"That I have never seen their equal on any world."
"Do you think other worlds would welcome them?"
"You mean—take the show into space? But that would be chancy, Gentle Fem. The transportation of animals needing diverse foods, special care—some cannot adapt to space flight at all. There is a way of putting them into freeze between landings. But that has a high risk and some might die. I think, Gentle Fem, it would take much planning and perhaps a specially built and equipped ship which would—"
"Cost a fortune," she finished for me. "Yes, so many dreams shatter on that rock, do they not? But if not the whole show, perhaps some of the main attractions might travel. Come, see my people— you will find this an experience to remember."
She was very right. We discovered as she led us up one of the cage streets and down another that these were not places of confinement but rather, as she pointed out, places of safety to protect her people from the harm which might come from human curiosity. The inhabitants were at the front of their dwellings as she stopped before each one and formally introduced us to them. And the feeling grew in me that these were indeed "people" with minds and feelings, strange to but approaching my own. There rose in me a great longing to have one for a ship comrade, though prudence argued against such recklessness.
We were near to the end of the last street when someone came running. He was one of the ragged "odd boys" who haunted the fair, picking up tokens by message running, and perhaps by less legal means. Now he danced from one bare foot to the other as if he had a message of import yet feared to disturb the Thassa girl. But she cut short her speech and looked to him.
"Freesha, the beast seller. It is as you asked me to discover—he has a furred one in torment."
Her face seemed to narrow, her lips drew taut against her teeth. She was even more alien for an instant, and it seemed to me that she expelled her breath in a feline hiss of anger. Then her calm mask was once more in place and she spoke to us.
"It would seem that one has need of me, Gentle Homos. Malec will entertain you. I shall not be gone long."
What impulse then moved me I did not understand, but I said quickly, "Gentle Fem, may I go with you?"
There was no reason to believe that this was not her business alone. And I think she might have said so. Again her expression altered and she nodded.
"As you wish, Gentle Homo."
Griss looked from one to the other, but he did not offer to accompany us. He made his way to the living quarters with Malec as we followed the messenger. The late hour had filled the street here, though it was the rule that selling and buying, for the protection of the customer, must be done only in the bright light of day when all defects in the merchandise would be plain to see. It was the night hours that drew men and women to the amusements, and through that part of the fair we now made our way. I noted that when the natives saw the identity of my companion they made way for her, some watching her pass with a kind of apprehension or awe, such as might be given to a priestess. But she paid no heed to them.
Nor did she break the silence between us. It was as if, having agreed to my coming, she had then pushed me from her mind, to concentrate on a matter of greater importance.
We reached the end of the straggling collection of amusement places and found a rather pretentious tent of raw scarlet splashed with eye-torturing green, from which came the calls of gambling games. The clamor sounded as if such games depended less upon mental skill than upon uproar, though I caught a glimpse of one table near the open door where they were playing the galaxy-wide Star and Comet. And seated there was my acquaintance of the afternoon, Gauk Slafid. Apparently his ship did not keep the strict discipline of the Free Traders, for he had a pile of counters before him that towered higher than those of his neighbors who, by their dress, were at least the close kinsmen of lords, though they appeared too young to be feudal rulers in their own right.
He raised his head as we passed and there was surprise in his glance, a glance which became a stare. He half raised his hand as if he would either wave or beckon to me, then his eyes dropped to the action on the table. One of the lordlings was also staring, and continued to watch us, with so intent and measuring a gaze that I fell a step or two behind Maelen and returned that scrutiny steadily. Nor did he then drop his eyes, but met mine, whether in challenge or mere curiosity, I could not read. And I dared not loose esper in that time and place to find out.
Beyond the gambling tent there was a place of small shelters—the living quarters, I presumed, for those working in the various amusement places. An odor of strange cooking, of sickly scents, and lesser and worse smells hung here. We turned again, picking our way around the huddle of huts to a quieter area where there were parked the wains, or carts, of the small merchants.
And thus we came to another tent from which the smell was vile and nose-twisting. I thought I again heard that hiss of anger from Maelen as she thrust forth her silver wand, using its tip to raise the entrance flap as if she refused to touch the fabric with her fingers. Within evil stenches warred mightily with one another, to raise a choking cloud, and there was also a clamor of barks, growls, raucous snarls, and sputterings. We stood in a small open space in the midst of cages which were not cherished living quarters, but rather places of imprisonment for their occupants, and wretched they were.
A beast dealer who cared for naught save quick profit and many sales owned them. The man himself came out of the shadows, his lips stretched in a smile which never reached his eyes in the way of greeting. But when he saw Maelen that smile was wiped away as if it had never been, and the coldness in his eyes was lighted by a spark which I read for hate—tempered by a wariness of the powers of the one he hated.
"Where is the barsk?" Maelen wasted no greeting on him, her tone was one of outright command.
"Barsk, Freesha? Who in possession of his full bag of wits would do aught with a barsk save slay it? It is a devil, a demon of the moonless dark as all know."
There was a listening look about her as if among all that clamor of unhappiness she could detect a single note and was now engaged in tracing it to its source. She paid no more attention to him but walked forward. I saw hate burn away his fear, so that he prepared to take a stand. His hand went to his belt and my seeking thought was a beam of light, showing me the weapon there, a curious, secret, and very deadly thing, unlike honest steel. This was small enough to be near swallowed up in a closed palm, fashioned not as a blade but a hooked claw, and it was green-smeared with what would be more deadly than its bite.
Whether he would have used it, even eaten as he was by rage and hate for the moment, I do not know. But he had no chance. The stunner in my hold, set to low ray, froze his fingers as they grasped the hidden fang. He stumbled back against one of his smelly cages and then cried out as the creature within, only a dark shadow, flung itself in a frenzy against the bars, striving to reach him. Maelen glanced around and then pointed her wand. The man reeled back and down, crouched on the floor with his useless hand doubled against him, now slobbering with a rage that choked him so he could not speak.
Maelen surveyed him coldly. "Fool, twice fool! Would you have me accuse you of peace breaking?"
She might well have dashed a bucket of icy water into his face, so quickly were the flames of anger gone. Fear replaced hate in his eyes. The thing she threatened meant outlawry. And on Yiktor that is the ultimate in punishment.
He scrambled on hands and knees back into the shadows. But I thought it prudent to stand guard, and told her so.
She shook her head. "There is no need to fear this one. The Thassa are not to be befooled—as you will know—nather!" She did not speak scornfully as she addressed him with the name for worthless-hanger-on, but rather as one who states a fact.
So we went beyond a dividing curtain into a place of more cages and even worse smells. She hurried to one prison set apart by itself.
What was housed there lay inert and, I thought, dead, until I saw the bone-creased
hide rise and fall in long-spaced breaths.
"The cart there—" She was on her knees before the cage, staring intently at its occupant, but her wand indicated a board balanced on four wheels, and I pushed that forward.
Together we lifted the cage onto the cart and then pushed it to the outer portion of the tent. Maelen paused and took from her belt purse two tokens, tossing them to the top of one of the other cages.
"For one barsk, five scales and two fourthers," she said to the man still crouching in the shadows. "Agreed?"
Mind-seek told me he wanted us out. But a spark of greed had awakened behind his fear.
"A barsk is rare," he half whined.
"This barsk is near dead and worth nothing, not even the hide, you have so starved it. If you agree not, petition the price judge in open hearing."
"Enough!"
I caught her amusement. We pushed our burden into the open. The lad who had guided us hither came out of the dark and with him one of his fellows. Between them they took over management of the cart and cage. We took another route in return, one which brought us through a swinging panel in the lattice wall. As the cage was trundled by the line of the burden beasts, they snorted, and several rose to their feet, their nostrils wide, their heads tossing.
Maelen stood before them, her wand weaving from side to side, her voice raised in a low, comforting croon which restored their peace. The boys pushed the cage to the far end of the line and stood by it, waiting. Malec and Griss came out of the booth and the Thassa youth stooped to peer into the cage. Shaking his head, he paid the boys.
"It is hopeless for this one," he told Maelen as she came from the now quiet kasi. "Not even you can reach it, Singer."
She stood looking at the cage with a brooding stare, her wand in one hand while, with the other, she stroked the fur of her short jacket as if it was a beloved pet animal, alive and breathing.
"Perhaps you are right," she agreed. "Yet perhaps its fate is not yet written in the Second Book of Molaster. If it must go on the White Road, then it shall begin that journey in peace and without pain. For now it is too worn out to fight us. Let the cage for the sick hold it."
Together they loosed the fastening of the cage and lifted the creature within to wider, freer quarters in one of their own places, a soft litter spread to support the bone rack of body. It was larger, I saw, than any of the animals that had been on the stage this night; standing, I would judge, if it could rise upon its feet, about as high as my lower ribs. The coat was dusty, befouled, dull, and ragged, but in color it was the red of Maelen's jacket.
In form it was an oddly proportioned animal, for the body was small and the legs very long and thin, as if the limbs meant for one beast had been fitted wrongly to another. The tail ended in a fan tuft, while from between the pointed ears, down the neck, and across the shoulders was a growth of longer hair of a much lighter shade, forming a brush of mane. The nose was long and sharp, showing strong teeth beneath black lips. All in all, had the thing not been so outworn, I would have said it was dangerous.
It aroused enough to snap feebly as they lowered it onto the bedding in the new cage. Then Maelen used her wand with a light touch, drawing it caressingly down between its eyes to the point of its nose, and its head ceased to move. Malec returned from the living quarters with a bowl from which he dipped liquid, dribbling it from his fingers onto the creature's head, and then down the belly, finishing by getting a small measure of it between the jaws and into the encrusted mouth from which a blackened tongue lolled.
Maelen stood up. "For the present that is all we can do. The rest— " Her wand drew a symbol in the air. Then she turned to us. "Gentle Homos, the hour grows late and this poor one will need me."
"Thank you for your graciousness, Gentle Fem." I found her open dismissal abrupt. It was as if she had once had some reason to seek us out, but it was no longer of importance. And somehow I disliked that thought, which might or might not be rooted in fact.
"And you for your aid, Gentle Homo. You will return." And that was no question, and not quite an order, but a statement of fact in which we both agreed.
On the way back to the Lydis, Griss and I did not talk together much, though I told him of what had happened in the tent of the beast seller and received his advice that I note it in my report, lest there be some future trouble.
"What is a barsk?" I asked.
"You saw. They provide the fur displayed this morning, that which Maelen wears as a jacket. They have the reputation for being cunning, intelligent, and dangerous. And they are sometimes killed, but I do not believe very often trapped alive. More than that—" He shrugged.
We were passing the port guards when all of a sudden I caught it—not the hatred of the beast seller alone, but that coupled with a strong and driving purpose. So joined were the emotions they struck the mind as keenly as one of the spears we had seen displayed by the armorers would tear into the body. I halted and swung around to face that mind-stroke only to see nothing but shadows and darkness. And then Griss was beside me, a drawn stunner in his hand. I knew that he, too, had felt it.
"What—?"
"The beast dealer, but also another—" Not for the first time in my life did I wish for the full inner power to read esper. As it was, sometimes a warning could cripple instead of armor a man.
Griss stared at me. "Take care, Krip. He may not dare to go against a Thassa, but he may deem that you are in his reach. This must go to the captain."
He was right, of course, though I hated to admit it. Urban Foss might restrict me to the Lydis until lift-off. Caution was a Trader's shield in strange places, but if a man always clung too tightly to his shield he might well miss the sword stroke which would free him from all danger. And I was young enough to wish to fight my own battles, not sit under cover waiting for the storm to sweep me by. Also, that thrust had been born of two wills and not one. I could understand the beast seller's enmity, but who had coupled that with another assault and for what reason? What other enemy had I made on Yiktor, and by what means?
Chapter 4
Talla, talla, by the will and heart of Molaster and the power of the Third Ring, do I begin my part of this tale thus as would any Deed Singer of some upcountry lordling?
I am, or was, Maelen of the Kontra, Moon Singer, leader of little ones. I have been other things in the past, and am also now under bonds for a time.
What did we care for lord or Trader in that meeting in a tent at the fair of Yrjar? Neither were more to us than the dust of the cities that stifle us with their dirt and greed and clamor, and the drab thoughts of those who will themselves into such confines. But it is not necessary now to speak of the Thassa and their beliefs and customs, only of how my own life came to be pushed from one future to another, because I took no care for the acts of men, overlooked them—something I would not do with the little ones I respect.
Osokun came to me at the mid-point of day, sending to me firstly his shieldbearer. I think that he held me so much in awe that he would not treat me as one less than his own rank, though the plainsmen profess to believe the Thassa wanderers and vagabonds, not saying so to our faces however. He craved speech with me, said this young cub of the forts. And I was curious, for Osokun I knew by repute—and that repute clouded.
It is of the nature of the lords that power among them shifts often. This one or that rises to draw under him or remove all rivals, to become for a space the High King. So it has been many times in the past, an endless parade of mountains and plains in their history. Under one man a kind of uneasy peace holds, then straightway does it fall again. And for a space of many twelves of years now there has been no paramount lord, only many quarreling among themselves.
Osokun, son of Oskold, had in him the fire for great things, that will to power which, when blended with luck and skill, can bring a man successfully to the high seat. But when it is not so companied it torments the one who contains it, consuming him utterly. And I did not believe that Osokun had more than ambition t
o arm him. Such men are a danger not only to themselves but to their kind.
Perhaps it is not well to be aloof as are the Thassa, looking upon others' quarrels with amusement or indifference. For this disarms wisdom and foreknowledge.
I did not refuse Osokun's coming, though I knew that Malec did not agree that in this I moved with any wisdom. I confess that I had a certain curiosity as to why he sought contact with the Thassa, since he professed to consider us beneath his notice.
Though he had sent his sword-sworn to arrange the meeting, he came himself with no escort, but rather with an off-worlder, a young man with an easy smile and fair words on his tongue, but darker things unsaid in the mind behind his searching eyes, whom Osokun named Gauk Slafid.
They gave formal greetings and we gave them a just due at our table. But that impatience which would bring Osokun and all his plans to naught plunged him quickly into a business which was indeed perilous—though more for him, should it be detected, than for me, as the laws which bound him were not the Standing Words of my people.