POUL ANDERSON

The Queen of Air and Darkness

Poul ANDERSON was born November 25, 1926, in Bristol, Pennsylvania, ofScandinavian parents. Part of his youth was spent in Denmark. He returnedto the United States before World War II, and he sold his first story whilea student at the University of Minnesota. When he graduated.with distinction,in 1948, he decided to try to support himself for a time with his writingbefore seeking employment in his area of specialization, physics. That for atimeis approaching twenty-five years with the end happily not in sight. In 1953Anderson married Karen Kruse, herself an author of fiction and poetry. Theyhave one daughter, Astrid. They make their home in Orinda, California.

Anderson's dazzling versatility as a writer is reflected in James Blish'sdescription of him as ". . . the scientist, the technician, the stylist,the bard, the humanist and the humorist-a non-exhaustive list." He ranks as oneof themost prolific science fiction writers of all times (a recently compiledbibliography, published in the April 1971 issue of The Magazine of Fantasyand Science fiction, fills seven pages!). From poetry to novels to shortstories to nonfiction books and articles on a variety of subjects, hebrilliantlycombines the saga and song of his Scandinavian heritage with the searchingmind and speculative science of the scholar. He also finds time for suchvaried activities as houseboat building, sailing, mountain climbing,gardening, chess, poker, Science Fiction Writers of America, Mystery Writers ofAmerica, and the Society for Creative Anachronism (where he is known as Bela ofEastmarch in itsmedieval tourneys)-another non-exhaustive list.

Under his own name and his two pseudonyms, Winston P. Sanders andMichael Karageorge, he is the author of some fifty books and perhapstwo hundred shorter items. His stories "No Truce with Kings," "TheLongest Voyage" and "The Sharing of Flesh" won Hugo Awards. Hismystery novel Perish by the Sword won the Cock Robin Award. Well-known science fiction novels are Brain Wave, The High Crusade, ThreeHearts and Three Lions, Earthman's Burden (with Gordon R. Dickson), TheBroken Sword, Alter Doomsday and Tau Zero. Recently anthologized stories are"Call Me Joe" (selected for inclusion in the SFWA Hall of Fame, Volume2), "The Man Who Came Early," "Sam Hall," "Kings Who Die" and"Journeys End." His Time Patrol series was collected in Guardians ofTime. Other series concern Nicholas van Rijn, the interstellar trader,Dominic Flandry and Trygve Yamamura.

Anderson's novel The Byworlder was a finalist in the balloting for the 1971Nebula Awards; and his novelette "The Queen of Air and Darkness" wona Nebula Award.

The last glow of the last sunset would linger almost until midwinter. Butthere would be no more day, and the northlands rejoiced. Blossomsopened, flamboyance on firethorn trees, steelflowers rising blue fromthe brok and rainplant that cloaked all hills, shy whiteness of kiss-me-never down in the dales. Flitteries darted among them in iridescentwings; a crownbuck shook his horns and bugled. Between horizons thesky deepened from purple to sable. Both moons were aloft, nearly full,shining frosty on leaves and molten on waters. The shadows they madewere blurred by an aurora, a great blowing curtain of light across halfheaven. Behind it the earliest stars had come out.

A boy and a girl sat on Wolund's Barrow just under the dolmen itupbore. Their hair, which streamed halfway down their backs, showedstartlingly forth, bleached as it was by summer. Their bodies, still darkfrom that season, merged with earth and bush and rock, for they woreonly garlands. He played on a bone flute

and she sang. They had lately become lovers. Their age was about \.sixteen, but they did not know this, considering themselves Out..lingsand thus indifferent to time, remembering little or nothing of how theyhad once dwelt in the lands of men.

His notes piped cold around her voice:

"Cast a spell, weave it well of dust and dew and night and you."

A brook by the grave mound, carrying moonlight down to a hillhiddenriver, answered with its rapids. A flock of hellbats passed black beneaththe aurora.

A shape came bounding over Cloudmoor. It had two arms and' two legs,but the legs were long and claw-footed and feather covered it to the endof a tail and broad wings. The face was half, human, dominated by itseyes. Had Ayoch been able to standwholly erect, he would have reachedto the boy's shoulder.

The girl rose. "He carries a burden," she said. Her vision was not.. meantfor twilight like that of a northland creature born, but she had learnedhow to use every sign her senses gave her. Besides the,fact that ordinarilya pook would fly, there was a heaviness to his haste.

"And he comes from the south." Excitement jumped in the boy, suddenas a green flame that went across the constellation Lyrth. He sped downthe mound. "Ohoi, Ayoch!" he called. "Me here,: Mistherd!"

"And Shadow-of-a-Dream," the girl laughed, following.

The pook halted. He breathed louder than the soughing in the growtharound him. A smell of bruised yerba lifted where he

stood.

"Well met in winterbirth," he whistled. "You can help me bring this toCarheddin."

He held out what he bore. His eyes were yellow lanterns above. It movedarid whimpered.

"Why, a child," Mistherd said."Even as you were, my son, even as you were. Ho, ho, what a snatchl"Ayoch boasted. "They were a score in yon camp by Fallowwood, armed, andbesides watcher engines they had big ugly dogs aprowl while they slept. Icame from above, however, having spied on them till I knew that a handfulof dazedust "

"The poor thing." Shadow-of-a-Dream took the boy and held him to hersmall breasts. "So full of sleep yet, aren't you?" Blindly, he sought anipple.She smiled through the veil of her-hair. "No, I am still too young, and youalready too old. But come, when you wake in Carheddin under the mountain,you shall feast."

"Yo-ah; " said Ayoch very softly. "She is abroad and has heard

and seen. She comes." He crouched down, wings folded. After amoment Mistherd knelt, and then Shadow-of-a-Dream, thoughshe did not let go the child.

The Queen's tall form blocked off the moons. For a while she regarded thethree and their booty. Hill and moor sounds withdrew from their awarenessuntil it seemed they could hear the northlights hiss.

At last Ayoch whispered, "Have I done well, Starmother?"

"If you stole a babe from a camp full of engines," said the beautiful voice,"then they were folk out of the far south who may not endure it as meeklyas yeomen."

"But what can they do, Snowmaker?" the pook asked. "How can they trackus?"

Mistherd lifted his head and spoke in pride. "Also, now they too have feltthe awe of us."

"And he is a cuddly dear," Shadow-of-a-Dream said. "And we need more likehim, do we not, Lady Sky?"

"It had to happen in some twilight," agreed she who stood above. "Takehim onward and care for him. By this sign," which she made, "is he claimedfor the Dwellers."

Their joy was freed. Ayoch cartwheeled over the ground till he reached ashiverleaf. There he swarmed up the trunk and out on a limb, perched halfhidden by unrestful pale foliage, and crowed.

Boy and girl bore the child toward Carheddin at an easy distancedevouringlope which let him pipe and hey sing:

"Wahaii, wahaii!

Wayala, laii! -

Wing on the windhigh over heaven,shrilly shrieking,rush with the rainspears,tumble through tumult,drift to the moonhoar trees and the dream-heavyshadows beneath them,and rock in, be one with the clinking wavelets oflakes where the starbeams drown."

*

As she entered, Barbro Cullen felt, through all grief and fury, stabbed bydismay. The room was unkempt. Journals, tapes, reels, codices, file boxes,bescribbled papers were piled on every table. Dust filmed most shelves andcorners. Against one wall stood a laboratory setup, microscope andanalytical equipment. She recognized it as compact and efficient, but it wasnot what you would expect in an office, and it gave the air a faint chemicalreek. The rug was threadbare, the furniture shabby.

This was her final chance?

Then Eric Sherrinford approached. "Good day, Mrs. Cullen," he said. Histone was crisp, his handclasp firm. His faded gripsuit didn't bother her.Shewasn't inclined to fuss about her own appearance except on specialoccasions. (And would she ever again have one, unless she got back Jimmy?)What she observed was a cat's personal neatness.

A smile radiated in crow's feet from his eyes. "Forgive my bachelorhousekeeping. On Beowulf we have-we had, at any ratemachines for that, soI never acquired the habit myself, and I don't want a hireling disarrangingmy tools. More convenient to work out of my apartment than keep aseparate office. Won't you be seated?""No, thanks. I couldn't," she mumbled.

"I understand. But if you'll excuse me, I function best in a relaxedposition."

He jackknifed into a lounger. One long shank crossed the other knee.He drew forth a pipe and stuffed it from a pouch. Barbro wondered whyhe took tobacco in so ancient a way. Wasn't Beowulf supposed to havethe up-to-date equipment that they still couldn't afford to build onRoland? Well, of course old customs might survive anyhow. Theygenerally did in colonies, she remembered reading. People had movedstarward in the hope of preserving such outmoded things as theirmother tongues or constitutional government or rational-technologicalcivilization ....

Sherrinford pulled her up from the confusion of her weariness. "Youmust give me the details of your case, Mrs. Cullen. You've simply toldme your son was kidnapped and your local constabulary did nothing.Otherwise, I know just a few obvious facts, such as your being widowedrather than divorced; and you're the daughter of outwayers in Olgalvanoff Land who, nevertheless, kept in close telecommunication withChristmas Landing; and you're trained in one of the biologicalprofessions; and you had several years' hiatus in field work untilrecently you started again."

She gaped at the high-cheeked, beak-nosed, black-haired and gray-eyedcountenance. His lighter made a scrit and a flare which seemed to fill theroom. Quietness dwelt on this height above the city, and winter duskwas seeping through the windows. "How in cosmos do you know that?"she heard herself exclaim.

He shrugged and fell into the lecturer's manner for which he wasnotorious. "My work depends on noticing details and fitting themtogether. In more than a hundred years on Roland, tending to clusteraccording to their origins and thought habits, people have developedregional accents. You have a trace of the Olgan burr, but you nasalizeyour vowels in the style of this area, though you live in Portolondon-That suggests steady childhood exposure to metropolitan speech. Youwere part of Matsuyama's expedition, you told me, and took your boyalong. They wouldn't have allowed any ordinary technician to do that;hence, you had to be valuable

enough to get away with it. The team was conducting ecological'research; therefore, you must be in the life sciences. For the samereason, you must have had previous field experience. But your skin isfair, showing none of the leatheriness one gets from prolongedexposureto this sun. Accordingly, you must have been mostly

indoors for a good while before you went on your ill-fated trip. As: forwidowhood-you never mentioned a husband to me, but you have had aman whom you thought so highly of that you still wear both thewedding and the engagement ring he gave you."

Her sight blurred and stung. The last of those words had brought Timback, huge, ruddy, laughterful and gentle. She must turn from this otherperson and stare outward. "Yes," she achieved saying, "you're right."

The apartment occupied a hilltop above Christmas Landing Beneath itthe city dropped away in walls, roofs, archaistic chimneys and lamplitstreets, goblin lights of human-piloted vehicles,' to the harbor, thesweep of Venture Bay, ships bound to and from the Sunward Islands andremoter regions of the Boreal Ocean, which glimmered like mercury inthe afterglow of Charlemagne. Oliver was swinging rapidly higher, amottled orange disc a full degree wide; closer to the zenith which itcould never reach, it would shine the color of ice. Alde, half theseeming size, was a thin slow crescent near Sirius, which sheremembered was near Sol, but you couldn't see Sol without a telescope

"Yes," she said around the pain in her throat, "my husband is about fouryears dead. I was carrying our first child when he was killed by astampeding monocerus. We'd been married three years before. Metwhile we were both at the University-'casts from School Central canonly supply a basic education, you know-We founded our own team todo ecological studies under contractyou know, can a certain area besettled while maintaining a balance of nature, what crops will grow,what hazards, that sort of question-Well, afterward I did lab work for afisher co-op in Portolondon. But the monotony, the . . . shut-in-ness .. . was eating me away. Professor Matsuyama offered me a position onthe team he was organizing to examine Commissioner Hauch Land. Ithought, God help me, I thought Jimmy-Tim wanted him named James,once the tests showed it'd be a boy, after his own father and because of'Timmy and Jimmy' and-oh, I thought Jimmy could safely come along. Icouldn't bear to leave him behind for months, not at his age. We couldmake sure he'd never wander out of camp. What could hurt him inside it?I had never believed those stories about the Outlings stealing humanchildren. I supposed parents were trying to hide from themselves the factthey'd been careless, they'd let a kid get lost in the woods or attacked byapack of satans or- Well, I learned better, Mr. Sherrinford. The guardrobots were evaded and the dogs were drugged and when I woke, Jimmywas gone."

He regarded her through the smoke from his pipe. Barbro Engdahl Cullenwas a big woman of thirty or so (Rolandic years, he reminded himself,ninety-five percent of Terrestrial, not the same as Beowulfan years),broad-shouldered, long-legged, full-breasted, supple of stride; her face waswide, straight nose, straightforward hazel eyes, heavy but mobile mouth;her hair was reddish-brown, cropped below the ears, her voice husky, hergarment a plain street robe. To still the writhing of her fingers, he askedskeptically, "Do you now believe in the Outlings?"

"No. I'm just not so sure as I was." She swung about with half a glare forhim. "And we have found traces."

"Bits of fossils," he nodded. "A few artifacts of a neolithic sort. Butapparently ancient, as if the makers died ages ago. Intensive search hasfailed to turn up any real evidence for their survival."

"How intensive can search be, in a summer-stormy, wintergloomywilderness around the North Pole?" she demanded. "When we are, howmany, a million people on an entire planet, half of us crowded into thisone city?"

"And the rest crowding this one habitable continent," he pointed out.

"Arctica covers five million square kilometers," she flung back. "TheArctic Zone proper covers a fourth of it. We haven't the industrial baseto establish satellite monitor stations, build aircraft

we can trust in those parts, drive roads through the damned darklands andestablish permanent bases and get to know them and tame them. GoodChrist, generations of lonely outwaymen told stories about Graymantle,and the beast was never seen by a I proper scientist till last year!"

"Still, you continue to doubt the reality of the Outlings?" -

"Well, what about a secret cult among humans, born of isolation andignorance, lairing in the wilderness, stealing children when they can for-"She swallowed. Her head dropped. "But you're supposed to be the expert."

"From what you told me over the visiphone, the Portolondonconstabulary questions the accuracy of the report your group ` made,thinks the lot of you were hysterical, claims you must have omitted a dueprecaution, and the child toddled away and was lost beyond your finding."

His dry words pried the horror out of her. Flushing, she snapped, "Likeany settler's kid? No. I didn't simply yell. I consulted Data Retrieval. Afew too many such cases are recorded for accident to be a very plausibleexplanation. And shall we totally ignore the frightened stories aboutreappearances? But when I t went back to the constabulary with my facts,they brushed me off. _ I suspect that was not entirely because they'reundermanned. I think they're afraid too. They're recruited from countryboys, and .. Portolondon lies near the edge of the unknown."

Her energy faded. "Roland hasn't got any central police force," shefinished drably. "You're my last hope."

The man puffed smoke into twilight, with which it blent, before he said ina kindlier voice than hitherto: "Please don't make it a high hope, Mrs.Cullen. I'm the solitary private investigator on this world, having noresources beyond myself, and a newcomer to boot."

"How long have you been here?"

"Twelve years. Barely time to get a little familiarity with the relativelycivilized coastlands. You settlers of a century or more- ' what do you,even, know about Arctica's interior?"Sherrinford sighed. "I'll take the case, charging no more than I must,mainly for the sake of the experience," he said. "But only if you'll bemy guide and assistant, however painful it will be for you."

"Of course! I dreaded waiting idle. Why me, though?"

"hiring someone else as well qualified would be prohibitivelyexpensive, on a pioneer planet where every hand has a thousandurgent tasks to do. Besides, you have a motive. And I'll need that. 1,who was born on another world altogether strange to this one, itselfaltogether strange to Mother Earth, I am too dauntingly aware of howhandicapped we are."

Night gathered upon Christmas Landing. The air stayed mild, butglimmer-lit tendrils of fog, sneaking through the streets, had a coldlook, and colder yet was the aurora where it shuddered between themoons. The woman drew closer to the man in this darkening room,surely not aware that she did, until he switched on a Auoropanel. Thesame knowledge of Roland's aloneness was in both of them.

One light-year is not much as galactic distances go. You could walk itin about 270 million years, beginning at the middle of the PermianEra, when dinosaurs belonged to the remote future, and continuing tothe present day when spaceships cross even greater reaches. But starsin our neighborhood average some nine lightyears apart, and barelyone percent of them have planets which are man-habitable, and speedsare limited to less than that of radiation. Scant help is given byrelativistic time contraction and suspended animation en route.' Thesemake the journeys seem short, but history meanwhile does not stop athome.

Thus voyages from sun to sun will always be few. Colonists will bethose who have extremely special reasons for going. They will takealong germ plasm for exogenetic cultivation of domestic plants andanimals-and of human infants, in order that population can grow fastenough to escape death through genetic drift. After all, they cannotrely on further immigration. Two or three

times a century, a ship may call from some other colony. (Not fromEarth. Earth has long ago sunk into alien concerns.) Its place of originwill be an old settlement. The young ones are in no position to buildand man interstellar vessels.

Their very survival, let alone their eventual modernization, is indoubt. The founding fathers have had to take what they could get in auniverse not especially designed for man.

Consider, for example, Roland. It is among the rare happy finds, aworld where humans can live, breathe, eat the food, drink the water,walk unclad if they choose, sow their crops, pasture their beasts, digtheir mines, erect their homes, raise their children and grandchildren.It is worth crossing three-quarters of a light-century to preservecertain dear values and strike new roots into the soil of Roland.

But the star Charlemagne is of type F9, forty percent brighter thanSol, brighter still in the treacherous ultraviolet and wilder still in thewind of charged particles that seethes from it. The planet has aneccentric orbit. In the middle of the short but furious northernsummer, which includes periastron, total insolation is more thandouble what Earth gets; in the depth of the long northern winter, it isbarely less than Terrestrial average.

Native life is abundant everywhere. But lacking elaborate machinery,not yet economically possible to construct for more than a fewspecialists, man can only endure the high latitudes. A tendegree axialtilt, together with the orbit, means that the northern part of theArctican continent spends half its year in unbroken sunlessness.Around the South Pole lies an empty ocean.

Other differences from Earth might superficially seem moreimportant. Roland has two moons, small but close, to evoke clashingtides. It rotates once in thirty-two hours, which is endlessly, subtlydisturbing to organisms evolved through gigayears of a quickerrhythm. The weather patterns are altogether unterrestrial. The globeis a mere 9500 kilometers in diameter; its surface gravity is 0.42 X980 cm/sect; the sea level air pressure is slightly above one Earthatmosphere. (For actually Earth is the freak, andman exists because a cosmic accident blew away most of the gas that abody its size ought to have kept, as Venus has done.)

However, Homo can truly be called sapiens when he practices hisspecialty of being unspecialized. His repeated attempts to freezehimself into an all-answering pattern or culture or ideology, orwhatever he has named it, have repeatedly brought ruin. Give him thepragmatic business of making his living, and he will usually do ratherwell. fie adapts, within broad limits.

These limits are set by such factors as his need for sunlight and hisbeing, necessarily and forever, a part of the life that surrounds him anda creature of the spirit within.

Portolondon thrust docks, boats, machinery, warehouses into the Gulfof Polaris. Behind them huddled the dwellings of its five thousandpermanent inhabitants: concrete walls, storm shutters, high-peaked tileroofs. The gaiety of their paint looked forlorn amidst lamps; this townlay past the Arctic Circle.

Nevertheless Sherrinford remarked, "Cheerful place, eh? The kind ofthing I came to Roland looking for."

Barbro made no reply. The days in Christmas Landing, while he madehis preparations, had drained her. Gazing out the dome of the taxi thatwas whirring them downtown from the hydrofoil that brought them,she supposed he meant the lushness of forest and meadows along theroad, brilliant hues and phosphorescence of flowers in gardens, clamorof wings overhead. Unlike Terrestrial flora in cold climates, Arcticanvegetation spends every, daylit hour in frantic growth and energystorage. Not till summer's fever gives place to gentle winter does itbloom and fruit; and estivating animals rise from their dens andmigratory birds come home.

The view was lovely, she had to admit: beyond the trees, a spaciousnessclimbing toward remote heights, silvery-gray under a moon, an aurora,the diffuse radiance from a sun just below the horizon.

Beautiful as a hunting satan, she thought, and as terrible. Thatwilderness had stolen Jimmy. She wondered it she would at least

be given to find his little bones and take them to his father.

Abruptly she realized that she and Sherrinford were at their hotel andthat he had been speaking of the town. Since it was next in size afterthe capital, he must have visited here often before. The streets werecrowded and noisy; signs flickered, music blared from shops, taverns,restaurants, sports centers, dance halls; vehicles were jammed down tomolasses speed; the several-storieshigh office buildings stood aglow.Portolondon linked an enormous hinterland to the outside world. Downthe Gloria River came timber rafts, ores, harvest of farms whoseowners were slowly making Rolandic life serve them, meat and ivoryand furs gathered by rangers in the mountains beyond Troll Scarp. Infrom the sea came coastwise freighters, the fishing fleet, produce ofthe Sunward Islands, plunder of whole continents further south wherebold men adventured. It clanged in Portolondon, laughed, blustered,swaggered, connived, robbed, preached, guzzled, swilled, toiled,dreamed, lusted, built, destroyed, died, was born, was happy, angry,sorrowful, greedy, vulgar, loving, ambitious, human. Neither the sun'sblaze elsewhere nor the half year's twilight here-wholly night aroundmidwinter-was going to stay man's hand.

Or so everybody said.

Everybody except those who had settled in the darklands. Barbro usedto take for granted that they were evolving curious customs, legendsand superstitions, which would die when the Outway had beencompletely mapped and controlled. Of late, she had wondered. PerhapsSherrinford's hints, about a change in his own attitude brought about byhis preliminary research; were responsible.

Or perhaps she just needed something to think about besides howJimmy, the day before he went, when she asked him whether he wantedrye or French bread for a sandwich, answered in great solemnity-he wasbecoming interested in the alphabet "I'll have a slice of what we peoplecall the F bread."

She scarcely noticed getting out of the taxi, registering, beingconducted to a primitively furnished room. But after she unpacked, sheremembered Sherrinford had suggested a confidential conference. Shewent down the hall and knocked on his door. Her knuckles sounded lessloud than her heart.

He opened the door, finger on lips, and gestured her toward a corner.Her temper bristled until she saw the image of Chief Constable Dawsonin the visiphone. Sherrinford must have chimed him up and must havea reason to keep her out of scanner range. She found a chair andwatched, nails digging into knees.

The detective's lean length refolded itself. "Pardon the interruption,"he said. "A man mistook the number. Drunk, by the indications."

Dawson chuckled. "We get plenty of those." Barbro recalled hisfondness for gabbing. He tugged the beard which he affected, as if hewere an outwayer instead of a townsman. "No harm in them as a rule.They only have a lot of voltage to discharge, after weeks or months inthe backlands.".

"I've gathered that that environment-foreign in a million major andminor ways to the one that created man-I've gathered that it does doodd things to the personality." Sherrinford tamped his pipe. "Ofcourse, you know my practice has been confined to urban and suburbanareas. Isolated garths seldom need private investigators. Now thatsituation appears to have changed. I called to ask you for advice."

"Glad to help," Dawson said. "I've not forgotten what you did for us inthe de Tahoe murder case." Cautiously: "Better explain your problemfirst."

Sherrinford struck fire. The smoke that followed cut through the greenodors-even here, a paved pair of kilometers from the nearest woods-that drifted past traffic rumble through a crepuscular window. "This ismore a scientific mission than a search for an absconding debtor or anindustrial spy," he drawled. "I'm looking into two possibilities: that anorganization, criminal or religious or whatever, has long been activeand steals infants; or that the Outlings of folklore are real."

"Huh?" On Dawson's face Barbro read as much dismay as surprise."You can't be serious!"

"Can't I?" Sherrinford smiled. "Several generations' worth of reportsshouldn't be dismissed out of hand. Especially not when they becomemore frequent and consistent in the course of time, not less. Nor canwe ignore the documented loss of babies and small children, amountingby now to over a hundred, and never a trace found afterward. Nor thefinds which demonstrate that an intelligent species once inhabitedArctica and may still haunt the interior."

Dawson leaned forward as if to climb out of the screen. "Who engagedyou?" he demanded. "That Cullen woman? We were sorry for her,naturally, but she wasn't making sense, and when she got downrightabusive-"

"Didn't her companions, reputable scientists, confirm her story?"

"No story to confirm. Look, they had the place ringed with detectorsand alarms, and they kept mastiffs. Standard procedure in countrywhere a hungry sauroid or whatever might happen by Nothing could'veentered unbeknownst."

"On the ground. flow about a flyer landing in the middle of camp?"

"A man in a copter rig would've roused everybody."

"A winged being might be quieter."

"A living flyer that could lift a three-year-old boy? Doesn't exist."

"Isn't in the scientific literature, you mean, Constable. RememberGraymantle; remember how little we know about Roland, a planet, anentire world. Such birds do exist on Beowulf-and on Rustum, I've read. Imade a calculation from the local ratio of air density to gravity, and,yes, it's marginally possible here too. The child could have been carriedoff for a short distance before wing muscles were exhausted and thecreature must descend."

Dawson snorted. "First it landed and walked into the tent wheremother and boy were asleep. Then it walked away, totinghim, after it couldn't fly further. Does that sound like a bird of prey?And the victim didn't cry out, the dogs didn't bark!"

"As a matter of fact," Sherrinford said, "those inconsistencies are themost interesting and convincing features of the whole account. You'reright, it's hard to see how a human kidnapper could get in undetected,and an eagle type of creature wouldn't operate in that fashion. But noneof this applies to a winged intelligent being. The boy could have beendrugged. Certainly the dogs showed signs of having been."

"The dogs showed signs of having overslept. Nothing had disturbedthem. The kid wandering by wouldn't do so. We don't need to assumeone damn thing except, first, that he got restless and, second, that thealarms were a bit sloppily rigged-seeing as how no danger was expectedfrom inside camp-and let him pass out. And, third, I hate to speak thisway, but we must assume the poor tyke starved or was killed."

Dawson paused before adding: "If we had more staff, we could have giventhe affair more time. And would have, of course. We did make an aerialsweep, which risked the lives of the pilots, using instruments whichwould've sported the kid anywhere in a fiftykilometer radius, unless hewas dead. You know how sensitive thermal analyzers are. We drew acomplete blank. We have more important jobs than to hunt for thescattered pieces of a corpse."

He finished brusquely. "If Mrs. Cullen's hired you, my advice is you findan excuse to quit. Better for her, too. She's got to come to terms withreality."

Barbro checked a shout by biting her tongue.

"Oh, this is merely the latest disappearance of the series," Sherrinfordsaid. She didn't understand how he could maintain his easy tone whenJimmy. was lost. "More thoroughly recorded than any before, thus moresuggestive. Usually an outwayer family has given a tearful but undetailedaccount of their child who vanished and must have been stolen by theOld Folk. Sometimes, years later, they'd tell about glimpses of what theyswore must have been the grown child, not really human any longer,flitting past in

murk or peering through, a window or working mischief upon them. Asyou say, neither the authorities nor the scientists have had personnel orresources to mount a proper investigation. But as I say, the matterappears to be worth investigating. Maybe a private party like myself cancontribute."

"Listen, most of us constables grew up in the outway. We don't just ridepatrol and answer emergency calls; we go back there for holidays andreunions. If any gang of . . . of human sacrificers was around, we'dknow."

"I realize that. I also realize that the people you came from have awidespread and deep-seated belief in nonhuman beings with supernaturalpowers. Many actually go through rites and make offerings to propitiatethem."

"I know what you're leading up to," Dawson fleered. "I've heard itbefore, from a hundred sensationalists. The aborigines are the Outlings. Ithought better of you. Surely you've visited a museumų or three, surelyyou've read literature from planets which do have natives-or damn andblast, haven't you ever applied that logic of yours?"

He wagged a finger. "Think," he said. "What have we in fact discovered?A few pieces of worked stone; a few megaliths that might be artificial;scratchings on rock that seem to show plants and animals, though notthe way any human culture would ever have shown them; traces of firesand broken bones; other fragments of bone that seem as if they might'vebelonged to thinking creatures, as if they might've been inside fingers oraround big brains. If so, however, the owners looked nothing like men.Or angels, for that matter. Nothing! The most anthropoidreconstruction I've seen shows a kind of two-legged crocagator.

"Wait, let me finish. The stories about the Outlings-oh, I've heard themtoo, plenty of them. I believed them when I was a kid -the stories tellhow there're different kinds, some winged, some not, some half human,some completely human except maybe for being too handsome-It'sfairyland from ancient Earth all over again. Isn't it? I got interestedonce and dug into the HeritageLibrary microfiles, and be damned if I didn't find almost the identicalyarns, told by peasants centuries before spaceflight.

"None of it squares with the scanty relics we have, if they are relics, orwith the fact that no area the size of Arctica could spawn a dozendifferent intelligent species, or . . . hellfire, man, with the way yourcommon sense tells you aborigines would behave when humans arrived!"

Sherrinford nodded. "Yes, yes," he said. "I'm less sure than you that thecommon sense of nonhuman beings is precisely like our own. I've seenso much variation within mankind. But, granted, your arguments arestrong. Roland's too few scientists have more pressing tasks thantracking down the origins of what is, as you put it, a revived medievalsuperstition."

He cradled his pipe bowl in both hands and peered into the tiny hearth ofit. "Perhaps what interests me most," he said softly, "is why-across thatgap of centuries, across a barrier of machine civilization and its utterlyantagonistic world view-no continuity of tradition whatsoever-why havehardheaded, technologically organized, reasonably well-educatedcolonists here brought back from its grave a belief in the Old Folk'"

"I suppose eventually, if the University ever does develop thepsychology department they keep talking about, I suppose eventuallysomebody will get a thesis out of your question." Dawson spoke in ajagged voice, and he gulped when Sherrinford replied:

"I propose to begin now. In Commissioner Hauch Land, since that'swhere the latest incident occurred. Where can I rent a vehicle?"

"Uh, might be hard to do-"

"Come, come. Tenderfoot or not, I know better. In an economy ofscarcity, few people own heavy equipment. But since it's needed, it canalways be rented. I want a camper bus with a ground-effect drive suitablefor every kind of terrain. And I want certain equipment installed whichI've brought along, and the top canopy section replaced by a gun turretcontrollable from the driver's seat. But I'll supply the weapons. Besidesrifles and pistols

of my own, I've arranged to borrow some artillery from ChristmasLanding's police arsenal."

"Hoy? Are you genuinely intending to make ready for . . . a war . . .against a myth?"

"Let's say I'm taking out insurance, which isn't terribly expensive,against a remote possibility. Now, besides the bus, what about a lightaircraft carried piggyback for use in surveys?"

"No." Dawson sounded more positive than hitherto. "That's asking fordisaster. We can have you flown to a base camp in a large plane whenthe weather report's exactly right. But the pilot will have to fly back atonce, before the weather turns wrong again. Meteorology'sunderdeveloped on Roland; the air's especially treacherous this time ofyear, and we're not tooled up to produce aircraft that can outlive everysurprise." He drew breath. "Have you no idea of how fast a whirly-whirlycan hit, or what size hailstones might strike from a clear sky, or-P Onceyou're there, man, you stick to the ground." He hesitated. "That's animportant reason our information is so scanty about the outway and itssettlers are so isolated."

Sherrinford laughed ruefully. "Well, I suppose if details are what I'mafter, I must creep along anyway."

"You'll waste a lot of time," Dawson said. "Not to mention your client'smoney. Listen, I can't forbid you to chase shadows, but-"

.

The discussion went on for almost an hour. When the screen finallyblanked, Sherrinford rose, stretched and walked toward Barbro. Shenoticed anew his peculiar gait. He had come from a planet with a fourthagain of Earth's gravitational drag, to one where weight was less thanhalf Terrestrial. She wondered if he had flying dreams.

"I apologize for shuffling you off like that," he said. "I didn't expectto reach him at once. He was quite truthful about how busy he is. Buthaving made contact, I didn't want to remind him overmuch of you. Hecan dismiss my project as a futile fantasy which I'll soon give- up. But hemight have frozen completely, might even have put up obstacles beforeus, if he'd realizedthrough you how determined we are."

"Why should he care?" she asked in her bitterness.

"Fear of consequences, the worse because it is unadmitted fear ofconsequences, the more terrifying because they are unguessable."Sherrinford's gaze went to the screen, and thence out the window tothe aurora pulsing in glacial blue and white immensely far overhead. "Isuppose you saw I was talking to a frightened man. Down underneathhis conventionality and scoffing, he. believes in the Outlings-oh, yes,he believes."

The feet of Mistherd flew over yerba and outpaced windblowndriftweed. Beside him, black and misshapen, hulked Nagrim the nicor,whose earthquake weight left a swath of crushed plants. Behind,luminous blossoms of a firethorn shone through the twining, trailingoutlines of Morgarel the wraith.

Here Cloudmoor rose in a surf of hills and thickets. The air lay quiet,now and then carrying the distance-muted howl of a beast. It wasdarker than usual at winterbirth, the moons being down and aurora awan flicker above the mountains on the northern world edge. But thismade the stars keen, and their numbers crowded heaven, and GhostRoad shone among them as if it, like the leafage beneath, were pavedwith dew.

"Yonder!" bawled Nagrim. All four of his arms pointed. The party hadtopped a ridge. Far off glimmered a spark. "Noah, hoah! Ull we rightoff stamp dem flat, or pluck derv apart slow?"

We shall do nothing of the sort, bonebrain, Morgarel's answer slidthrough their heads. Not unless they attack us, and they will not unlesswe make them aware of us, and her command is that we spy out theirpurposes.

"Gr-r-rum-m-m. I know deir aim. Cut down trees, stick plows in land,sow deir cursed seed in de clods and in deir shes. 'Less we drive deminto de bitterwater, and soon, soon, dey'll wax too strong for us."

"Not too strong for the Queen!" Mistherd protested, shocked.

Yet they do have new powers, it seems, Morgarel reminded

him. Carefully must we probe them.

"Den carefully can we step on dem?" asked Nagrim.

The question woke a grin out of Mistherd's own uneasiness. He slappedthe scaly back. "Don't talk, you," he said. "It hurts my ears. Northink; that hurts your head. Come, run!"

Ease yourself, Morgarel scolded. You have too much life in you,human-born.

Mistherd made a face at the wraith, but obeyed to the extent ofslowing down and picking his way through what cover the countryafforded. For he traveled on behalf of the Fairest, to learn what hadbrought a pair of mortals questing hither.

Did they seek that boy whom Ayoch stole? (He continued to weep forhis mother, though less and less often as the marvels of Carheddinentered him.) Perhaps. A birdcraft had left them and their car at thenow-abandoned campsite, from which they had followed an outwardspiral. But when no trace of the cub had appeared inside a reasonabledistance, they did not call to be flown home. And this wasn't becauseweather forbade the farspeaker waves to travel, as was frequently thecase. No, instead the couple set off toward the mountains ofMoonhorn. Their course would take them past a few outlying invadersteadings and on into realms untrodden by their race.

So this was no ordinary survey. Then what was it?

Mistherd understood now why she who reigned had made her adoptedmortal children learn, or retain, the clumsy language of theirforebears. He had hated that drill, wholly foreign to Dweller ways. Ofcourse, you obeyed her, and in time you saw how wise she had been ....

-

Presently he left Nagrim behind a rock-the nicor would only be usefulin a fight-and crawled from bush to bush until he lay within man-lengths of the humans. A rainplant drooped over him, leaves soft onhis bare skin, and clothed him in darkness. Morgarel floated to thecrown of a shiverleaf, whose unrest would better conceal his flimsyshape. He'd not be much help either. And that was the mosttroublous, the almost appalling thing here. Wraithswere among those who could not just sense and send thoughts, but castillusions. Morgarel had reported that this time his power seemed torebound off an invisible cold wall around the car.

Otherwise the male and female had set up no guardian engines andkept no dogs. Belike they supposed none would be needed, since theyslept in the long vehicle which bore them. But such contempt of theQueen's strength could not be tolerated, could it?

Metal sheened faintly by the light of their campfire. They sat oneither side, wrapped in coats against a coolness that Mistherd, naked,found mild. The male drank smoke. The female stared past him into adusk which her flame-dazzled eyes must see as thick gloom. Thedancing glow brought her vividly forth. Yes, to judge from Ayoch'stale, she was the dam of the new cub.

Ayoch had wanted to come too, but the Wonderful One forbade.Pooks couldn't hold still long enough for such a mission.

The man sucked on his pipe. His cheeks thus pulled into shadow whilethe light flickered across nose and brow, he looked disquietingly like ashearbill about to stoop on prey.

'-No, I tell you again, Barbro, I have no theories," he was saying."When facts are insufficient, theorizing is ridiculous at best, misleadingat worst."

"Still, you must have some idea of what you're doing," she said. It wasplain that they had threshed this out often before. No Dweller could beas persistent as she or as patient as he. "That gear you packed-thatgenerator you keep running-"

"I have a working hypothesis or two, which suggested what equipmentI ought to take."

"Why won't you tell me what the hypotheses are?"

"They themselves indicate that that might be inadvisable at thepresent time. I'm still feeling my way into the labyrinth. And I haven'thad a chance yet to hook everything up. In fact, we're really onlyprotected against so-called telepathic influence-"

"What?" She started. "Do you mean . . . those legends about how theycan read minds too . . ." Her words trailed off and her gaze sought thedarkness beyond his shoulders.

He leaned forward. His tone lost its clipped rapidity, grew earnest andsoft. "Barbro, you're racking yourself to pieces. Which is no help toJimmy if he's alive, the more so when you may well be badly neededlater on. We've a long trek before us, and you'd better settle into it."

She nodded jerkily and caught her lip between her teeth for a momentbefore she answered, -'I'm trying."

He smiled around his pipe. "I expect you'll succeed. You don't strikeme as a quitter or a whiner or an enjoyer of misery."

She dropped a hand to the pistol at her belt. Her voice changed; itcame out of her throat like knife from sheath. "When we find them,they'll know what I am. What humans are."

"Put anger aside also," the man urged. "We can't afford emotions. Ifthe Outlings are real, as I told you I'm provisionally assuming, they'refighting for their homes." After a short stillness he added: "I like tothink that if the first explorers had found live natives, men would nothave colonized Roland. But too late now. We can't go back if wewanted to. It's a bitter-end struggle, against an enemy so crafty thathe's even hidden from us the fact that he is waging war."

"Is he? I mean, skulking, kidnapping an occasional child-"

"That's part of my hypothesis. I suspect those aren't harassments,they're tactics employed in a chillingly subtle strategy."

The fire sputtered and sparked. The man smoked awhile, brooding,until he went on:

"I didn't want to raise your hopes or excite you unduly while you hadto wait on me, first in Christmas Landing, then in Portolondon.Afterward we were busy satisfying ourselves that Jimmy had beentaken further from camp than he could have wandered beforecollapsing. So I'm only now telling you how thoroughly I studiedavailable material on the . . . Old Folk. Besides, at first I did it on theprinciple of eliminating every imaginable possibility, however absurd. Iexpected no result other than final disproof. But I went througheverything, relics, analyses, histories, journalistic accounts,monographs; I talked to outwayers who happened to bein town and to what scientists we have who've taken any interest inthe matter. I'm a quick study. I Hatter myself I became as expert asanyone-though God knows there's little to be expert on. Furthermore,I, a comparative stranger to Roland, maybe looked on the problemwith fresh eyes. And a pattern emerged for me.

"If the aborigines had become extinct, why hadn't they left moreremnants? Arctica isn't enormous, and it's fertile for Rolandic life. Itought to have supported a population whose artifacts ought to haveaccumulated over millennia. I've read that on Earth, literally tens ofthousands of paleolithic hand axes were found, more by chance thanarchaeology.

"Very well. Suppose the relics and fossils were deliberately removed,between the time the last survey party left and the first colonizingships arrived. I did find some support for that idea in the diaries of theoriginal explorers. They were too preoccupied with checking thehabitability of the planet to make catalogues of primitive monuments.However, the remarks they wrote down indicate they saw much morethan later arrivals did. Suppose what we have found is just what theremovers overlooked or didn't get around to.

"That argues a sophisticated mentality, thinking in long-range terms,doesn't it? Which in turn argues that the Old Folk were not merehunters or neolithic farmers."

"But nobody ever saw buildings or machines or any such thing," Barbroobjected.

"No. Most likely the natives didn't go through our kind of metallurgic-industrial evolution. I can conceive of other paths to take. Their full-Hedged civilization might have begun, rather than ended, in biologicalscience and technology. It might have developed potentialities of thenervous system, which might be greater in their species than in man.We have those abilities to some degree ourselves, you realize. Adowser, for instance, actually senses variations in the local magneticfield caused by a water table. However, in us, these talents aremaddeningly rare and tricky. So we took our business elsewhere. Whoneeds to be a

telepath, say, when he has a visiphone? The Old Folk may have seen itthe other way around. The artifacts of their civilization may havebeen, may still be unrecognizable to men."

"They could have identified themselves to the men, though," Barbrosaid. "Why didn't they?"

"I can imagine any number of reasons. As, they could have had a badexperience with interstellar visitors earlier in their history. Ours isscarcely the sole race that has spaceships. However, I told you I don'ttheorize in advance of the facts. Let's say no more than that the OldFolk, if they exist, are alien to us."

"For a rigorous thinker, you're spinning a mighty thin thread."

"I've admitted this is entirely provisional." He squinted at her througha roil of campfire smoke. "You came to me, Barbro, insisting in theteeth of officialdom that your boy had been stolen, but your own talkabout cultist kidnappers was ridiculous. Why are you reluctant to admitthe reality of nonhumans?"

"In spite of the fact that Jimmy's being alive probably depends on it,"she sighed. "I know." A shudder. "Maybe I don't dare admit it."

"I've said nothing thus far that hasn't been speculated about in print,"he told her. "A disreputable speculation, true. In a hundred years,nobody has found valid evidence for the Outlings being more than asuperstition. Still, a few people have declared it's at least possible thatintelligent natives are at large in the wilderness."

"I know," she repeated. "I'm not sure, though, what has made you,overnight, take those arguments seriously."

"Well, once you got me started thinking, it occurred to me thatRoland's outwayers are not utterly isolated medieval crofters. Theyhave books, telecommunications, power tools, motor vehicles; aboveall, they have a modern science-oriented education. Why should theyturn superstitious? Something must be causing it." He stopped. "I'dbetter not continue. My ideas go further than this; but if they'recorrect, it's dangerous to speak them aloud."

Mistherd's belly muscles tensed. There was danger for fair, inthat shearbill head. The Garland Bearer must be warned. For a minute hewondered about summoning Nagrim to kill these two. If the nicor jumpedthem fast, their firearms might avail them naught. But no. They mighthave left word at home, or- He came back to his ears. The talk hadchanged course. Barbro was murmuring, "-why you stayed on Roland."

The man smiled his gaunt smile. "Well, life on Beowulf held no challengefor me. Heorot is-or was; this was decades past, remember-Heorot wasdensely populated, smoothly organized, boringly uniform. That was partlydue to the lowland frontier, a safety valve that bled off the dissatisfied.But I lack the carbon dioxide tolerance necessary to live healthily downthere. An expedition was being readied to make a swing around a numberof colony worlds, especially those which didn't have the equipment tokeep in laser contact. You'll recall its announced purpose, to seek out newideas in science, arts, sociology, philosophy, whatever might provevaluable. I'm afraid they found little on Roland relevant to Beowulf. But I,who had wangled a berth, I saw opportunities for myself and decided tomake my home here."

"Were you a detective back there, too?"

"Yes, in the official police. We had a tradition of such work in our family.Some of that may have come from the Cherokee side of it, if the namemeans anything to you. However, we also claimed collateral descent fromone of the first private inquiry agents on record, back on Earth beforespaceflight. Regardless of how true that may be, I found him a usefulmodel. You see, an archetype-"

The man broke off. Unease crossed his features. "Best we go to sleep," hesaid. "We've a long distance to cover in the morning."

She looked outward. "Here is no morning."

They retired. Mistherd rose and cautiously flexed limberness back into hismuscles. Before returning to the Sister of Lyrth, he risked a glancethrough a pane in the car. Bunks were made up, side by side, and thehumans lay in them. Yet the man had not touched her, though hers was abonny body, and nothing that had

passed between them suggested he meant to do so.

Eldritch, humans. Cold and claylike. And they would overrun the.beautifulwild world? Mistherd spat in disgust. It must not happen. It would nothappen. She who reigned had vowed that. .

The lands of William Irons were immense. But this was because a baronywas required to support him, his kin and cattle, on native crops whosecultivation was still poorly understood. He raised some Terrestrial plantsas well, by summerlight and in conservatories. However, these were aluxury. The true conquest of northern Arctica lay in yerba hay, inbathyrhiza wood, in pericoup and glycophyllon, and eventually, when themarket had expanded with population and industry, in chalcanthemum forcity florists and pelts of cage-bred rover for city furriers.

That was in a tomorrow Irons did not expect that he would live -l to see.Sherrinford wondered if the man really expected anyone ever would.

The room was warm and bright. Cheerfulness crackled in the fireplace.Light from fluoropanels gleamed off hand-carven chests t and chairs andtables, off colorful draperies and shelved dishes. The outwayer sat solid inhis high seat, stoutly clad, beard flowing down his chest. His wife anddaughters brought coffee, whose fragrance joined the remnant odors of ahearty supper, to him, his :s guests and his sons.

But outside, wind hooted, lightning flared, thunder bawled, rain crashed onroof and walls and roared down to swirl among the courtyard cobblestones.Sheds and barns crouched against hugeness beyond. Trees groaned, and dida wicked undertone of laughter run beneath the lowing of a frightenedcow? A burst of hailstones hit the tiles like knocking knuckles.

You could feel how distant your neighbors were, Sherrinfordthought. And nonetheless they were the people whom you sawoftenest, did daily business with by visiphone (when a solar stormdidn't make gibberish of their voices and chaos of their faces)or in the flesh, partied with, gossiped and intrigued with, inter-

a

,smarried with; in the end, they were the people who would bury you.The lights of the coastal towns were monstrously further away.

William Irons was a strong man. Yet when now he spoke, fear was inhis tone. "You'd truly go over Troll Scarp?"

"Do you mean Hanstein Palisades?" Sherrinford responded, morechallenge than question.

"No outwayer calls it anything but Troll Scarp," Barbro said.

And how had a name like that been reborn, light-years and centuriesfrom Earth's Dark Ages?

"Hunters, trappers, prospectors-rangers, you call themtravel in thosemountains," Sherrinford declared.

"In certain parts," Irons said. "That's allowed, by a pact once made'tween a man and the Queen after he'd done well by a jack-o'-the-hillthat a satan had hurt. Wherever the plumablanca grows, men may fare,if they leave man-goods on the altar boulders in payment for whatthey take out of the land. Elsewhere" -one fist clenched on a chair armand went slack again-" 's not wise to go."

"It's been done, hasn't it?"

"Oh, yes. And some came back all right, or so they claimed, thoughI've heard they were never lucky afterward. And some didn't; theyvanished. And some who returned babbled of wonders and horrors, andstayed witlings the rest of their lives. Not for a long time has anybodybeen rash enough to break the pact and overtread the bounds." Ironslooked at Barbro almost entreatingly. His woman and children staredlikewise, grown still. Wind hooted beyond the walls and rattled thestorm shutters. "Don't you."

"I've reason to believe my son is there," she answered.

"Yes, yes, you've told and I'm sorry. Maybe something can be done. Idon't know what, but I'd be glad to, oh, lay a double offering onUnvar's Barrow this midwinter, and a prayer drawn in the turf by aflint knife. Maybe they'll return him." Irons sighed. "They've not donesuch a thing in man's memory, though. And he

could have a worse lot. I've glimpsed them myself, speeding madcapthrough twilight. They seem happier than we are. Might be nokindness, sending your boy home again."

"Like in the Arvid song," said his wife.

Irons nodded. "M-hm. Or others, come to think of it."

"What's this?" Sherrinford asked. More sharply than before, he felthimself a stranger. He was a child of cities and technics, above all achild of the skeptical intelligence. This family believed. It wasdisquieting to see more than a touch of .their acceptance in Barbro'sslow nod.

"We have the same ballad in Olga Ivanoff Land," she told him, hervoice less calm than the words. "It's one of the traditional ones -nobody knows who composed them-that are sung to set the measure ofa ring dance in a meadow."

"I noticed a multilyre in your baggage, Mrs. (sullen," said the wife ofIrons. She was obviously eager to get off the explosive topic of aventure in defiance of the Old Folk. A songfest could help. "Wouldyou like to entertain us?"

Barbro shook her head, white around the nostrils. The oldest boy saidquickly, rather importantly, "Well, sure, I can, if our guests would liketo hear."

"I'd enjoy that, thank you." Sherrinford leaned back in his seat andstoked his pipe. If this had not happened spontaneously. he wouldhave guided the conversation toward a similar outcome.

In the past he had had no incentive to study the folklore of theoutway, and not much chance to read the scanty references on it sinceBarbro brought him her trouble. Yet more and more he was becomingconvinced that he must get an understanding-not an anthropologicalstudy, but a feel from the inside out-of the relationship betweenRoland's frontiersmen and those beings which haunted them.

A bustling followed, rearrangement, settling down to listen, coffee cupsrefilled and brandy offered on the side. The boy explained, "The lastline is the chorus. Everybody join in, right?" Clearly he too hoped thusto bleed off some of the tension. Cathar-sis through music? Sherrinford wondered, and added to himself:No; exorcism.

A girl strummed a guitar. The boy sang, to a melody which beat acrossthe storm noise:

"It was the ranger Arvid rode homeward through the hills among theshadowy shiverleafs, along the chiming rills.

The dance weaves under the firethorn.

"The night wind whispered around him . with scent of brok and rue.Both moons rose high above him and hills aflash with dew.

The dance weaves under the firethorn.

"And dreaming of that woman who waited in the sun, he stopped,amazed by starlight, and so he was undone.

The dance weaves under the firethorn.

"For there beneath a barrow that bulked athwart a moon, the Outlingfolk were dancing in glass and golden shoon.

The dance weaver under the firethorn.

"The Outling folk were dancing like water, wind and fire to frosty-ringing harpstrings, and never did they tire.

The dance weaves under the firethorn.

"To Arvid came she striding from where she watched the dance, theQueen of Air and Darkness, with starlight in her glance.

The dance weaves under the firethorn.

"With starlight, love and terror in her immortal eye, the Queen of Airand Darkness-"

"No!" Barbro leaped from her chair. Her fists were clenched and tearsflogged her cheekbones. "You can't-pretend that-about the things thatstole Jimmy!"

She fled from the chamber, upstairs to her guest bedroom.

But she finished the song herself. That was about seventy hours later,camped in the steeps where rangers dared not fare.

She and Sherrinford had not said much to the Irons family, afterrefusing repeated pleas to leave the forbidden country alone. Nor hadthey exchanged many remarks at first as they drove north. Slowly,however, he began to draw her out about her own life. After a whileshe almost forgot to mourn, in her remembering of home and oldneighbors. Somehow this led to discoveries=that he, beneath hisprofessional manner, was a gourmet and a lover of opera andappreciated her femaleness; that she could still laugh and find beauty inthe wild land around her-and she realized, half guiltily, that life heldmore hopes than even the recovery of the son Tim gave her.

"I've convinced myself he's alive," the detective said. He scowled."Frankly, it makes me regret having taken you along. I expected thiswould be only a fact-gathering trip, but it's turning out to be more. Ifwe're dealing with real creatures who stole him, they can do real harm.I ought to turn back to the nearest garth and call for a plane to fetchyou." '

"Like bottommost hell you will, mister," she said. "You needsomebody who knows outway conditions, and I'm a better shot thanaverage."

"M-m-m . . . it would involve considerable delay too, wouldn't it?Besides the added distance, I can't put a signal through to any airportbefore this current burst of solar interference has calmed down."Next "night" he broke out his remaining equipment and set it up. Sherecognized some of it, such as the thermal detector. Other items werestrange to her, copied to his order from the advanced apparatus of hisbirthworld. fie would tell her little about them. "I've explained mysuspicion that the ones we're after have telepathic capabilities," hesaid in apology.

Her eyes widened. "You mean it could be true, the Queen and herpeople can read minds?"

"That's part of the dread which surrounds their legend, isn't it?Actually there's nothing spooky about the phenomenon. It wasstudied and fairly well defined centuries ago, on Earth. I daresay thefacts are available in the scientific microfiles at Christmas Landing.You Rolanders have simply had no occasion to seek them out, anymore than you've yet had occasion to look up how to build powerbeamcasters or spacecraft."

"Well, how does telepathy work, then?"

Sherrinford recognized that her query asked for comfort as much as itdid for facts and he spoke with deliberate dryness: "The organismgenerates extremely long-wave radiation which can, in principle, bemodulated by the nervous system. In practice, the feebleness of thesignals and their low rate of information transmission make themelusive, hard to detect and measure. Our prehuman ancestors went infor more reliable senses, like vision and hearing. What telepathictransceiving we do is marginal at best. But explorers have foundextraterrestrial species that got an evolutionary advantage fromdeveloping the system further, in their particular environments. Iimagine such species could include one which gets comparatively littledirect sunlight-in fact, appears to hide from broad day. It could evenbecome so able in this regard that, at short range, it can pick up man'sweak emissions and.make man's primitive sensitivities resonate to itsown strong sendings."

"That would account for a lot, wouldn't it?" Barbro said faintly.

"I've now screened our car by a jamming field," Sherrinford told her,"but it reaches only a few meters past the chassis. Beyond, a

scout of theirs might get a warning from your thoughts, if you knewprecisely what I'm trying to do. I have a well-trained subconsciouswhich sees to it that I think about this in French when I'm outside.Communication has to be structured to be intelligible, you see, andthat's a different enough structure from English. But English is theonly human language on Roland, and surely the Old Folk have learnedit."

She nodded. Ile had told her his general plan, which was too obvious toconceal. The problem was to make contact with the aliens, if theyexisted. Hitherto, they had only revealed themselves, at rareintervals, to one or a few backwoodsmen at a time. An ability togenerate hallucinations would help them in that. They would stayclear of any large, perhaps unmanageable expedition which might passthrough their territory. But two people, braving all prohibitions,shouldn't look too formidable to approach. And . . . this would be thefirst human team which not only worked on the assumption that theOutlings were real but possessed the resources of modern, off-planetpolice technology.

Nothing happened at that camp. Sherrinford said he hadn't expected itwould. The Old Folk seemed cautious this near to any settlement. Intheir own lands they must be bolder.

And by the following "night," the vehicle had gone well into yondercountry. When Sherrinford stopped the engine in a meadow and thecar settled down, silence rolled in like a wave.

They stepped out. She cooked a meal on the glower while he gatheredwood, that they might later cheer themselves with a campfire.Frequently he glanced at his wrist. It bore no watchinstead, a radio-controlled dial, to tell what the instruments in the bus might register.

Who needed a watch here? Slow constellations wheeled beyondglimmering aurora. The moon Alde stood above a snowpeak, turningit argent, though this place lay at a goodly height. The rest of themountains were hidden by the forest that crowded around. Its treeswere mostly shiverleaf and feathery white plumablanca,ghostly amidst their shadows. A few firethorns glowed, clustered dimlanterns, and the underbrush was heavy and smelled sweet. You could seesurprisingly far through the blue dusk. Somewhere nearby, a brook sangand a bird fluted.

"Lovely here," Sherrinford said. They had risen from their supper andnot yet sat down again or kindled their fire.

"But strange," Barbro answered as low. "I wonder if it's really meant forus. If we can really hope to possess it."

His pipestem gestured at the stars. "Man's gone to stranger places thanthis."

"Has he? I . . . oh, I suppose it's just something left over from my outwaychildhood, but do you know, when I'm under them I can't think of the.stars as balls of gas, whose energies have been measured, whose planetshave been walked on by prosaic feet. No, they're small and cold andmagical; our lives are bound to them; after we die, they whisper to us inour graves." Barbro glanced downward. "I realize that's nonsense."

She could see in the twilight how his face grew tight. "Not at all," hesaid."Emotionally, physics may be a worse nonsense. And in the end, youknow, after a sufficient number of generations, thought follows feeling.Man is not at heart rational. He could stop believing the stories of scienceif those no longer felt right."

He paused. "That ballad which didn't get finished in the house," he said,not looking at her. "Why did it affect you so?"

"I couldn't stand hearing them, well, praised. Or that's how it seemed.Sorry for the fuss."

"I gather the ballad is typical of a large class."

"Well, I never thought to add them up. Cultural anthropology issomething we don't have time for on Roland, or more likely it hasn'toccurred to us, with everything else there is to do. Butnow you mentionit, yes, I'm surprised at how many songs and stories have the Arvid motifin them."

"Could you bear to recite it?"

She mustered the will to laugh. "Why, I can do better than that if youwant. Let me get my multilyre and I'll perform."

She omitted the hypnotic chorus line, though, when the notes rang out,except at the end. He watched her where she stood . against moon andaurora.

`-the Queen of Air and Darkness cried softly under sky:

"'Light down, you ranger Arvid, and join the Outling folk. You need nomore be human, which is a heavy yoke.'

"lie dared to give her answer: I may do naught but run. A maiden waitsme, dreaming in lands beneath the sun.

"'And likewise wait me comrades and tasks I would not shirk, for what isranger Arvid if he lays down his work?

"'So wreak your spells, you Outling, and east your wrath on me. Thoughmaybe you can slay me, you'll not make me unfree.'

"The Queen of Air and Darkness stood wrapped about with fear andnorthlight flares and beauty he dared not look too near.

"Until she laughed like harpsong `

and said to him in scorn:'I do not need a magicto make you always mourn.

"'I send you home with nothing except your memory of moonlight,Outling music, night breezes, dew and me."'And that will run behind you, a shadow on the sun, and that will liebeside you when every clay is done.

"'In work and play and friendship your grief will strike you dumb forthinking what you are-and-what you might have become.

"'Your dull and foolish woman treat kindly as you can. Go home now,ranger Arvid, set free to be a man!'

"In flickering and laughter

' the Outling folk were gone.

He stood alone by moonlightand wept until the dawn.

The dance weaves under the firethorn."

She laid the lyre aside. A wind rustled leaves. After a long quietnessSherrinford said, "And tales of this kind are part of everyone's life inthe outway?"

"Well, you could put it thus," Barbro replied. "Though they're not allfull of supernatural doings. Some are about love or heroism.Traditional themes."

"I don't think your particular tradition has arisen of itself." His tonewas bleak. "In fact, I think many of your songs and stories were notcomposed by human beings."

He snapped his lips shut and would say no more on the subject. Theywent early to bed.

Hours later, an alarm roused them.

The buzzing was soft, but it brought them instantly alert. They sleptin gripsuits, to be prepared for emergencies. Sky-glow lit them throughthe canopy. Sherrinford swung out of his bunk, slipped shoes on feetand clipped gun holster to belt. "Stay inside," he commanded.

"What's here?" Her pulse thuttered.

He squinted at the dials of his instruments and checked them againstthe luminous telltale on his wrist. "Three animals," he counted. "Notwild ones happening by. A large one, homeothermic, to judge from theinfrared, holding still a short ways off. Another . . . hm, lowtemperature, diffuse and unstable emission, as if it were more like a . . .a swarm of cells coordinated somehow . . . pheromonally?. . .hovering, also at a distance. But the third's practically next to us,moving around in the brush; and that pattern looks human."

She saw him quiver with eagerness, no longer seeming a professor. "I'mgoing to try to make a capture," he said. "When we have a subject forinterrogation-Stand ready to let me back in again fast. But don't riskyourself, whatever happens. And keep this cocked." He handed her aloaded big-game rifle.

His tall frame poised by the door, opened it a crack. Air blew in, cool,damp, full of fragrances and murmurings. The moon Oliver was nowalso aloft, the radiance of both unreally brilliant, and the auroraseethed in whiteness and ice-blue.

Sherrinford peered afresh at his telltale. It must indicate the directionsof the watchers, among those dappled leaves. Abruptly he sprang out.He sprinted past the ashes of the campfire and vanished under trees.Barbro's hand strained on the butt of her weapon.

Racket exploded. Two in combat burst onto the meadow. Sherrinfordhad clapped a grip on a smaller human figure. She could make out bystreaming silver and rainbow flicker that the other was nude, male,long-haired, lithe and young. He fought demoniacally, seeking to useteeth and feet and raking nails, and meanwhile he ululated like a satan.

The identification shot through her: A changeling, stolen in babyhoodand raised by the Old Folk. This creature was what they would makeJimmy into.

"Ha!" Sherrinford forced his opponent around and drove stiffenedfingers into the solar plexus. The boy gasped and sagged. Sherrinfordmanhandled him toward the car.Out from the woods came a giant. It might itself have been a tree,black and rugose, bearing four great gnarly boughs; but earthquivered and boomed beneath its leg-roots, and its hoarse bellowingfilled sky and skulls.

Barbro shrieked. Sherrinford whirled. He yanked out his pistol,fired and fired, flat whipcracks through the half light. His free armkept a lock on the youth. The troll shape lurched under thoseblows. It recovered and came on, more slowly, more carefully,circling around to cut him off from the bus. He couldn't move fastenough to evade it unless he released his prisoner-who was his solepossible guide to Jimmy

Barbro leaped forth. "Don't!" Sherrinford shouted. "For God's sake,stay inside!" The monster rumbled and made snatching motions ather. She pulled the trigger. Recoil slammed her in the shoulder. Thecolossus rocked and fell. Somehow it got its feet back and lumberedtoward her. She retreated. Again she shot, and again. The creaturesnarled. Blood began to drip from it and gleam oilily amidstdewdrops. It turned and went off, breaking branches, into thedarkness that laired beneath the woods.

"Get to shelter!" Sherrinford yelled. "You're out of the jammerfield!"

A mistiness drifted by overhead. She barely glimpsed it before shesaw the new shape at the meadow edge. "Jimmy!" tore from her.

"Mother." He held out his arms. Moonlight coursed in his tears.She dropped her weapon and ran to him.

Sherrinford plunged in pursuit. Jimmy flitted away into the brush.Barbro crashed after, through clawing twigs. Then she was seizedand borne away.

Standing over his captive, Sherrinford strengthened the fluorooutput until vision of the wilderness was blocked off from withinthe bus. The boy squirmed beneath that colorless glare.

"You are going to talk," the man said. Despite the haggardness in hisfeatures, he spoke quietly.

The boy glared through tangled locks. A bruise was purpling on hisjaw. He'd almost recovered ability to flee while Sherrinford chasedand lost the woman. Returning, the detective had barely caught him.Time was lacking to be gentle, when Outling reinforcements mightarrive at any moment. Sherrinford had knocked him out and draggedhim inside. He sat lashed into a swivel seat.

He spat. "Talk to you, man-clod?" But sweat stood on his skin, andhis eyes flickered unceasingly around the metal which caged him.

"Give me a name to call you by."

"And have you work a spell on me?"

"Mine's Eric. If you don't give me another choice, I'll have to callyou . . . m-m-m . . . Wuddikins."

"What?" However eldritch, the bound one remained a humanadolescent. "Mistherd, then." The lilting accent of his Englishsomehow emphasized its sullenness. "That's not the sound, onlywhat it means. Anyway, it's my spoken name, naught else."

"Ah, you keep a secret name you consider to be real?"

"She does. I don't know myself what it is. She knows the real namesof everybody."

Sherrinford raised his brows. "She?"

"Who reigns. May she forgive me, I can't make the reverent signwhen my arms are tied. Some invaders call her the Queen of Air andDarkness."

"So." Sherrinford got pipe and tobacco. He let silence wax while hestarted the fire. At length he said:

"I'll confess the Old Folk took me by surprise. I didn't expect soformidable a member of your gang. Everything I could learn hadseemed to show they work on my race-and yours, lad-by stealth,trickery and illusion."

Mistherd jerked a truculent nod. "She created the first nicors notlong ago. Don't think she has naught but dazzlements at her beck."

"I don't. However, a steel jacketed bullet works pretty well too,doesn't it?"Sherrinford talked on, softly, mostly to himself: "I do still believe the,ah,nicors-all your half-humanlike breeds-are intended in the main to be seen,not used. The power of projecting mirages must surely be quite limited inrange and scope as well as in the number of individuals who possess it.Otherwise she wouldn't have needed to work as slowly and craftily as shehas. Even outside our mind-shield, Barbro-my companion-could haveresisted, could have remained aware that whatever she saw was unreal . . .ifshe'd been less shaken, less frantic, less driven by need."

Sherrinford wreathed his head in smoke. "Never mind what I experienced,"he said. "It couldn't have been the same as for her. I think the commandwas simply given us, 'You will see what you most desire in the world,running away from you into the forest.' Of course, she didn't travel manymeters before the nicor waylaid her. I'd no hope of trailing them; I'm noArctican woodsman, and besides, it'd have been too easy to ambush me. Icame back to you." Grimly: "You're my link to your overlady."

"You think I'll guide you to Starhaven or Carheddin? Try making me, clod-man."

"I want to bargain."

"I s'pect you intend more'n that." Mistherd's answer held surprisingshrewdness. "What'll you tell after you come home?"

"Yes, that does pose a problem, doesn't it? Barbro Cullen and I are notterrified outwayers. We're of the city. We brought recording instruments.We'd be the first of our kind to report an encounter with the Old Folk, andthat report would be detailed and plausible. It would produce action."

"So you see I'm not afraid to die," Mistherd declared, though his lipstrembled a bit. "If I let you come in and do your man-things to my people,I'd have naught left worth living for."

"Have no immediate fears," Sherrinford said. "You're merely bait." He satdown and regarded the boy through a visor of calm. (Within, it wept in him:Barbro, Barbro!) "Consider. Your Queen can't very well let me go back,bringing my prisoner and telling about hers. She has to stop that somehow. Icould try fighting my

way through-this car is better armed than you know-but that wouldn't freeanybody. Instead, I'm staying put. New forces of hers will get here asfast as they can. I assume they won't blindly throw themselves against amachine gun, a howitzer, a fulgurator. They'll parley first, whether theirintentions are honest or not. Thus I make the contact I'm after."

"What d' you plan?" The mumble held anguish.

"First, this, as a sort of invitation." Sherrinford reached out to flick aswitch. "There. I've lowered my shield against mind-reading and shape-casting. I daresay the leaders, at least, will be able to sense that it'sgone.That should give them confidence."

"And next?"

"Next we wait. Would you like something to eat or drink'?"

During the time which followed, Sherrinford tried to jolly Mistherd along,find out something of his life. What answers he got were curt. He dimmedthe interior lights and settled down to peer outward. That was a long fewhours.

They ended at a shout of gladness, half a sob, from the boy. Out

of the woods came a band of the Old Folk.,

Some of them stood forth more clearly than moons and stars andnorthlights should have caused. He in the van rode a white crownbuck whosehorns were garlanded. His form was manlike but unearthly beautiful, silver-blond hair falling from beneath the antlered helmet, around the proud coldface. The cloak fluttered off his back like living wings. His frost-coloredmail rang as he fared.

Behind him, to right and left, rode two who bore swords whereon smallflames gleamed and flickered. Above, a flying flock laughed and trilled andtumbled in the breezes. Near then drifted a half-transparent mistiness.Those others who passed among trees after their chieftain were harder tomake out. But thev moved in quicksilver grace and as it were to a sound ofharps and trumpets.

"Lord Luighaid." Glory overflowed in Mistherd's tone. "Her master Knower-himself."

Sherrinford had never done a harder thing than to sit at themain control panel, finger near the button of the shield generator, and nottouch it. He rolled down a section of canopy to let voices travel. A gust ofwind struck him in the face, bearing odors of the roses'in his mother'sgarden. At his back, in the main body of the vehicle, Mistherd strainedagainst his bonds till he could see the oncoming troop. ,

"Call to them," Sherrinford said. "Ask if they will talk with me."

Unknown, flutingly sweet words flew back and forth. "Yes," the boyinterpreted. "fie will, the Lord Luighaid. But I can tell you, you'll neverbelet go. Don't fight them. Yield. Come away. You don't know what 'tis to bealive till you've dwelt in Carheddin under the mountain."

The Outlings drew nigh.

Jimmy glimmered and was gone. Barbro lay in strong arms, against a broadbreast, and felt the horse move beneath her. It had to be a horse, thoughonly a few were kept any longer on the steadings and they only for specialuses or love. She could feel the rippling beneath its hide, hear a rush ofparted leafage and the thud when a hoof struck stone; warmth and livingscent welled up around her through the darkness.

He who carried her said mildly, "Don't be afraid, darling. It was a vision.But he's waiting for us and we're bound for him."

She was aware in a vague way that she ought to feel terror or despair orsomething. But her memories lay behind her-she wasn't sure just how shehad come to be here-she was borne along in a knowledge of being loved. Atpeace, at peace; rest in the calm expectation of joy . . .

After a while the forest opened. They crossed a lea where boulders stoodgray-white under the moons, their shadows shifting in the dim hues whichthe aurora threw across them. Flitteries danced, tiny comets, above theflowers between. Ahead gleamed a peak whose top was crowned in clouds.

Barbro's eyes happened to be turned forward. She saw the horse's head andthought, with quiet surprise: Why, this is Sambo,

who was mine when I was a girl. She looked upward at the man. He wore ablack tunic and a cowled cape, which made his face hard to see. She couldnot cry aloud, here. "Tim," she whispered.

"Yes, Barbro."

"I buried you-"

His smile was endlessly tender. "Did you think we're no more than what'slaid back into the ground? Poor torn sweetheart. She who's called us is theAll Healer. Now rest and dream."

--- "Dream," she said, and for a space she struggled to rouse herself.

But the effort was weak. Why should she believe ashen tales about. . . atoms and energies, nothing else to fill a gape of emptiness. . . tales she could not bring to mind . . . when Tim and the horseher father gave her carried her on to Jimmy? Had the other thingnot been the evil dream, and this her first drowsy awakening fromit?

As if he heard her thoughts, he murmured, "They have a song in Outlinglands. The Song of the Men:

"The world sails to an unseen wind. Light swirls by the bows. The wake isnight.

But the Dwellers have no such sadness."

"I don't understand," she said.

He nodded. "There's much you'll have to understand, darling, and I can't seeyou again until you've learned those truths. But meanwhile you'll be withour son."

She tried to lift her head and kiss him. He held her down. "Not yet," hesaid. "You've not been received among the Queen's people. I shouldn't havecome for you, except that she was too merciful to forbid. Lie back, lieback."

Time blew past. The horse galloped tireless, never stumbling, up themountain. Once she glimpsed a troop riding down it and thought theywere bound for a last weird battle in the west against . . . who? . . . onewholay cased in iron and sorrow. Later she wouldask herself the name of him who had brought her into the land of theOld Truth.

Finally spires lifted splendid among the stars, which are small andmagical and whose whisperings comfort us after we are dead. Theyrode into a courtyard where candles burned unwavering, fountainssplashed and birds sang. The air bore fragrance of brok and pericoup,of rue and roses, for not everything that man brought was horrible.The Dwellers waited in beauty to welcome her. Beyond theirstateliness, pooks cavorted through the gloaming; among the treesdarted children; merriment caroled across music more solemn.

"We have come-" Tim's voice was suddenly, inexplicably a croak.Barbro was not sure how he dismounted, bearing her. She stood beforehim and saw him sway on his feet.

Fear caught her. "Are you well?" She seized both his hands. They feltcold and rough. Where had Sambo gone? Her eyes searched beneaththe cowl. In this brighter illumination, she ought to have seen herman's face clearly. But it was blurred, it kept changing. "What's wrong,oh, what's happened?"

He smiled. Was that the smile she had cherished? She couldn'tcompletely remember. "I-I must go," he stammered, so low she couldscarcely hear. "Our time is not ready." Ile drew free of her grasp andleaned on a robed form which had appeared at his side. A hazinessswirled over both their heads. "Don't watch me go . . . back into theearth," he pleaded. "That's death for you. Till our time returns- There,our son!"

She had to fling her gaze around. Kneeling, she spread wide her arms.Jimmy struck her like a warm, solid cannonball. She rumpled his hair;she kissed the hollow of his neck; she laughed and wept and babbledfoolishness; and this was no ghost, no memory that had stolen offwhen she wasn't looking. Now and again, as she turned her attention toyet another hurt which might have come upon him-hunger, sickness,fear-and found none, she would glimpse their surroundings. Thegardens were gone. It didn't matter.

"I missed you so, Mother. Stay?"

"I'll take you home, dearest."

"Stay. Here's fun. I'll show. But you stay."

A sighing went through the twilight. Barbro rose. Jimmy clung to herhand. They confronted the Queen.

Very tall she was in her robes woven of northlights, and her starrycrown and her garlands of kiss-me-never. Her countenance recalledAphrodite of Milos, whose picture Barbro had often seen in the realmsof men, save that the Queen's was more fair and more majesty dweltupon it and in the night-blue eyes. Around her the gardens woke tonew reality, the court of the Dwellers and the heaven-climbing spires.

"Be welcome," she spoke, her speaking a song, "forever."

Against the awe of her, Barbro said, "Moonmother, let us go home."

"That may not be."

"To our world, little and beloved," Barbro dreamed she begged, "whichwe build for ourselves and cherish for our children."

"To prison days, angry nights, works that crumble in the fingers, lovesthat turn to rot or stone or driftweed, loss, grief, and the only surenessthat of the final nothingness. No. You too, Wanderfoot who is to be,will jubilate when the banners of the Outworld come flying into thelast of the cities and man is made wholly alive. Now go with those whowill teach you."

The Queen of Air and Darkness lifted an arm in summons. It halted,and none came to answer.

For over the fountains and melodies lifted a gruesome growling. Firesleaped, thunders crashed. Her hosts scattered screaming before thesteel thing which boomed up the mountainside. The pooks were gonein a whirl of frightened wings. The nicors flung their bodies against theunalive invader and were consumed, until their Mother cried to themto retreat.

Barbro cast Jimmy down and herself over him. Towers wavered andsmoked away. The mountain stood bare under icy moons, save forrocks, crags,. and farther off a glacier in whose depths theauroral light pulsed blue. A cave mouth darkened a cliff. Thither folkstreamed, seeking refuge underground. Some were human of blood, somegrotesques like the pooks and nicors and wraiths; but most were lean, scaly,long-tailed, long-beaked, not remotely men or Outlings.

For an instant, even as Jimmy wailed at her breast-perhaps as much becausethe enchantment had been wrecked as because he was afraid-Barbro pitiedthe Queen who stood alone in her nakedness. Then that one also had fled,and Barbro's world shiver ered apart.

The guns fell silent; the vehicle whirred to a halt. From it sprang a boywho called wildly, "Shadow-of-a-Dream, where are you? It's me, Mistherd.Oh, come, come!"-before he remembered that the language they had beenraised in was not man's. He shouted in that until a girl crept out of athicket where she had hidden. They stared at each other through dust,smoke and moonglow. She ran to him.

A new voice barked from the car, "Barbro, hurry!"

Christmas Landing knew day: short at this time of year, but sunlight, blueskies, white clouds, glittering water, salt breezes in busy streets, and thesane disorder of Eric Sherrinford's living room.

He crossed and uncrossed his legs where he sat, puffed on his pipe as if tomake a veil, and said, "Are you certain you're recovered? You mustn't riskoverstrain."

"I'm fine," Barbro Cullen replied, though her tone was flat. "Still tired,yes,and showing it, no doubt. One doesn't go through such an experience andbounce back in a week. But I'm up and about. And to be frank, I must knowwhat's happened, what's going on, before I can settle down to regain myfull strength. Not a word of news anywhere."

"Have you spoken to others about the matter?"

"No. I've simply told visitors I was too exhausted to talk. Not much of alie. I assumed there's a reason for censorship."

Sherrinford looked relieved. "Good girl. It's at my urging. You can imaginethe sensation when this is made public. The authorities agreed they needtime to study the facts, think and debate in a calm atmosphere, have adecent policy ready to offer voters who're bound to become ratherhvsterical at first." His mouth quirked slightly upward. "Furthermore, yournerves and Jimmy's get their chance to heal before the journalistic stormbreaks over you. How is he?"

- "Quite well. He continues pestering me for leave to go play with

his friends in the Wonderful Place. But at his age, he'll recover-he'll forget."

"He may meet them later anyhow."

"What? We didn't-" Barbro shifted in her chair. "I've forgotten too. Ihardly recall a thing from our last hours. Did you bring back any kidnappedhumans?"

"No. The shock was savage as it was, without throwing them straight intoan . . . an institution. Mistherd, who's basically a sensible young fellow,assured me they'd get along, at any rate as regards survival necessities,tillarrangements can be made." Sherrinford hesitated. "I'm not sure what thearrangements will be. Nobody is, at our present stage. But obviously theyinclude those people-or many of them, especially those who aren't full-grown -rejoining the human race. Though they may never feel at home incivilization. Perhaps in a way that's best, since we will need some kind ofmutually acceptable liaison with the Dwellers."

His impersonality soothed them both. Barbro became able to say, "Was Itoo big a fool? I do remember how I yowled and beat my head on thefloor."

"Why, no." He considered the big woman and her pride for a few secondsbefore he rose, walked over and laid a hand on her shoulder. "You'd beenlured and trapped by a skillful play on your deepest instincts, at a momentof sheer nightmare. Afterward, as that wounded monster carried you off,evidently another type of being came along, one that could saturate youwith close-range neuropsychic forces. On top of this, my arrival, thesudden brutalabolishment of every hallucination, must have been shattering. Nowonder if you cried out in pain. Before you did, you competentlygot Jimmy and yourself into the bus, and you never interferedwith me.""What did you do?""Why, I drove off as fast as possible. After several hours, theatmospherics let up sufficiently for me to call Portolondon andinsist on an emergency airlift. Not that that was vital. What chancehad the enemy to stop us? They didn't even try-But quick trans-_portation was certainly helpful.""I figured that's what must have gone on." Barbro caught hisglance. "No, what I meant was, how did you find us in the back-lands?"Sherrinford moved a little off from her. "My prisoner was myguide. I don't think I actually killed any of the Dwellers who'dcome to deal with me. I hope not. The car simply broke throughthem, after a couple of warning shots, and afterward outpacedthem. Steel and fuel against flesh wasn't really fair. At the caveentrance, I did have to shoot down a few of those troll creatures.I'm not proud of it."He stood silent. Presently: "But you were a captive," he said. "Icouldn't be sure what they might do to you, who had first claimon me." After another pause: "I don't look for any more violence.""How did you make . . . the boy . . . cooperate?" ,Sherrinford paced from her, to the window, where he stoodstaring out at the Boreal Ocean. "I turned off the mind-shield,"he said. "I let their band get close, in full splendor of illusion.Then I turned the shield back on, and we both saw them intheir true shapes. As we went northward, I explained to Mist-herd how he and his kind had been hoodwinked, used, madeto live in a world that was never really there. I asked him if hewanted himself and whomever he cared about to go on tillthey died as domestic animals-yes, running in limited freedomon solid hills, but always called back to the dream-kennel." Hispipe fumed furiously. "May I never see such bitterness again.

He had been taught to believe he was free."Quiet returned, above the hectic traffic. Charlemagne drewnearer to setting; already the east darkened.Finally Barbro asked, "Do you know why?""Why children were taken and raised like that? Partly becauseit was in the pattern the Dwellers were creating; partly in orderto study and experiment on members of our species-minds, thatis, not bodies; partly because humans have special strengths whichare helpful, like being able to endure full daylight.""But what was the final purpose of it all?"Sherrinford paced the floor. "Well," he said, "of course the ulti-mate motives of the aborigines are obscure. We can't do more thanguess at how they think, let alone how they feel. But our ideas doseem to fit the data."Why did they hide from man? I suspect they, or rather theirancestors-for they aren't glittering elves, you know; they're mor-tal and fallible too-I suspect the natives were only being cautiousat first, more cautious than human primitives, though certain ofthose on Earth were also slow to reveal themselves to strangersSpying, mentally eavesdropping, Roland's Dwellers must havepicked up enough language to get some idea of how different manwas from them, and how powerful; and they gathered that moreships would be arriving, bringing settlers. It didn't occur to themthat they might be conceded the right to keep their lands. Perhapsthey're still more fiercely territorial than we. They determined tofight, in their own way. I daresay, once we begin to get insight intothat mentality, our psychological science will go through itsCopernican revolution."Enthusiasm kindled in him. "That's not the sole thing we'lllearn, either," he went on. "They must have science of their own,a nonhuman science born on a -planet that isn't Earth. Becausethey did observe us as profoundly as we've ever observed our-selves; they did mount a plan against us, one that would havetaken another century or more to complete. Well, what else dothey know? How do they support their civilization without visibleagriculture or aboveground buildings or mines or anything? How canthey breed whole new intelligent species to order? A million questions,ten million answers!"

"Can we learn from them?" Barbro asked softly. "Or can we onlyoverrun them as you say they fear?"

Sherrinford halted, leaned elbow on mantel, hugged his pipe andreplied, "I hope we'll show more charity than that to a defeatedenemy. It's what they are. They tried to conquer us, and failed, andnow in a sense we are bound to conquer them since they'll have tomake their peace with the civilization of the machine rather than seeit rust away as they strove for. Still, they never did us any harm asatrocious as what we've inflicted on our fellow men in the past. And, Irepeat, they could teach us marvelous things; and we could teach them,too, once they've learned to be less intolerant of a different way oflife."

"I suppose we can give them a reservation," she said, and didn't knowwhy he grimaced and answered so roughly:

"Let's leave them the honor they've earned! They fought to save theworld they'd always known from that"-he made a chopping gesture atthe city-"and just possibly we'd be better off ourselves with less of it."

He sagged a trifle and sighed, "However, I suppose if Elfland had won,man on Roland would at last-peacefully, even happily -have died away.We live with our archetypes, but can we live in them?"

Barbro shook her head. "Sorry, I don't understand."

"What'?" He looked at her in a surprise that drove out melancholy.After a laugh: "Stupid of me. I've explained this to so many politiciansand scientists and commissioners and Lord knows what, these pastdays, I forgot I'd never explained to you. It was a rather vague idea ofmine, most of the time we were traveling, and I don't like to discussideas prematurely. Now that we've met the Outlings and watched howthey work, I do feel sure."

He tamped down his tobacco. "In limited measure," he said, "I've usedan archetype throughout my own working life. The

rational detective. It hasn't been a conscious pose-much-it's simplybeen an image which fitted my personality and professional style. Butit draws an appropriate response from most people, whether or notthey've ever heard of the original. The phenomenon is notuncommon. We meet persons who, in varying degrees, suggest Christor Buddha or the Earth Mother, or, say, on a less exalted plane,Hamlet or d'Artagnan. Historical, fictional and mythical, such figurescrystallize basic aspects of the human psyche, and when we meet themin our real experience, our reaction goes deeper than consciousness."

He grew grave again. "Man also creates archetypes that are notindividuals. The Anima, the Shadow-and, it seems, the Outworld. Theworld of magic, of glamour-which originally meant enchantment-ofhalf-human beings, some like Ariel and some like Caliban, but eachfree of mortal frailties and sorrows-therefore, perhaps, a littlecarelessly cruel, more than a little tricksy; dwellers, in dusk andmoonlight, not truly gods but obedient to rulers who are enigmatic andpowerful enough to be- Yes, our Queen of Air and Darkness knew wellwhat sights to let lonely people see, what illusions to spin around themfrom time to time, what songs and legends to set going among them. Iwonder how much she and her underlings gleaned from human fairytales, how much they made up themselves, and how much men createdall over again, all unwittingly, as the sense of living on the edge of theworld entered them."

Shadows stole across the room. It grew cooler and the traffic noisesdwindled. Barbro asked mutedly, "But what could this do?"

"In many ways," Sherrinford answered, "the outwayer is back in theDark Ages. He has few neighbors, hears scanty news from beyond hishorizon, toils to survive in a land he only partly understands, that mayany night raise unforeseeable disasters against him and is bounded byenormous wildernesses. The machine civilization which brought hisancestors here is frail at best. He could lose it as the Dark Ages nationshad lost Greece and Rome, as the whole of Earth seems to have lost it.Let him be worked on, long,strongly, cunningly, by the archetypical Outworld, until he has-come to believe in his bones that the magic of the Queen of Airand Darkness is greater than the energy of engines; and first hisfaith, finally his deeds will follow her. Oh, it wouldn't happen fast.Ideally, it would happen too slowly to be noticed, especially byself-satisfied city people. But when in the end a hinterland goneback to the ancient way turned from them, how could they keepalive?"Barbro breathed, "She said to me, when their banners flew inthe last of our cities, we would rejoice.""I think we would have, by then," Sherrinford admitted. "Nev-ertheless, I believe in choosing one's destiny."He shook himself, as if casting off a burden. He knocked thedottle from his pipe and stretched, muscle by muscle. "Well," hesaid, "it isn't going to happen."She looked straight at him. "Thanks to you."A flush went up his thin cheeks. "In time, I'm sure somebodyelse would have- What matters is what we do next, and that's toobig a decision for one individual or one generation to make."She rose. "Unless the decision is personal, Eric," she suggested,feeling heat in her own face.It was curious to see him shy. "I was hoping we might meetagain.""We will."Ayoch sat on Wolund's Barrow. Aurora shuddered so brilliant,G in such vast sheafs of light, as almost to hide the waning moons.Firethorn blooms had fallen; a few still glowed around the treeroots, amidst dry brok which crackled underfoot and smelled likewoodsmoke. The air remained warm but no gleam was left on the"- sunset horizon."Farewell, fare lucky," the pook called. Mistherd and Shadow-of-a-Dream never looked back. It was as if they didn't dare. Theytrudged on out of sight, toward the human camp whose lightsmade a harsh new star in the south.

Ayoch lingered. He felt he should also offer good-bye to her whohad lately joined him that slept in the dolmen. Likely none would -s.-- meet here again for loving or magic. But he could only think of `one old verse that might do. He stood and trilled:

 "Out of her breasta blossom ascended.The summer burned it.The song is ended."