Thankfully there was little they could get out of him. He was very glad that he had not been deep in any plans the Thassa might have made. Certainly he could fight and he would, testing his will to the uttermost. But in the end they would wring him dry as one wrings a washing rag. That they could and would use him as trap bait – that he also supposed to be the truth. But he had no idea that any Thassa would venture into the heart of enemy territory to have him out. They had treated him well, near as if he were standing tall and fully human. But . . .
He slowly turned his large head from side to side. Put that shadow of hope out of mind. He had no chance of being plucked out of the hands of the Guild. It was all he could do to fight down the waves of dark fear that rolled over him until he was breathing in small throat-hurting gasps and the sweat rolled down his cheeks like tears.
There was no weapon. He had no Toggor this time to even give him a hazy picture of what lay outside. His hands, thin and long as they were, were only collections of brittle bones that could be easily snapped by a single kick or blow. And they had mentioned laser burns . . .
Farree's head fell forward until it rested on his drawn-up knees. He wound his arms about his legs until he was near a ball of distorted flesh and bone open to any attack which might come. But his mind . . . ? Feeling very open to evil he sent forth a questioning tendril of thought.
Time and time again that came against the blankness which he knew marked a shielded man. There was no chance at all of contacting any of them. Then he found a spark of thought – not coherent but rather all emotion, and that emotion was mainly hunger underlaid with wary fear.
An animal of some sort, perhaps the same type of vermin as might be drawn to an inhabited building in the Limits. It was a very limited mind, but it was not shielded. He saw so little by its aid – only a dark run which he guessed was within the walls. But he rode with it, beginning by very slow sendings to build up the sensation of hunger which should bring the creature he had netted out into the open.
Hunger – the kind of hunger he himself had known only too often in the past. It was easy to think hunger—impress it on the hurrying creature in the wall. There was thin light in the haze of the run; the hunter must be approaching some exit to the outside. Hunger! With the same pressure he had used with Toggor he fed that need – hunger!
The creature was out of the wall into full light. But the picture was so hazy he could not be sure just where it was – within one of the buildings or clear in the open. Hunger—food—feed! He bore down upon that order which the minute brain of the hunter could hold.
There was a sudden leap which caught Farree by surprise. And now—food—he could pick up every nuance of that feeding, the tearing, the gulping – then —
There was a sudden sense of spinning, of falling, and at the end – Farree withdrew touch in a hurry. That creature he had "ridden" was nearly dead. He filled his lungs deeply, clasped his hands upon his arms with a nail-cutting grip. Almost he had gone into death! He could only believe that the forager had been caught and killed. Yet – insofar as he was successful—there was or had been one mind within these walls which had not been shielded. He had not only found it but made use of it after a fashion. Where there was one there might be more.
Also – and this was something new he had gained – he had not had to focus on a clear mental picture in order to make contact, as he always had or thought he had had to do with Toggor. Now, his eyes closed, his body still in that tense ball, he began another search.
From the single window in the wall so far above his head there was framed the sky. What life, other than Guild men in flitters, rode that sky? Awkwardly at first and with little success he thought of sky, and vaguely of a winged creature which rode the winds there. He knew little or nothing of birds. Their like did not abound in the Limits, save a few lice-covered eaters of carrion haunting some of the darker ways.
There was something about the —
A trace of thought! Farree poured all his strength into touching that, wrapping about it, finding its source. This was an air dweller, a flyer – and again it was hunger and the lust for a hunt that moved the unknown. He strove to see, but the difference in their sight organs was too much or —
It was as if someone had pressed a button. He could see: the earth spread below him like a great floor. The buildings on the knoll were a gray-black stain with flickers of light here and there. He could —
"Who?"
The hunger and the desire to hunt had been cut off as sharply as the change in vision had come to him. There was – another!
"Thassa?" He thought that.
"Thassa." There was no mistaking the sharp assent which came to his single-word question. "Who?"
Farree strove to mind picture himself in all his misshapenness. He could not be sure if the other were to follow him as he had followed the trace of the flying thing.
"Here!" That was no bird thought; rather it spoke in his own mind even as he strove to contact it a second time.
"No!" He had respect for the Guild. Mind shielded they might be, but in dealing with the Thassa they might also have alarms that could betray such an entrance as much as if an enemy of his captors rode into the gate.
"Not so." The answer came so firm and loud that Farree uncoiled and looked sharply at the door, almost sure that had been uttered aloud rather than by mind speech. "You are – "
There came no other word for a long breath or two. Then with the same clear sharpness that mind voice said: "We are on a level not well known – not known." There seemed to be almost an aura of surprise in that. "They have their safeguards, but those are for minds such as theirs. They will not know. What has happened?"
"Thassa you are," Parree thought back slowly. There was no mistaking the kinship of this voice to the one which had come to them earlier in the ship. "Why?"
"Why? Because you are open to us and all else is closed save vermin of the walls and that which flies. Who are these and what is their purpose?"
He was sure now that this was one of the four who had stood in judgment over Maelen at the gathering. Perhaps the one who had sealed his ears to that intolerable dirge that the people had sung back in the audience chamber.
Though he would have wished the Lady Maelen that was his own wish – though the Thassa meant hardly more to him than a name, yet what was threatened touched those he knew. He ordered his thoughts quickly and strove to relive in his mind that meeting with the Commander.
"So." The mind voice had but that comment. "And they think to perhaps use you as bait in some trap?"
"Which will not work," he answered quickly. "What am I that any should venture for me here? But they bring other Machines —"
"Machines!" The other voice made that sound like an oath. "Already they have profaned the Old Place with their flyers, and now they would seek to use other things. But have hope yourself, little one. I say this and it is never a thing lightly promised, though you do not know us well enough to understand that. The Song has been sung in your hearing. Now you are under the wands of the Singers and what comes to you also touches us. You are not forgotten. Think you on that and be steady as you have been!"
Abruptly, as with the flying thing, the voice was gone, and he had a strange sensation as if in some manner it had drawn that which was the inner part of him a short way after it. But no, that was no escape. He was still crouched here – Dung of the Limits. He could not see that there was any hope of escape. Were he on his home world, a number of things would come to mind; here was nothing.