The Forerunner Factor (37 page)

Simsa thumped her forehead with the palm of her hand. Thoughts, why must she deal with thoughts? If she could not justify what she did, not to herself—so be it. She only knew that it was as if she once more hung from the compelling claws of the alien. She had no choice against these invisible claws that had come into being when she had seen Thorn’s face, perhaps his
dead
face, backed by the haze in the valley.

Hating what led her, but no longer fighting it for there was no use in such a struggle, the girl got to her feet to begin edging along that narrow strip of walkway, the pit at her back, teeth set hard against lip as she strove to move without a sound to betray her.

What if the thing could not hear, rather sensed? She did not look over her shoulder, but scraped along the rock so that its surface abraded the cheek she kept to it as she moved. Without even viewing it, Simsa was aware that once again, there was movement in the dark. Sweat ran down her face, smarted in the raw places on her skin. One step, another, this part of her memory was stubbornly blank. She had been too fearful before to reckon; now that same fear was rising in her like a smothering of her lungs, a choking in her throat.

On and on. In her own ears the beating of her heart was a drum for votive dancers, deep and calling, while breath came in shallow puffs. She would not linger. To stop moving was perhaps to anchor her immovably to await the torture of the spark fire to whip her down.

So far no light—she clung to the darkness, which now meant safety. Step, hold, bring the other foot along. Again. Again! Then she became aware of heat against her body. Even as the alien had a glow to light the way arising from her own frame, so did there arise radiance from the rod. Simsa could not spare the hand to tuck it farther out of sight. It was responding to power—to energy she could neither understand nor control.

She was certain, if she were able to look down, that that which lay in wait would respond. Step. Hold. Step. Sound now—a spitting such as might come from fat meat placed too close to a flame. Yes—there was brightness growing, not only between her body and the wall, but behind and below.

Light, enough to see!

Simsa hurled herself sidewise as well as forward, landing with bruising force on the tunnel floor. Behind her the infernal sparkling fire fountained upward a first questing tongue.

She turned her back on that growing brilliance and ran, half-expecting it to launch an attack upon her, as had the thing from the sand river. Only speed was in the fore of her mind as she scuttled ahead.

It was light, far too light in the tunnel. Simsa gave a gasping cry as a spark swooped into her line of sight, seemed to strike straight at her, as might a well-aimed weapon loosed in fury. More sparks in the air, they touched and bit, leaving smarting if tiny hurts behind them.

Simsa fled on. There was other light ahead, faint but there. Still refusing to look behind, she panted into the room within the shell of the outer cliff into which the alien had first drawn her. Only then did she face about to see that, though they had not followed her into this rough-hewn chamber, there danced in the air of the tunnel she had just quitted a cloud of flame sparks, multiplying constantly. She had the frightening feeling that they were merely building up to collapse into a more solid flame—a creature that not even the Elder One could handle.

She threw herself at the window opening that had been her doorway. Scrambling up on the ledge, she swung over and dropped to the shelf where she had taken refuge before, then leaned against the rock, her breath coming in racking sobs. This was sheer panic such as had not gripped her since childhood. As she got her breath, Simsa could see that there were no sparks flying now from above. Since the heavier haze which was night on this world was tight drawn, those would have been instantly revealed.

She would not, could not, linger too near. Whether that which fed the sparks dared venture out of the dark well into the corridor, she had no way of knowing. Only she must put between its source and herself as much space as possible.

Thus, even as she had climbed there in her hunt for Zass, so did she now scramble down, fighting to remember so that she would miss no finger- or toehold. It was not until she had reached the foot of the cliff and looked up at the dark opening above that she was angered at her own fear. There were indeed those raw and smarting places on her skin to make plain the threat offered, but now she had a feeling that she had given way far too easily to what was more threat than attack.

Before her was that slowly flowing river of sand. She had crossed that with the bespelled cloak. Now she hunkered down on that carven place where a true bridge must once have been end-rooted. Sliding out of the cloak, she laid it flat on the stone, her flesh cooled by puffs of a wind that did not ripple the sand below but was becoming swiftly forceful.

Trying to beat her from her perch into the sand river? No! There was a danger in such a belief. Had it not been belief that had forged the bridge for her on this very place? She must not speculate, must keep closed those corners of her mind into which could intrude and be nourished the thought of dangers.

She ran one hand across the rumpled cloak, her fingers catching in the edge of the hole where she had torn a place for her head. Then upon it she laid the rod from her girdle. There was no warmth in it. There had not been since she had dropped from that window above. There could be tens of tens reasons why. The Elder One—

Simsa shook her head and grimaced. This she must do herself, for to loose that other one, to call upon her . . . That one might well have no sympathy for what Burrows Simsa was doing now. The Elder One would have no reason to succor any life she had helped to warn of. She might perhaps even try to extinguish it with her own power. Simsa of the Burrows must go forward now, and how she could do that?

She got wearily to her feet, tugged on the cloak again, swung the rod back and forth as if it were only a fishing spear. North or south? She had come in from the northeast when she had discovered this place. Surely, the swirling sand flood could not cut it off entirely from the outer world—she had never heard of a stream that ran in a circle with no inlet or outlet.

South, then, for she had already made the journey along the northern way before she had found the bridge place. It would not be easy—but what had been on this world?

There was no “beach” along the edge above the sand river, nor would she have gone too close to what might climb out of the water. Rather she continually climbed and descended a series of tumbled rocks or edged fearfully along slides of gravel where a wrong step might send her spinning down into that noxious flood.

Zass had not returned, and she had flown north when leaving the valley. Therefore, she herself might have a long march back even if she could locate a crossing of the flood. And she was tired. Night and day flowed so easily one into the other on this world she had long ago lost all sense of time as an exact measurement. But now her flesh and bones measured for her. There was just so far she could force her feet to carry her, and realizing that she was near the end of endurance, Simsa dropped down behind a large boulder that formed a small wall of its own, shutting her in so that she need not watch the stream. She took a scant mouthful of liquid from the flask she had filled at the fountain, ate two of the sticky fruit. Then with the rod upon her breast as she had slept ever since it had come into her hands, Simsa forced her mind quiet, for she needed a clear mind and a rested body. She walled fiercely away all thought of what might have happened to the flitter and those within, and sought sleep.

Here where there was no rising sun one could truly see, no cry of bird or buzz of insect to disturb slumber, she did not know how long a time had passed before she wriggled in her pocket of rock and wall and moved stiffly to sit up.

Those small burns the fire had left her all sprang to life. She saw the spots of seared skin on her arms and hands, felt them on her cheeks and throat. There was no healing from the alien source this time; she shrugged and looked over the edge of the rock that had sheltered her.

And there—she had been so close! A few steps more and she might have—Simsa again shook her head at her thoughts. To have taken that path when she was so weary would have been folly. There were at least two places to pass that would require all her courage and strength.

At some time in the past, there had been on the other side of the stream another outcropping of the blocklike rocks, not quite as tall as those to her right. There was very little regularity to that formation, so she could believe that it had not been shaped by intelligent endeavor to form an outpost for the valley defense—save that one corner to the east was acute- and regular-angled. The rest of it had been shattered. Some mighty blow had crushed the stone, crumbled it to a riven mass.

However, a portion of that mass had landed in the sand river, supplying an impediment where the thick stuff parted to flow, a narrower ribbon right below her perch, a wider one to the east. She could drop to that mass. The first of the streams was small enough to leap. The second one—let her reach it, and she could see better what was to be done!

She ate and drank sparingly, made sure that her supplies were as safe as she could make them. Then she descended to a rock where a center ridge afforded a precarious perch.

Did it offer enough of takeoff for a leap? And what of that gap farther on? She studied her possible landing and decided that the gap was better than her present perch. Working her way to the end of the ridge piece, she saw to the safety of her cloak, now twisted as tightly about her above her waist as she could manage. Also, she brought forth the rod and thrust it in twice to make sure that she would not lose it.

The rippling of the sand at the foot of her rock was steady, but Simsa would not allow herself to look. Instead, drawing upon the skills of her lean body, she jumped, landing only barely on the other rock, fighting desperately for hand- and footholds. Here she lay for a space, breathing fast and staring up into the haze. It was midday or later, and now she was conscious of the heat both of the air and of the rock beneath her.

Rolling over, she crawled on hands and knees to the other end of the rockfall and there surveyed the rest of the passage. This break was wider than the other portion of the stream and it had no good landing strip beyond. Simsa refused to accept that. There must be a way.

Looking higher, she picked out, partly shadowed by a tumble of rock, a darker spot, which, as she studied it, took on something of a likeness to the window holes in the fortress? home? city? behind her. Had she had about her all that she carried in the Burrows when about her nearly illegal business—a stout rope, with a small knife that opened into a grapple—the crossing would have been, perhaps not easy, but possible. But she was not equipped as in the old days.

Still, that thought held in her mind—a rope and a grapple. If the grapple held true, she could swing across above the surface of the sand, reach the narrow top of one of the tumbled rocks just below the suspected opening.

Simsa shed the cloak. The rod? It was too precious to risk. That left the metal strips of her kilt—which she had been so proud to assume and which she had since worn even when it would have been better not to in order to avoid attention. One strip still lay back beside that other river where she had been tempted to fish with such ill results. But with two—four more . . .

She speedily loosened a pair. They were limber in her hold, not stiff, but they were also hard to bend, and she had to pound them against the rock with the help of a small stone until she had them entwined together, with two prongs pointed outward in opposite directions.

Rope? There could be only one source for that. Simsa now fell upon the cloak and tore a wide strip, or rather worried it loose with the edge of her grapple. Into this she fitted her small store of supplies—it would make a pack she could bind to her back. The rest of the tough material she tore, pulled, cut, and knotted into an unwieldy length of line perhaps half the width of her palm in thickness.

Knotting this to the improvised grapple, she again tested each and every knot. She was not depending upon illusion, or will, or power now, but on knowledge she had learned for herself, and that thought strengthened her determination to succeed. If she fell, she thought wryly, then that Elder One, with all her learning and skills, would end just as quickly as the beggar-thief out of the Burrows. Save that she was set on victory this time on her own.

It took three casts, even in the full light, to bring the grapple within that broken window place. Then Simsa threw all her weight backward, not just once but three times. Without realizing that she did so, she was mumbling one of the charms Ferwar had always sworn by and made her learn to summon fortune.

She was very careful in tying on her improvised pack, allowing herself two swallows of water. Her skin was slippery with sweat now and she deliberately rubbed her palms across the rock surface to pick up any grit that might adhere.

“Ready as I shall ever be!” She said that aloud stoutly as both a challenge and encouragement. Then, the awkward “rope” in her grasp, she cast herself directly into the hands of fortune by jumping from the end of her perch.

The swing of her rope took her only an arm’s distance above the sand, and the force of her jump brought her up against a far rock with such a blow as nearly drove all the air from her lungs. But she held and began to climb, her feet braced against the riven face of the rock, her hands and arms cruelly strained. She reached the end of the rope, swung up one hand to hook over the edge where the grapple was fixed, and at last tumbled head forward into a cramped hollow where she merely lay, her breasts heaving from the struggle and the fear which, at the last moment, broke through the guards she had set.

She was safe across and, for a time, that was all that counted. Her many bruises and scratches joined those earlier hurts, and she felt as if she wanted nothing but to lie where she was indefinitely. To be back on her pallet of rags in Ferwar’s smelly burrow with a pot of fish stew and edible fungi boiling over the fire under the tending of her foster mother—that was sheer luxury. Why had fortune not granted that she remain so for her lifetime? She had meddled with things that were better left to slumber aeons longer. Now, it was as if she were one of Lame Ham’s people, made of sticks and rags, which he so skillfully used to summon up a crowd on market days while his partner Wulon plucked purses from the unwary.