"You cried out," the Lady Maelen said slowly. "It was a cry of hurt. I would have given you peace – that is all."

Perhaps she was right and had meant him only good, that he would again feel at ease.

"No!" There was deep concern in her voice, and she put out her hand as if she would gentle him as she might an animal that had been ruthlessly abused.

Only he was no animal! He was as much a man as a Thassa, even if he only held relationship by human standards to the eighth point! Perhaps the Thassa themselves, for all their humanoid appearance, were farther apart from the off-worlders who used that scale than he knew.

"Please." He was not aware that he had shrunk from her touch but maybe he had, for her band fell to her knee. "Please." She spoke the trade speech aloud; perhaps she knew that to mind touch now was more than he would allow. "Bad memories can lighten if they are shared."

"I have nothing to share." He pulled up and faced her almost as if she had been sent by the Commander to win out of him some last scrap of truth. "You know it all. I was with Lanti in the Limits – beyond that there is no memory."

"You were erased?" She was studying him so intently that he longed to be able to enter the wall of the stone chamber to hide. There was a new alertness in her eyes.

"I do not know. I do not care." He said that with all the fierce firmness he could summon. He saw that she would accept it.

"It can be reversed, you know. If you should want – "

"I do not!"

She raised both hands so her fingertips touched her forehead in the way of an oddly formal salute.

"Your pardon, Farree. Know that all will respect your barriers until you give them permission to do otherwise."

"It – is – well . . ." He stumbled a little over that. And remained sitting until she was gone out of the chamber. There was a small cluttering noise and he saw that Toggor was climbing upon his knee. He drew one finger down the back of the bristly shell which was the outer plating of the smux. Did Toggor also know resentment at times when Farree strove to catch his thoughts? What did the animals which the Lady Maelen loved and companioned with – what did they think of that companionship? He knew that Yazz and Bojor welcomed her effusively after they had been separated for a space – that they perhaps companioned with her by choice. Perhaps they welcomed the fact that another life form could communicate with them and that they were not frustrated by a lack of touch. He was no trainer nor owner of animals. Only Toggor.

Now he put out his cupped hands and the smux climbed into the hollow. He raised them so that he could meet him stalked eye to skull-enclosed one on a level.

"How is it, Toggor?" Tentatively Farree tried the mind touch. "How is this for you? Do you feel that I am forcing that on you which you would find freedom from? I am not Russtif to hold you captive, either body or mind."

He received no thought no matter how hazy, only a feeling of peace and contentment as the smux rocked a little from one set of claws to another in his hands.

Chapter 13.

Farree ate, he drank, he slept deeply and dreamlessly. If those of the Guild made any foray into the country of the Thassa, he knew nothing of it. When he at last awoke it was to see a band of clear and clean moonlight across his short legs, feel about him an ingathering of spirit. Had it been the latter which had drawn him out of that deep sleep?

No thoughts touched him directly. Perhaps the Lady Maelen had set a barrier to stop those, as she had promised that he would not be asked more than he wished to give. But, even though none had been sent to arouse him, he was as one hearing distant and summoning music. For just a moment there was a troubling deep in his mind as if something stirred there which might flower if he let it. But instantly that same barrier which he had striven to raise against the Thassa fell into place and he was free.

There was a basin of water in a small side crevice of the cave room and handsful of moss for towels. He shed his sweat-dark clothing and washed the whole of his crooked body. His hump was still unduly tender to the touch, it also itched, as if his pain had abraded the thick, corrugated skin, and he was careful in his drying as far as he could reach.

His shirt was so grimed he hated to re-cover his now clean body with it. But he did not have to. Near the crevice he found a small pair of breeches in the same pattern as those the Thassa wore and a shirt, wide across the shoulders, which gave room for his deformity. A chirping sound broke the silence of the cave and he saw the smux, throwing a grotesque shadow across the beam of moonlight as he came toward him, eyestalks erect.

Once more Farree sensed the aura of well-being and contentment which Toggor broadcast as he came. It would seem that the smux was well pleased with these lodgings, bare as they were. Farree reached for his belt to draw in the generous folds of that shirt when sound rang about him.

It was like the deep note of a huge gong, and his body vibrated with it. The boom did not seem to come from any one place, rather as if it were truly born of the very air about him. Three times it sounded, and he found himself moving out of the cave room as one who had been summoned and had no will except to obey.

He crossed the end of the valley, avoiding the sleeping beasts. Above him stretched a sky, which he twisted his small neck to see the more. There was the full circle of the third ring, and when one looked at it from here it was no true moonlight cast apart by some natural process of Sotrath itself, but rather a rainbow-touched encasement of the lowering moon. His flesh tingled, he felt alive to the last hair on his overlarge head, to the smallest tip of nail on his claw hands. It was as if the body he wore drank the radiance of that light as he would drink, after a long thirst, water from a clear fresh-flowing well.

The light appeared to draw the remainder of the ache from his hump, though the itching of his skin under the shirt grew worse until he longed to draw off the garment and use his nails on his own skin. In spite of that discomfort, his sense of well-being was acute.

There were none of the Thassa in sight. But he could hear again their song, issuing from the hall ahead. Only this time it was not a tale of loss and of long ages, but rather a cry of welcome to something which gave life anew.

Almost he expected to be turned back as he drew into the shadow of the long-eroded doorway. But there were no gatekeepers nor sentries here. The way was open and he passed on, drawn by the cadence of that song for which there were no words he could understand, only the rising melody.

Then he saw that through some ingenious means the light of the third ring was here also, banding across both the four Thassa who stood on the dais and the others who had come to gather below. In the glow their white hair held rainbow sheen; they were each enshrined in an envelope of light which made their bodies look almost tenuous, as if they were now only shadows. No, shadows were of the dark – rather wisps of iridescence.

He saw a Lady Maelen who was different. Her bright hair stirred about her as if each lock had a vibrant spirit of its own. The glow wrapped her round as it did all the others.

Farree halted inside the door and stood watching. Perhaps, in spite of the drawing he had felt within him, he was not one of these – perhaps it was better to keep his distance as a stranger.

The itching on his back grew stronger. He found himself rising on his toes, which were bare against the ancient stone, almost as if he were reaching again for some skyborne aid which would swing him out across that company, lift him even farther into the banded light. He flung his arms wide and lifted his head as far as he could from his crooked shoulders so that the moonglow touched his face. It was more than light now – it was welcoming warmth, like the soft pressure of a friend's hand sweeping aside the tangled hair on his forehead.