Grudgingly Dennel spoke. "But you haven't given my idea due consideration, Komak. We could make ourselves very useful to Kitru — and to Overlord Mekk himself. Think of the intelligence network we could form for him. Why, he could know what was going on in any one of his provinces at any time."
"Spies for the Overlord?" someone shouted. "Never."
"Listen to me." Dennel said. "It could save us, and be beneficial to Mekk as well!"
"You're dreaming," Komak said. "Practicality can't touch Mekk these days. He's become a religious fanatic. The priests have poisoned him against anything that does not bear True Shape — and that now seems to include our minds. No, Mekk is unreachable, I'm afraid."
"What about Kitru?" Dennel said. "We could make him very powerful lord."
Komak shook his head. "Kitru fears Mekk and dares not disobey him. I should know after spending years as his advisor. Kitru is a cruel, venal, greedy man, hungry for power, but he's a coward where Mekk is concerned. He won't question a single aspect of the new extermination decree. In fact, he'll enforce it with a single-mindedness as fanatical as Mekk's, just to impress the Overlord."
"But we could be useful."
"You mean ‘used,' don't you?"
"No. We're humans. Citizens. We shouldn't be treated like teries! There has to be a way!"
"A man is only what he proves himself to be," Komak said with an abrupt note of finality. "Right now we're fleeing for our lives, but your alternative strikes me as worse. Should we prove ourselves to be slaves? Tools of a tyrant? I think not, even if he permitted us to live that long. We can only run for now, but Rab promised that someday we'd return — and on our own terms!"
Dennel snorted. "Rab! The mystery Talent."
"But where is Rab?" Adriel said. "The answer means more to me than the rest of you. Most of you heard from this man by way of the Talent. I have only second-hand knowledge — yet here I am in the middle of the forest, fleeing from everything I know. Where is he? I thought he was supposed to join us out here."
"He was," her father said. "I don't know what happened to him. It's quite possible he met with the very fate he warned us all against. If only we knew more about him, maybe we could learn if anything happened to him."
"I'm leery of this Rab," Dennel said. "Where did he get all his advance information? And why haven't we ever heard from him before?"
Komak shrugged. "I can't possibly answer those questions. Perhaps he comes from Mekk's fortress — maybe that's where he got his information. One thing we do know: his warning was timely and correct. Need I remind anyone of the slaughter we experienced second hand on the third night after fleeing the keep, the slaughter we might have experience first hand were it not for Rab?"
No one met his searching gaze.
"I'm still suspicious," Dennel said. "How did Rab manage to contact those who were not publicly known to possess the Talent? Adriel is the only Finder in the province…I fear a trap, Komak."
"Well, if there's a trap, Rab will have caught himself — because he contacted us via the Talent, which puts him on Mekk's extermination list along with the rest of us. And there is something you all should know: There are still a number of Talents hiding undiscovered in Kitru's keep."
Dennel gasped. "There are? How do you know?"
"The morning after the slaughter, before we fled the area, I asked Adriel if she could pick up any traces of survivors." He turned to Adriel. "Tell them."
Adriel blushed and cleared her throat. "There were still a few left. Not many. Maybe four, certainly no more than six."
"Kitru has probably found them by now," Dennel said.
"Perhaps not," Komak said. "They may have been latent Talents, unaware of their gift, and therefore not publicly known."
"And to think," Dennel said morosely, "it used to be such a badge of pride to be known as a Talent. Now it's the equivalent of a death sentence."
Someone said, "Kitru will be nailed up outside his own gates if Mekk should come across any Talents in the realm during his inspection tour."
"I'd love to see that!" said another.
Dennel said nothing.
"That won't help us, however," Komak said. "It's best we learn to like the forest. I fear it will be home for a long, long time."
On that depressing note, Adriel retired to her tent and verbal conversation ceased.
The tery considered what he had learned. The world of the humans was in turmoil. He sympathized with Adriel's plight but had little sorrow to spare the rest of them. He had too great a sorrow of his own, and humans were to blame.
He settled near the fire and tried to doze. He would need his strength tomorrow. For tomorrow he would have to go back.
— V-
He was well enough to travel on his own the next day, so he slipped away from the train of the psi-folk as it moved deeper into the forest. He was not deserting his rescuers; he intended to stay with them, for he had nowhere else to go now and they seemed fairly well organized.
The raw meat and milk of the night before and again this morning had restored his strength. Moving steadily if not quickly through the lush foliage, he knew where he was going and what he would find. He hadn't wanted to leave Adriel. It would have been so easy to stay by her side and leave all the pain behind. But he couldn't. He had to face the horror.
Memories crowded around him…sights, sound, odors he could no banish… #
The hunting had been particularly good two days ago. The tery hunted with a club. He was fast and strong, and could move as silently as an insect when he wished. A club was all he needed.
That day, he returned early to the clearing around the cave that served as home for him and his parents. He intended to surprise them with the two large dantas he had bagged. But the surprise was his: A squad of steel-capped, leather-jerkined strangers had invaded their clearing.
Keeping low, he crept through the small plot where they tried to grow a few edibles. Halfway through the garden the tery noticed something huddled among the cornstalks to his left. He crawled over to investigate.
His father lay there. A big, coarse brute who was happiest when he could sit in the sun and watch with eternal wonder the growth of the things his mate had taught him to plant. His eyes stared sightlessly from a face frozen in bewildered agony. He had been pierced by a dozen or more feathered shafts and the pooled red of his life was congealing on the ground beside him.
Rage and fear exploded within the tery, each struggling for dominance. But he dug both hands into the ground and held on until the dizzy sick feeling swept over him and passed on, leaving only the rage.
Then he grabbed his hunting club.
Holding it tightly, he kept low to the ground between the rows of stalks and moved slowly toward the cave, following the sound of human voices, hoping…
The soldiers stood around the mouth of the cave, laughing, joking, sampling some of the wine his father had been fermenting.
"I wonder where they stole this," one trooper said, his beard dripping purple fluid. "It's good."
At their feet lay the tery's mother, her head nearly severed from her twisted body.
All control had shattered then. Screaming hoarsely and swinging his club before him, the tery charged. The utter berserk ferocity of his attack was almost as startling to him as it must have been to the soldiers. He heard their shouts of fear, saw the terror in their eyes as he leaped into their midst.
Good! Let them know some of the terror and pain his parents must have felt before they were slaughtered.