"Nothing!" Her word had the force of an aroused one's oath. "We do not treat with such as these. However, they may force us back into a path we forswore long ago – that we would meet open force with open force. When we chose what lies here" – she touched her forehead with the tip of her finger and then spread out her hand level and empty between them – "against what we might carry thus, the balance shifted and the Scales of Molester were set anew. It is our thought that these invaders, will not be easily turned aside, bemused by illusion. You say they are mind guarded – thus our first defense is negated. Very well, if illusion cannot grip them, then we shall summon the power. These are the hours of the third ring when the power ascends, and during the height of it we must make our move. No – "

She looked straight at Farree and under that regard he felt like a small crouched animal without any burrow in which to hide, as if all he was was spread out before the four for their reading.

"Picture," she ordered, "what you know of these men."

He began with that force which had drawn him forth from shelter, compelling him to deliver himself to the enemy. He continued with his trip in the flitter, his coming to the ruins, and his imprisonment in the tower – then his meeting with the Commander and Sulve. Then, for the first time he was interrupted by a raised hand of one of the men.

"This Sulve has been heard of. He is outwardly a merchant whose ship is in port for repairs."

"I believe him Guild," Farree answered. "They are supposed to have their men in many places – mostly unknown."

"True enough," Lord-One Krip agreed.

"It matters not what he seems to be." The woman sounded impatient now. "Let us know the rest."

So he told the story of his two interrogations, one under a machine which would prove the truth or falsity of his answers. There was a shade of another expression on the face of the Elder, one Farree could not read.

"So they depend always on machines. They have no trained Deliverer with them," she commented. "This machine" – she spoke now to the Lord-One Krip – "such are in use off-world?"

"The Patrol are said to have them, and they are used by the law on several worlds. But what is known to the law sooner or later comes into Guild hands."

"I do not think," the Lady Maelen said, "that they could read Thassa."

"They will not get a chance!" Again the male Elder flashed with some heat.

"Can you," Farree began slowly, one part of him struggling against the other which was all sober reason, "equip one who is not Thassa with false information and plant him to be retaken?"

For a long moment that seemed to stretch and stretch there was quiet in the room. He wanted to cry out he did not mean what he had said, that there was no way he was going to be trapped into returning into the hands of the Commander. For there would be no games played then – his very mind might be peeled and segmented so that the false would be made plain enough to those whose powers he had feared and held in awe all his life.

"I think . . . not!" That was Maelen. "There is Yiktor itself to work for us."

"Perhaps." The woman made a dismissing gesture with her hand. "But the full story is not yet told. What happened then, little one?"

He told of the coming of the bird with Toggor, of how by the smux's help he had set up the trap for the guard. Toggor, as if he knew well he was being discussed, came out of Farree's shirt to sit upon one of those knobby knees, his eyestalks well up and all turned in the direction of the Elders.

For the rest Farree hurried over his climb to the tower top and the nest there. When he spoke of finding the small box, the man among the Elders who had not yet spoken leaned forward and demanded: "There were symbols on this box – you could read them?"

Farree shook his head. "It was very old – "

"That it was!" the man agreed. "We knew not that such still existed. But if it was there, what else may still be ready to hand?"

"How did you know how to use it?" again he asked Farree.

"I did not. It was very old and worn. I forced it open, and the powder in it touched the dried nest stuff and aflamed."

"So. The Scales dipped in your favor then. This is something to be thought on. Only yet your story has no end – give us that, little one."

Farree spoke of his improvised weapons of bone and the assault on his perch, of the strange cloud of smoke which, instead of being wafted away by the wind, had sunk into the courtyard. Then he ended with the message of hope and the coming of the flitter to bear him away.

"Well enough," the Elder who had questioned him about the box said when he finished. "You gave them the truth and it did not serve them; you have escaped them, therefore their wrath, or that of their leader, will be great. I know that we may look forward to some new attack on their part. And since you are not Thassa and so vulnerable to what they may launch in the form of controls . . ." He hesitated.

Farree moved a little on his seat. Uneasiness and wariness arose within him. He had half offered, in spite of all good reason, to be bait, even as the Guild had thought to use him. But they had not accepted that from him. Now – now he must make them understand.

"What if they set some control on me and I prove a key to open your fortress?"

"Forewarned is forearmed," Lord-One Krip made answer. His hand closed about Farree's upper arm and he kept a grip there as if he feared that the hunchback was about to take off forthwith to tempt the Commander and his men into the open.

"There are none that can touch you here now." The Thassa Elder spoke with such conviction that Farree was compelled to believe her. "We have a defense which has not grown any the lesser through the years but stronger, as we have learned more and more concerning our own powers of self."

"They will not give up," Lord-One Krip said slowly. "Even if we see them evacuate the ruins and seemingly depart, we may be sure they have not given up."

"Nor shall we. There will be eyes aloft and eyes afield. Those who go on two wings and those who trot on all fours will keep them ever under eye."

Farree drew a deep breath. The bird which had brought Toggor, Yazz, other animals either linked by mind to – or even exchanged with – a Thassa. What if all the Thassa became one with the birds and the animals of this world? How could those still in human guise know or prepare to defend themselves against such an overthrow of all which was natural by their own thinking? Hand clutched on hand before him. What would it be like to have a fine, well-shaped body like Yazz – to be free of the miserable itching burden always on his back? Could this be done for him? His life as a humanoid had not been such that he would not willingly relinquish it for this other and freer guise.

"Not so!" She had read him, this Thassa Elder. "It is not given for all to make great change. Even the Thassa cannot do that as they please. Would you condemn Yazz to your body then?"

Farree set teeth on his lip and bit hard. All his thoughts had been for himself, that was the truth. No, he could not ask that any – animal or man – take on the burden that he wore.

"You must be a Singer." The Lady Maelen must also have caught those thoughts. "And there must also be to hand one furred or feathered who needs the strength of man – one hurt in mind or greatly beloved to the Singer. It is not an easy thing like putting off one kind of clothing and assuming another." She was kind, but he did not need her kindness, he thought sourly for that moment.

"I have been thinking upon this matter of the Eor-fog," the other Thassa man spoke. "That such a weapon was left in a grok nest is a mystery beyond all mysteries. It has been so many tens of tens of tens of seasons since the last of the weapons was destroyed. Certainly these ruins were built even later as an outpost for the Lord Janger's land. Where did the grok find that? There was nothing else?" He looked to Farree.