"A flitter!"
The Lady Maelen's lips flattened against her teeth in a grimace. She, too, leaned closer to the screen. "But this is the Land of Beyond where only the Thassa move. And the lordlings of the inner lands have no sky flight!"
"Others do," he returned grimly. "Such as those we have on board."
"Wait and watch!" Her hand on his shoulder pushed him fully down into his seat again.
The airborne transport came on, fully into the moonlight, where the rocks seemed to reflect back the glory of the rings to show the clearer what passed either on earth or through the air. The craft had no riding lights, and yet it appeared to hold a course that would bring it to their own landing place. Guild? But how could the two prisoners have summoned such support?
"They were waiting," said Lord-One Krip in a low voice.
"That they could not have been!" she protested. "The tape was unchanged and brought us – "
"Perhaps they expected their men might fail," he returned. "They had ready then a secondary plan."
"Which will not serve them either." Her fingers dug into his shoulder as she watched the oncoming flitter closely but with no expression of alarm. "See!"
The small craft boring through the moonlight had nearly reached the lip of the cliffs. Then it seemed to waver – almost as if the same wind which rippled the grass patches was strong enough to seize the flitter from the control of those on board. The craft sideslipped to the right, drew level with what Farree could believe was an effort, slipped again. It near-skimmed the top of the cliff, and then it made an abrupt turn and half circled to put itself back on the same course it had followed toward them.
Only no longer was its flight swift and sure; it slipped from one side to the other in jerky motion. The craft could have been a bird netted by a sure fling of a hunter, struggling for its freedom to no purpose.
So jerking and fighting the craft passed out of sight behind a taller pinnacle of the cliff rise and was gone.
"The Thassa have their own defenses," the Lady Maelen said. "None approach here unless they are of the blood or are summoned. This is the Old Place and here lies the heart – " She stopped suddenly and looked curiously abashed, as one who talks of hidden things and then realizes her words can be heard by those who have no right to listen.
"Will they crash?" Lord-One Krip asked in a level voice.
Now she frowned. "Not so. Our defenses are not to destroy – not even any evil which may come. They will be but diverted and also they will forget – "
"Not if they, too, are mind shielded."
She frowned. "I do not know. A shield is made to keep out thought thrusts. It is not intended to stand up to the force of the Elders acting together. We shall see how well any man-made thing may last against the full force of the Thassa."
"Let us hope," he said in the same level tone, "that the force is fully effective then. Do we go?"
"Not yet. With the dawn perhaps. Maybe then the summons will come. We cannot enter without that."
Farree lay once more curled on his own bunk with Toggor squatting beside him. This was a long way from the Limits yet. He rubbed his forehead. There was something – a pale shadow of a shadow of a memory that once he had lain within a ship before. Still, how could that be? His only clear memory came from the noisome sink of the Limits and that was all he thought he had ever known. He wondered – pushing away that shadow which made him uneasy and aching – what the dawn would bring. That Lord-One Krip was also uneasy this night, he sensed. However, if there was any crack in the confidence of the Lady Maelen he could not detect it. She was restless, yes, but not as one who awaited trouble, rather as one who would be out and doing – one who stood before a door, impatient that it be opened to her.
He wondered about the Thassa and that voice out of nowhere. Had it perhaps rung out also in the minds of those in the flitter, warning them off in a way they could not protest? Or had it taken charge of their bodies as he had heard tales of among the spacers, forcing them against their wills?
He thought and later he slept while, in his broken and fleeting dreams, he looked upon a three-ringed moon and felt power drawing him to – to – but to what he could not remember when he awakened.
It was Toggor tugging with a claw at one of the locks of his unruly hair that brought him out of that drowse. The smux radiated hunger, and Farree felt an answering emptiness in his own bent body. He slipped into the narrow slit of the fresher and allowed the mist there to wash him, coming out to a fresh robe and sandals. Then he went to the galley, smelling, even before he opened the door, the fine odors of food.
Lord-One Krip was at the table, an opened ration tin at hand, but he was not eating. When Toggor gave a squeal and leaped onto the table, he shoved the tin at the smux, who clacked claws over it and immediately began to eat.
Farree was a little daunted that the other had made no sign of seeing him nor given any greeting. But he got his own tin and crawled up on the empty seat opposite the man, waiting for him to break the silence between them.
"She is waiting still." Lord-One Krip might have been talking to himself, for he did not look in Farree's direction at all. "But what if . . ." He did not finish the question, and Farree dared now to do it for him. After all, he was a part of this company, too, and if trouble lay before them it was his right to know.
"What if the – the voice – says we must leave?"
For the first time the man looked at him. There was the crease of a frown between those upward-slanting brows.
"Then we go."
Greatly daring, Farree asked, "Where are we?"
"At the meeting place of the Thassa. You do not understand, little brother." He clasped his hands before him on the table. "I am not Thassa" – with the fingers on one hand he pinched the skin on the back of the other – "though I now wear a Thassa body."
"One does not wear bodies," Farree cut in sharply. "One is a body." For a wild moment the thought of another body – a straight, tall, humpless one – filled his mind. What if what he had just denied was the truth and he could change? There were many wonders on other worlds, but never had he heard such as that!
"The Thassa wear bodies." He could see that Lord-One Krip meant in truth what he said. "To become a Moon Singer, a one of power among them – they change bodies with animals, running wild on the land and learning from them other scents and desires. I was a crewman on a free trader, and here on Yiktor I was taken by a lordling who would have of me the secrets from off-world – or else use me to wring such from my captain. He gave my body to pain."
Farree hunched under the burden on his shoulders as if rolling himself into a ball. He knew what Lord-One Krip meant. Such had been his own portion.
"I was – damaged. Maelen was a Moon Singer and also the leader of a troop of little ones – animals who gave shows she devised. She saved me by singing me into a barsk."
Farree swallowed. "An animal?"
"An animal"—nodded the other—"one which was notably fierce and supposedly untameable. It was not one of hers but one which had been captured and badly treated, and which she was curing and trying to mind free. So did I live on Yiktor for a space. But then there was a Thassa body – a Kinsman to Maelen – a Thassa who had taken on animal form but been killed in that form. His body was empty of mind, for the animal transformed with him had gone mad. So – I became Thassa – for my own body was judged dead by my shipmates and spaced after they had taken off.