judge. Thus I must find that you are most likely in the right, as much as mankind can be without a clear sign from the gods. I will go with you, and we will hunt this killer in the fastnesses. I shall aid you in whatever seems just.” So they turned to their couches and slept deeply.
The stone house dreamed under frosty starts and the leaves drifted onto the roof, softly as snow. The moon-trees glimmered in the hills and the valleys, and in the gentle darkness slept Wilding and beast alike. But on a far outcrop of stone there shone a ruddy star of fire, and in its glow lay a man, propped against a pack, who sharpened a spear with a saw-toothed blade. The red light danced on the shaft and dripped like blood from the bright blade, lighting the quiet smile of pleasure on the face of the man as he drew the whetstone over the steel.
Night flowed over the rim of the world, and dawn followed on its heels. In the stone house, Tisha and her daughter donned stout clothing and footgear. Food they packed, and medicines, and they chose staffs with steel points to aid them should they need to ascend the heights.
The rising sun, peering pale and abstracted between flying wracks of cloud, found them upon the path. Single-file they walked, speaking little, but looking closely to the tracks in the trail, the forest on either hand, and stopping now and again to listen and to sense the air. Tisha stepped silently, her head slightly tilted, as a hart walks in its own place. Cara came behind, almost as silently, swinging her arms in pleasure at the physical action. Yet even to Cara’s watchful eyes, the figure of her mother almost seemed to melt into the silver-gray motley of the wood. The girl was careful never to fall a pace behind or to let her attention stray too far.
So, when Tisha paused, at midmorning, to study the mix of prints in the damp leaf-mold of the trail, Cara was just behind.
“The Wildings have been abroad,” whispered the woman. “Here are the prints of Leera, the mate of Loor. Do you remember, years ago, that she wrenched her foot awry amid the stones of the stream and came to me for aid? It left her lame, and here is her mark. The man walks in another direction than this, or Loor would surely have been with Leera. We must turn our steps to the east, toward the foothills. Pray that the People of the Heights be wary and avoid his path.”
Across the valley floor, cloaked with thick forests, they went. Before night they saw the thinning of the woodlands and the rise of land that told them their nearness to the foothills. The sun, which had merely lit the clouds from above all the day, now peeped below the western edge of the gray mat and dyed the near ranges with bronze fires. Then the two hurried their pace and climbed rapidly into the folded lands, making for the ridge that lay before them. There they hunted out a dry burrow beneath a fallen trunk and, hiding all traces of their approach, went to earth. From their packs they drew down-filled mats backed with the hides of beasts, which made their bed, and they ate cold meat and fruit and drank sparingly of their water.
For a little time they lay, listening to the earth-sounds about them, well content to be there, for often they would go into the wild for pleasure and lay their heads where they willed for days or weeks. The tick of the beetle in the old wood that was their roof was as familiar a sound, and as friendly, as the crick-crack of the cooling fireplace in their house. The hunting owl moved in the stillness, and they felt the prowling wolf as he hunted. Far away and above, they heard soft, whooping cries, infinitely mournful in the stillness, that they knew to be those of the People of the Heights. They stiffened unconsciously, listening carefully, analyzing every nuance of those calls.
“They are not at rest,” said Cara. “There might be many reasons, but my heart tells me there is only one. The man camps above.”
Tisha turned to peer through the dead bracken, though nothing could be seen. “Aye, he is there, I feel him. I almost hear his thoughts. Red his fire and red his heart. We shall find him tomorrow, mayhap. He has no feeling that he is hunted, no warning from instinct. That is no gift brought by the towns of men. When you or I are sought, we know.”
They lay side by side, breathing softly, feeling outward with their spirits, through the night. The small creatures they felt, and the large. The man lay asleep on the edge of their seeking.
“Strange,” said Cara. “He has no feel of malice. There is no black wickedness there.”
“No,” said Tisha, with a sigh of relief. “He is not another such as your father. This is a youngling, little older than you, who has not learned the permanence of death. He sleeps as a child, dreaming of deeds of daring. Perhaps we need not slay after all.”
Then they, too, slept, while the night swept soundlessly over them.
Again the rising sun found them on the move. They were near to the mountains now, and their path grew steep and stony. All the ways were known to them—even the secret paths of the People of the Heights—and those they followed into the high places.
“Now has the time come, my child, that you may speak with the People in their own places,” said Tisha, as they climbed. “We must tell them of their danger and our mission, that they may lie safe and silent until the peril is past. They know you, as they know me, in our lowland forests, but they will be shy. Be wary, for they are determined folk and may well send a boulder upon us before they see us well. They have no seeking sense and must deal with the things they see.”
No long while passed before they saw, upon an outcrop of rock high above them, a small gray figure, which watched them closely. Then Tisha called, a low, whooping cry much like that which had pierced the night. The figure straightened, human-like and small against the sky, and its hand moved in a gesture which traced a symbol upon the air.
Up they moved, clambering over standing stones and finding their way, shoulder and foot, up chimneys weather-worn in the mountain’s face. At last they stood at the top in a shallow saucer rimmed with tumbled rock. A group of the People awaited them there, standing quietly, their silken-smooth gray fur ruffled by the damp wind, their squat bodies still, and their round faces quiet, save for the watchfulness of their eyes. Long had it been since one of the People had sought them out, and Cara had forgotten the strangeness of those eyes, which were as panes of glass which looked inward upon a world of untroubled blue. No ripple touched those eyes, and now all those many windows were turned upon them. Tisha made the sign of peace and friendship and sat upon a stone, whereupon all came near and sat, also. The language of the People was strange: a soft twittering at times, with sad little hoots and cries interspersed with whispering sibilances. No man could learn it well, but Tisha had managed after a fashion, and she spoke with him who had awaited them.
Long they talked, Wheesha (as nearly as Cara could determine his name) turning now and again to relay information to his folk. Before midday the warning was given, and the People brought forth food from their burrows in the rock walls and gestured for their guests to eat. No stranger meal could any mortal ever have eaten, it seemed to Cara, as she munched a sort of bread that seemed made from lichen and pollen and sipped pale green wine whose origin she surmised must have lain with mosses and maidenhair ferns.
Their meal made, they touched hand to forehead, in the sign of thanks to their hosts, and took their leave. Not by the hard ways in which they had come did they go, for now they sought him whom they had avoided. Down the smooth slopes from the heights they made their way, using the paths of the People. The bare bones of the mountain they left behind and descended into rock-studded meadows where, in summer, the horned ones of the forest grazed. Now the grasslands were bare of life and of green, and the two women moved across them quietly, stepping with the flowing gait of the hunter who fears to start his prey too soon.
“He moves upon the heights,” said Tisha, as they paused to feel the space about them. “His camp lies below us, in a hollow rimmed with stones and juniper, so Wheesha told me. But now he seeks for strange game and never thinks himself hunted.”
“Do
