Flight in Yiktor

"She's gone – down there! I ca

"Not now. If I loose – I am lost."

Yet they both crept on hands and knees, one on either side of the trapdoor, striving to see what did lie below. Whether that wave of mind touch that had been building for generations could be loosed suddenly without disaster Farree did not know, but he felt that the pressure against his mental wall was less than it had been. And now he could see.

The Lady Maelen stood below a short ladder, and around her body there was an aura of the light from the globe – perhaps that served as her defense.

About her also were racks towering side to side, leaving only the small space where the ladder had given her entrance. And the racks were filled with a series of blocks which pulsated with rainbow colors in a mixture that hurt the eyes almost as much as the wave of mind touch had near toppled their other senses. Scarlet, vivid orange, green in five or six violent shades, blue the same – violet to purple. It was unbelievable.

She was just standing there, her head slowly swinging from side to side, her face a mask in which not even her eyes moved – like one asleep who yet walked.

Before either of them could move, she shifted the ball into her left hand and with the right she reached out toward one of the racks.

"No!" Lord-One Krip cried out, and Farree could have echoed him. But if she heard, that protest had no meaning for her. Her fingers closed about a cube which was gem-bright in green, and she plucked it out of the serried ranks of its like and held it to the level of her eyes. It was as if she both saw and heard something in its heart which kept her mazed. Then swiftly she stored it back with its fellows and turned to the ladder, coming up to them in haste.

Under the light of the third ring her own gleaming hair, her ivory-pale skin, took on ripples of the lights, but she still walked as one in a trance. Lord-One Krip reached for her as she came within grasping distance, pulled her up toward him as if he needs must draw her out of some great trap.

She did not try to throw off his hold, but she turned with it, holding her globe up to the glory of the third ring and then lowering it to focus its beams on the very stones she had used to open the door. And her chant sounded clear in the night air, the drumbeat of the unknown words harsher and faster as if now she worked against time itself.

Even as that aperture had opened so now it closed. Only when that was done did she look to the two of them as if she knew them again.

"Down. We must get down. To the courtyard!" She pushed away from Lord-One Krip and indicated that treacherous pavement below.

"It is" – Farree swinging upward dared to look again at the two huddled bodies below – "a trap."

"Yes," she agreed. "And it must be reset – reset for greater prey! I must do that, by the third ring!"

With the aid of the vine rope they made it. She waved Lord-One Krip away and pointed to certain lines of the patterns.

"Walk so and so." She motioned. "Get to the other wall and up! We may have very little time. Those others will come." It was as if she had knowledge they did not share.

Lord-One Krip stared at her for a long moment and then did as she had told him. Farree flew to give them an escape route, knotting the vine this time to a hard rock near the shore and feeding the free end into the courtyard. But Lord-One Krip would retreat no farther than the wall itself.

The Lady Maelen was singing again. She did not approach the part of the designs where lay the dead off-worlders, but she paced other sections, showing great care where she trod, and sang the same harsh song she had used to close the door above. Three times she rounded the tower and each time the uneasiness in Farree rose. He felt Toggor crowd tightly against him, and the fear in the smux fed his own.

Then, having trod on the pattern before all the four walls, the Lady Maelen ran toward them. Lord-One Krip caught her and tossed her body a little upward so that she clutched the vine rope at a higher level. Then he was hard behind her as she climbed and slid down to the other side.

"It is done." She was panting, her body sleekly wet with sweat, her face drawn and haggard. "And none too soon – The rocks – those – take shelter – "

She did not have to utter any warning. They had already heard the beat of the flitter in the sky, saw riding lights like the eyes of a vast insect coming down the valley even as it had earlier flown.

They lay belly down behind the screen of rocks, Farree crimping his wings into the smallest possible space. On the flitter came, and he heard the Lady Maelen: "They know something. Surely they would not come under the ring. But no Thassa would deal with them. What secret has been betrayed that they hunt so?" It was as if she asked that question of the world at large.

Over swung the air craft. It hung at hover, and this time dropped two from its belly onto the top of the tower. At least they had learned that much from their abortive earlier attempt.

"Yes." The Lady Maelen's voice was only a breath of whisper, and then she added, "Now, let it be now!"

As to what followed Farree could never afterwards settle in his own mind. It was as if the rays of the third ring awoke to life every gemlike stone so that beams of raw and eye-burning color flashed out. Not only at the men who had landed on the roof but upwards far enough to transfix the flitter in turn. Farree thought he heard screams – he was never sure because it all happened so suddenly.

But the beams of gem light became flamelike and they licked about the flitter, drawing it down into their heart fire. Then the tower itself quivered and blazed until he dared not look at it any longer. It – it melted! There was no other way he could describe what happened, for its sides grew soft as thray wax under the sun and spun oddly outward in droplets – though none of those sped beyond the courtyard wall. But the tower sank and was gone, and the lights failed so only that of the third ring held. There came sobbing from where the Lady Maelen lay, and Lord-One Krip edged closer to take her into his arms.

"They are ... dead," she stammered, "they are dead and with them all their knowledge. It is a second death and one – one which I delivered to them!"

Farree answered, "But they were Guild and – "

"Not the Guild, those are dead of their own greed. It was – the ancient memories – those stored lest Thassa need the weight of them again. But they had their own defense, and that I set. You do not understand. We were once so great a people that the Guild, all off-world could not have troubled us. Then it was chosen that we should take another path. But there were those who argued that all knowledge should not be wiped from the face of Yiktor. So they set the memory tower and each memory was stored there – all the knowledge of untold time which we ca

They stood again in the great hall that Farree had first seen after the landing on Yiktor. The Lady Maelen was a little before them, facing those leaders of her people, her head proudly high. There had been a reading of minds, and she it was who insisted upon judgment. Now it was the elder of the women who spoke.

"Always you have gone your own way, Maelen. And always trouble and sorrow comes from it. So the great memories are gone. Well, none can bring them back. Nor" – she spoke more slowly now – "since there are those who would take them for a bitter use, can we wish them so. But we say to you a second time, Kinswoman, there is no place for you, by three rings or two. You are no longer Thassa but something else – we know not what. Nor can you slip within the shell of the people. Come to us when you desire but do not hope to stay – for there is that within you which ca