"It will be a long day – several of them – before this ever flies again," he commented when he was done. "It is better that we be on our way."

Once outside, they looked up. Evening was fast becoming night but the sky was alive with the glory of the third ring, and Farree saw the Lady Maelen gazing up at it, her hand raising to gesture in the air as if she truly gathered that light and brought inward a portion of it clasped between her palm and fingers.

Before them was the entrance to the place of the hall. There were heavy ruts in the soil, from the regiment of carts that had passed that way before them. Lord-One Krip's touch on his shoulder headed Farree in that direction.

Once more he came into that place where the cliffs themselves were honeycombed with the very ancient doorways and the hand of time lay heavy on the half-arid land. But they did not go to the hall again, rather made their way to a lesser opening that was hardly higher than the heads of the two who escorted Farree. Within the entrance to which there was no bar or door shone a pale light which might be a portion of the third ring blazoned proudly across the evening sky.

They were waiting there, the four who had stood on the dais of the hall, though they were not standing in judgment now. There was a subtle difference that Farree could sense without being able to set name to it, but he thought that whatever difference the Lady Maelen had had with these, the leaders of her people, had either been resolved or postponed to handle a more immediate problem.

"Welcome, little one." The voice he knew. It had cut into his thoughts too many times since this venture on Yiktor had begun for him to mistake it, or the speaker: the woman who stood a step before the other three.

"What have you learned that you could awake the Eor-fog?"

"The Eor-fog?" he repeated aloud in the trade tongue. All at once fatigue hit him hard. He wanted nothing so much as to curl up in sleep, a sleep without dreams, and remain unwaking for a long, long time.

The mental picture which flashed into his mind in answer to that question was of the thick green smoke which had issued from the powder in the box. He replied speedily with the truth, that he had found the box and that its contents had had no meaning for him.

"A nesting place of the grok. But those have been gone from here for many seasons. Fortune stands at your shoulder, little one, that such a thing could have happened."

He thought that he could well echo her statement. Looking back now, he could see that luck which had abided with him in the time he had been captive to the Guild. Perhaps the old superstition was the truth and his hump was a mark of luck – though one he would do without if he could.

"They thought to use me for bait." He brought out his only explanation for his remaining alive and in good condition.

"Yet the trap sprang on them," the Thassa leader said.

"They have lasers." He would not have her believe that perhaps they had seen the last of that company in the ruins. Whatever else the Thassa could mount in the way of offensive weapons, he could not tell.

"They could well have great weapons," Lord-One Krip spoke across his head in warning. "If they believe that we control some major find – "

"They may have what they please," the woman returned shortly. "Thassa control is now sealed to them."

Farree dared then to raise his voice in his own warning. "They may have patience, too. And can your land" – he thought of the arid country about – "give sustenance to all your people indefinitely?"

"Perhaps not. But there are other places to hunt for olden weapons besides a grok nest, little one."

He thought she was entirely too confident. As if she were the Commander and her forces set to harry a people who seemed, as far as he could determine, ready to depend upon intangibles for defense. Though he remembered how the flitter had been forced into another flight pattern the first time it had flown a scouting mission near the Thassa valley.

"You are tired, little one. Rest safe and know that you sleep within such a setting of sentries as those without have never met before."

It was a dismissal, and he went willingly enough but certainly not with a quiet mind. After his venture with the smoke he could believe that there were unusual weapons possible but that they might in the end triumph. He had lived too many years in the Limits under the ever-abiding shadow of the Guild where the indwellers spoke with awe and dread of what that organization could do and had done in the past. He still believed that the Thassa leaders were too confident.

But he went willingly with the Lord-One Krip to another of the cave rooms and there ate of dried fruit and strips of something which might be meat but which he believed was not, drank his fill of a sparkling fluid which was more than water but not a wine. Then he curled on a pile of mats with Toggor still beside him and waited for the sleep he craved. It was late in coming.

The Guild had wanted him for bait, yes. Almost the trap might have sprung. He realized suddenly that he had never really believed that the Lady Maelen and the Lord-One Krip would come searching for him. Perhaps it was a matter of duty for them, the same feeling of responsibility as he had for Toggor – that they could not leave him in enemy hands. That was the only reason he could accept. Had he been anything else to the Guild? Though he had closed his eyes for sleep, what he saw again was out of his vivid dream: Lanti sprawled across the table and that other shaking him by the shoulder, drawing back in frustration and disgust when he realized the former spacer was dead. That scrap of stuff which the other had held – Farree tried to fasten his memory on that, sift it for its value.

Only what he saw now in the wink of an eye, the draught of a breath, was not the filthy hut of the Limits but somewhere else —

It was as if he were aloft again, swinging on the ladder, only there was no fear in this essay into open space, flight was something right and brought no fear. He looked down as if he rode on the back of a bird, not in any flitter, for the free air was all about him and he knew that he was here by his will and not because he had no choice.

He was looking down upon a rippling land of brilliant green: groves of trees whose leaves were clasped lightly about gems of eye-pleasing color which he knew were flowers or fruit. For the first time Farree could remember, he was truly alive, feeling no telling weight upon his shoulders, able to move his head freely. He was straight of body; without touching his shoulders he knew this. This again must be a dream, but one he clung to fiercely. If he never awakened from it, then he was repaid for all the ills of the past.

He descended through the air, lightly, easily, depending now he knew upon nothing but his own will and body. Grass rose shoulder high about him and there was the sweet smell – of —

It was the scent which broke the dream, pulled him back into the grim reality of his own world. Yet it was a pleasant scent, one which he knew. He opened his eyes and the Lady Maelen was kneeling beside him. There was a small furred creature on her shoulder, bobbing its small head against her throat. Behind her Yazz stood, tasseled tail aswing.

"Farree . . . who is Lanti?"

Before he had time to truly align his thoughts, he answered. "I was with him. I think he brought me from another world to the Limits – me and something else that was worth more."

"Tell me," she urged.

He felt himself scowling. To have been awakened out of that dream in order to recall bitter memories was – hurtful.

"How did you know of Lanti?" he demanded.

"I saw him."

Farree hunched his body together as he felt a flow of anger beginning far inside him. "You were in my dream!" he accused her. He had met them mind to mind, yes, but he had never given them the right to monitor him without his knowledge. What more had she read from him that he knew nothing of? He felt as defenseless as he had in the hands of the Commander. At least then they had used a machine and had given him reason to know that he was about to be invaded.