The root was aromatic, its scent, as I held it close to my nose, clean and clear against the dank, near-fetid odors wafted from the growing beds. I chewed upon it and discovered, though it seemed to have no particular definable taste, it made my mouth feel clean. Also, once moistened by saliva, it softened, was easy to chew small and swallow.
She was not so quick to sample her own portion but continued to sit there, looking away from our small refuge by the dry and the dead towards the massed boxes before us where things grew far too luxuriantly to make me easy of mind. At that moment I did not want to look ahead, only lie and let the tiredness seep out of me in sleep—if one dared sleep in such a place.
"What are you thinking of?" I asked at last, mainly because I could not reach for that sleep with her still sitting there, a half-chewed twig in her fist and her eyes set on what I could not see. For I was sure she was no longer just watching the plants themselves.
"Of the link—" the words came from her with a force which aroused me. "What is the link—between what we have seen this day and the Shadow doom? Who first named it Shadow doom—and why? They might as well have spoken of lead death—of the Unknown—of—of—" her sentences trilled away as she still stared at what I could see, and perhaps, more at what I could not.
I had no answer for her, she did not even wait for one, but her words plunged on:
"Those flowers—they are the first proof of link. What reason for their being in the villages?" She flung her arms wide as if she would grasp something and pull it to her. "I want to know! I must know!" Then that trance-like stare broke and she glanced at me as if she saw me once again as a person. For the first time she smiled, her calm mask breaking so that in this alien place she was all human, not even a healer any more.
"When I was little," even the tone of her voice was changed, it had lost that faint hint of intoning, "I used to read story tapes. There were all the old, old adventures which are still always new—probably because way back in time somewhere they did hold once a kernel of truth. There was always the lady in great distress, menaced by all manner of evil, from monstrous beasts to dark-hearted men. But through all her trials she never lost heart, always knew that good would finally triumph.
"Then there was the hero, a mighty fighter and doer, who did not know the very name of fear, and to whom danger was a challenge he went eagerly to meet. The two of them were plunged into all manner of action through which they fought with sword, or wit, or plain strength of arm until evil was overcome and good put on a victory crown.
"Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to be caught in such an adventure—" She paused and I cut in:
"So now you are and discover that the truth is somewhat different—one's feet ache from walking, one can feel the cold of fear, also that you do not have the support of knowing that it will all come right in the end. Yes, adventures are not what the tapes would have us believe." I deliberately settled my head on the pillow of my pack and closed my eyes. In truth I realized that I was no hero and certainly could not make a good showing as one, no matter how action might call for such an effort. I thought that there might be a hint of mockery in her talk—though I believed that was a show on her part, meant probably to bolster her own spirits. At that moment I was selfish enough to want to try and refresh my own. The last things I wished to consider were the attributes of a proper hero.
I was even tired enough to sleep, willing to depend upon the gars for sentry duty, since I knew that they never slept soundly, but spent their rest halts and nights in light doses, awakening at intervals to graze—even though there was no grazing here.
Night and day must be all the same here. I came awake later aware of a weight resting half against my arm. Bemusedly, not yet fully aroused, I turned my head a fraction and saw that Illo was huddled down beside me, not the width of a camp fire away, and her head had rolled against me. She was deep in sleep, her breath coming in slow even rhythm. Her face, however, had a frown line locked between her brows as if questions without answers still haunted her.
Gently I moved away from her, allowing her head to rest on the edge of my pack, as I slipped out from the half-weight of it. The light was the same; the gars still knelt chewing their cuds which must be near vanished by now. Witol opened his big eyes as I came up, and closed them again, having assured himself, I supposed, that all was well.
However, slowly I became aware that the peace which had appeared a part of my sleep no longer existed. Just as the nodding flowers had given us the feeling of being watched, so I sat up and looked around, surveying the long vistas of the aisles between the boxes, planted, or full of the dead, with a growing uneasiness. There was something here—even if the gars on which I had, perhaps foolishly, depended for sentries did not appear to sense any trouble.
Though I studied all, I could see there was no outward change—only the misty pseudo-clouds were ever in motion, all else was quiet and silent. Still that sense which is sharp in one who has lived on and with the plains got me to my feet, moved me to the next aisle to peer up and down—and then to the one beyond.
Here the lights glowed and that dangerous growth was vigorous. So I kept a careful distance from it, drawing the stunner, hoping that if I came under any attack I could face that as well here with the same weapon as had defeated the Tangle.
Here all was very quiet. Here I could not hear the breathing of the gars, the slight rustle Illo might be making turning in her sleep. It was as if I were totally alone, caught in strangeness, hedged about by alienness which was threatening because it had no possible meeting point with my own species.
In those moments that I stood there my view of this place shifted. I had considered it a forcing house for plants—perhaps an experimental station, such as my own kind used on other worlds to test the possibilities of adapting natural food products to strange soils. Only that logic was based on my observation and information. What if there was an entirely different reason for the forcing of the plants?
At that moment there crept into my mind, thin and weak at first, as might a first root break out of a seed casing, another conception altogether. There were no armies on Voor. My kind had never had to band together against a concrete and visible foe. I had never even seen any of the Patrol, the armed might of The Federation, except when once a cruiser on a routine outer fringe world flight had landed a squad at Portcity, mainly to pick up some records a disabled Survey ship had jettisoned there.
Since the Shadow doom had always remained just that—shadowy, unknown—one did not think of it as a trained force, an army. What the Voorloper had to fight he faced alone—weather such as the sudden storm which had been our bane, a handful of hostile animals, the mishaps of a sudden illness where there was no medical aid. These dangers would be small against—
My whole body tensed, my fingers ached a little with the tight grip I kept on the stunner which was ready, which, without my conscious volition, swerved slowly from side to side as if I were prepared to sweep free a broad path with my ray. Yet here was no tangle of jungle—there were the orderly networks of aisles leading to infinity. I wrangled my distance glasses loose with my left hand, keeping the stunner ready in the other.
Boxes, some full, some dead, a numberless procession of them, and that was only along the one aisle. I could not sight the far end of the place in which I stood because—
I blinked, wiped the lenses of the glasses against my thigh, put them to my eyes again. There was a definite limit, far from here—but no wall. Rather a thick mist, as if the small cloudlets overhead had their birth there, breaking from a greater mass which touched the floor.
And—
I began to back down the side aisle which had brought me away from my companions. I had not just imagined that! My eyes were too distance-wise to be deceived. The foggy mass was on the move, in our direction!
At the same time I made sure of that, I was swung back against on the boxes, hurled off balance by a ring of fire about my throat. The glasses fell from
my grasp as I threw up my hand to tear at the necklet. But I did not lose my hold on the stunner.
With that circle of pain eating into my flesh I was no longer Bart s'Lorn. Or rather I was he battling what I could not see, hear, feel, but which was in me. I must go forward—this was needful—I was—
Food?
The conception was such a shock that it broke the hold of the pressure on my brain. That small recession of struggle let me marshal my forces. I turned and staggered back, wavering from side to side, slamming with bruising force from the boxes on one edge of the walkway to those on the other.
The necklet did not feel hot to my fingers, but there was my own blood welling from the frantic scratches of my nails striving to pull it open.
"Bart—?"
Illo was pulling herself up to her feet with one hand on a box where brittle stems turned to powder at her touch. "Bart—!" Her eyes were large, staring at me as if I had suddenly put on a monster's mask. Then she fairly sprung away from the box to meet me; with both hands she caught mine as I clawed so futilely at the necklet.
It was Illo—truly it was Illo—not that other—that other with her mouth twisted open to voice a hideous scream. Dark hair—light hair—one face over another—and then gone again. I was going mad—the whole world was twisting around me, assuming one shape which melted into another, and then another—
There was a hag! No, she was not old—young, young and evil, and her mouth gaped open to show teeth ready to tear wolfishly at my flesh. No—she was old—old with all the evil knowledge gained during a vicious life in those burning eyes, and she had a knife—a knife to match that which was already sawing at my throat.
She led the pack. I must get away—run—I brought up my fist and sent it crashing into her face. Then the face was gone. I could run—run to meet them, the others—those who waited—who needed me.
This was like trying to run through a viscous flood rising higher and higher about my legs. I was wading now. The level reached my knees, clung about my thighs. I could not see it! I threw out both hands, strove to cast the invisible off. My hands met nothing. Still it was there, slowing me down, holding me back so that they could catch me.
They—they were everywhere! There was no escape! My heart pounded in great jolts, trying to break through the cage of my ribs, tear its own path out of my body. The pain at my throat—my head was being forced up and back, a garrote might be slowly closing about my neck.
I screamed like a tortured animal:
"Almanic! Almanic!"
He was here somewhere. I had been loyal—I had carried the summons to the kin—I had obeyed orders—thus I deserved his help.
The tide of the mist—the death mist—rolling forward to meet me. Food—the cursed creations needed food. They had taken and taken—and taken—
"Almanic!"
It was hard to keep my feet with that sucking flood rising about me. Ahead I could see them—the Outer Company—the defenders—I must reach them before the gate closed—I must!
Those others—storming at my heels, creeping in from the sides. This was their place, they knew it. The things they had spawned from their own black delving into the forbidden reached greedy tendrils for me.
A lashing out—I was jerked back, not by the cord about my neck, but that which hurled from one side, which tightened about my waist, crushing in about my body until pain was a red mist rising in my head, blotting out everything.
"Almanic!" I cried in despair. The gate was closing. I had fallen to my knees. There was none who dared leave his place and come to aid me. Too few—they were needed, needed to hold the sanctuary. To sacrifice themselves if the need came. I must watch all hope shut away.
But the eaters would not get me! Or else they would get my body when it no longer mattered. My key—my life key! My hands up to that.
"Ullagath nu ploz—" Words which would release me, by their tones alone, to a final dissolution. They could come upon me now but what would lie to their hands would be of no use to them—They must have their meat alive!
"—fa stan—" I must remember! Why did the proper words fade in and out of my mind? I had known them beyond any forgetting since I was old enough to wear a key as a man and a warrior. "—fa stan—"
What was next? By the Will of the Fourth Eye, what was next? I must have it! Now—before they cut me down, bound me, drew me back to serve their bestial appetites.
"—stan dy ki—" It was coming again—I must hold on. I realized dimly that my shoulder was jammed against a wall of some sort—that around me was an awful stench of death and decay—that that pressure about my middle was pulling tighter and tighter, until pain ran hot fingers up into my brain—I could not remember! I must!
"—ki nen pla—"
Someone was calling. Not the one of the Outer Company. They had gone, the gate was closed.
"Bart—!"
I shook my head. It troubled me, that word—a name—yes, it was a name. But it had no meaning! I must remember—
The pressure about my waist gave way. I sprawled forward, crashing hard against an unyielding substance. I could not remember—I would be meat, meant for the half-men! With a last dying hope I sought the bar resting against my throat. If I could only remember! Instead, I plunged into the dark—perhaps the Power was merciful after all, and I had gained death without the ritual, I thought, as I surrendered to that engulfing wave.
Chapter 12
I was moving, but not on my feet—rather I half sat, half lay on the back of a living creature that bore me forward. There was a mist—a cloud which had seeped into my mind. I could not think. Who was I? The citadel had fallen and the half-people had loosed the growing death—fed it horribly. No! I dare not think! Let me slip back once more into that nothingness of non-memory—non-mind!
This body being borne forward—was not mine. Let me be free of it! Free—
I tried to move and found that I was a prisoner—in bonds. The half-men had taken me!
Then from my forehead there began to spread a coolness, driving back the fire which ate at me, in me. Very, very far away I heard sounds rhythmically repeated. Sounds?—words? Words which had no meaning—alien words. The half-men would lock me with their word spells, even as they had bound me with their living ropes. I tried to close my mind to those words—so to keep the ill in them from me. What was the chant of protection? I could not remember it! That was gone, stripped from me, as a prisoner is stripped of all weapons. And still those sounds continued:
"Return—Bart, Bart, Bart—return!"
The coolness spreading into my head, waning, pouring over, smothering, the chaos whirling in my brain which would not let me think!
"Return—you are Bart s'Lorn! You are Bart s'Lorn. Awake and remember! Return—Bart s'Lorn!"
Bart—that was a name—a name I knew once. When and where? Who had he been? Some comrade-in-arms—kinsman? Who—who?
If I could grasp the memory of Bart then I would have a key—A key—there had been a key, too—A key! A necklet which I wore! But that was mine—given me when I had become a man to serve—to serve—
My head was filled with pain worse than any hurt of body, as if a war raged in the very channels of my brain itself—as if two fought there in desperate battle.
"Bart s'Lorn! Wake, Bart—wake!"
The cool pressure on my head—that was not of the evil of the half-men. It was beneficent, healing—Healing? There had been one who was a healer. For just a moment it was as if a face, serene, untouched by any of the raging conflict I knew, was clear in my memory—a young face—the face of one who was a mender, not a destroyer.
"Bart—"
I was not only thought—I was also body. My body contained me—it must obey my commands. I was a person—I was—With a great forcing of will I made the body obey me. I opened my eyes.
The world about me was dim, fogged—as if the parts of this body answered only sluggishly to my will. See! I ordered—see, for me—now!
Now t
he fog broke. I could see! I was riding on the back of a large animal. Only I was not alone. There was one who sat behind me on that broad back, whose hands were up, pressed against my forehead. It was from them that the blessed healing coolness reached into me.
More and more of the space around us cleared to my sight. We rode down an aisle between beds of vegetation, keeping an exact middle path. For from those beds arose whips of vine tentacles which reached vainly to ensnare us, flowers the color of open wounds leaned far forward seeking to engulf our flesh—to feed—to smother—to kill!
"Bart!" She whom I could not see, who rode behind me, called that name yet once again. The touch of her hands upon my head tightened, but not with that terrible compelling pressure I had known in the earlier assault which had sent me whirling thankfully into the dark.