Part 3

He strolled on casually, until he succeeded in coming up behind the shrubbery bordering the space in back of Jayn's big house. There he loitered for some time, until he saw a trio of kitchen maids carry out wooden buckets of dirty water. One of them wore a soiled and bedraggled blue dress.

Yorgh rustled the bushes hiding him. Vaneen looked sharply about, and he parted the branches an instant.

The girl said something to the other wenches, and they went inside, leaving her to empty the buckets. She carried one pair over toward Yorgh as if to water the shrubbery.

When these were empty, she brought the next pair closer, and stepped around the bush behind which he stood.

"How are you?" asked Yorgh, thinking that she looked like a fish-cleaning woman among the Sea People.

She stared hard at his fine new clothes, and scowled.

"Some people know how to wheedle the best side of the tent for themselves!" she said bitterly. "What did you do to get that pretty tunic from her?"

"Not what you would be jealous to think about," retorted Yorgh. "_Yet_," he added to tease her.

"You look funny in that fur collar," snapped Vaneen. "Does it have a copper ring under the fur--with a place to fasten on the chain?"

"Ueln gave it to me," said Yorgh, deciding that it was time to smooth things over. "Listen--it may soon be time to get out of here. Do they lock you in at night?"

"No," said Vaneen. "They just told me what would happen to me if I went out on the streets at night, so I don't."

"Could you sneak out here tonight ... say about the time Kloto sets?"

Vaneen peered hopefully at his expression, and nodded.

"I have thought of a place to run to," said Yorgh. "It might work."

The girl's brown eyes filled with sudden tears.

"Yorgh, if this is one of your stories--"

"Sssh!" he hushed her, slipping an arm about her shoulders. "You've been out too long already. Meet me tonight, here!"

He slipped back into the pathway and hurried off. Vaneen's tears made him uncomfortable and he tried hard not to feel guilty. She had been having a miserable time, no doubt, but had he any choice but to make himself pleasant to Jayn?

* * * * *

That evening he was careful to let himself be seen with Jayn whispering frequently in his ear during the story-telling. She was beginning to hint that he might like to stay in the village for good, but Yorgh's expressions suggested much more.

Later, after dark, he crept cautiously into the hall with a short length of bed slat tucked in his belt. He had not been allowed a knife except at meals. As he padded to the foot of the stone stairs, a shadow detached itself from the wall near the main door. Yorgh sensed rather than saw the spear that reached out a moment later to prod him just below the ribs.

"Sssh! Quietly!" he whispered. "Jayn expects me."

The guard grunted, but lowered his spear as if far from surprised. Before he could think the matter over further, Yorgh made a show of enlisting his aid.

"She teased by not saying which is her room," he claimed, snickering sheepishly. "She is having her joke with me because I said I would be man enough to find it."

"Such a joke is only the beginning, friend," the guard assured him. "Up the opposite stairs and to the end of the hall. Come, I will point the way."

"Slowly," pleaded Yorgh. "I don't see as well in the dark as you people."

He saw clearly enough, however, to note that the man wore only a woolen cap, with no leather to protect his head. Yorgh struck him a chopping blow with the piece of slat.

He caught the spear in one hand, though he almost fumbled it in the dark, and dropped his weapon as quietly as possible to catch the sagging body in his other arm.

I'd better store him out of the way, he thought, heaving the man onto his shoulder.

He crept back up the stairs with his burden, having one nervous moment when he opened the wrong door to the tune of several raucous snores. The sweat itched on his forehead by the time he got the door quietly closed and made sure the next was the one to his own room.

He left the guard comfortably bound, and gagged with a strip of blanket, and traversed the stairway for the third time, wearing a good bronze knife in his belt. Near the door, he groped about until he found the spear and his club. The latter he thrust again into his waistband.

The door made little noise, though it sounded to Yorgh like the bleating of a dozen wollies. Once in the dark street, he padded quickly around the corner of the building, moving with assurance gained from counting the steps in daylight. He left the spear in the grass there, lest it embarrass him later by rattling against something.

A hiss from the bushes halted him in his tracks, until Vaneen whispered his name.

"Good!" Yorgh whispered back, reaching out to touch her arm. "Are you cold? Then, let's move. Be very quiet till we get out of the village!"

He led the way through some of the narrower alleyways and they sneaked out of the sleeping village by way of someone's garden. When they had a little distance, Yorgh returned to the trail.

"Where are we going?" asked Vaneen.

"I saw the trail this morning, a little beyond the pond. It must lead to the shrine they talk of, up the mountain. I could see marks on the cliff like steps, when I looked through the trees."

"Oh! They talked about that shrine in the kitchen when they thought I wasn't listening," volunteered the girl. "They said Ueln was wrong to mention it before you."

"Did they say what it is?"

"No, except that no one ever goes there, and the old stories say the Raydowers were set here to guard it."

"So no one goes there! Good! That's what I hoped for."

Yorgh set off briskly along the path, intent upon not missing the junction with the trail he wanted. Even so, in the dark, he would have gone past, had not a voice spoken out sharply.

"Who's there?"

Yorgh froze, so promptly that Vaneen bumped into him.

"Ueln," he answered with the first name that came to him.

Then he saw a darker patch move among the bushes.

Who'd have thought they'd be strict enough to keep a sentry on the trail? he thought.

"You lie!" charged the sentry, overcoming his hesitation. "You are twice Ueln's size--ah, I know you now, Hunter! Ho--Kansi!"

Yorgh drew his club and hurled it at where he thought the man's head would be. There was a smack of wood as the other instinctively raised the shaft of his spear before his face.

* * * * *

Then Yorgh was upon him, bearing him savagely to the ground. One big hand seized the mountain man's throat. When he grabbed at it with both of his own, Yorgh's other fist rose and fell like a hammer.

The hunter stood up, listening. Then, stooping swiftly, he groped at the sentry's belt and handed the man's knife to Vaneen.

"We must move fast now," he warned her in an undertone. "I do not like the idea of this 'Kansi' he called to knowing where we are."

"I think someone shouted from the village also," whispered the girl.

"Come, then!" said Yorgh, and plunged into the entrance of the trail to the cliff.

Within a short distance, it became a steep grade. Yorgh prudently slowed to save their legs for the real climb ahead. A moment later, he congratulated himself for doing this, for they came upon the other sentry leaning on his spear where the bushes opened to form a clearing at the foot of a stone stairway.

"Stay here!" Yorgh breathed with his lips touching Vaneen's ear. "I'll try to creep around behind him."

"I can do better than that," whispered the girl, pushing against his arm to force him behind a shrub.

Yorgh swore luridly to himself when he discovered that the plant was armed with sharp thorns the size of arrowheads, but it was too late to protest.

"Kansi ..." called Vaneen softly.

The sentry straightened nervously and hissed, "Who is it?"

"Come and see," invited the girl, keeping her voice so low that it might have been any girl.

Kansi strode over with quick, worried steps, the picture of a man torn between opportunity and duty.

Yorgh's big fist shot out of the darkness to take him behind the ear with a solid thunk! He went down without a sound.

Back in the village, there were symptoms of a growing hue and cry. Torches began to move out along the trail.

"Hurry!" said Yorgh.

"What will you do when we reach the top?" asked Vaneen.

"That I will tell you when I see what is there. Perhaps, if we are in possession of their precious shrine, they will think twice before egging us on to destroy it!"

The steps led upward, then doubled back around a narrow turn to rise further. They were on the fourth such flight and still almost directly above the trail when the first Raydowers set up a howl of rage at discovering the unconscious sentries.

"Yorgh!" shouted a voice that sounded like Ueln's. "Come down! This is no joking matter!"

Yorgh reached back an arm to sweep Vaneen close to the rock out of which the steps were cut, and kept climbing. He guessed that they were more than a hundred feet up.

Then, they turned onto a flight that stretched upward without a landing as far as they had already come, and curled past a corner of the cliff out of sight.

Some bowman below, with the eyes of a night-roaming ponadu, caught sight of the fleeing pair at a place where the stairway narrowed to a mere two feet. It seemed to Yorgh that a section of rock must have been broken away by a fall of stone from above, but he put aside his speculation as an arrow hissed up from below and snapped against the face of the cliff less than ten feet ahead.

"They're coming up the steps too!" Vaneen reported breathlessly.

"Hurry!" urged Yorgh, grabbing her hand. "They seem to think we're breaking a greater taboo than killing!"

He heard more twanging of bows below, but only two more arrows came close. Then they were past the narrow spot and protected by the bulge of rock around which the steps curved.

Yorgh groaned when he looked ahead.

"Have they been guarding steps that lead only to a place to jump from?"

Then he saw the dark hole in the rock where the stone footway ended.

"A cave!" gasped Vaneen. "Yorgh, must we go in?"

Little liking the idea himself, he said nothing. His exploring fingers found that the walls, near the entrance at least, were curiously smooth. He edged into the blackness, groping ahead cautiously. Guiding Vaneen's hand to a grip on his belt, he drew the bronze knife and held it--blade upward and ready--in his right hand.

About thirty feet straight into the mountain, he tripped.

"May the Three Moons sink into the sea!" he growled as he felt about in the dark. "More steps!"

"They're coming," said Vaneen.

"I know it," snapped Yorgh, wondering how patient a man had to be in the face of eating a sheaf of arrows.

Then it occurred to him that it would probably be worse for the girl if they were caught, and he decided that she was being reasonably patient too.

There were three short flights of steps, leading to a short corridor only a few feet wide. This ended in a blank wall, as Yorgh discovered by bumping his head against it.

As his exploring hands reached out on all sides and confirmed that the passage was squared off to a dead end, he growled a particularly obscene oath he had heard among the Sea People. Then he hesitated.

"Vaneen," he whispered, "can you see anything?"

"Where?" came her whisper over his shoulder. Then he heard her gasp. "Oh, Yorgh, it doesn't look solid! I can see shadows!"

"It must be some kind of door," Yorgh declared. "If I only had a light! There's some kind of round bump but I can't find any handle."

He threw his weight against the smooth surface but it did not even quiver.

"Well," said Yorgh, "I was tired of letting that rabble chase me anyway."

It bothered him, however, not to know what had trapped him, what sort of barrier it was.

I wonder if I could see by sparks from my fire stones? he thought.

He sheathed his knife and thrust a hand into the pouch at his belt. His fingers touched something long and metallic.

Of course! he told himself. Although it probably won't work now that I need it!

He pulled out the metal cylinder and twisted at the ends. As he located the right one, the blue-green light flared out, brilliant to eyes adjusted to the blackness.

"It is a door!" Vaneen breathed. "Look, Yorgh! You can see through--"

She stopped as the door slowly swung open.

V

Yorgh held the light in his left hand and dropped the other to the hilt of his knife, straining to see who or what was opening the door.

Then he decided to thrash that matter out on the inside and twisted the light off to avoid making himself a target.

He stepped forward ... and smashed into the closing door.

At first, he thought someone had hit him. Then he heard the tiny click as the door shut.

"There are torches below the steps!" Vaneen warned.

Yorgh twisted the light on again, and held it out so he could examine the door closely. He saw the blue-green rays reflected from the small, round bump on the portal, which immediately swung open again.

This time, Yorgh charged ahead without waiting. Vaneen was on his heels. As they passed the door, and their bodies shielded the light in his hand, it swung back and clicked shut again. They were alone in a large, shadowy chamber.

"Look!" Vaneen said.

He turned and found he could see the rest of the corridor plainly through the door, lit by the reflection of torches. It grew brighter as a young Raydower thrust a light and his head cautiously above the level of the floor.

Yorgh twisted the light off and drew Vaneen to one side.

"You know," he whispered, "when one follows a loppa trail to a waterhole, and finds only ponadu tracks going away, one asks no questions as to exactly how it came about. If they do not have a little light like mine, I think they will not get past that door."

It turned out that he was right.

The voices outside were almost inaudible, but the torch light shone in the corridor. Someone finally laid the palm of a sweating hand against the door. When he found that he could not push it open he quickly retreated.

After a while Yorgh peeped out in time to see the last of the pursuers descending the steps. Then it was dark again.

"I can see the stars," murmured Vaneen.

Yorgh looked up. It was true.

"And, Yorgh...?"

"Yes?" he asked, feeling light of heart at having succeeded in escaping the Raydowers for the time being.

"I ... am beginning to believe your story about finding the metal stick in the desert. I'm sorry I said what I did."

Yorgh chuckled and reached out for her in the dark. He pulled her to him and found her soft lips with his. After the first instant, she slipped strong young arms about his waist and strained her body against his.

"That's ninety-nine you owe me," said Yorgh, taking a deep breath.

Vaneen pretended to pull back from him, with a low laugh.

Abruptly, following a quiet click, the place was flooded by a white glare that was like a blow on his eyes. When he could see again, they were still the only ones there ... except for a skeleton on a couch across the wide, cluttered chamber ... and another on the floor beside a long table with many drawers.

"What is it?" gasped Yorgh.

"I don't know. My shoulder touched something on the wall beside the door, and--"

The place was filled with strange furnishings. Some were wooden and seemed to sag here and there; most were queer things of metal. Overhead, a transparent roof offered a good view of the stars.

Cautiously, with Vaneen crowding close, Yorgh walked around the chamber. There were other doors, and he tried his light at one of them. It obediently swung open to reveal what must have been sleeping quarters. Yorgh saw more bones, and let the door close again.

It was Vaneen who discovered the books. The writing and pictures on the smooth, pliable pages put to shame the few parchment records they had seen in the village of the Sea People.

Yorgh never remembered how many awed hours they spent looking at the strange instruments and colored maps and other curiosities. The sky, he did recall later, was showing light when he made his little mistake.

"This must be a place of the Old Ones of the legends," Vaneen was murmuring as Yorgh fingered a series of little studs on one of the machines.

Suddenly, there was whirring motion under his hand. He leaped back, startled. A humming grew from nowhere, followed by a scratching sound that culminated in a loud snap.

A tired voice spoke, sounding so near and natural that Yorgh dropped a hand to his knife and looked about.

"World Four of the Kithgol planetary system reporting on the hundred and sixty-first day of the plague. Urgently request the dropping of medical supplies detailed in last report, but advise against any attempt to land here. The plague is still uncontrollable, even animals, with few exceptions, being wiped out.

"Little hope for survival of this colony. Personnel of this station remain in strict quarantine, and will not venture out to mingle with other colonists in hopes of maintaining communication to the last...."

There was more, but Yorgh was satisfied.

He backed away from the talking thing, and saw that Vaneen's face was as white as his own felt.

"Let's go down again," he whispered through dry lips. "It's getting light."

He would have accepted a look of scorn for such a weak excuse, but the girl followed meekly. The door opened as soon as he got his light within a yard of it, and they crept guiltily down the stairs cut out of solid rock.

* * * * *

There were no Raydowers about until Yorgh and Vaneen came wearily down the last flight of steps on the face of the cliff. Jayn was waiting there in the little clearing, with Ueln and a crowd of villagers, spearmen prominently to the fore.

"The spirits let you return!" murmured Jayn, her face strained and pale.

There was a general air of shrinking back among the crowd, although Yorgh did not see anyone actually move his feet.

"I swear," said Ueln, "that they must have been all the way inside the shrine. I followed right to the Portal!"

"That is true enough," said Yorgh, waiting a few steps up to see what they would do.

He wondered if he could impress them with his light. He held it in his hands.

"Then, the sooner you go, the better!" said Jayn bitterly. "If the spirits let you go, we may not touch you. But I do not care to keep you around until you bring certain disaster upon the village."

An old woman whispered in her ear, and she looked sharply at Vaneen.

"And you took the girl with you?" she demanded.

"Of course," he replied. "And if you are really anxious to have us gone, I think you should give us wollies to ride."

"You can have all the animals my cousin took from the flatland!" she snapped. "But first, another matter!"

An old man was pushed to the forefront of the crowd. He smoothed his white beard nervously and peered up at Yorgh and Vaneen with faded, short-sighted eyes.

Abruptly, he found his voice, and rattled off a brief, chanting patter. Then he stepped back behind a spearman who looked to Yorgh as if he would be poor protection.

"What was that, a curse?" demanded the Hunter, having had difficulty understanding the rapid words mumbled from the old man's toothless mouth.

To force an answer, he twisted the metal cylinder to flash the light at them.

"No," gulped Jayn, her eyes riveted upon the object in his hands. "He married you. It's the only thing that might possibly lessen the sacrilege. You were up there a long time."

She looked up at him bitterly.

"Oh, Yorgh! Why did you have to take that wench with you?"

Vaneen, who had been so quiet behind his shoulder, spoke at last.

"And I didn't even give him a tunic with a fur collar," she said.

Jayn flushed, then paled as she bit her red lower lip; and Yorgh saw that the comment must have struck a deeper wound than could days of kitchen drudgery.

He didn't know what to say; but his silence must have seemed threatening, for Ueln spoke up.

"I will ride after him, and make plain to his people how we brought him and the girl to the mountains," he offered.

"A good idea!" said Jayn, with an undertone in her voice that made Yorgh think of a cornered ponadu. "Just to be safe, and to make sure they take him back, we'll all go!"

Yorgh and Vaneen glanced at each other, but soon found that the Raydowers were in earnest. Before noon, they found themselves leading the hastily assembled column from the village out onto the grassy plain beyond the foothills.

There, another surprise waited them.

The Hunters, mostly on foot, save for a dozen on half-tamed wollies, met them at the first clump of trees, where some of their dark tents were pitched.

"We were just about to follow your trail in," cried Kwint, riding up to Yorgh with a grin splitting his features. "Do I see our run-away wollies being herded along there?"

"You do," said Yorgh, conscious that Ueln had pulled up beside him, looking glum. "This is Ueln of the Raydowers. He ... caught them for us."

Kwint looked hard at both of them, but held his peace. Vaneen had ridden straight to her father.

"I gave the metal stick to Yorgh as you told me, Father," she said, staring him levelly between the eyes. "I hope you have no more such errands."

She slipped down from her mount, and headed for their tent.

"She's tired," said Yorgh to Puko, whom he found at his knee.

Tefior looked about weakly, and finally thought to close his mouth.

"The least you could do," Yorgh told him, "is to offer our friends here meat, to show there are no grudges."

Tefior licked his lips and began to give orders, but there was a puzzled frown on his brow.

Anyone but me, thought Yorgh, grinning, he would ask, but he is timid of the answers I might give him.

Things went very well after that. With the returned wollies, it was easy to move back to the camp at the creek, where the Hunters had left their carts and most of their baggage. The Raydowers willingly traveled with them, and were loaned tents to set up a camp of their own.

For eleven days, the tribes camped there, exchanging feasts, hunting together, and finding things to trade. Yorgh was gratified at how his advice was accepted by both sides, even though in fear by one of them. The Raydowers looked uneasy whenever he casually talked of traveling back with them.

There was only one untoward incident, which was quickly hushed up. As Yorgh was told the tale, Vaneen had taken Jayn to swim in the secluded bend of the creek. Somehow or other it happened that only the Hunter girl had dressed when she shrieked that she heard a ponadu in the woods.

Yorgh remembered the way Jayn's dark robes had fitted over the hips, and wished he had been there to see. Then he thought of her kitchen in the mountain village, and said no more on the subject.

When some of the Raydowers became friendly enough to talk, however, the story of his escapade with Vaneen got around.

Yorgh caught people glancing askance at him every time he turned around. He went to old Tefior.

"I suppose you have heard it all," he said. "If you do not think it best, I won't come to your fire to see Vaneen."

The chief looked over Yorgh's shoulder.

"Perhaps ... for the time being...."

Don't know why I took that for an answer, thought Yorgh, staring across the flatland the next morning at dawn. Suppose I tell him the Raydowers call us married? Would he just say their law doesn't count? Vaneen looks kindly at me from a distance, but she hasn't spoken.

He chewed moodily on a blade of grass, thinking that he heard a distant herd of kromp moving.

Then his head jerked up as a great flame ripped across the sky.

VI

There were shouts behind him in the camp, and he saw motion about the borrowed tents of the Raydowers.

A huge, gleaming thing sank down to the plain on a cushion of smoke and flame. The fires disappeared as it touched ground. A moment later, the thunder died out.