“No,” Hern said, though his gaze lingered on the riding beast fidgeting a short distance off, neck bent in a graceful arc, snorting and dancing from foot to foot with an impossible lightness as attendants dived for the dangling reins. “No,” he said and sighed.
The Mirror flickered. A forest. Gigantic trees with skirts of fragile air-root lace arching out near the ground. A woman standing among and towering above brown glass figures that danced around her, crooning something exquisitely lovely and compelling; Serroi could feel the pull of it as she watched. A woman, bright hair hanging loose about a frowning face, a face alive with something better than beauty, a powerful leonine female, visibly dangerous. She lifted a hand. Fire gathered about the hand, a gout of gold flame that flowed like ropy syrup about it. She pointed. Fire leaped out in a long lance from her finger. She swept her arm in a short arc, the lance moving with it to slash deep into the side of a tree. The forest groaned. The hypnotic chant broke. One of the glass figures cried out, agony in the rising shriek, a deep burn slanting across its delicate torso. “I want my friend,” the woman cried. “Give me back my friend; bring her out from where you’ve hid her.” She cut at another tree. A spun gold crown appeared on her head, a band woven from gold wire, flowers like flattened lilies on the band, the petals made of multiple lines of wire until the petal space was filled in. The centers of the blooms were singing crystals whose pure sweet chimes sounded over the moaning and screaming from the little ones, the hooshing of the trees. “I want my friend or I’ll burn your forest about your ears.” She took a step forward, the fury in her face a terrible thing. Once again she slashed at a tree.
“No,” Hern said. Hastily but definitely.
“Why?” Serroi turned from the fading image to examine his face.
“I’ve got enough trouble coping with the women in my life.” He chuckled. “You, Yael-mri, Floarin, even the Maiden. Fortune deliver me from another. Remember my number two, Lybor?” When she nodded, he jerked his thumb at the Mirror. “A Lybor with brains. Give that one a year and she’d own the world.”
“If she wanted it.”
He shrugged. “Why take the chance?”
The Mirror flickered. The gloom about the trees changed, deepened. The giants shrank to trees that were still great, but great on a more human scale. The ground tilted to a steeper slope. The view shifted until it seemed they hovered over a red dirt trail. A line of men came trotting along it-no, not all men, about half were women. Serroi counted twenty, all of them lean and fit, moving steadily down the mountainside, making no sound but the soft beat of their feet and the softer slide of their clothing. Dark clothing. Trousers of some tough but finely woven cloth more like leather than the homespun cloth she knew. Some of them wore dark shirts that buttoned down the front, heavy blousy shirts with a number of buttoned-down pockets, others had short sleeved, round-necked tunics that clung like fine silk to torsos male and female. Some had wide belts looped across their bodies, others had pouches that bounced softly and heavily against their hips. They all carried complicated wood and metal objects, rather like crossbows without the bowstaves. Well-kept weapons, handled with the ease of long use. Down and down they went, moving in and out of moonlight that was beginning to dim as clouds blew across the sky. They reached a dirt road, only a little wider than the trail but with deeper ruts in it. Without hesitation they turned onto it and loped along it, still going down.
A purring like that of a giant sicamar grew slowly louder, died. A blatting honk. The band split in half and vanished into the brush and trees on both sides of the road. The throaty purr began again, again grew louder. Again it stopped. Serroi heard a sharp whistle. Three bursts, then two. The purr again-coming on until Serroi at last saw the thing that made it. A large squarish van rather like the caravans of the players. This one had no team pulling it, yet it came steadily on, its fat, soft-looking wheels turning with a speed that started Hern tapping his fingers. The purring muted to a mutter as the van slowed and stopped; the man inside the glassed-in front leaned out an opening by his side and repeated the whistle signal. His face was strained, gaunt, shadow emphasizing the hollows around his eyes, the heavy lines slashing down his cheeks and disappearing under his chin.
An answering whistle came from the trees on his left.
He opened the side of the van, jumped down and trotted around to the back, put a key into a tiny keyhole, turned it, then pulled down the two handles and opened out the doors. The viewpoint shifted so she could see inside, but it was a disappointment; nothing there but thin quilted padding on the floor.
The men and women came swiftly and silently from the trees and began climbing inside, fitting themselves with quick ease into the limited space. The driver and the leader of the band, a stocky blond man, stood talking by the front door.
“Rumor says they’re close to finishing new spy satellites and shooting them up.” The driver’s voice was soft, unassertive, a hoarse but pleasant baritone that blended well with the soughing of the wind through the conifers, the brighter rustling of the other trees. “When they do, they’ll be going over the mountains inch by inch until they find you.” He passed a hand across his brow, stirring the lank thin hair hanging into his eyes. “Unless you can take them out again.”
“Through a fuckin army? Hunh! Well, we won a year. They took their time.” The stocky man rubbed a fist across his chin. “We can hold out.” A quick swoop of his arm included the fighters. “But the rest, the old folks and the kids…” Hand fisted again, he jabbed at the unseen enemy, eyes narrowed, cheekbones suddenly prominent, catching what was left of the moonlight. “Shit, man, what else we fighting for?”
The driver smiled, a nervous twitch of his lips. “All of us, we’ll have to go deeper underground or cross the border and raid from there. Tell you, Georgia, I’ve about gone my limit in town. Getting so I grovel to shadows. Had a couple blackshirts go through my store records a week ago, they came back yesterday, didn’t do anything but stand around. Still, I was sweating rivers.”
“You suspect?”
“I don’t think so. Not for this.” He patted the side of the van, “It’s what I sell, electronic games, the minicomputers, the rest of it, all that second-hand gear. And I was a wargamer before they got that outlawed. Devil’s work, you know.” He shrugged, swiped again at the hair falling in his eyes. “Be really ironic if they pull me in because whatever they’ve got instead of brains is twitching at shadows like that. It’s getting so it’s anybody any time, all the cops need is a funny feeling. Hunh! The Dommers, they located a collection of drop-outs a couple hundred miles south of here. What I hear, all they were doing was scratching a few patches of vegetables out of the mountainside, living on what they could catch or kill. Dommers rounded them up, the ones left alive, brought them in for trial. Was on TV last night, showing us the horrible examples. Rumor says trial’s rigged, they’re going to shoot them first of the week.” He shrugged again. “They’re starting to ration gas. Guess you’ll have to lift a few cans so I can fill up again. I damn sure don’t want them coming down on me asking questions I can’t answer. Constitution suspended till the emergency’s over. Over!” The last word was a barking snarl. He thrust his hands in the pockets of his jacket and scowled into the night. “It’ll be over when the fat cats get themselves dug in so deep we’ll never root them out; little man can wave good-bye to any rights he thinks he’s got.”