Norton, Andre - Moon of Three Rings

Simmle growled and rose to her feet, showing her teeth in a snarl. Borba and Vors lifted their heads, crests flattened, ready to do battle, while Tantacka shifted her weight from left to right and back again on her broad pawed forefeet, rumbling deep in her throat so her warning was more vibration than audible sound.

Down the slope wavered a figure, pulling itself onward by grasping bush and sapling, going to the knees, yet always rising doggedly to advance, until at last it fell and slid limply down into the circle of moon-globe radiance, mud encasing much of its length. I stooped and gripped a shoulder, exerted my strength to turn over that flaccid body.

The face was mud-splattered, cut, bruised, swollen, yet the one I had expected to see. The off-worlder had won out of Osokun's hold and through the hills. Now I was ready to repay my debt—but how? For it was well like he had come from one danger into another equally as great. We stood on the border of Oskold's land where none would gainsay his orders—or rather I stood, and Krip Vorlund lay in a swound now so deep that I could not probe it. Like the barsk, he slept and perhaps was the better for fleeing the here and now. And so passed much of that day.

KRIP VORLUND VIII

There was a singing, low and sweet, a croon which sounded in my ears as the wind which the space-borne so seldom feel on their bodies. And from whatever place Krip Vorlund had gone into hiding, I was pulled back to be one again, body and spirit locked together. When I opened my eyes to look about me, it was upon a strange company. Still, their strangeness did not truly amaze me; it was as if I had expected to see each and every one of them—girl's face with silver hair escaping about it from the hood of a cloak, furred muzzles with bright animal eyes glistening inquisitively about them.

"You are—Maelen—" My voice surprised me, for it was a hoarse croaking.

She of the hood nodded. "I am Maelen." But she spoke absently and her head turned as if she stared beyond in search of something she feared to see. All the other heads swung also, and from them came snarls and growls, low and rumbling, each differently pitched. My drowsy content vanished, apprehension awoke.

Her hand lifted and light glowed along that which she held between her fingers, the wand. She put this with care on the flattened palm of her other hand. I saw, though she did not touch it, the rod stir of itself and turn to point in the same direction her eyes sought.

As if by a signal, the furred ones vanished into the gloom beyond the borders of the lamplight in which I lay. Now Maelen took up again the wand and pointed with it to the moon globe, which died into nothingness. She leaned closer over me, her weather cloak out in wide wings tenting us both.

"Quiet!" Her order was a mere puff of breath.

I found I was listening, straining to hear whatever her ears also sought. There was the sighing of the wind, the splashing of water not too far away, other sounds of the open—nothing more—save the rising pound of my own blood in my ears.

So we waited for a space I could not measure, save it seemed very long. Then once more she spoke, perhaps to me, perhaps only voicing her thought.

"So—they hunt."

"Me?" I whispered.

"You." I did not need confirmation of that.

"Listen now," she continued swiftly. "There are more than just Osokun's sword-sworn—these come from before and behind. And—" she hesitated, "I do not see how we can get through the net they weave for our taking."

"It is not your trouble—"

Her finger tips pressed upon my lips, cool and strong. "Mine the debt, man of the star lanes, mine the payment, so say the scales of Molaster—the scales of Molaster," she repeated. Then after a pause, she whispered again, "should I give you another skin, Krip Vorlund, for the undoing of the enemy?"

"What do you mean?" It seemed to me, although the cloak about us cast a dark pool of shadow, I could see her two eyes a little above me as sparks of frosty light, much as a beast's eyes will shine in the night if caught by a torch's ray.

"To my mind has come the answer of Molaster." She sounded bewildered, the confidence I had always seen in her shaken. "But you are not Thassa—not Thassa—" Her voice trailed away into a moment of silence. Then she spoke with her old assurance. "So be it, if you choose, so be it! Hark well now, off-worlder. I do not think we have a chance to elude those who search these hills. By their thought-throws I read they would have your death and that speedily if they come upon you."

"That I can believe," I told her dryly. "Have you time to get away? I may not be a trained swordsman but—"

I think she found that amusing, the sound she gave might have been a tiny laugh. "Brave, oh, brave star rover! But we have not come to such straits yet. There is another path, though a very strange one, and you may think being cut down by the blades of Osokun's men better than the walking of it."

Perhaps I read challenge into what was only warning, but I reacted stubbornly to her words. "Show me this path, if you think it means escape."

"There is this, you may change bodies—"

"What!" I struggled to sit up, pushed her so that we both overbalanced and struck the ground.

"I am not the enemy!" Her hands thrust against my chest, punishing old bruises and making me wince. "Another body is what I said, and what I meant, Krip Vorlund."

"And this body I now wear?" I could not believe that she was serious.

"Let Osokun's men take it and welcome."

"Thank you!" I retorted. "Either I lose my life in my body, or they kill my body and leave me outside somewhere." The utter folly of what I said made me laugh a little hysterically.

"No!" Maelen retorted. She had pulled her cloak away and we sat facing each other in the twilight. I could see her face, but it was hard to read her expression, though I believed she was in earnest and meant exactly what she said.

"They will not harm your body, once you have gone from it. They will believe you under the cloak of Umphra."

"So they would let my body go?" I decided to humor her. My mind was in an odd state, nothing about this adventure had any reality by the standards I knew. I began to think it was one of those vivid dreams which now and then visit a sleeper, plunging him into an inner state of awareness so that he believes he is awake, not sleeping, as he undertakes impossible feats. It was beginning to seem, in this real dream, that perhaps all things were possible.

"Your body would not be tenantless, for two spirits will pass from one housing to another. For a space only need this be, as we can then retake your body and once more exchange."

"Because they would leave it here?" I continued, willing to go along with the fantasy.

"No, they would take it to the Temple of Umphra. And we would have to follow, even to the Valley of the Forgotten." Her head turned away and I had a feeling that what she said had some meaning for her which had nothing to do with me.

"And where would I be while we went hunting my body?"

"In another body, perhaps even better fashioned for what might have to be done."

This was a dream, of course. I no longer questioned that it might be anything else. Perhaps it was all a dream—my escape from the fort which had been so oddly favored by fortune, the nightmare journey through the hills and the storm, my coming here. Perhaps the dream extended even further—I had never been kidnaped from the fair, I lay safely now in my ship bunk and dreamed all this. And an odd curiosity awoke in me. I wanted to know how far this dream would take me and what new and weird action would come next.

"Let it be as you wish," I said, and I laughed, for I knew that neither this, nor the waking hours of my life were real.