They were gone, and it seemed to Farree that the whole of the crystal cavern was the lighter for their going. He wondered what harm they might wreak on the invaders, for many of those who had swept on seemed hardly more solid than a cloud of that haze which could spring into being at command of the Darda.
The Zacanthan moved for the first time, turning his sharp-jawed head to watch their going. Farree knew that Zoror was filing in his head all which chanced here. What names would he give to those who had just gone? How many more were there that had long ago been listed in the records he thought he knew so well?
However, if there was an exit of a force there was also an entrance. Farree heard the now-familiar tinkle of flute notes. So heralded came Vestrum. Gone was the clothing he had worn before. In its place he wore silver fashioned in small supple rings so that it moved even at his breathing. He carried a length of crystal rod which was headed by a hilt much like that of the sword which was never far from Fragon's hands. The flutist scampered back and forth as might an eager hound only waiting to be dispatched against some quarry, while the two women who walked a pace of so behind had laid aside their filmy robes and flower ribbons. They, too, wore chain mail and on the out-held right wrist of each there sat a flying lizard, smaller than that which had accompanied Farree on his first trip across this land, but manifestly of the same breed.
Neither was this all of the party, for Vorlund followed but a little behind the Darda and, with him, two of the giant folk, bending heads as they strode ponderously, striving to avoid and painful meeting with down-pointing crystals.
Vestrum spoke, but he did not seem to address any particular one of them but rather the whole company, from Fragon to the smallest of the winglings.
"This one"—he indicated Vorlund, but as if there was nothing in truth between them but what might be a distant enmity—"has done as he swore that he would—he has launched forth his messenger."
"And you, Vestrum, how has it been with you?" Selrena was the first to break the silence on the tail of that message.
"I made sure that there was no treachery in what was wrought!" returned the Darda coldly. Now his eye caught on Farree for the first time, and with a lightning-swift gesture the hiked rod swung up, its end aimed for Farree's head. Along the length of that sped a dot of rainbow light. More memory moved in Farree. He took two steps forward and his bandaged hand swung up, his fingers caught and held the end of the rod. It was chill, seeming to generate a cold which bit into his flesh, but he did not loose it for ten long-drawn breaths. Then his hand dropped and he met the measuring stare of Vestrum with as level and probing a gaze.
Was there a faint trace of disappointment in the Darda's tight held eye to eye measurement? Farree could not be sure, he only held a suspicion.
"Well and now, Vestrum." This time it was Atra who broke thought silence just as the capering flutist settled down at the Darda's feet and made the instrument it carried give forth a trill of notes. "Do you believe? Or is it your claim next that Glasrant has power to hide the cast of all his thoughts from you?"
"Have done!" For the first time Farree saw Fragon rise to his feet. Standing, he was near as tall as he was spare, almost shoulder to shoulder with the giants who had come with Vorlund. "What may have been in these two—it is gone. This night Glasrant has done what Valfor in his day might have lifted hand to—save that, mighty as our Elders were in their own time, they had not the knowledge of Them. We have been given that which we have not held to us since the days of incoming upon this world. We have lived, we have built, we dwindle, we earth dwell or keep jealous council with one race, even one kin, only our kind. We have lost much and now we are too old and few even to defend ourselves against Them. How many more times must their star ships come—each adding death to death? They are as many as a hundred times the number of sand grains now under our feet. There will always be more to come and less of us at their going, If they go, for their signal was set to guide others this time. Look to your delving in the ancient knowledge, Vestrum. What discoveries have you made? Small things, things of half life– Can you bring forth that which is no larger than your hand but can rock a star ship?"
The trickle of notes from the flute ascended higher and higher—until they sounded almost like a cry for help. The Darda in his coat of mail stood frowning, his two hands sliding back and forth along his hiked rod.
"And you, Sorwin." Fragon thrust his head a bit forward, his now widely open eyes seeking out the unmasked one. "Well for you—yes, that has been your thought for a long time. Your groundlings and your wraiths—they have little to fear from Them. You and yours think to go into such hiding that no off-world mind or body can scoop you forth! We already know that is less true than you would like. And I say to you that They have always sought knowledge, more and more of it along paths which we do not or cannot follow. We can summon a storm, set against them the land itself. Only we cannot hold—there are too few of us and we are too wearied with time. What other secrets have They uncovered? Do not think you can lie safe hidden."
Sorwin did not reply but Fragon was plainly not through. He gestured with one hand while with the other he still kept his fingers in tight hold on the hilt of the skull-piercing sword. It was a summons and one they had no thought to disobey.
The Zacanthan came, and Maelen, and Vorlund, edged by his giant helpers, and Farree reluctantly dropped his hold on Atra's hand to stand with the other three. Fragon moved again, down from his dusky throne. He came to wait on a level for their coming to him.
They did not approach him too closely for he was now swinging the sword back and forth and the skull was smoothing out a patch of the sand. When that seemed leveled to his liking, the Dark Darda fumbled at the breast of his hazy robe and tossed out upon the patch of readied sand a ball of the same clouded crystal as Farree had taken up in Vestrum's chamber, though this did not break when it landed. Instead light spread from it. Then it was as if they were all a-wing, looking down upon a scene of constant, almost frenzied change. The star ship no longer stood tall but was canted, and its nose was oddly concave at one side. Hail and wind beat at both the ship and the ground about it. The wreck of the shelters flapped forward and back in the wind. Of any men there were no sign.
Then there appeared to burst out of the troubled air itself a flight of such winged snakes as those Farree had seen before. Only these were four, six times the size of those, and they whirled in a mad circle about the canted ship, one after another in turn darting down to skim the wreckage on the ground.
Then night and storm vanished, and with them the disabled ship and what was left of the shelters. What they were looking at now was a stream swollen with storm water, and it was day. A knot of men gathered on the bank of that stream. Several were on their knees digging into the soil with their bare hands. One jerked free from dark clay a swinging length of shining metal. The one nearest him snatched at it. Their mouths were open and they might have been shouting at one another. In moments a frenzy seemed to grip them all, and then there was the flash of a laser which itself banished the scene.