IT WAS LATE AT night, and the evening rains had long since begun to fall when a short, stocky figure, dressed in a long hooded cape, entered a muddy sidepath in the surface city of Upper Erda. The constant trampling of many feet had destroyed the spongy moss and topsoil of the forest, and the path had become a morass of ankle-deep mud. But the man who walked alone on East Pathway Three seemed not to notice the thick ooze that was coating his feet and the skirt of his flowing robe of lapan hide. His attention was, obviously, on more urgent matters. As he walked, his head turned rapidly from side to side, and he paused to stare cautiously down every crosspath.
When at last he stopped, it was before a long, low building fashioned of rough-hewn logs and roofed with a poorly woven thatch of frond. Going first to a low window, he squatted down and peered inside. For some time he continued his scrutiny, changing his position twice in order to inspect every corner of the interior. He stood, then, and going to the entryway, he pushed aside the doorhanging of soggy lapan hide and stepped inside.
The building he had entered was a lapan-house, one of several that had sprung up in recent months in Upper Erda. Specializing in cooking and serving the flesh of lapan and plak hen, the lapan-houses were patronized by immigrant Erdlings who had moved into the Kindar city of Orbora, but who had not yet become Kindar in their tastes and appetites. Only a few among them had renounced the eating of flesh. There were, in fact, some who daily defied the Council’s request that they refrain from cooking or eating flesh in their nid-places and continued to terrify their Kindar neighbors with their smoking hearth-fires and the smells of burning flesh. But the largest number, while honoring the Council’s ruling, returned often to the surface cities and the newly established lapan-houses to satisfy their taste for fried lapan or roasted plak hen.
Since there had been no public eating houses in Erda, no tradition dictated the cost of a hot meal; but the Erdling hearth-keepers were enterprising and inventive, and the charges tended to be flexible and open to negotiation. A plate full of hot mashed tarbo root and roasted lapan, washed down by a mug of pan-mead, might go for as little as five Erdling tokens or in exchange for a few paraso eggs or a basket of tree mushrooms. But now and then a hearth-keeper might ask for something as valuable as a new shuba, fresh from the looms of the Kindar silk-houses.
Due to the lateness of the hour, the lapan-house that the robed and hooded figure entered was nearly empty. Its regular patrons had long since returned to their nid-places in the heights. Most of the table-boards were empty, except for a litter of dirty plates and utensils. The light that came from two small wall lamps and the glowing coals of the hearth-fire at the far end of the room was dim, and the air was heavy with smoke and grease. Here and there rain dripped through the makeshift roof and fell into small muddy puddles on the earthen floor. In the far corner near the hearth, two men, sitting crouched over a table, looked up quickly as the newcomer entered. Leaving a dripping trail of rainwater in his wake, the figure approached the table, and a voice emerged from the shadows of the deep hood.
“Who is hearth-keeping?” the voice asked.
“Only Dergg,” one of the men at the table answered. “The other has gone home. It is safe.”
Taking off his soaked and dripping cape and throwing it across a nearby chair, the newcomer sat down at the table. He was dressed in a shuba, its softly shimmering folds contrasting strangely with his thick, graceless body, as well as with the long and heavy metal instrument that hung on a leather band at his waist.
“Dergg,” he called. “Dergg. Come out here.”
A minute or two passed before a tousle-haired, sleepy-eyed youth appeared in a small doorway near the hearth. He was dressed in Erdling fashion in a fur tunic, except that his long apron, stained and grease-spotted, had been fashioned of torn shuba silk. His wide flat face was sullen with sleepy resentment, until sudden recognition made him start as if he had been jabbed by a roasting fork, and he scurried forward.
“Axon Befal,” he stammered. “Yes, yes, Axon Befal. What can I do for you, Great Leader?”
“We are holding a meeting here,” Axon said. “And we are hungry. We will have fried lapan. There will be—” He paused and looked at his two companions. “How many are coming?”
“Five, at least. Perhaps seven.”
“Enough lapan for eight. And hurry.”
The hearth-keeper burst into a flurry of activity. Scattering fresh coal on the hearth, he fanned it feverishly for several minutes and then disappeared into the back room at a trot. A moment later he returned carrying a platter of raw lapan. Within a few minutes a fresh cloud of greasy smoke billowed out from the hearth and the sound of sizzling fat filled the air.
The other Nekom arrived one by one, two more men and two women. They, like the earlier arrivals, were wearing shubas and carried, strapped to their bodies, long, sharp tools-of-violence, like the one worn by Axon Befal.
Except for muttered words of greeting, little was said until the lapan was served and eaten. At last, pushing back his empty plate, Axon leaned forward and began to speak. His voice was harsh and urgent, but low in volume, and its furtive, rasping tone blended with the rustle of raindrops in the rooffronds. In order to hear, his listeners were forced to lean far forward until their heads were almost touching over the table. Watching them, Dergg, a novice Nekom, was reminded of a huddle of scavenger beetles gathered around a tasty morsel of refuse on the forest floor.
It was clear to the hearth-keeper that, as a new recruit, he was not going to be asked to take part in the conference. But it was not clear to him whether or not he would be allowed to listen. Fearing that he would not if the matter were drawn to the attention of the members of the huddled conference, he crept as close as he dared and crouched down on the muddy floor.
He did not hear all that was said, but what he did hear filled him with a strange mixture of emotions—a bewildering blend of feverish exhilaration, fierce pride, and anxious confusion.
Dergg Ursh had not been a Nekom for long, and the belonging was still new and exciting. As a child in Erda, he had several times heard the Nekom leader speak, and he had always been excited and intrigued by the loud and stirring words. But not until he came to Upper Erda had he begun to listen in earnest. When, alone and lonely in the new surface city, he had been approached by the Nekom recruiters, he had been flattered and greatly impressed. And he had begun to listen very carefully to all the things that they told him.
It had all begun to seem very right. It was true that the Ol-zhaan, particularly those who had once been Geets-kel, had cruelly and unjustly kept the Erdlings imprisoned below the Root. And it did seem only fair that someone should be punished for so great an offense—that someone else should be forced to suffer as the Erdling had suffered for so many generations. It also seemed unfair, as Dergg had heard Axon Befal himself say, that the new Erdling immigrants were being assigned to the smallest and most simply built nid-places in the mid- and farheights of the city, rather than to the large and beautiful nid-places of the lower levels. And it seemed quite likely that, as Axon claimed, the Rejoyning had become no more than another plot against the Erdlings, and that their Councilors, Kir Oblan and the others, had allowed themselves to be duped and deceived by the Kindar Councilors, who were secretly still under the control of the Ol-zhaan. But, in the future, things would be very different.
The future, as Axon Befal described it, seemed to Dergg Ursh to be full of excitement, adventure, and glory. Axon Befal would overcome the Joined Council with its cringing Erdling and treacherous Kindar leaders, and he and his closest followers would move into the great palaces and temples of the beautiful Temple Grove. From there, they would direct the destiny of all Green-sky, righting old wrongs and leading all who would follow, Erdling and Kindar alike, into a beautiful new era of happiness and plenty. And all those who had been loyal to Axon in these early days of trial and danger would be rewarded with privilege and honor and would be loved and respected by all the people.
Of course, it would take some time for these great changes to be brought about, and in the meantime there was much to do. In a secret hiding place in the open forest, Axon was gathering and training a large group of new recruits. It was necessary for all Nekom to learn how to climb and glide as well or better than any Kindar, and to make use of the long, sharp instrument that was called a wand-of-Befal. The wand-of-Befal would, Axon said, eventually be carried by every Erdling fortunate enough to be accepted into the society of the Nekom. Dergg looked forward eagerly to the time when he, too, would wear a wand-of-Befal and march proudly with the other Nekom up and down the great branchways of Orbora, before all the cheering people. But for the moment Dergg was a secret Nekom, and as such he was not allowed to wear a wand.
A secret Nekom was, however, a person of great importance. There were, Dergg had been told, many others besides himself. Scattered throughout the surface cities, back in Erda, and even among the immigrants in the heights, they were all engaged in carrying out duties that were absolutely essential to the glorious future of the new Green-sky.
There were secret members among the craftsmen who still worked in the caves of Erda, whose duty it was to fashion the wands-of-Befal from Erdling steel. There were others who lived with their families in Orbora and were thus able to acquire shubas for all the members. And there were many who, in various ways, contributed to the support of the forest community of full-time Nekom. Some allowed their nid-places to be used as occasional hiding places; others helped to obtain and transport food; and yet others worked as recruiters in their own neighborhoods and places of service. Dergg’s assignment up to the present time had been to make food and shelter available to occasional groups of Nekom during the hours of rain and darkness. This he had been able to accomplish easily, simply by staying on as watchman after the old man who owned the lapan-house had gone home to his nid-place. So Dergg had been able to be of service to his fellow Nekom while he was, at the same time, earning the extra tokens that the old man was glad to pay to have his lapan-house guarded during the hours of darkness.
Dergg felt that he was fortunate indeed, and particularly fortunate tonight, when the Great Leader himself honored the lapan-house with his presence. Leaning far to one side, straining until his ears ached from the effort, Dergg tried desperately to hear and understand every syllable of the message that Axon Befal was imparting to his followers. His words were certain to be of great importance, full of wisdom and power.
But Axon Befal was still speaking too softly for Dergg to make out exactly what he was saying. His tone, however, was abrupt and full of tension, and he seemed to be reprimanding one of the Nekom officers who sat with him at the table. Dergg shivered, glad that the Great Leader’s harshness was not directed at himself. But now, occasional words and phrases became clear, and it seemed that Axon was scolding one whose task it was to train the Nekom in the skill of gliding. Suddenly, Axon Befal’s voice rose, almost to a mighty roar.
“Twice now we have failed,” he was saying. “And each time we have failed because the Kindar were more agile and possessed greater skill at gliding. First we allowed the old man to escape from beneath the very edges of our wands, and now we have allowed one of the most dangerous and powerful of all the Ol-zhaan to elude us.
Then one of the others spoke. “Your pardon, Great Leader, but I don’t understand why—”
But at that point the speaker turned his head and his voice fell, so that the rest of what he said was swallowed in the rustle of the rain on the rooffronds.
But Axon’s voice was still lifted, and Dergg clearly heard his reply. “You are right in part,” he said. “It is true that his name is not on our list—not yet. And we were not expecting him. Our watcher told us that the woman Geets-kel known as Birta often uses the branchpath we were guarding. It was she whom we were awaiting. But he would have been an even greater prize. Is he not a member of the corrupt Council? And during the hearing against us, he hardened the hearts of the Councilors against our cause. True, he said but little, but that one does not need to speak to influence the people. Don’t you remember, Harff, how he stared at us? He has great power over the people, both Erdling and Kindar. And do you imagine that, once we have come to power, he would not try to turn the people against us? No, it would have been no mistake if we had taken Raamo.”
At that moment Dergg Ursh lost his balance and sat down suddenly on the muddy floor of the lapan-house. Glancing his way, Axon Befal frowned and gestured for him to approach.
“Get us some more pan-mead, boy,” he said. “We are thirsty.”
In the supply room behind the hearth, Dergg Ursh filled his pitcher from the barrel of musty mead and started to leave the room, but suddenly he stopped and leaned against the wall. His hands were shaking, and his head felt large and painful with confusion.
Had the leader really meant that there had been an attack on Raamo? It seemed impossible. Dergg had taken a special interest in the young Councilor since the first days of the Rejoyning. For one thing, they were almost the same age. And then, in the third or fourth month of the Rejoyning, he had actually seen Raamo, when a group of Councilors had come to speak to the people of Upper Erda. Struggling through the crowd, Dergg had found himself suddenly face to face with Raamo; and as he looked into the clear, deep eyes of the young Rejoyner, he had been stirred and shaken by a strong feeling. He did not know what the feeling meant, but it had been strong and warm and unforgettable. Surely, Axon Befal had not meant what he had seemed to be saying. Surely he had only misunderstood.
Taking a deep breath, Dergg shook his head hard to clear it of the dark confusion, which had, for a moment, almost overwhelmed him, and hurried back into the main chamber of the lapan-house.
As he poured the mead, he listened carefully, but they were no longer speaking of Raamo. Instead, Axon Befal was telling his officers of a great new plan that he had recently conceived, a plan that would greatly hasten the day when the Nekom would be welcomed into Orbora and honored by all the people of Green-sky.
Dergg would have liked to hear more about the new plan, but this time, when he squatted down to listen, Axon Befal glanced up and ordered him from the room.