Sawyer followed, more slowly, scanning the damp soil he passed with an anxious eye. It seemed too good to be true, but there was the familiar burrow with the rock blocking it. He exhaled deeply, pulled out the rock, dropped it, thrust his fist into the hole and in another moment felt the precious golden bar of the Firebird throbbing warmly against his hand.
He dropped the terrible, wonderful, dangerous thing into his pocket and went rapidly up the rope. The little man waited grinning at the top to help him over the edge.
Twice in their devious, rapid course through the dark streets of the city Sawyer’s guide paused, drew back into a doorway and whistled softly in warning to Sawyer. The city was alive with excited Khom, but this little man had a knowledge of byways so complete that they never had to cross a lighted thoroughfare.
He had a sixth sense about pursuit, too, for the second time he pulled Sawyer into hiding they saw the flash of white robes behind them, dodging out of sight, and a faint, luminous glow that was almost certainly Nethe’s earrings.
“So that was her idea,” Sawyer thought. “She had to hide when the Goddess’s soldiers started that beachhead attack on the island. But now? Maybe she thinks she can track me to the Firebird.” He shut his hand on the warm glow in his pocket, thinking, “She didn’t see me get it when I climbed the root. She couldn’t have, or she’d have caught up with me by now. No, she’s still following hoping I’ll give myself away.”
The little guide tapped Sawyer softly on the shoulder, tinkered for an instant with the door in whose shadow they hid, then pushed it soundlessly open and led the way through total darkness down rickety stairs and out a low window in the back. They plunged into another alley and set off at a rapid trot.
It occurred to Sawyer as he ran that he had better post Alper on current events or he might receive a jolt from the transceiver when it would do the most harm. So, in a whisper, he talked eerily to the distant, unseen enemy who controlled his life while he ran through an unknown city at a stranger’s heels, toward an unknown goal.
That goal turned out to be a cul-de-sac alley, dark and smelling not unpleasantly of hay and stabled animals. Sawyer’s companion rattled his nails in a brisk code on a half-seen door. Two Khom came up quietly out of nowhere, peered into their faces, exchanged murmurs and withdrew. The door opened. Quickly Sawyer and his guide slipped through.
A lantern burning some pungent-smelling oil swung from a low rafter, its motion making the shadows seem to rock dizzily. The heads of leopard-spotted ponies nodded drowsily over their stalls along both walls. Under the lantern reddish chickens scratched and pecked at the chaff-strewn floor. And all around the walls one simultaneous motion of turning bodies, turning heads, quickly narrowing eyes, greeted the newcomers.
The stable was packed with Khom. They sat three deep along the stalls, clogged the corners, swung their legs over the hay-fringed edges of the mows above the ponies. Their eyes glinted in the lantern-light and they held themselves alertly poised, ready for any trouble that came, from any source.
At the far end of the stable, on a bale of hay, a plump old man sat with a striped cat on his knees. And beside him, fast asleep on a spread blue cloak, lay Klai with her hand under her cheek, smudges of smoke and ash on her face, and her pretty teeth showing a little under her lip.
The old man shook her gently. Her eyes came open instantly, deep blue and blank with sleep. Then she scrambled up, cried, “Sawyer!” and stumbled forward, still dazed from slumber but smiling, reaching out her hands.
He took them eagerly. It was tremendously consoling to see a familiar face again and speak English to it. But she was, at first, babbling out phrases in her own tongue. He said, “Wait a minute! Hello!” and she laughed, shook her head with confusion, and changed over to English, though strange phrases kept tumbling into it in her excitement.
“You’re safe?” she demanded. “Am I still dreaming. Are you all right? I got you into trouble you didn’t bargain for when I dragged you into my problems, didn’t I? I’m awfully sorry. I—”
“Keep it in English!” Sawyer broke in. “I can’t understand Khom! We’re all in trouble and we’ll have to help each other out.” He touched the soot-stain on her cheek. “What’s been happening to you?”
“The Isier guards came,” she said simply. “We knew they would, of course. They burned grandfather’s house and we just got away in time. They’re still hunting for me. Probably they’d have found me already if this attack on the city hadn’t started. Were you involved in that? Do tell me what’s been happening to you!”
A crisp phrase from behind her made Klai turn. The old man was smiling at them, but his blue eyes stayed cool and wary. He stroked the stable cat with unvaried smoothness, but what he said made Klai pull herself together and turn Sawyer to face the old man.
“Zatri is his name,” she said. “He’s my grandfather, and he’s a wonderful man. He says there isn’t much time to waste. I told him about the Firebird and what Nethe said back there on the steps, before the Goddess came. The Firebird’s something we don’t know about, but grandfather thinks it may be very important. He wants to know what’s been happening, but there may not be time for much talk. The Sselli are beginning to swarm up into the city, and we may have fighting in the streets too close for comfort. Grandfather hopes you may have some information we can use.”
“What sort of information?” Sawyer asked.
Klai repeated the question and the old man’s eyes gleamed as he leaned forward, speaking in urgent syllables.
“For a thousand years,” Klai translated soberly when he finished, “the Isier have enslaved our people. We aren’t allowed freedom of any kind, not even freedom to think or to learn. To the Isier we’re simply animals. Grandfather thinks this may be our chance to put an end to their rule.
“He wants you to know he wouldn’t have risked the lives of his men when they rescued me from the Isier, not even to save his own grandchild, if he hadn’t hoped I’d brought back some sort of information we could use, from wherever I’d been. Well, I didn’t. But he thinks maybe you might.”
“Wait a minute,” Sawyer said. “Tell him I’m with him if he wants to make trouble for the Isier. I got into this in the first place to stop the looting of uranium from Fortuna. I know a lot more about that than I did. I want to get back to Earth and finish my job. I’d like to stay alive, too. I’d just as soon you did.” He smiled at her. “But I wouldn’t interfere with the Isier now, even if I could. Without them, who’s going to prevent the Sselli from killing us all? Have the Khom any defense against them?”
She shook her head, gave him a troubled glance. “From what I hear, not even the Isier can actually destroy them. They seem to be a little—oh, overawed, terrified—by the Isier. But not when they’re in a frenzy, like right now. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“I wish I knew a little more about those savages,” Sawyer said. “Surely you’ve developed some way to deal with them, or you’d all be dead.”
“But they’re new!” Klai said. “They only began to trouble us when the Isier Well went dry. We Khom aren’t supposed to know about that, of course, but my grandfather was a Temple slave for a long, long time, and he knows all sorts of secret listening posts in the Temple. We even know why the Isier fear the Sselli.
“Sselli means—well, younger brother, but with a strong sense of hatred and rivalry. The Isier say the Goddess committed some frightful sin in allowing the Well to die. Now the whole race is being punished. The Isier originated down below in the lower world, the Under-Shell. It’s forbidden land. Nobody ever goes there. But soon after the Well died, lights began to shine down there, and then the Sselli started to wander up the floating islands and make a lot of trouble. They’re invulnerable, like the Isier themselves. The theory is that a new race of potential gods is being reared in the Isier homeland, to take over when they’re strong enough. So naturally, the Isier hate and fear the Sselli.”