There was a small flare of anger in Farree. He moved out from beside the Zacanthan and held out both his hands in a welcome he had not consciously meant until that moment. Her delicate hands, still dark with bruises and rent by seams of scratches, lay palm downward for a moment, resting on his, and into his mind sang words.
"Welcome. Greater that the Seven Deeds of Malfor has been yours! We thought that the days of the Thrice Named were gone." For the first time she glanced away, her eyes sweeping over those of the company which were the closest. "Tallen can we of the Langrone claim, and Asdir, Tullusa, and Rond. You have joined a high and fair company, kinsman!"
At those names, very faint and broken memories stirred in him. He shook his head.
"You do me too much honor, kinswoman. It was not my own powers that I used." His hands dropped from hers and went to his belt to indicate what the smiths and Vorlund had made for him. "The Langrone—" He hesitated. What would it be to her that that word did not mean kin to him—that it was but a name?
"A name, yes." The words were in his mind. "And perhaps only a name—for the clan is gone. See?" She nodded towards the winglings in their ranks. Then her hand went up and smoothed the edge of one of her own wings and he caught her meaning. That color was not to be seen among the others gathered here, save in his own pinions.
"Lanquar and Lis, Lystal and Loyn." When she beamed him those names he knew them even as he would have known something long set in his mind. "But Langrone have no more to answer, unless those by the Far Rim scattered in time. And of those how many were there?" She held up one hand between them and extended the very slender fingers, once and then again.
In his mind he saw what she had willed—a threatening mountain, rock bare and radiating from it a gloom which was a leaden weight upon the heart. If any of the kin had been driven or had fled despairingly there—
"They have not answered the call—"
Farree was startled by that other mind voice breaking in almost harshly upon his thoughts. It was a wingling who wore red-white wings, and he had left his own people to come to them. Farree could sense no congratulation, nothing but a forbidding chill in his words.
"If they come not at the Great Summons, then they are either dead or overshadowed by thought far and faint. You have no true kin, Glasrant."
"So do you wish it!" flashed Atra. "Who closed the upper flight to Amassa when she was heavy with child? Who sent forth the Doom Singers in that hour?"
"What had to be done, was done. Sometimes one dies for many—"
"That I have heard before." This roused Farree. "Was it not that very thought which this kin-sister"—his hand touched Atra's shoulder and almost he gasped, for that touch had united him with a source of warmth he had not known could exist: it had nothing of the burn of fire but was rather a caressing, a healing—"Was it not that same thought which held you all," he began again, "when this sister lay in the hands of Them?"
"As bait—" the other returned. "Better she had taken up the fire metal and wreathed around—"
Farree moved. He stood between Atra now and the chief of Lystal, another scrap of memory supplying him with a use for that name.
"Do you speak now, Qua, for all?" he asked, narrow-eyed. Though he still felt apart from these who appeared so like himself, he was also aroused that they seemed so uneager to welcome him either. That denial angered him even more. Granted that he was mind blind, so he could not remember when he had been gathered close into the circle of kinship, warmed and sustained by this whole world. Yet that was a loss which he pushed aside. Nor could he fit into any other clan!
But that was it, he knew suddenly. There were the Lanquar and Lis, Lystal and Lyon– He saw them standing there. However, save for Qua, none had approached, nor was there any welcome mind send from them. Only Atra—
His hand slid down her arm to the wrist and there his fingers closed as if it were a matter of utmost importance that he keep her here. As it had been on the ship when he had depended on Vorlund's device, here was it now—she only was his anchorage and that which he had sought could be found only with and by her.
"I speak—" Qua hesitated and there was a shadow of a frown on his handsome face; his folded wings stirred a fraction as if he would expand them and so employ all the stature he could command. "Yes, I speak for all. You have both been within the shadow, the very hold of Them. They have blinded and bound you—therefore shall we not always wonder whether there can be any trust placed with you henceforth?"
"You speak well, Qua." Atra smiled coldly. "Have you in truth matched words with Slitha of Lis, Usern of Lystal, and Cambar of the Loyn?"
All the gathering of winglings was watching them now. Farree knew that those others had been following all which was said by mind touch. There was a stir among them at Atra's naming of names. Again his remnants of memory gave him what he needed. He did not wait for Qua to answer that, but instead took the lead for himself.
"If you speak with one voice for all, Qua," he returned, "then put your fears to rest. This is not the first time Langrone has stood alone. Valfor bore green wings—and went to his brave ending because of that. However, we intend no ending. Langrone lives, under the ancient rule, as long as either of us flies—" He drew Atra a little closer. "If you covet our Two Plains and the river land, then take it, Qua. We shall not dispute you for them. But neither shall we be forgotten when the Great Summons goes forth at Year's Ending.
Remember that, Qua!" Farree now looked beyond the Lanquar to the others who were waiting. "And you, Slitha,"—he looked toward a slender wingling with a queen's proud stance and wings of gold—"and Usern,"—blue wings quivered as his thought struck home—"and Cambar." The pinions of that leader were grey shading to white and he was much darker of countenance, thicker of body, than the others.
"Remember!" Atra's reinforcement of his speech was more than a warning, it was an order.
Qua stared at the girl and then he smiled as coldly as she had done earlier. "There is now a common enemy; we fly no direction but that." He, too, might be only giving a reminder, but Farree was certain that there was also a warning to be read there.
"As Glasrant has already done!" she flashed. What more the spokesman for the winglings might have said was never uttered, for Maelen opened her eyes, and the skin tightly covering the eye caverns in Fragon's face quivered and also showed a slit break.
"It is done!" Both voice and thought came from Maelen. "Their beacon has been quenched, and even more, many of those traps and defenses set up by Them are gone. And the dream holds those two we need to make trouble for each other in thrall!"
Selrena spoke to the unmasked one.
"Loose your followers now, Sorwin!"
The robed one raised both hands to mouth and with them shaped a hollow like a horn. The puffed cheeks expanded even more and from that horn there pulsed a cry which echoed through Farree's head. It had savagery in it, a lust and a hunger which was like a call of doom. Groundlings growled and left with a rush and a slapping of huge bare feet, and after them came a following of things whose very bodies, swinging and swaying, seemed to alter as they went—and always the forms they wore, forms which slipped from one to another and then another, were those of the blackest terrors any night might know. Ironically it was true that those who were fashioned as entirely threatening to each other marched now against a single enemy.