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But a broad platform of stone with an upper opening in the rock roof supported smouldering wood, wood that gave off a spicy, aromatic fragrance as it was eaten into ashes. A flooring of wooden planks had been fitted over the rock beneath their boots, and here and there lay shaggy pelts to serve as small rugs while on the walls were shelves holding not only the familiar boxes of reading tapes, but bits of gleaming rock, some small carvings. Brilliant birdskins had been pieced together in an intricate patchwork pattern to cover six feet of the opposite wall.

The yardmen snapped to attention. “Check out the rest of the rooms; report to me in the office. ” Troy stood quietly as his employer patted cov-aid dressing along the line of the burn. ” Kyger retopped the container. ” But Kyger was watching him with an intent stare as if he could see straight into Troy’s memory and pick out the events as they had really happened—the incredible fact that a warning had struck from an animal’s mind to his. “He must have been badly jigged,” Kyger commented. “So much so that I wonder.

The story was absorbing, but Troy was no child to be beguiled by stories. He began to wonder at the reason for Rerne’s talkativeness. “There is no carbite on Korwar,” Rerne continued. ” Troy ventured, suddenly aware that he, too, was now thinking as a partisan, ready to protect the Wild against willful destruction. Something in him was stirring sluggishly, pressing bonds he himself had welded into place as a self-protection. Like the hawk, he wanted to test his wings against a free and open sky.