Part 3

The street was dark and empty. He ran with the wind, dodging around corners and leaping along straight streets. Far behind him there came shouts and the dull thumping of pounding feet.

The cyclopean walls of Yawarta rose before him. Here and there hung the great nets of the fishermen, hung out to dry on stout wooden pegs. Up then he went, his arms lifting his massive body with ease. From bastion to ledge he went up the wall like a scurrying spider.

Now he stood on the broad top, beneath the stars. He raised an arm and waved it at the city, and went over the other side.

He ran free, away from Yawarta.

Behind him he could hear the _phffft-phffft_ of the jet planes rising to pursue him, leaping upwards like hounds from the racing barriers. Tyr grinned and stretched his long legs out so that the ground sped by eerily. They could not catch him under the stars, not with this weapon in his hand.

Wind whistled past his ears. He headed for the silver forests he could see in the dim distance. He would be under their shelter soon.

Beams of light showered the ground, hunting him. They slid all around, missing him as he dodged gracefully, swerving from their pale radiance.

Soon he would be beneath those trees. Nothing on all Lyallar could catch him then.

Tyr swung the solar gun upward, put the cold muzzle to his naked chest, and pulled the trigger.

* * * * *

Sunlight tinted the bluffs a pale amber, spreading a gossamer gold across the shelving stone ledges. It made dark shadows undulate in rock crevices, and sent tiny cascades of brilliant red and yellow from veins of quartz. The cliffs towered high above a rolling countryside where hummocks of grass grew in clustered greenness.

Tyr stood erect on the jagged tongue of rock, staring down at a file of men and women walking across the hills. He was naked but for the white cloth at his middle into which the butt of the solar gun protruded at a rakish angle. Towering huge in the morning sun, he looked the god, by every inch of him, that the Trylla thought him to be.

He grinned and patted the walnut handle of the weapon. That blast of power had given him needed energy last night, when the sun was on the other side of the planet. His follicles had drunk it in, and his strange organs filtered it throughout his body.

All night long had he run, yet he was fresh and strong.

Now he looked across the brown valley, and saw the Trylla walking across it, beginning the long ascent up the other side. Here and there he recognized familiar figures. Fay was at the head of the column, just ahead of young Texel and grim old Gaarn. Tyr scanned the blue sky. No _ardth_-men there!

He lowered himself over the jagged edge of the bluff. His canny feet, feeling about like sensitive fingers, found chinks in the weather-worn rock. He went down foot by foot, yet swiftly.

When he dropped the last twenty feet to the crumbly valley bottom, the Trylla were only a few miles from him. His straight descent had saved him hours of travel. He could catch them now in a matter of minutes.

Fay saw him first, turning her golden head almost as if some telepathic thought commanded her. She cried out, and the slender column wavered and halted.

Tyr came up to her with outstretched hands and a smile on his lips, but the smile faded when he saw her eyes.

"Why have you returned?" she asked numbly. "You made your bargains with the _ardth_, for the girl named Katha. What else did they give you for Lyallar, besides the girl?"

"For Lyallar? Besides the girl? Are you mad, Fay? And you others--do you believe what she says? Fay, what--"

Gaarn said sourly, "Deny it, then. Deny that you went alone with this woman Katha to plot our undoing. Deny that Zarman and others who trusted you were flogged."

"I plotted no one's undoing. And as for Zarman--"

"He was flogged, wasn't he?" howled Texel, his eyes two abysses of anguish.

"Flogged before I--"

Texel spat at him, and Tyr quivered and his hands came up. Sadly, he let them fall again. Force would accomplish nothing. And a god must be understanding.

"I freed Zarman and the others as they were being taken through the streets," he said patiently. "As for Katha, she is a biologist of the _ardth_."

"You were alone with her," Fay muttered sullenly. "Otho saw you kissing her."

"Otho! So that is where you get your news."

"The talking trees, the silver ones," said Gaarn between toothless lips. "They pick up subsonic messages. That was how we heard."

"And of course, you believe. It matters not that the _ardth_ appointed Otho in place of Zarman. Take his word to mine. It was Otho that sent the messages out, wasn't it?"

"Yes," said a woman.

"Otho wants me as a captive. So do the _ardth_. Otho hopes that you will turn me in. There will be a reward for me. That is why he sent out that message. He wants to turn the Trylla against me."

He talked to their eyes that reflected their feelings, fighting to recapture their trust, "If the _ardth_ kill me, what hope is left to you? You all say I am a god, your god. Yet you desert me at the first lies of a renegade!"

The men shuffled their feet. Their faces were haggard, and lined with bitterness and distrust. In some eyes, Tyr could read real hate.

"Why have you come back?" whispered Fay, staring up at a distant mountaintop. "To turn us in? To give my back to the floggers? Am I that valuable to the _ardth_?"

Tyr pleaded, "Should I have returned alone, if my purpose was your capture? If that were the case, the skies would be alive with aircraft! I knew you were on your way to the Barrow. I could have made you all prisoners by now, if such was my intent. Reason it out. Otho tells you lies to turn you away from the one thing that had any chance of helping you!"

* * * * *

Like children, their faces grew hopeful, as their minds absorbed his words. Fay was biting her lip. From under her yellow lashes, her brown eyes studied him.

"But you kissed this Katha, didn't you? You kissed an _ardth_-woman! The god of the Trylla would never do that."

Tyr could see her illogical reasoning was swaying the others. They were hesitant, reproachful.

He said defiantly, "I kissed her, because she was a woman, and lovely. I--"

Fay turned her back. The others looked from the girl to Tyr and back at the girl again.

"I am no traitor, because of that kiss. I--"

They were not listening, but following Fay who was walking swiftly away, and toward the hills in the purple distance. His fingers closed on empty bitterness as he stood there alone, miserable. His people ... following a girl toward destruction.

Sorrow gnawed in his heart. This was the fate of a god, then, that his children should misunderstand him, perhaps even that they should hate him. Still, he did not blame them. They were so alone, so helpless, and so afraid.

Watching them move away, Tyr knew they needed him more than ever. They were leaving the only one who stood any chance of helping them. Without him, the Trylla were like toys before the hard, sure hands of the _ardth_.

He touched the handle of the solar gun and let his fingers trail away.

He would have to find the Barrow alone, now.

* * * * *

Two days later, Tyr parted the green fronds of a mountain bush and looked at the gleaming whiteness of the Barrow. It was a low rounded dome, lying across the hard whitish rocks of a strange mountain peak. From where he stood, he could make out arches receding back in under the dome, many of them. The arches were so many that each looked like a reflection of the others.

The Barrow, he thought with dull triumph. It was camouflaged perfectly. That roundness gave no glint to a watcher in the sky. Its lowness cast no shadow. Its whiteness blended with the dazzling brilliance of the white mountain rocks. No wonder it had stood years without detection. Even looking for it as he was, Tyr almost missed it. Only the arches, seen at a certain angle, betrayed its existence.

He loped toward it, breaking into the open. Only when he was near the arches did he see the woman on the ground to one side, kneeling. Before her a man lay on his back.

Tyr went forward on the tips of his toes, as silent as a breeze moving across rock.

The girl knelt beside the man, was moving her hands over him swiftly, competently. Then she leaned back on her haunches and shook her dark head. The black blouse and white slacks looked familiar. When he saw her face as she raised it, he knew.

"Katha," he said.

The girl whirled, reaching for a gun at her hip. But when she saw him fully she gave a low cry and scrambled to her feet. "Tyr, Tyr! Oh, I'm so glad I've found you!" And was running to him.

He tried to be curt, but it was useless. There was too much joy shining out of those black eyes, too much laughter and delight. And she was so feminine! He put out his hands and held her arms, making her stay a little away from him. Tyr wondered if she heard the wild pounding of his heart.

"Why?" he asked. "Why are you here? Why did you come searching for me?"

Laughter was like musical hoarseness in her throat. With head flung back so that she could hold him with her eyes, she said, "Because Space Commander Mason ordered that you be shot on sight. Because you are a doomed man. And because--I think you may yet save the Trylla."

"You are _ardth_!"

"It makes no difference. What are you, for that matter?"

"I--I don't know."

He did not know. Always that uncertainty tugged at the core of him. Unknowingness within him, like an emptiness. Who are you, Tyr? What are you? And mad laughter answered, "You do not know. You will never know what you are. A god? Ho! Not you, not Tyr."

She saw the blankness in his eyes, and the misery. Her voice was soft, tender. "Tyr, can't you see? You are--Tyr."

He shook his head, heart dull within his chest.

She cried between a laugh and a sob, "But you are the first, Tyr, the first of your kind! I can tell you that. You are a biochemical newcomer."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know. No one knows. _You_ have to prove it to yourself first. _You_ have to learn about you, and then others will know. Who can best understand a new thing but the thing itself! Explore yourself, Tyr--and know!"

Katha hooked a finger in the black braid of her belt and made traceries in the sand with the toe of her sandal. "I had to come and find you. I could not let you die. Besides, there is something in what you do. If the Trylla could be made friendly to the _ardth_ they would help us. Perhaps they could find the way to keep the Glows from dying. The _ardth_ need help. You might be the agent to bring _ardth_ and Trylla together."

From the depths of his bitterness, Tyr laughed harshly.

"I am but one against the _ardth_. I have no allies. Even the Trylla turn their faces from me. The only thing that keeps me going is the thought that a god must protect his people. Even if they hate him."

"Then think of the rewards that the Trylla may reap, if you unite them with the _ardth_ in friendship. The _ardth_ are not only conquerors, but colonizers as well. In the far-flung span of cities that spread from the home planets fanwise beyond even Fornax, there are many marvels.

"You have never been to Zafega on Fomalhaut-2. You have not beheld the creata-screens, where your dreams become reality, where the deeps of the subconscious are caught in graphs and translated into pictures. That is incredible beauty, and horror in one! No one is ever the same, having beheld his dreams in a waking moment.

"Then there are the historays that recapture the past, making a living, breathing thing of it. You could see the history of all Lyallar, Tyr, from its primordial beginnings until the--"

Tyr whispered roughly, "That sight would make me realize even more bitterly what it means to be a Tryllan--and alive--these days."

Katha turned her back to him, looking across the rock and sand to a distant fringe of silver trees. Tyr bit his lip, staring at her shapely shoulders. Fool! To alienate the one person on all the planet who cared whether--

An old face lying on the ground, his eyes saw. Gaunt brown cheeks, and sparse grey hair on a round skull. Harl. The ancient one with a brain filled with the magic of war and the knowledge of sciences lost to all the Trylla, other than himself. Harl was dead.

IV

Katha killed him. That was why she was here. She cared not a fig for his chances of freeing the Trylla. She was a spy. And he believed her talk of screens and luxuries and the joys of joining the _ardth_!

His hand vised at her wrist and twisted her around to face him. Her black eyes went wide, frightened at the mad rage in his face. Under the grip of that hand, her knees dug into the sand.

"You murdered him. You--"

"No! Oh, no, Tyr! His heart stopped from excitement. He--he thought the _ardth_ had found the Barrow. It _is_ the Barrow, isn't it?"

"Yes," he muttered numbly, looking away from her toward the receding, confusing arches.

Accuse her again, Tyr. Do not let those big black eyes fool you. She is a traitress, is she? She is a spy, instead. Accuse the one thing on all Lyallar that believes in you. Smash her belief. Kill her with your hands. Stand alone, as always you have done.

"No!" he moaned, swaying on big legs, widespread.

The woman knelt, looking up at him.

His eyes closed as thoughts rocketed across his brain. She killed Harl. _She wears no gun, his body bears no mark of violence!_ She is a spy for Mason, and will betray you. _She has come alone to you!_ Kill her, and be safe. Trust not in your strength to fight what may come.

He put out his big hands and caught her shoulders. He lifted her up and held her against him. He rained kisses on her soft mouth.

She stirred after a while, gently.

She whispered, her black head nestled to his chest, "You love me, Tyr?"

"Yes."

"You came to the Barrow, Tyr. Let us do what you would have done. Rumor has it that there are weapons inside."

"Harl was the only one who knew their use."

She rubbed her arms with her palms, loving the bruise where his hands had dwelt. She chided, "Fie, darling. A god can understand any weapon." And when he glanced sharply to seek mockery in her eyes, she said simply, "I mean it. You can understand them, if you will. Your mind is different. Try it!"

As they went beneath the myriad arches, their feet stepping loudly on the marble flooring in the stillness, Tyr said, "If I cannot use these weapons the cause of the Trylla is forever lost."

A labyrinth of strange things and objects, set on shelf and counter, under glass and on metal. Mazes of plasticine and steel, glittering and glimmering, shadowing cones and tridents and metal circlets. And none of it was even remotely understandable to the brown giant who stood and stared.

Katha slipped a hand into his and said, "You can do it, Tyr. Yes, you can!"

He shook his head, but he went and stood before the machines. With narrowed eyes, he studied curving generators and domed turbines. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he began to understand them. If only--

A beam of yellow sunlight swam through a glassine vent in the wall, quivering, moving. It touched Tyr, laving his brown face and dark hair in its radiance. The sunlight was hot and soothing. Tyr smiled faintly, knowing that the light was opening the secret facets of his brain, feeding energy to them, making his mind work whether he wanted it to or not.

He was understanding these silent machines, now.

He touched a button, and watched an engine throb and hum, coming to life. Where the blue discs were was its outlet. They turned red, and glowed. When they went white, a blast of power would splay out, and he did not want that to happen, yet. He shut the power off.

Katha walked with him. "You know?" she asked softly.

"I know."

"There is a kitchenette off to one side," she said. "I am going to prepare food for myself. Then tell me your plans!"

When she left him, Tyr turned back to the metal giants, touching levers and rods. He lost himself in their intricacies as a boy does with new and complicated toys.

He did not hear Katha cry out from the next chamber. He did not hear the footsteps. He did not see the girl who came with Gaarn and Texel to stand in the doorway, a solar gun in her white hand.

* * * * *

A ball of flame exploded amid the coils and antennae of a big machine. Another fell onto a huge dynamo. Still another whistled shrilly as it clove a path through cones and hoops.

Tyr whirled, but it was too late. Fay was firing rapidly, as fast as she could depress the stud. The yellow blasts ate and drank their way through the machines until every one lay smashed and wrecked.

Tyr laughed bitterly.

"Destroy your every chance," he said. "Your freedom lies on the floor, amid those twisted metal things."

Fay lifted the gun and aimed it at him. She said coldly, "The _ardth_ shall never receive our weapons, Tyr. I destroyed them before you could bring the _ardth_ to them."

"I would never bring the _ardth_! What mad poison eats in your brains, you Trylla? Without weapons, what may I do?"

"The Old Ones shall never get them!"

"The Old Ones do not need these things. They have better ones. A hundred years ago they beat men who used these weapons. In that time they have new weapons, better weapons! What would the _ardth_ want with things like these?"

There was doubt in the eyes of some, but Fay lifted her gun. Tyr walked toward her, seeing the red hate in her eyes. Her finger touched the stud and balls of yellow fire leaped for him, splashed across his chest.

He went on, unstoppable. The energy from the yellow balls poured into him. Muscles rippled on his arms as he reached out and took the gun away from her.

With white hand pressed to her writhing mouth, Fay stared at him in dumb awe. Tyr wrapped his fingers around the gun. The metal crumpled in his hand. When he opened his hand the remnants bounced on the floor.

Tyr put a hand to Fay's shoulder and pushed her aside. Gaarn and young Texel watched him with fascinated, frightened eyes. He lunged into the chamber where Katha had cried out.

"Katha!" he called.

She lay on a long white table, and there were strong steel straps holding her. Her clothing was somewhat torn. Her dark eyes met his from the corners as her red mouth smiled a little.

"I tried to warn you. The Trylla do not like the _ardth_. They wanted me alive to learn secrets from me." She made a grimace. "I don't know whether I could have stood up to torture."

"There's no need of it, now," he grunted, putting his hands under the straps and bursting them. He lifted her and held her on his chest.

"I am no longer god of the Trylla," he rasped bitterly, looking down at her. "I am hated by them. Now I am--nothing!"

She was very round and soft on his ribs. Tyr tightened his arm, watching her mouth. Katha made a face and mocked him.

"Man or god--you hurt!"

He eased his arms a little, still holding her tightly. He went down the corridor of the arches as Fay and the others watched from the shadows. His footfalls were soft, but deadly. It was as though his feet intoned a _danse macabre_ for the Tryllan race.

Tyr carried the girl to her jet plane that had been hidden among the rocks. He lifted her into it and swung up, both hands on the smooth plasticine handles. The door clicked behind him.

Katha dropped into a red leather seat before an intricate control-board. Her white fingers touched pins. The ship rumbled and shuddered. Slowly it trundled forward, gathering momentum. From the port window, Tyr watched the white dome of the Barrow falling away below. He turned his eyes to the front, seeing her lift the plane over a fringe of _hibithus_-trees to arrow into the cloudless sky.

"Katha, I am homeless."

Homeless and a wanderer, without a people. The Trylla had been his people, if a god ever had people. Now they had turned against him, broken with him, even tried to kill him. There was bitterness on his tongue and in his heart. A bitterness that burned and galled.

From the depths of his anguish, he cried, "I want to be a part of something, Katha! I am neither Tryllan nor _ardth_. What am I?"

The woman caught his hand and pressed it to her lips. She whispered softly, "To me you are always a god, Tyr. I love you. You love me."

"I have you. Yes, that makes up for everything else."

He sighed, "But I keep telling myself that I have failed. That I have not done all I could to free the Trylla."

"What of the tower, Tyr? You said it had strange things in it. Perhaps it is a laboratory, of sorts. I might make tests there, of you, seek to know your purposes, your abilities."

"Yes, the tower. I'd forgotten that. It could be a home to us. An _ardth_-woman and a--an unknown!"

"I am _ardth_ no longer. I gave that up when I came after you. I knew what I was doing."

He knelt and caught her to him, saying, "There is no place for either of us, except with the other. Two wanderers."

"Two wanderers," she sighed. "With a purpose. A mad, insane belief in themselves. To fight even when there is no chance of victory!"

* * * * *

The tower stood gaunt and lonely, rising up into a blue sky. Baked dirt powdered into clouds under their feet as they walked toward it. The tower was strong and thickly built, and it towered above the flat earth in its loneliness. In that respect, it was a little like Tyr himself, Katha thought. She studied the flat buttresses and arched windows.

"An _ardth_-man built that," she said.

"If he did, he made it a laboratory and home at the same time."

Katha furrowed her thin black brows. "But what _ardth_ ever built such a tower on Lyallar?" she wondered.

Tyr pushed open the big wooden door. The round room was walled with dials and panels, cool and dim. It gave off a faint and musky smell. A circular table was covered with vials and belljars and retorts. Shelves lined the walls, and bottles lined the shelves. At the far side of the room, a metal stairway twisted its way to the upper floors.

Katha wandered around, delight shining in her eyes. She lifted vials and smelled at chemicals. Laughter gurgled in her throat.

"But this is marvelous. It's almost as complete as my own lab. Now who built this place, Tyr? Can you tell me?"

He showed her a big book bound in tooled leather.

"William Rohrig!" she cried at sight of the golden letters stamped into the cover. "Why--why, he was an _ardth_ genius! We often wondered what became of him! He was to travel to Antares, to study life conditions on one of its outer planets. Commander Mason would be delighted--"

She broke off, glancing sideways at Tyr.

He said, "If it were not for me, you could go back. You could go anyhow. I--"

Her white palm covered his mouth. "Don't say it, Tyr. We'll see this through, you and I."

"If there were only some way in which I could convince the _ardth_ that they and the Trylla could live in peace! The Trylla mistrust me and the _ardth_ hate me, for I threaten their power. Katha, Katha! There is no answer."

"There is always an answer to a problem. The only trouble is, it takes a long time to see it."

While Tyr worked at the table, making tests and experiments under Katha's guidance, to test the powers of his mind, Katha made the tower her own. Sunlight bathed Tyr through an open window. Above him he heard her footsteps going to and fro, heard her lifting things, and the squeals of delight when she unearthed notebooks that had once been Rohrig's.

They spent their days in work and laughter. Katha made many tests on him, saying, "You are a biological miracle, darling. I don't know much about miracles, so I have to learn, slowly and gropingly."

* * * * *