"What you and your kin have faced before." Zoror nodded. "You have said here that, though you have not been friends in the past, you have now drawn together—"
"Drawn together?" Atra said, her voice high, almost shrill, as she interrupted. "Ask those who winged out of Burdenholm at a sending for an ingathering how that drawing followed! Well did the Earlier Ones name you in-cursed, Fragon!"
"You see"—the ancient Darda did not reply to her challenge, rather he continued to speak to the Zacanthan– "there is little upon which we may build anything which approaches true comradeship. The Langrone are near wiped from our history as we make it now. It is true that there was treachery and ill dealing which began that. This one"—now that free hand pointed to Farree himself—"can be witness to that, even though the memory was near burned from his mind. He is in truth Glasrant and right lord to those same Langrone who are near gone. All happened to him because there was a settling of blood between two who held false honor above the good of all. And Atra who speaks so plainly now, she also has been used as a weapon against her own kind—but not by any will of ours, wingling, earthling, or Darda.
"These Cursed Sky-Riding Ones who have made near a quarter of our world a place of blood and killing—always have they followed after us from world to world. They turn against us the metal which burns and various powers of their own, born in turn of artifacts they make of that same iron. Our wits they can rift from us—Atra can witness that. They fight with fire and all we can do is to call on skills such as we have long known and make what defenses we can. At this hour we do stand together, power with power, that we may not be mown down apart and have no defense at all.
"Now you come also from the star ways and you are not as They, for you have that in you which is far nearer kin to us. You brought hither Glasrant and him we have read—to know that in you is found none of the poison that They use to besoil all they touch. There are three of you and you are of different races– You, Lady"—he spoke now to Maelen—"are of a people we can call kin after a fashion. And he"—now Vorlund was indicated—"is also of a mind with you, though he is not born of your blood, and within might be one of Them. And you, Zacanthan, have no malice in you toward us, only wonder and pleasure at finding our kind. So we are not enemies, though we may not be friends—"
Vestrum shifted a little. "Words upon words, Fragon! You summoned us hither for deeds. We had Selrena and her winglings go up against these enemies by mind will alone, impressing upon These who slay without mercy the phantoms which can be summoned by mind—"
"True," Selrena cut in. "Have we not spent too long a time on words? While Atra was with them we had no chance to attack, for she would have known and by their trickery must have given us away. So when that one"—she nodded at Farree—"was near within our hands we had no trouble closing fingers upon him, and using him as a key to open Atra's prison—as he did very well. Now what do we next? Once more summon up ghosts of ourselves to ride the sky? There is little ghosts can do and already we know that They have doubts about us. So, I say again, Fragon, Vestrum, and also"—she indicated the Beast Mask,"what do we do?"
Fragon spoke directly now to Maelen. "What do we do?" He repeated the question.
Chapter Seventeen
What do we do?" Fragon had asked of Maelen. Perhaps he had not expected her to produce an answer, but she did.
Farree—he could not yet think of himself under that other name they had called him, nor even wholly accept that he was a part of their race—lay belly down on a rock ledge. His outspread wings were the same color as the lichen which grew in patches among the stones here, and now served him as disguise. Togger squatted just under the edge of the right wing. The smux's sight could not reach as far as his own, but Farree was aware that Togger was using all his own senses to the highest alertness.
Behind the two were others of the winglings whose natural pinions were of a color to blend in with the rocks– there grey patched with silver, and the darker ones who had accompanied Selrena. What they spied upon was the off-world ship and the small temporary settlement by its fins.
It was well into afternoon and there had been a great deal of activity down there to be observed. Three days ago several of the spacers had tried to take the path underground in search of their freed captives, only to discover that most of it had fallen in; after a few feet not even its course could be traced.
They had taken to the air also. The repairs on their flitter had been speeded up so that it could continue to carry laser-armed patrols out over the surrounding country in a gradually widening circle. Twice those Farree had met in the crystal cavern had summoned up the haze which was their most constant defense, only to have the flitter bore directly through it, seemingly unaware that there had been any blinding fog projected. They had not attempted another mass hallucination such as they had used to cover Atra's rescue.
It was plain from the probing Fragon and Maelen, two unlikely partners-in-arms, had used, that those in the camp were well guarded by devices which protected against either mind search or lasting illusions—the two ancient and tolerably efficient weapons of the People.
Nor could they compete physically. Swords and force-charged wands, the other arms which were theirs and had been for untold generations, could not stand against lasers, tanglers, even discordant sound. When the latter had blasted out of the camp earlier that day most of the winglings, the Darda, and several others of the old stock had been rendered helpless for awhile. Only those born of the earth who had immediately retreated underground kept their full senses. Then Zoror had loosed a small shape like a winged tube. That, arching up above the waiting ship and its camp, had blasted back, as a mirror might return a reflection, the same ear-piercing sound, drawing it up the scale as if each note were threaded on a cord and jerked out of reach.
In answer they had seen the men spill out into the opening, staggering here and there, hands pressed over their ears, some stumbling to their knees and then falling forward to roll across the ground, plainly in agony. At length some one of the enemy regained sense long enough to shut off their own broadcast and the ensuing silence was like that of death, so complete was it.
The spying party, in hiding along the upper reaches of the great valley in which the ship had set down, revived sooner than the opposition. While Farree and his companions stirred and came back to themselves, at least three limp bodies had been toted into the largest of the ground shelters and several others had made a difficult business of getting back to the ship itself.
It was not much later that the flitter had taken off and began to fly its spy circles around and around, each one farther than the one before. That the invader might be equipped with detectors was a point Farree considered when he had witnessed the first flight. They had had Atra long enough to run a sensor on her, set her pattern as part of the "memory" of such a machine. Thus any of her own species could be instantly detected when caught on the flitter screen. That the enemy did not coast down the wind and spray them all with laser fire as they lay in hiding was something which Farree himself could not understand. He cringed flatter to the ground—his fingers digging deep into the soil as if he were an earthling used to disappearing quickly from sight into that sanctuary.