So, when Tisha paused, at midmorning, to study the mix of prints in the damp leaf-mold of the trail, Cara was just behind.
“The Wildings have been abroad,” whispered the woman. “Here are the prints of Leera, the mate of Loor. Do you remember, years ago, that she wrenched her foot awry amid the stones of the stream and came to me for aid? It left her lame, and here is her mark. The man walks in another direction than this, or Loor would surely have been with Leera. We must turn our steps to the east, toward the foothills. Pray that the People of the Heights be wary and avoid his path.”
Across the valley floor, cloaked with thick forests, they went. Before night they saw the thinning of the woodlands and the rise of land that told them their nearness to the foothills. The sun, which had merely lit the clouds from above all the day, now peeped below the western edge of the gray mat and dyed the near ranges with bronze fires. Then the two hurried their pace and climbed rapidly into the folded lands, making for the ridge that lay before them. There they hunted out a dry burrow beneath a fallen trunk and, hiding all traces of their approach, went to earth. From their packs they drew down-filled mats backed with the hides of beasts, which made their bed, and they ate cold meat and fruit and drank sparingly of their water.
For a little time they lay, listening to the earth-sounds about them, well content to be there, for often they would go into the wild for pleasure and lay their heads where they willed for days or weeks. The tick of the beetle in the old wood that was their roof was as familiar a sound, and as friendly, as the crick-crack of the cooling fireplace in their house. The hunting owl moved in the stillness, and they felt the prowling wolf as he hunted. Far away and above, they heard soft, whooping cries, infinitely mournful in the stillness, that they knew to be those of the People of the Heights. They stiffened unconsciously, listening carefully, analyzing every nuance of those calls.
“They are not at rest,” said Cara. “There might be many reasons, but my heart tells me there is only one. The man camps above.”
Tisha turned to peer through the dead bracken, though nothing could be seen. “Aye, he is there, I feel him. I almost hear his thoughts. Red his fire and red his heart. We shall find him tomorrow, mayhap. He has no feeling that he is hunted, no warning from instinct. That is no gift brought by the towns of men. When you or I are sought, we know.”
They lay side by side, breathing softly, feeling outward with their spirits, through the night. The small creatures they felt, and the large. The man lay asleep on the edge of their seeking.
“Strange,” said Cara. “He has no feel of malice. There is no black wickedness there.”
“No,” said Tisha, with a sigh of relief. “He is not another such as your father. This is a youngling, little older than you, who has not learned the permanence of death. He sleeps as a child, dreaming of deeds of daring. Perhaps we need not slay after all.”
Then they, too, slept, while the night swept soundlessly over them.
Again the rising sun found them on the move. They were near to the mountains now, and their path grew steep and stony. All the ways were known to them—even the secret paths of the People of the Heights—and those they followed into the high places.
“Now has the time come, my child, that you may speak with the People in their own places,” said Tisha, as they climbed. “We must tell them of their danger and our mission, that they may lie safe and silent until the peril is past. They know you, as they know me, in our lowland forests, but they will be shy. Be wary, for they are determined folk and may well send a boulder upon us before they see us well. They have no seeking sense and must deal with the things they see.”
No long while passed before they saw, upon an outcrop of rock high above them, a small gray figure, which watched them closely. Then Tisha called, a low, whooping cry much like that which had pierced the night. The figure straightened, human-like and small against the sky, and its hand moved in a gesture which traced a symbol upon the air.
Up they moved, clambering over standing stones and finding their way, shoulder and foot, up chimneys weather-worn in the mountain’s face. At last they stood at the top in a shallow saucer rimmed with tumbled rock. A group of the People awaited them there, standing quietly, their silken-smooth gray fur ruffled by the damp wind, their squat bodies still, and their round faces quiet, save for the watchfulness of their eyes. Long had it been since one of the People had sought them out, and Cara had forgotten the strangeness of those eyes, which were as panes of glass which looked inward upon a world of untroubled blue. No ripple touched those eyes, and now all those many windows were turned upon them. Tisha made the sign of peace and friendship and sat upon a stone, whereupon all came near and sat, also. The language of the People was strange: a soft twittering at times, with sad little hoots and cries interspersed with whispering sibilances. No man could learn it well, but Tisha had managed after a fashion, and she spoke with him who had awaited them.
Long they talked, Wheesha (as nearly as Cara could determine his name) turning now and again to relay information to his folk. Before midday the warning was given, and the People brought forth food from their burrows in the rock walls and gestured for their guests to eat. No stranger meal could any mortal ever have eaten, it seemed to Cara, as she munched a sort of bread that seemed made from lichen and pollen and sipped pale green wine whose origin she surmised must have lain with mosses and maidenhair ferns.
Their meal made, they touched hand to forehead, in the sign of thanks to their hosts, and took their leave. Not by the hard ways in which they had come did they go, for now they sought him whom they had avoided. Down the smooth slopes from the heights they made their way, using the paths of the People. The bare bones of the mountain they left behind and descended into rock-studded meadows where, in summer, the horned ones of the forest grazed. Now the grasslands were bare of life and of green, and the two women moved across them quietly, stepping with the flowing gait of the hunter who fears to start his prey too soon.
“He moves upon the heights,” said Tisha, as they paused to feel the space about them. “His camp lies below us, in a hollow rimmed with stones and juniper, so Wheesha told me. But now he seeks for strange game and never thinks himself hunted.”
“Do we lie in wait above his camping-place?” asked Cara.
“Such is my thought,” replied her mother.
So, long before sunset, they lay snugly burrowed into a ridge of junipers, on the lip of the cup which held the hunter’s gear. Sleeping and watching by turns, they waited with the patience they had learned as part of their lives and their beings, seldom stirring so much as a foot or a finger, breathing so softly that they could not hear one another.
The sun went down behind the gray mass of cloud which had hidden it all the day, and with the coming darkness the man came seeking his fire and his food and his bed. Tisha felt him first and laid her hand lightly upon Cara’s wrist. Then the girl strained her senses and caught the bundle of sensations that was the man, walking dispiritedly among the stones of the mountainside.
Never had Cara been so near to another of humankind, save only her mother. She lay tense with astonishment at the intricate orchestration of mood and emotion that existed within him. His thoughts were impenetrable to the delicate talent which was hers and her mother’s, but his feelings closed above her as a stream over the head of an inexperienced swimmer, and she sought desperately to disengage herself from them. Then she felt Tisha’s cool fingers again on her wrist, then her temple, and the tide drained away, leaving her limp.
A bud of fire kindled below, which soon blossomed into a grateful glow. The scent of cooking found its way upward to the place where Tisha and Cara lay, but they kept their motionless watch. Once, far and woeful,