Selrena must have been following his thoughts. "What you remember—do!"
That was an order Farree discovered he must obey. He began with the misty half life he had led in the Limits, coming into clarity only with the death of the spacer who had kept him in bondage and his own escape. The dangerous days which followed were so much alike in the constant peril which they offered that they were a single blur of misery, in which only his tie with Togger made one small patch of light. Then there was the coming of Maelen and Vorlund and the seeming miracle that they cared enough to lift him out of the foul mud of the Limits and admit him into the tight circle of their friendship.
There came the voyage to Yiktor and the meeting with the Thassa after the Guild had made its move to take them over. When he thought of the Thassa and of Maelen's people there was, for the first time, a stir among those who listened, who read from the pictures in his memory. It was Vestrum who broke through what was nearly a trance in which Farree spilled out the past.
"These Thassa—of what world are they? From whence do they come? And what powers have they?"
"Why not ask that of they themselves?" Selrena countered. Those who followed her broke apart to form a pathway and down that came Maelen, the flickering lights of the crystals seeming to center about her slender body in the sober-colored space covering, making it resemble the robe of one who was equal to Selrena or perhaps more than the Darda. At her shoulder walked Vorlund and he, too, appeared kin to the Darda, as powerful in his way as Vestrum. While behind the two was Zoror looking eagerly from right to left as if to crowd into memory every small detail of the scene.
Maelen and the two with her made a small gesture to Fragon, no more than they would have used in greeting one of their own kind with whom they had little to share. But Maelen smiled at Selrena and raised her two hands before her, her fingers moving in intricate patterns as if she wrote some message on the air.
For the first time Farree saw an odd expression on the Darda's face—a trace of confusion. Vestrum stepped to her side and his eyes were intent on the off-worlder. One of his small flute-playing creatures made a sudden quick movement, squatting down before his feet between him and Maelen.
From its pipe there arose a thread, thin, sweet-noted air. Maelen listened for a breath or two. Then from her own lips there came a song without words, note matching the note of the player. Wonderment was on Vestrum's face. Selrena's hands moved of themselves, her fingers lifting and falling to the measure of that wordless song.
Among those who were winged there was a stirring, a fanning of pinions as if they would take off to the spaces above Fragon's seat, though none of them did. In Farree there was also an answer—a lightness of heart such as he had not felt since they had started this venture. He found a hand slipping into his and he knew that Atra also was making her own answer to the weaving of this spell. Only Fragon, the beast-masked one, and his crooked company did not move. The faces of some of them were screwed up into masks as ugly as that their leader wore.
"You are—of the Blood!" Vestrum spoke first when the piper was finished and Maelen's own song died away. "Of the lost ones, the far travelers who are apart!"
"I am Thassa," she answered him. "My people are so old that we have forgotten our far past. Long ago we put aside what we had held to—settled homes, land, save for riding over it, possessions, all which had weighed down our spirits. We cut ties with the past—seeking only that which would give us life with the Little Ones—knowledge which brought good, not harm—"
"You are of the Blood!" Vestrum repeated. "And of the Lost Ones! We are few here. There only half a hundred of us left. And of those many have withdrawn into worlds they have created where they choose to be gods, or heroes, or"—he looked to Fragon and then away again—"devils. We age with weariness and the knowledge that wherever we go They will follow to bring their deaths and their ills, and, at last, all destruction of what we know. Do you now take to the stars and seek distant kin? If so, you have succeeded—I will say that you are of the Blood!"
"Of the Blood," Selrena echoed him, "but, I think of a different path. You have power but never have you used it to the full—" Her head was up and her dark eyes seemed to grow ever the larger. "You have chosen another way. And"—she hesitated—"perhaps your choice has brought greater content than we have known. What do you with Them when they come?"
"We live apart, and because we have no treasure and because we walk another road, we have lived without darkness for long and long. Now there are others who have set up laws that none may be troubled if they live in peace." Maelen looked to Fragon. "What is your peace, my lord? Rule by your order alone? And you"—she turned her head slowly that her gaze could go around the half circle—"until those from off-world came was there peace here?"
Farree remembered the skeletons of the dark ways and that room of shadowy horror through which he had gone.
"We have had our disputes." Fragon made answer first. "Of such ploys there always comes an end. One tires even of power. This I shall say first, I of whom much ill has been said and perhaps with truth. There comes a time when one has fulfilled every wish, answered every desire. Then"—his grasp of the skull-piercing sword must have shaken a fraction for there was a clatter from it—"one is as nothing." Now he deliberately rattled the skull by twisting the hilt of the sword back and forth. "They have found us and with us they have played games—setting one against another as they have done countless times before. There are old hatreds which they aroused on their coming. Why not"—it was plain that he spoke to the others behind Maelen—"give them what they want—we are done—"
"That is not the truth." Zoror's slightly lower mind band came alive. "Never yet has one door been closed that another does not wait the unlocking—"
"So?" Fragon asked. "You are not of them, nor of the Blood, or else our records are not complete. What part of this do your people play?"
"We gather knowledge, hunt for the beginnings—"
"On the belief that the ends may be better marked?" Vestrum locked eyes with the Zacanthan and stood still as if they were now bound together. Then he added: "What are you that you can see so far into others? You are—"
"A Zacanthan."
Farree knew that these were claiming him, and that perhaps those he had been comrades with were acknowledging that claim. However, at this moment, he felt no comradeship with those others with wings, though he had sought such ever since his own had broken out of their casing.
"We search for knowledge."
"Knowledge can cut two ways—" began Selrena when, for the first time, Fragon loosed hold on the sword hilt. His talon-fingered hand arose to make a small gesture which ended Selrena's speech almost in midword. "Knowledge is never to be neglected. Tell us, hunter of the lost, what do we face now? For out of past roots grow present troubles."