Again a sword of memory cut at him deeply.
Hagger—a hagger run. He could see in his mind a bloated brown body, a thing which ran stomach down on six legs. Yet the shape of its head—! Hagger!
That which controlled his flight did not wait for memory to grow any clearer—it sent him climbing, heading for the gem rocks with wildly beating wings. Then he fought free of that fear, turned back, coming once more to his first perch on the mound. Again around him arose the scent of trampled salenge, soothing—relaxing—
Hagger and salenge—where under the moons of Three did such ever come together? The moons of Three! He dropped his harvest of burst berries and held his head in both hands. Again a memory flash—why did such torture him so?
"Farree!" Maelen's mind call brought him out of that haze of pain. "What is it?"
He did not answer. Instead he took wing, flying back to the ramp outsprung from the ship and there stood before the other three. Plucking a salenge berry from the edge of his sleeve he held it into their full sight.
"This is salenge—what they call also ill-bane for it heals all ills and wounds if it can be used in time. And"—he gestured to the ship—"behind that are the hunting lines of the hagger. Do not ask me how I know this—I cannot tell." He shook his head slowly. The pain had eased, yet he knew that it was lying just beyond—waiting—
"Where have we landed?" To Farree's surprise Zoror asked him nothing concerning what he did know.
"Thus—" Quickly Farree replied with a picture of the cup in which they had planeted.
It was Vorlund who broke the silence first when he had ended.
"No way out then?"
"Not unless you climb. But I have not had time to search thoroughly."
Maelen let her hands hang free. "No life registers—save our own party."
"Those mounds." The Zacanthan nodded to the humps Farree had first sighted. "Grave barrows, ruins—" He spoke as if to himself. Then he asked Farree the question for which the other had been waiting. "Salenge—hagger—?" Repeating the words he made them an inquiry.
Farree shrugged. "I cannot tell you why," he repeated, "but that much I know."
Vorlund sealed the lock with a word code they all repeated after him and then they moved off, Zoror heading straight for the nearest one of those hillocks. Vorlund stood eyeing the nearest wall, now hidden under that thick coating of vegetation and Maelen held her head up, staring straight northward, as if from a breeze now rising she had gathered a message.
Farree's gaze followed hers. He actually staggered as the strongest hurt from that hiding place of his memory struck home.
"Caer Vul-li-Wan—"
Not part of the barriers which closed them in now, no—rather a peak upstanding like a narrow tower surmounting a keep. White against the sky which was a rich green-blue– Down its sides he thought he could see flickers of glitter even as far away as it must be—perhaps the same gem light as on the upper reaches of the cliffs about.
Almost as if his small flash of recognition had sent out some unknown message to alert sentries, there was a gathering of haze about that spire, a cover which might have been drawn from clouds too high to be seen, and it was gone from view.
Zoror's thought struck with almost the same force as the memory touch had given Farree. "Caer of the Seven Lords? So—it would appear that we have indeed been caught up by legend, younger brother. But whose legend? Have you come in summons by the 'Little People?'"
Farree paid him no attention; he thought only of the sight of that slim uprise against the sky. No, he had never seen that before– Then where had he gotten that name, and known that it was truly the right one? The haze which hid it now—the Breath of Merl-Math wafted in, to confuse any not of the true blood. But not raised to confuse him.
No, there was other cause to wear the wind veil! Other causes—!
He was airborne once more, hardly aware that he had beat upwards with what was near a leap. It did not matter that the Caer—that which called him—lay elsewhere. Farree wheeled in the air, looking not to the north where the peak was now hidden but to the west. At that moment the ship, those from it, everything which made up the mystery of this new world was wiped away. In him was a compelling call which only he might answer.
Already he had passed above the lip of the cliff which walled in the cup. There was no stretch of green beneath him as he dropped a little lower, skimming across a space filled with many pillars and wedges of rock, where there blazed forth with force enough to make him squint and strive to see only through a narrow slit, flames of light, red, green, blue, yellow, and also rainbows of many colors.
"Farree!"
He blocked that call out of his mind. Beside the compulsion which sent him on it was but a fading whisper. He was needed—he, alone—not those of other blood—those who plundered and took, killed and enslaved—
"I come!" He thought that with all his might, all the power he had learned from Maelen and Zoror. It was as if his own thoughts broke and tore as had that rough skin which had covered his wings, freeing him in another way.
Even as that tatter of some other's wing skin had led him through the crooked lanes of the portside town, so did that appeal, growing ever louder, draw his mind. The stretch of country where the jewel fires blazed fell away. He saw before him now a sloping into another valley but one much wider and more uneven of shapes. There was the glint of water there, and clumps of what might be trees. No bare soil showed the crisscross of hagger ways. Yet there was life here. Across the valley a number of dark animals were apparently grazing the short turf. One flung up its head and pointed that in Farree's direction. On so low a thought band that he almost missed it, he sensed part of what might be a question. He had no desire to linger and answer. The creature reared, flashing forelegs in the air, perhaps in challenge, while those others about it bunched swiftly, before taking off first in a trot and then at a rocking gallop.
Up from the copse of trees not too far from the river whirled a flock of birds taking to wing with the speed of warriors summoned by a chief's horn. They drew near to Farree and he saw that, though they appeared at a distance to resemble birds, this close he could see no feathers. Their brilliantly hued wings were more like his own and their bodies were covered with scales which were as jeweled in this light as the cliff rock he had crossed moments earlier. Their heads were long and narrow, split near the beginning of their sinuous necks with gaping jaws which showed teeth.
He eyed them warily and soared higher. There was a wind now which was chill and had what could be a snow bite to it. Perhaps it had come from the taller mountains to the north. For some reason the bird things did not try to join him. Instead they wheeled as if on some shouted order and headed north, leaving the sky clear.
The sight of this alien life had, in a strange way, dimmed the message which drew him on. Now that was strong again. Suddenly he was looking down at a disturbance of the turf and soil below. There was broken earth, gouges and ruts. Surely those were of such a size as to make certain they were no beast spoor left to be tracked by a hunter. Oddly enough they had sprung from a point in the middle of a bare space of ground as if whatever had left those marks had issued from beneath the surface itself.
Farree flew on. Now he discovered that the call which drew him lay in the same direction as that trail. He winged ahead to where a fringe of small hills were a screen between any ground traveler and the land beyond. But the ruts found a way among these barriers, weaving in and out. Here the valley, which had appeared narrow in the beginning, widened out, though even from the air he could not see what lay far beyond. The same haze which had veiled Caer-Vul-li-Wan cloaked it as fully as if a curtain, hung high in the heavens, lowered folds to hide the earth.