Farree found himself drowsing in spite of the need for sentry go. They had hurried after the sky craft when it had been sighted yesterday, but he had found it hard going with his shorter legs and the weight of his hump. Though he would not have voiced any complaint even if they tried to wring it out of him, now his body was one ache, and he felt as if he could not force himself to any further effort at all.
The barren lands which surrounded the heart of the Thassa country had given way to coarse grass and woods scattered here and there. Here in the mountains was growth also, wind-gnarled trees for the most part, growing in pockets. Far above there was the bluish-white shadow of snow early fallen or late thawed – it could be either.
One of the jams drifted across the gap between them and the flitter to hunker down on the rocks that concealed the Lady Maelen. That the creature was reporting, perhaps from Maskay, Farree was sure, and a moment later the mind touch aroused him.
"There is nothing above save a road which is now encased in ice. It seems that those look in the wrong direction for their treasure. It may well lie on this side." She passed along the report and her own interpretation.
"But the way here leads nowhere – only to barren rock," he dared to protest wearily.
"What seems barren rock," she corrected.
Illusions again? He would not deny that the ancients of her race might have set such to cover their trail. But how to make sure of that?
"I go, before those others and Maskay return." It was Lord-One Krip who, answered.
"You could be seen – "
"If I walk, yes. But if I creep ..."
Farree had hunched around to face that trail. Perhaps it had originally been cut into the stone on purpose to give fair footing, perhaps it had been so worn below the surface about it by countless feet over a period of uncountable years, but it was plain that it was now a trough. The hunchback looked to Lord-One Krip. His body was slender, but even if he moved on hands and knees he certainly would show up to any watching this side of the cliff. Though he shrank from what he was impulsively agreeing to do, Farree cut in: "To creep is what I have done most of my life. Dust me well with the soil." He was already scraping up his own handfuls and smearing it across the backs of his legs and across his hips, leaving the tenderness of his hump to the last. "I can make it best."
The Lady Maelen turned her head and looked at him as one who is weighing one thought against the other. Then slowly she nodded.
"There is something in what you say, Farree."
He had so wanted her to refuse instead of accept that once more that old cord of bitterness awoke in him. They were willing to use him even as they used the jam, the bartle, any and all of the life on this world. The rainbow of the rising third ring swept over him and it seemed to bring with it a soothing. Even his painful hump felt a touch of coolness – which could not be the truth, as since when had a radiance of light had substance?
Farree shucked off his belt bag and tossed some more of the gravelly soil on his back, biting his lip against the tenderness of the hump, the small flashes of pain he felt when anything touched it now.
He crawled on his belly until the upward slope of that path faced him. Then he asked the question that he should have voiced earlier.
"If there is illusion, how may it be broken?"
"Try to pierce it," she answered him. "Illusion can distort sight but not touch – unless the one who tries to break it is totally under control."
Fair enough, he thought. His deluded eyes would at least serve him until he reached the solid wall at the top – or the wall that only appeared solid. He began to crawl, the rock harsh against his hands, panting a little with the effort of keeping as flat as he could in the depression of the way.
He went slowly, with many pauses, hoping that if the one with the flitter had any long-seeing glass trained on this side it would show only a portion of his hump – a rock bedded against rocks.
Sotrath climbed above the horizon and the three rings were clearly defined, the elusive third spreading glory over all the land. Flecks of glitter answered from the stone under him, the wall ahead.
On and on he went and then froze and flattened himself to the stone as a warning reached him from below.
"The others are returning."
He was tempted to look for himself, but there remained the matter of time. The Guild men could well try this side of the cliff now, having been baffled on the other. So he strove to speed up his crawl and yet not reveal that anything moved there. He lay during one of his periods of stillness, his pointed chin resting on his crooked arm as he looked ahead. To his relief it seemed that the wall was not too far above. Now he felt the pinch of claw on his shoulder and remembered that Toggor had not been left behind. Could the smux be sent ahead to prospect for an opening? Did an illusion fashioned to deceive the eyes of his species also confuse animals? He did not know, but the knowledge that the smux was still with him was a warming one.
The path up which he hunched his way was leveling out. Yes, he could see the wall before him. The path, if path it really was, ended abruptly at its foot. He was out on a level space. Putting up a hand he chirped to Toggor, and the smux obediently climbed into his palm and turned toward the stone. He lowered it.
On Farree inched until he was within touching distance of the wall. For a moment he hesitated. To his eyes it was so firm a barrier that he could not believe it was illusion only.
He put out his hand and his palm met solid substance. But it would be necessary for him to test it fully from one border of the sunken roadway to the other.
Edging along, he began at the outer side, Toggor clawing along beside his hand. Not here – nor here – nor – He stopped with a gasp of astonishment and fear. Before he touched the fourth time, Toggor was gone. One moment he had been there brushing the side of Farree's hand and the next he had disappeared!
Frantically the hunchback struck the wall at the same point where he was sure the smux had vanished. There was a solid surface right enough, but there was also a crack through which he could feel a slight stir of cold air. Quickly he traced that crack. It ran only for a short distance, but where it ended there was a second crack, this ascending vertically. He returned and felt his way back, found another vertical crack. There was certainly a sealed opening, perhaps a door. He thumped it, hoping for some give in it. There was none. Perhaps he was too near the ground to move it, or perhaps it was sealed past any of their forcing!
He lay with his head close to the crack and tried to search out Toggor with the mind touch. The return was very faint, as if the smux answered from some great distance, but at least he was alive and within, though Farree would not have believed that crack wide enough to admit him.
Still lying with his head against the wall, he mind sent his discovery to the Lady Maelen. The rainbow of the third ring washed over him, brightening those flecks of glitter in the rock. In fact, as he glanced up the wall against which he now lay, he could see that the speckles were drawing together to form a dim pattern, or perhaps awaking one which had been deliberately set there generations ago.
"I come." That was the Lady Maelen.