[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

that direction. Then, looking up, he saw those mighty branches, far, far above, between him
and the sky. He had entered the shadow of the tree.
More and more to the right that way turned, denser and denser the shadow of the tree.
The old lore
of Iftcan that a tree's shadow had power to harm Yet here, in the heart o fThat 's
domain, this tree stood
Ayyar paused now and then, just to gaze up into that canopy, to savor the good feeling
of being once more, even by so little, in the presence of a Great Crown. Then the knowledge
came slowly to him that this was not like Iftsiga, not what his heart longed for.
Not one of those leaves above stirred. They kept ever the same. He waited for the feel
of life, of the out-flowing with which one of the Great Crowns would welcome Ift. Instead
there was silence nothingness.
He knew the dead towers of Iftcan, standing bone white and terrible, heart-rending with
the sense of loss they awoke in all passing. That was death as the Great Crowns knew it.
And now he would have welcomed that.
For this emptiness was not the death of what had once been life it was a nothingness
of that which had never lived at all! At the same moment that his Iftin sense told him that,
Ayyar realized that those banks towering far above his head on either hand were no longer
earth but the buttress roots of the tree. He was coming to its very foot.
To his eyes those buttress roots were no different from any he had seen in Iftcan. This
might be Iftsiga he now approached, save that that lived and this did not. Like Vallylle, it was
false, a mirror-image of the truth, but as hard and lifeless as the surface that reflected it.
Was it both bait and trap to draw any Ift who sighted it as it had drawn him? In
Ayyar's hold the sword hilt warmed, from its tip the silver spark flashed. This was the
road he was intended to march; there was no turning back.
The root walls were so high they cut off most of the light as he neared the trunk of the
tree. And he was not quite sure when he did pass within it. There was such a feeling of
loneliness, of being cut off from all his kind perhaps for evermore that closed about him
as he went into the dark, that he sent forth a silent call born of fear and foreboding:
"Illylle!"
He had not really expected an answer, yet when none came he was chilled, feeling like
one who enters a prison and hears behind him bolts lock, knowing that for him there will be
no going forth again. But he could not turn back; he was under command as when the suit
had carried him into the burrows. Only this was no tThat 's ordering. It came from the
energy stored within him.
Ayyar passed through the outer wall of the trunk into a space where a thin red light
issued from the ground under his feet. It was as if he walked over live coals on a dying fire.
Thus he came face to face with Ift again. This time it was not one like Vallylle, meant to
allure, to entice. Rather it had a worn face, scarred with a great slash that had healed badly,
that of a man and a warrior who had fought to little purpose by the bitter lines about his
mouth. And in his hands he held not a sword, but the shaft of a banner that hung limp, torn
and stained from a pole ending in splinters.
Memory awoke in Ayyar.
"Hanfors "
His whisper of that name was a thin sound. He whom Ayyar had once known and
followed into battle did not move but stood statue still. And beyond him was another and
another, all warriors who had led Iftin forces in glory and defeat. Some Ayyar knew, for they
were from the last days when he, too,
had had Larsh blood on his blade. But others were earlier, and yet earlier
Then a small doubt crept into his mind. Hanfors had led them in defeat, yes. And there
was Vanok, also of the last days, and Selmak. But others they were of the Green Leaf
when That was still
Oath-bound, and they had known the glory, not the end of their race. Therefore, if this was
meant to be a triumph of That, it was not one that spoke the truth. And that small discovery
was important, though as yet Ayyar did not know why.
Whether he fronted statues or the remains of living Ift set up to so glorify their
conquerors, he could not tell, nor did he care to learn by closer examination. Then he saw on
the other side a second line of
figures, and these were armed first with sword and spear to match the Iftin, then with
other weapons. But those nearest to where he stood were Larsh. Slowly Ayyar walked on,
peering at them in wonderment, for they changed. The beast men became different; they
stood straighter and taller, their shaggy body hair thinned and disappeared, until he stood at
last between those two who were the last in both lines. The Ift wore a type of clothing Ayyar
had never seen, yet still he was wholly Ift while that one to the right was no longer Larsh
at all. And the clothing on its slender body was it must be a space suit! In its hands was
clasped a weapon vaguely akin to an off-world blaster!
But the order in which those figures stood The Iftin line plainly ran forward in time
since Hanfors was first by the entrance. But the Larsh sequence was reversed, showing the
slow evolution from the very primitive to a civilization high enough to aim for the stars.
How long then how long since the Iftin had vanished from Janus? How many centuries
had passed for the Larsh to climb and then in turn disappear? To think about that vast roll of
time frightened Ayyar. For changeling that he was, the last frantic answer by the Iftin to the
stamping out of their species, he carried the form and part of the memories of a man who had
marched with Hanfors when the Larsh were part beast. And to cut such a great span of time
into years, seasons His head spun, and he pushed
such speculation aside in haste.
So the Larsh unde rThat 's guidance had at last tried for the stars? But then what had
happened to them, brought an end to their civilization, wiped all traces of it from Janus, so
effectively that no signs of it remained? While the trees of Iftcan, or some of them, had lived
to guard the Iftin seed? It would seem, for all the self-confidence ofThat , this very chamber
proved the superiority of Ift knowledge. The Larsh had come and gone, but Iftin once more
walked the Forest.
For how long? So small a company of changelings a handful here, and few more
overseas. No nation, less even than one Company used to muster at the First Ring. And wit
hThat now ready to play
Its game against them what chance had they, in spite of all the craft and skill which had
brought them to life?
Ayyar did not want to look again at the lines of Ift and Larsh. Only that tantalizing
thought remained, that the latter marked one failure o fThat  the Larsh were gone. Could it
be that nowThat wove its own magic to bring them to life again in its present captives?
There was another doorway, another chamber. Again the red light glowed, and in it were
machines, strange things, meant, he thought, to fly, others to pass over the ground. They
stood there, thick dust on their surfaces and piled about them the dust of time so great that
no mind might truly contemplate it. These had been born of Larsh brains, made by Larsh
hands, and now they were as dead as those who had conceived them.
But he was pulled from his survey of the machines. In his hand the sword turned,
pointed to the floor, and from that position he could not move. Instead it grew heavier, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

zanotowane.pl

doc.pisz.pl

pdf.pisz.pl

razem.keep.pl