In the field that hugged the Cold River. Adults were huddled around something. Grainstalks lay trampled as though a war party had swept through the fields … they stood under the staring sun. Kelver and some other children had come to see what was wrong, but they couldn’t see through the elders that had clumped together.

  Kelver pushed some boys aside—all smaller than he was —and strode toward where his uncle stood. Here the Cold River reared up on pylons for a few klomets where the land dipped a little. Rust-earth showed through the patches of green.

  “What’s happened, what’s happened?” he exclaimed. They ignored him, and he heard snatches of their quick, intense whisperings.

  .. It’s a violation ..

  .. They’re too bold, do something ..

  “… a posse, we have to round them up and eliminate them, vermin, vermin, vermin. ..

  Kelver couldn’t make much sense of it. Hestepped back to where a pylon’s shadow barred the burning ground and sat down on the green. He got up at once, plucked some stalks, and tried to wipe off the gooey mess. Now he knew that an al’ksigark had been here. This near to the village. He was angry. But he also wanted to take a weapon and join the hunt So he sprang up and went to the group of elders again, trying to become a part of them.

  A child smiled at him and he elbowed him out of his way.

  “Uncle, I’ve found its spoor.”

  The group fell silent. Uncle Aaye pushed his way out of the huddle and Kelver showed him die stains on his tunic from where he had tried to sit down. He turned and ran to the spot The elders followed, stumbling and puffing, and Kelver suppressed an urge to laugh at them.

  There was a patch of greenish, slimy fluid there, under the shadowbar of the pylon. Uncle Aaye ignored Kelver at once and the group started to buzz again, pushing him out. Kelver spun around and—

  Suddenly he saw what the elders had been standing around before. It was more interesting than a puddle of congealing bodily fluids. So he sprinted over. Some kids were already prodding the body with grainstalks, then retreating. …

  “It’s a dead one!” someone yelled. “I want the skin!”

  “There’s two of them!” someone else was shouting.

  Kelver reached the spot, pushed the other children aside easily—they were too soared to get near it anyway—and then saw them.

  Green-stained fur with those tiny, spiderfast legs, muscular and mammallike, but too many and too small, a body of globs and light-sensitive patches that served as eyes, and that gaping, orcine mouth crowned by the huge rheumy nostrils where eyes would be on a man’s face … two al’ksigarkar. One of them had his mantle partially protruded. It was perhaps a couple of square meters, at the moment, sprouting out from an orifice in the head, bright green and veined in black . .. this one had eaten well, then.

  In the badlands they lived in herds, thousands of them. They spread their mantles—often amounting collectively to many square kilometers—and photosynthesized, and never moved at all. But … if a living prey came by, they could become carnivorous. They could switch over to hunting functions. Then the dormant jaws and the layers of razor fangs and the swift spider feet and the rasping claws would come into use. And there were rogues. A lone al’ksigark breaking from the herd and becoming a full carnivore, eating, eating … until it died. These had come far and were reduced to eating plants. Somewhere nearby there must be a herd. The pact had been violated.

  For the al’ksigarkar were, in a manner of speaking, sentient, although their predominant urges were hunger and revenge. They possessed a kind of language, of perhaps two hundred different cries, produced by making their teeth chatter and rubbing their legs together. There had been a pact. They were not to come near the Cold River. These two had died for it.

  Everyone in the village hated them more than anything. Because the al’ksigarkar, whenever they could, ate people. Not, of course, the civilized ones of the village, unless they wandered out too far from a displacement plate … but there were the ghost people in the desert, a stone-age culture that one never saw or thought about much, except when one came stumbling into the village, his arm bitten off at the shoulder, once in a decade or so….

  Only an Inquestral summons—and that once in a very long time—could take you safely to Effelkang. They could send an airfloater for you that would cover the distance in less than a day. Only Uncle Aaye had ever done that… .

  Kelver looked at the corpses—in the heat they had already begun to decompose, and the stench was staggering —and listened to the buzz of the elders as they discussed plans for a punitive search and the buzz of small insects that hovered over the dead al’ksigarkar. “Disgusting,” he said to himself.

  Behind him, all the kids were screaming, “Let’s have a hunt! A hunt!”

  “Want to play, Kevi?” A shy girl’s voice. It was two-winter-old Haller who had always had a secret crush on him.

  “I’m too old—” Kelver saw the imploring look. “All right.”

  “You can be the al’ksigark!” a fat boy shouted. “You’re the biggest and baddest!”

  *‘Ha!” Kelver cried out scornfully, running for the nearest displacement plate.

  Kelver stepped from behind the blue house. The blue glaze on the porcelain scattered the diffuse groundlight and the shadow blued his tunic a little.

  Where die shadow crossed the shadow of a yellow house there was a triangle of green-tinged darkness. Just beyond it, the displacement plate.

  Damn children! he thought. But I’ll make it so they can't find me. They’re all out there jumping from plate to plate, the lazy monsters!

  He picked a path between plates, shuffled from shadow to shadow, and soon he found he had crept all the way to the side of the Cold River. He could see where it entered the mountain.

  —shrieks—

  They’ll never look for me here. They’ll think Fve plated all the way over to the very village’s edge. Children think very obviously.

  —shrieks fading now, tickling the silence—

  Picking a direction at random, Kelver found himself following the river. A coolness came from it. Once or twice he stopped to lick the dew that always settled on its walls, collected into pockets crevassed by the way the moss grew. … He found himself staring at the Skywall. He found he could see no sky at all, almost as though it were winter and the suns had gone to sleep.

  At the base of the river walls, a faint blue light showed him the way. He hadn’t come to this part of the Skywall before: it rose straight up here. Usually if they played they ran to a part within sight of the village, where some of the pylons to the Cold River had steplike holds and you could balance atop the river’s walls. One day on a dare he had even perched on an impossible ledge and launched three stones at his uncle’s house with a slingshot.

  He stared at the wall and …

  I don’t want to fight for the Inquest anymore, when I grow older, he decided, remembering the to-do after the tachyon bubbles, and finally forcing himself to remember his father’s corpse. It came as a cold memory; he could not stand to color it with emotion. But if I don’t become a soldier, he thought, how will I ever touch the stars?

  A grief touched him. He didn’t understand it; he didn’t want it; but he couldn’t dismiss it with just a shrug.

  “There he is, ambling along like he doesn’t know what’s coming to him!” A shrill voice piercing his thoughts.

  He turned and sprinted towards the mountain.

  An idea. He reached one of the pylons that supported the Cold River, about eighty meters above his head now, and climbed it quickly. Then he grasped a vine that hung from the river wall and shinnied up with a bloodcurdling yell. The cold burned his stomach so he unflattened himself and held on with his elbows and knees. They were little points of cold knifing into him—

  “He’s going to climb up there, the devilish al’ksigark!”

  He stood on the wall, and underneath him the children were hooting and booing. “I’m sick of this game!” he shouted down.

  “Al’ksigark! Al’ksigark!”

  “Go catch a real one!”

  Nimbly he ran along the wall—it was perhaps a half-meter wide—without so much as looking at the Cold River rushing below, soundless under its protective forcefield and shooting out tendrils of cloud as it hurtled towards somewhere far away.

  The river ran into solid rock. Now what?

  “Quick!” A little voice. “This way!”

  “Huh … ? Haller!” he gasped. “You’re supposed to be chasing me ..

  “I know a place they’ll never find you—” He saw her now, lit by the river-glow from below; upside down the shadows of her face. “Here.” She flattened herself on the ridge and inched onto a ledge of the black rock, and Kel-ver saw a fissure. They crouched at the jagged opening.

  “It’s okay,” said Haller. She touched him and he shied away. “I come here all the time. I hate my parents, and I come here to get mad all by myself.”

  “Why, do they beat you or something?”

  “No. It’s not that simple,” she said. “Come.” She began to lower herself into the rock. Her head sank and the hair glowed a little golden, like ripe grain.

  A room.

  “Do you hear the other kids yelling?” she said. “They’ll never find us, not until we’re ready.. ..”

  A shy smile.

  The room … it was a cavern rather, with rockwalls that

  shimmered with a cold phosphorescence. Kelver took a few steps. There didn’t seem to be an end to the room.

  “I didn’t know there were any passages inside the Sky-wall,” he said softly, wondering.

  Above, the ceiling glittered like a starlit winter night when the suns slept, silverglitter of far stars, of far worlds. … A longing tugged at him. He didn’t look at Haller. Although he suddenly suspected that she had maneuvered him into coming here.

  “All right,” she said, reading his mind. “I was hiding here, waiting, hoping you’d show up. You know I’ve got this helpless crush on you. You tell stories about things you’ve never seen. You don’t just sit there jabbering about al’ksigark hunts and boasting of how you can fight. Although I know you can beat up any kid in the village. And a lot of the adults too.**

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Want to play sex?”

  Kelver walked on a little.

  “Kevi?”

  “Oh, Halli,” he said without looking back at her. “You’re just a kid.” He looked steadily ahead to veil his insecurity.

  He heard her babble on: “D’ye remember, Kevi, these hundred sunpassings past, the day” we played by ourselves among the grainbales and no one was looking, and we showed each other things?”

  Above, a vague screaming—

  “Shit.” Kelver stopped dead. “They’ve found us.” He darted further into the cavern. A passageway suddenly opened where he thought was a mere crack in the rock.

  Another cave now.

  And silence.

  For a moment he almost wanted Haller with him. But she was doubtless still out there, timidly awaiting his return.

  “Powers of powers,” he whispered. “It’s artificial ”

  Walls here, metallic silvergleaming walls that curved up in a majestic sweep to twine in a spiraling roof shrinking to infinity, whether mirrors or reality he couldn’t think.

  A hum, fainter than a heartbeat. Machinery.

  Crystals set into the walls. Studs, patterned lights, twinkling.

  There were curves here. An orgy of curves, sinuous, sensuous, to his eyes that were from a world Abound by straight edges … mirror curves. Soft twisting metal, like waves of a girl’s hair in the wind, but frozen….

  “Why is it always I who make the discoveries* in this village?” he said. The echo came back from behind him, louder than his own voice, and softedged like a shape in dawnmist…

  Slowly he crossed the room.

  The spiral ceiling turned with him, a giant corkscrew of a mirror. Footsteps, loud, harsh. His own. He stopped, whirled around* before he realized he was alone here. Sighed relief. Strode across the room now, pretending confidence.

  Then he found the round door. It was twice manhigh, set into the wall, an ordinary enough doorway; and at its side an ordinary doorstud.

  He deliberated for a while, then thought: Let the children worry!

  He shrugged and pressed the stud.

  The door dissolved and—

  Thunder crashed in the distance! A crazy labyrinth of passageways twisting, forking, weaving, warping—

  The wind hit him.

  He stood his ground for a few moments, stunned. The wind rushed at him, gusted over him, his hair flew and his tunic flapped, there was no wind like this in the world, vehement, pungent, alive—

  On the wind he smelled … a fragrance he couldn’t recognize. A scent that stirred excitement and rage and desire, all at once, as the warm wind battered him and shook him into shivering—

  After a few moments the wind subsided a little. And then the song came. Just an echo of an echo of an echo of a songsnatch, and then it was gone and a grief came on him, a tragedy he couldn’t understand.

  Got to close the door/1 can’t stand it—

  Palm slammed on stud. Cold metal biting him.

  The door resolved itself again.

  Silence.

  And then he saw the words that were written on the door, written in the Inquestral highscript that he had learned—with many beatings—from his uncle, in an ancient hand, etched onto the metal with a quill dipped in acid, no doubt:

  THE SHADOW IS MOTHER

  THE SHADOW IS DEATH

  THE SHADOW FALLS FOREVER

  ON THE CHILDREN OF DARKNESS

  And then he knew that this was the gateway to the Dark Country.

  As he turned his back on the door dread breathed on his neck, like an al’ksigark ready to pounce.

  Somehow he felt he must be in trouble. I’ll never tell Uncle! Never!

  He heard his own breathing re-echo from behind like the breathing of a giant creature….

  Run! Run!

  The fragrance lingered beneath the surface of his mind. There was a new longing there, quickly repressed. It was more urgent than the scent of a girl, even….

  Quick! Back into the passageway, out into the cavern, don’t look at anything.

  Footsteps, patter, patter, patter

  You don’t see the machines.

  patter patter

  You don’t see the walls that curve and curl and swirl like dreams of girls. You don’t smell the fragrance.

  patter

  He scooted into the passageway. Rock rubbed against his shin. He cried out, giving himself away.

  You don’t hear the song.

  He emerged. They ambushed him.

  “Ha, ha, al’ksigark, the village sleeps safe tonight—”

  “Hey, let me breathe!”

  With a sigh he gave himself up to their gleeful vengeance. But his mind was somewhere else.

  EIGHT

  LIGHT ON THE SOUND

  Loneliness. The wild windstream, like a firetouch. The airskiff plowing, rocking a little, plowing … and the darkness stretching forever. Darktouch with her hands on the pulsescreen, measuring the patterns of airskiffs, cross-hatching, shifting, coalescing somewhere beneath them. When she raised her head her eyes touched nothing. But here and there she would smell a soft odor of bittersweet or peardrop, as airskiffs of the appropriate scent-class settled into position.

  Windstriker always flew his skiff high, among the boldest of the hunters. The more timid, doused in more delicate scents, clustered below, forming a net onto which Wind-bringer would fall when the harpoons of shatterstuff burst all over his body.

  Windstriker moved around, setting controls and sniffing the air for his directions, relying more on scent than on the datascreens. Sometimes he would hand her a ruddertip to hold fast against the wind. Sometimes she would be ordered to heave her weight against one of the levers that lifted the wingflaps. The skiff would shudder for a moment, ease into a new direction on the windcurrent, and then the shuddering would smooth out and they would sail on as in a dream.

  She slept awhile. She dreamt of pincers gouging her eyes out, of the blood-trickle congealing on her face. She woke with a start They soared now, they and the other stunhunters; she could smell them through the smothering blanket of darkness.

  More time passed. But there was no touching to mark time.

  Suddenly her father’s hand, tense: Sniff!

  —The scent of the preparation room, the steam drenched with the gall of the Windbringer, the sweet fragrance in the hot mist—

  Windbringer, she signed. He’s near.

  Yes, her father’s hand signed, a quick tick of contact. Still her eyes touched nothing. Only her nose sensed it, the shadow of an awesome thing….

  The wind was wrong. There was a pocket in the wind ahead, a hollow of calm. The wind dividing, shearing off in two directions, skirting a vast emptiness. Windbringer.

  Quick, her father signed. An object in her hand, round, knobbly. A grenade. The stunners would be separating now, soaring above Windbringer, seeking to drug him with high-velocity opiate pellets from their stunguns and with burrowing grenades. She knew what to do. When it struck the living skin, it would start to burrow, claws would gouge out scraps of flesh, needles would inject paralysis gases stored inside at tremendous pressure. It was beautiful, how Windbringer fashioned his own homecoming.

  The object gave off a glint of undark. She knew it for one of the old things. She knew it must cause pain, like the rituals of adulthood; but this was part of the order of the cosmos. Gingerly she put it down, fearful. She did not want it to be triggered off by her body warmth.

  Windstriker placed her hands on the mechanism for firing the stuncannons. He let her waste a volley into darkness, to make sure she had gotten it right.

  Then they soared!

  Darktouch touched the pounding of her heart. Wind churned against their passage. The airskiff soared up glided propellers roared wings lifted rudders turned hair flapped forward backward sideways wrapped itself around her face—