The Forerunner Factor (7 page)

As the girl pulled out the small packet which contained the carvings, something else spun free into the light of the lamp, the violence of its spin freeing it from the scrap of cloth she had thought so firmly bound around it. It was as if fate itself had begun to betray her, Simsa thought, as she snatched for that, caught only the cloth and dumped the contents fully into the shine of the lamp.

The ring did not glitter, the metal of its fashioning was too soft a sheen, it had been buried perhaps too long, and its single remaining stone was milkily opaque and not cut to blaze forth in glory. Yet, there was no mistaking, no hiding now what had so seemingly loosened itself through no will of hers.

That circlet with its tiny castle mount for the unknown stone lay revealed to both of them. Simsa hurled aside the packet of the carvings, scooped, with claw-extended fingers, for the ring. She might have parted, had there been both opportunity and need, with the two other pieces of jewelry—those from the Old One’s caches, but this—no! From the first moment she had found it, something within her claimed it, knew that it must be hers alone.

Though the off-worlder had picked up the packet, shaken the carvings free of their covering and inspected them as any prudent purchaser would, he quickly turned his attention again to her hand. For some reason, perhaps defiance, because he had handled her so easily at the window, Simsa did not thrust the ring into hiding once again. Rather she slipped it over her thumb in full sight.

He did not bend his head any closer to view it. Still, she was as certain as if he did, that he studied it with care. Then, at last, he said—as if the words were forced from him against his will:

“And from where came that?”

“This?” She tapped it with the slightly extended foreclaw of her other hand. “This was the Old One’s gift—(which was truth after a fashion—had Simsa not labored to bury Ferwar, she would never have chanced on it)—I do not know from where she had it.”

Now he did extend his hand. “Will you let me see it?”

She would not take it off, the longer she felt its weight on her finger the more natural that seemed. But she lifted her hand a fraction closer to him.

“X-Arth maybe,” he said very softly, almost in wonder.

“The ring could be that of a Moon Sister, or High Lady. But here?” He must ask the question of himself rather than her, Simsa decided. She had a new flow of curiosity.

“What is Moon Sister? A High Lady? Yes, of them I have heard.”

He shook his head and there was impatience in his voice when he answered.

“I do not speak of the Lady of one of your Guild Lords. The High Lady was of another world and time. She could summon powers my race were never able to measure, and the Moon was her crown and her strength.”

Though the Burrowers gave no lip service nor bowed knees except to Fortune, Simsa thought she understood: A goddess.

The temples of the upper city served only those with precious metal to pay for sacrifices (not that Simsa had ever heard of any surprising answer to prayer muttered or full-sung in any of
those
halls). If there were gods and goddesses on this world, they busied themselves only with those who already had the warm right hand of fortune on their shoulders. Only how did the symbol of a goddess known to the off-worlder come to lie under a rock down by the burial pits?

This X-Arth he hunted—what did the Lord Arfellen have to do with that?

“Those guards—they followed you.” She flipped the ring about so only the band was showing, the castle, as he called it, lay against her palm in hiding. “What has Lord Arfellen to do with you—or—what is more important—does he know of me?”

She was not sure he would tell her. He was frowning now, wrapping the carvings in the same piece of cloth she had used, putting them with care into his belt pouch. He did not answer, but rather went once more, with a tread so quick and easy that in spite of his spacer’s boots he made no sound crossing the room, to peer out a crack between the shutter and the casing.

“The lamp—” He made an impatient gesture and she guessed what he wanted, blew out the flame, then heard the squeak of the shutter as he must have pulled it farther open. Zass complained with a growl and Simsa joined the off-worlder in time to take the weight of the zorsal back on her shoulder.

There was nothing below. No one moved. They might be looking down upon the street of a deserted city. Simsa, bred to the Burrows and the alarms of the fringe places, understood the threat which hung as a part of that very silence.

“Lord Arfellen—” she whispered.

He made a swift movement, held his hand hard across her mouth. His answer came in the thinnest thread of a whisper. She wouldn’t have believed he could have spoken so softly and yet have the words reach her with such clarity.

“Listen well—Arfellen’s men followed me to spy. Is there any way out of here? He may have loosed more than just the guard to dog me—”

How much would her help be worth, that question flashed first into her mind, only to be followed by the sense of her own danger. If the Guild Lord’s men hunted this off-worlder, an alien whom all the customs of Kuxortal protected, then how much more they would profit in taking her for whose very skin they would not have to answer to anyone? They could crush her dry in one of their question rooms and learn all she knew—yet try to wring more out of her. Only if the off-worlder was safe—for now—could she also hope to have time to work out her own method of escape from his troubles.

There was only one place—the Burrows. No one of the upper city came seeking there. There were far too many runways and passages, too many hiding holes. Those from the upper city had long ago given up hope of flushing any who fled there, depending indeed on the clannishness of the Burrowers themselves, who resented any newcomers and would set up and deliver up to the authorities an upper-town fugitive.

Only if one struck a bargain with a Burrower—one of enough weight of arm to defend himself and his prey—could any fugitive hope for refuge—then only for a short time.

Simsa’s thought spun back and forth in a whirl. There was one way she could take the off-worlder back to the very den she had hoped to have seen the last of. It would cause talk, yes—but she could do it openly and none would stand between her and a dubious, fleeting safety. First—the money.

She pulled out of the off-worlder’s loose hold to catch up the bag of broken bits, stuff it deep into her sleeve and fasten the wrist button. Then her hands went to the tight wrapping about her head. She pulled off the many strands of that, shook free her thick mat of silver hair, then smeared the band pieces across her eyebrows and lashes to remove some of the protective coloring. She was not to be Shadow now, but play a very different role.

“There is a way,” she said softly as she scrubbed away her disguise. “We have some play-women in the Burrows. None have ever brought back a ship man. Though some of the lesser river traders—when they are drunk enough—will come for their pleasure. Take this,” she groped her way to the bed she had hoped to lie soft on and never had a chance to even try, and snatched up its upper cover pushing it on him where he stood—a darkened blotch between her and the open window, the lights from below giving her that much guidance now. “Put it about you as a cloak. Now—if you can stand being thought a Burrow woman’s pleasure buyer!”

He was following her, though she was not sure at that moment whether she wanted that or not. Once more, they made the way through the back parts of the inn, even as they had entered a short time before.

As they came under a dim lantern, she thought she heard a faint exclamation out of him, but when she turned her head quickly he was quiet. So they passed into a side street, Simsa in the lead, he following with that soft tread on her very heels. Down they went, skirting a wall which was a division point between the city and the fringe. There were secrets there, known well to her people. She stopped beside what looked to be a regular section of that same wall, but was merely lamperwood, hard as iron even in such a small panel and skillfully overlaid with paint and dirt to appear as solid as the stone on either side.

Simsa slipped through that easily enough, her large companion found it a tighter squeeze, but he did not delay her longer. She went only a few more steps until she darted into a cellar left open to the sky and then caught his hand to lead him through a maze of passages far better known to her than the streets above their heads.

Thus she came back after a momentous day and night in a full circle to that place she had never thought to see again—Ferwar’s Burrow. In the dark, she found a battered lamp which fed upon not oil from the upper city but the squeezings of certain ill-smelling ground nuts which had to be pressed for weary spaces of time to give forth their juices, so that lamp light at all was treasure in the Burrows. Still, if there were eyes for the seeing now, let them mark that she was not alone.

However, as she set spark to the battered saucer-like bowl of mud which held that oil, she was not prepared for the wonderment in the off-worlder’s eyes. For a moment, she was startled at the strange look he turned upon her. Then she remembered that, for the first time in years, she had taken off that discreet covering which had made her “Shadow.”

“But you are—you are a woman!” His surprise was so open and complete that she was startled a little in turn. Did her disguise then hold so well that even her sex had been undiscovered when she ventured forth? He had indeed, she remembered back now, addressed her by that queer off-planet greeting she had heard given to males. But she had merely thought that these aliens had but one form of greeting for all.

Now, hardly knowing why, she raised her hands and ran her fingers through her silvery hair. It floated a little at the touch, the electricity aroused by her treatment moving its lighter strands. It was seldom and only in private nowadays that she unwrapped her hair so. In fact, now she felt an odd kind of embarrassment which was better left hidden.

“I am Simsa—” Perhaps Gathar had already spoken her name.

She saw the look of awe change into a slight smile on the off-worlder’s face.

“My House name is Thorn,” he placed his two hands together, palm meeting and bowed across them. “My given-by-father name, Chan-li. My friend name—Yun.”

Simsa laughed suddenly. “What a world of names! How do those you know choose among them if they would call you?” She seated herself cross-legged on the pile of mats which had been Ferwar’s. With a wave of beringed hand, the girl indicated the smaller collection of woven rush squares which were of her own making and had been her bed-place.

He seated himself limberly in the same fashion. It was odd what she was finding out about this stranger. His smile was gone from his lips, but it still seemed to hold in his eyes which had opened to their widest extent when he looked at her and now remained that way.

“Those who are kin say ‘Chan’, my friends ‘Yun’.”

She gave another combing toss to her hair. To sit here in idle talk was not enough. There was that she must know and as soon as she might.

“Tell me now,” she commanded, “what dealing have you with Lord Arfellen that his guards follow you and yet you would have none of them? Do you know that he has only to crook his finger joint so much as this,” she stretched out her ringed thumb and made a slight curve in the air, “and he can have the life of near any one in Kuxortal, and set to tremble a few more he could not kill at once? What have you done?”

This Thorn did not seem in the least disturbed by her questions now. He sat as easily as if he were any Burrower. In fact easier than any who would now dare to enter
this
particular chamber.

“I asked questions—questions concerning my brother who went off into your world some seasons ago and of whom there had been no word since, though he was pledged to a meeting he would not have missed unless he had met with dire trouble. You spoke of him as a witling who went into the Hard Hills. I swear to you that no matter how it would seem to your people, he had good reason to go there, to hunt what he had come to discover. Now—” he hesitated for a moment and then added with the sharpness of a Guild man voicing an order, “can you tell me any other rumors concerning him? Or why anyone would wish him to come to ill?”

“There were tens of tens ways in which he could have come to ill,” she returned, striving to keep her voice as cool and stern as his own. “The Hard Hills have their secrets in plenty. Most men travel by river or by sea. It used to be long ago—when I was very young, that caravans still came in from Qurux across the desert lands which front the Hard Hills. Those were from Semmele and they brought strange things from the north for the trading. Then we heard of a plague which made Semmele a place of dead men and ghosts and no caravans came. What they had ever brought was little—the Guilds could well make up the yield from the rivermen. So the way there was lost. Yes, there was talk when the off-worlder hunted out three of the old caravan men. They say he offered a fortune in broke-bits for a guide. Two of them would have none of his urging—the other got into a shuffle with one of Lord Arfellen’s guards and thereafter agreed to go.” She was suddenly aware of what she had said and repeated slowly, “Lord Arfellen’s guard . . .” more to herself than to him.

“So and so.” He used the trader’s speech so easily that if she shut her eyes, she could not be sure he was not of Kuxortal. “These other two—are they still here?”

The girl shrugged. “If they are, surely Gathar will find them for you. Have you not already made such a bargain with him?”

Again he was smiling. “Your knowledge seems to stretch a long way, Gentlefem Simsa. Does it touch any more on such as this?” He patted with his hand the belt pouch into which he had put the carvings.

“All I know is that the Old One had a liking for such. What I found, what was brought to her, she kept.”

“What you found—where?” He caught that up eagerly.

“In the Burrows. We dig into the back years of Kuxortal, we who live on her refuse. Some of that refuse being very old. Once this,” again she gestured, “might well have been part of some Lord’s palace place. There are bits of wall paint still in yonder corner. Things have been lost as houses collapsed, were built over. Kuxortal was sacked by pirates, three times attacked by armies before the rise of the River lords and their alliance. There has been much destroyed and built upon over and over again. The Burrowers live in the past and on what they can scoop from their tunnels. We are less than dust to the Guild Lords.”