Yet for all its alienness it was not a face to disgust one, nor did it bear the signs of degradation or idiotic mindlessness which she had expected to see. When he spoke his voice was not only low-pitched but calm, even gentle:
“You have my thanks, Lady of Lanlat—”
Her sword quivered in her hold. Who in this northern land could still call her by that name? Was he some other refugee? Had she once met him long ago at some feastings? No, once met this man could never be forgot.
“There is no more Lanlat—” she returned harshly. “But I have asked—who are you?”
His hands moved in a vague gesture she could not understand. “I do not know—”
Some drifter from a lost battle? She had heard of men head wounded so they could not remember, but were afterwards like new-born children, having to learn again how to live.
“How came you here?”
At least he should be able to answer that, unless his wits were so disordered that even recent events were lost to him.
“I have always been—” His voice trailed away as he continued to regard her with a kind of eager curiosity. In his clear eyes she could detect nothing of a sleeping mind but rather eager intelligence.
Her sword point touched the pounded earth of the floor. In spite of his foul clothing, wild appearance, he had such a quiet air of certainty that he could be one wearing a disguise.
His hands had gone now to his belt where he ran fingers back and forth across the sleek fur as one might caress a beloved animal—or reassure himself that a treasure long denied, long lost, had been safely returned.
“Always been?” Doggedly she kept to her point.
He nodded. An errant lock of hair fell across his face and he brushed it aside. Not soon enough. Thra held her breath for an instant. Just so—her eyes flickered to the door of the armorie and away again. No—this was no refugee from her own land. He was—she moved her shoulders along the wall, setting more of a distance between them.
“What are you?” Her voice was a whisper. Still, among the wild thoughts now churning in her mind, there was no fear—rather wonder. This surely—grown somewhat older—was the youth of the carving—the one who had fled the hunters.
“Why do you ask that?” It was his voice which rang loud and sharp. “When you already know—if you allow yourself to face the truth.” His head inclined the slightest toward the open armorie door.
Thra moistened lips with tongue tip. “I have seen that,” she, too, indicated the door. “You are like the hunted one. But—”
He raised hands from his belt, flexed his fingers full in the subdued glow of the fire. Those were claws with wet earth clinging to them, not overlong human nails.
“You have heard of my kind?”
Thra could not answer at once. What were old legends compared with this? Though the forest had such an ill name her mind refused to connect such tales with this slender young man. Legend suggested that such as he were a dark menace of sorcery, yet in her there was no shrinking. She had met many of her own kind who carried with them a far greater stench of pure evil.
His lips drew back so those fang-sharp teeth showed clearly as he stood there straight and tall, as one facing an enemy about to make an assault on a poorly defended last redoubt.
“I am were.” He might have been shouting a battle slogan against all the world which she represented.
Silence, one so deep that she heard a leaf flutter across the floor inward from the open door. Once more his tongue swept across his lips. He looked almost sly—dangerous. Still in her she felt no menace and she held his gaze locked to hers.
“Do you not understand, Lady Thra? Or are our kind not known in the south for the dreaded thrice-damned stock we are? Do you lack cursed forests there?”
Her sword point scratched a half-remembered protective pattern on the well-packed earth. But what had such to do with turning aside the possible wrath of one who claimed his blood?
“You put your trust in steel?” Those slanting brows near vanished beneath the fringe of rough hair. “Ah, but steel, no matter how cunningly forged, cannot harm us. Though hounds may chase to pull us down, yet no true arrow nor spear can kill. We can feel pain but not death—save by silver. Silver or,” his hands quivered, “fire.”
“Yet you warm yourself by that,” Thra returned. “Is this not your home? Yet you bring your enemy fire into it.”
His wide mouth stretched in a wry smile.
“You see me in a guise wherein fire is servant not master. Ah, Grimclaw,” he addressed the cat, “who have you summoned here? A lady who shows no fear, does not tremble nor look upon me as if I differed from those of her own kind, one who walks—”
“Two-legged?” Thra interrupted. “How is it that you greet me by my name, stranger? I am new come into these lands, only this day into your forest.” She still held the thought that he might be one who had lost his wits from some battle injury.
“This is my talent—” Even as the cat had before him, he projected his unspoken answer into her mind.
That her thoughts could be so invaded was, to her, a kind of ravishment, such a blow as she had never taken before. She stiffened against showing outwardly her repugnance but rage rose icily within her.
He no longer even looked in her direction, instead he moved a little closer to the armorie, gazing intently at the sword still hanging there. But, if that weapon was his as the belt seemed to be, he made no attempt to arm himself with it. Perhaps he had run four-legged so long that he clung to fangs and claws as his proper weapons.
“I have to thank you.” Though he spoke aloud this time she thought that was a concession on his part. “I have been long afield and there are those to whom I am welcome prey. That you have brought me this much freedom,” his fingers once more sought the circlet of fur about him, “is almost more than I had dared hope for. Perhaps there is some meaning in this. We are only the playthings of strange forces. And you chose a poor refuge here, why, my lady?”
Need he ask when he could read her mind and she could not shut him out? Thra longed to turn her sword on him—to banish so this—this thing who could know her in a way so unnatural. Was her every thought and feeling open to him now?
“I cannot enter where you hate—” His voice was low. “It was when I skulked outside and must know who or what waited here that I did that. We have our own oaths which we do not break!” There was high pride in him, such pride as matched her own, and she felt herself responding when she did not want to yield. “Do you wish such an oath from me, lady?”
What did he awaken in her—feelings and beliefs she thought long slain? She shook her head, instead accepting this self-confessed forest monster as she would one of her own rank in the old days.
“So—what brought you here?” He returned to his first question.
“A beast pack which marches under the banner of a running hound—” she spat forth the words and thumped the point of her sword into the earth. “My freedom was hard bought—the last of my liegemen hangs from a tree in the valley. Your lords hunt to ill deaths.”
His eyes glowed flame bright for an instant.
“A running hound—aye!” Once more his lips shaped a snarl which was feral. “Roth is abroad then or—” he scowled, “since time moves different here within the wood and years sometimes speed without noting—one of his get. They live with fear as their armor and their weapons, but lately they have not tried the forest ways. Perhaps now the hounds will course again—on your trail, lady!”
He showed no sign of uneasiness, rather spoke eagerly as if he looked forward to some contest.
“It might be so.” She did not enlarge upon that, wondering if she would also be considered prey by some of the forest dwellers.