end of their wild voyage was very near. The higher walls about them sank swiftly, until they came out of the canyon into another valley—if valley it was and not a plains country beyond the mountains. At least this level land, clothed in the autumn hued grass, spread like a sea as far on out as Elossa could distinguish ahead.

The river which carried them did not flow so swiftly here, and its way across the plain was marked by stands of water-nourished brush and small trees which were the only vegetation to rise above the level of the thick grass. For the rest this seemed a deserted land. It was close to sunset as far as Elossa could judge and there was not a bird to be seen, no grazing animals in sight.

While the dull hue of the grass and the faded colors of the tree leaves gave a forbidding cast to the whole of this land, it appeared as if all vibrant life had been drawn out of it, and only withered remnants left. Looking around she shivered, more from inner than outer chill.

A groan from Stans drew her attention back to her companion. His eyes were open and he had shifted his position a little. When his gaze met hers his eyes were still open. It was plain he realized at least some of what had happened. With his hand he touched his shoulder carefully and winced. But at least he was fully conscious. Now he looked out at the plain into which the river was carrying them.

“We are beyond the heights.” It was more a statement than a question.

“Yes,” Elossa answered. “Though where we may be I have no idea.”

He was frowning and now he rubbed his hand across his forehead. “Was it a dream—or did we see Karn back there?”

Elossa chose her words. “We saw a man. . . . he had a face like the Mouth of Atturn . . . you called him Karn.”

“Then it was not just a dream.” Stans spoke heavily. “But Karn is long dead. Though, yes, he was priest as well as king and in his own time men whispered behind their hands—a dark legend but one even I have heard remnants of. Karn dealt with forces most men did not even believe existed. Or so they say—and said. It is true I cannot remember clearly.” Now he shook his head. “I feel that I should, but that some wall stands between me and the truth. Karn. . . .” his voice trailed away.

“If that was your long dead king,” Elossa cut in sharply, “he has taken to himself some evil followers. The monsters who brought us down were no true blood of men.”

“Yes. And them, of them I have no knowledge at all. But why they loosed us to the mercy of the river and this boat. . . .” He moved again and his face twisted with what must have been a grievous twinge of pain. But he had hitched up farther and was gazing around as if now intent upon assessing their situation clearly.

“No oars,” he commented. “It is plain we are not meant to command any part of the future. But. . . .”

Elossa, who had looked back at the river and what lay ahead, gave an exclamation. There seemed to be a wall of brush now directly above the water, though that flowed unimpeded beneath it. It was evident that bearing down upon the barrier as they were, there was no other chance but that the boat would be brought up against it.

Carefully she got to her knees, balancing with difficulty as the boat bobbed and moved under her weight. Even if he stood, Elossa guessed, she could not have reached the top of that obstruction across the water.

The boat rocked again as Stans raised himself higher. He gestured to the river itself.

“Swim for it?” he suggested.

Though Elossa had splashed about in mountain pools and knew that she would be at a loss in this current-driven river. She hesitated. Perhaps, were they to bring up against the mass of the barrier, that could be better climbed. Yet the presence of the barrier itself was an implied threat. It had not simply appeared there as some freak of nature, of that she was sure. Made—it brought to mind the question of its makers and the purpose for which they might have erected it.

In the end they were given no choice at all. For even as the boat neared the barrier, there dropped, seemingly from the very air over their heads (though Elossa knew it must be the result of some well trained casting) a net which entangled both the boat and its occupants.

She and Stans were fighting that entrapment when those who had so arranged their capture appeared out of the brush and trees on either side of the stream. Unlike the misshapen monsters of their first encounter with the mountain dwellers, these were straight of body, well formed. And—they were Yurth!

Elossa cried out for help. These were kin, her own blood. But—were they. Some wore the coarse clothing of the mountain clans, enough like her own to have come from the same looms. Others had on the tight-fitting body suits she had seen in the pictures the ship had shown her, the same that Yurth who had aimed the ancient weapon at them scarce a day ago had appeared in.

Elossa sent out an imperative mind-call. To be so startled in return that she cried out. These were closed—tight guarded against her touch. Yurth they might appear in body—they were not Yurth in mind.

Also she saw now their faces more clearly—they were blank eyed, without expression. Nor did they speak to one another in any words as these on the left bank drew the net and so the boat and its two occupants toward them.

“Yurth,” Stans said. “Your people—what would they do with us?”

Elossa shook her head. She felt so strange and at a loss—meeting closed minds, blank faces where she had the right to expect something far different—that she now had the sensation of being caught tight in some nightmare, or else laid under so strong a hallucination that it endured in spite of any attempt on her part to break it.

“They look Yurth—” She spoke her bewilderment aloud. “But they are not, not the Yurth I know.”

If they were not her people, they were well used to handling prisoners taken in their odd net and water trap. And there were too many of them for either Elossa or Stans, weakened as he was by the reopening of his wound, to put up any defense. Even though her first attempt at communication had failed, the girl tried twice again to launch mind-send at their captors. But it would seem that none were receptive.

In the end, their hands once more bound behind them, she and Stans were marched away from the river and the boat, now tied at the bank, striking out across the dull emptiness of the plain. At sunset they camped where a circle of stones set to confine fire to a much blackened and ash-piled piece of ground suggested that this was a well used halting place.

The Yurth had marched in silence, speaking neither to their prisoners nor each other. Elossa had come to feel a shrinking from contact with any of them. They might well be only hollow shells of the people she had known, sent to obey the will of some other, without a spirit of their own remaining in their bodies.

At least those bodies remained human in their need for food and water. For supplies were produced and shared with their prisoners, unbound for the purpose, but watched closely while they gnawed on lengths of what seemed dried meat, as hard to chew as wood, and allowed to drink from journey bottles. Even the water had a strange, stale taste as if it had been in those storage containers for a long time.

“Where do you take us?” In the general silence of that camp Stans’ voice rang out unusually loud. He had spoken to the Yurth who was rebinding his hands.

The man might have been deaf for he did not even glance up as he tested the last knot with grim efficiency before he turned away. Now the Raski looked to Elossa.

“They are of your stock, surely they will answer you.” There was an odd note in his voice. Almost, Elossa thought, as if he had already identified her wholly with his enemies, in spite of the outward trappings of captivity which she wore.

She moistened her lips and launched the one appeal she had thought upon during that dusty journey to reach this place. To do this before a Raski went against all her conditioning from birth—Yurth affairs were theirs only. Still she must break through to these of her kin; that need had become the most important thing in her whole world.

Again she ran her tongue over her lips; her mouth, in spite of the water she had drunk, felt bone dry, as if she could not shape any words.

But this must be done—she had to know. So she began the chant in words so old that even their meaning was now forgotten. Out of some very dim past had those words come, and their birth must have been of abiding importance to all which was Yurth for the fact still remained that they must learn them, intelligible or no.

“In the beginning,” she said in that tongue now forgotten, “was created Heaven and Yurth,” (that last was the only understandable word in her chant), “and there man took being and. . . .”

On sped the words, faster now and uttered with more power and authority. And—yes! One of the Yurth, one wearing the clothing like her own, had turned his head to look at her. There was the faint trace of puzzlement dawning in his blank face. She saw his lips move. Then his voice joined hers in the chant, lower, less strong, halting at times.

But when she had done he saw her, really saw her! It was as if she had shaken out of sleep this one, if not the others. His eyes swept from her face down to the wrists again bound, the end of that cording looping out to twist about the arm of another of the guards. The attention in his expression became hopelessness.

“To Yurth the burden of the Sin.” He spoke harshly as might a man who had not used his voice for a long time. “We pay, Yurth, we pay.”

She leaned forward. None of the others had appeared to note that he had spoken.

“To whom does Yurth pay?” She tried to keep her voice as level as might one carrying on a usual conversation.

“To Atturn.” His last faint trace of interest flickered out. Now he turned away and got to his feet.

She sent a mind-probe with all the force she could summon, determined to break through the barrier she had found, to reach the real man within the shell. Maybe she troubled him a fraction, for his head did turn once more in her direction. Then he strode off into the growing dusk.

“So Yurth pays,” commented Stans.

“To Atturn,” she snapped in return, desolated at her failure when she had begun to think that she might have actually learned more. “Perhaps to your Karn.” She ended, not because she believed what she said. “But if Atturn rules, why does a Raski go in bonds?” she flung at him in conclusion.

“Perhaps we shall soon have a chance to learn.” He showed heat to match her own.

With the dark the Yurth settled themselves for sleep, each captive placed carefully between two of their guards, cords looping them in contact so that Elossa guessed that the least move on her part would alert either one or the other, or both, of the men who boxed her in. He who had spoken to her was across the fire and settled early, his eyes closed, as if the last thing he wanted to see was Elossa herself.

She slept at last, rousing once to see one of the Yurth feeding the fire from a pile of sticks which had been stacked there waiting for their coming. Stans was only a dark form nearly engulfed in the shadows and she could not tell whether he waked or slept.

There was an uneasiness in her now which made her adverse to any casting of mind-seek. That these Yurth were perhaps bound to another’s will was the only explanation which made sense to her. The “Burden” which the ship had loosed on her had ridden her people heavily for generations, that was true. But that it had reduced any to this state was not normal—Yurth normal. He and the others who had worn the clothing like her own—were they those who had earlier made the Pilgrimage and had never returned? Instead of death in the mountains they had found this life-in-death.

But there were the others who wore the ship’s clothing. It had certainly been too many years since the crash of their spacer and the death of Kal-Hath-Tan for any of them to have lived to this time—again, unless someone had found the secret of prolonging life far past any scale of years known to Elossa’s reckoning. Had there been another ship, a later one?

There was such a surge of excitement through her at that thought that she had to will herself fiercely to lie still. It was the same excitement and racing of the blood which had visited her when she had watched in the wrecked ship the scenes taken in space before the crash.

Another ship—a later one—perhaps sent to find Yurth, to take them home. Home? Where was home then? Lying here she could see the stars strewn across the sky. Was one of them the sun which warmed the fields and hills of Yurth Home?

She drew a deep breath and then that excitement changed.

Those around her, she knew they were not free. If they had come to save, then they in turn had been caught in some trap and made captive. Yet they could not have been conditioned by the machines in the ship as all those of her own blood and kin had been. She longed to be able to crawl over to Stans, to shake him awake if he did indeed sleep, force him somehow to tell her more of Atturn, of the Karn who had stood wearing Atturn’s face and who had launched the fire bolt at them, who might have set upon them the monstrous creatures who had pulled them down. There was too much she did not know, could not know when the mind-seek refused to serve her.

Shortly after dawn, having eaten meagerly again of the dry stuff and been allowed to drink, they were marched on steadily across the plains. Stans walked well ahead of her. He seemed unsteady on his feet and now and then the Yurth beside him put out a hand to aid him with the impersonal manner of a machine doing some set duty.

They halted at intervals to rest, and were offered water at each such halt. The dry grass grew long here, sweeping to their knees and Elossa could trace no path in it. Still the party certainly moved as if they trod some well known trail and did not have to fear getting lost.

There was something about the horizon ahead, a kind of haziness she could not account for. But shortly before noon, or so she judged it to be by the sun, they reached the explanation for that. The plain ended almost abruptly in a cliff. It would seem that this level country was really a large plateau and to proceed they must descend to a country lying below, a far different country.