It was not long after midnight. We had not brought ghyrm-hunting supplies to the inn with us, but a Siblinghood outpost was only a short flight away. When he arrived there, however, it did him little good, for a very junior member was in charge who seemed to know little or nothing about where anyone in authority might be or when such a person might return. Ferni passed on the new ghyrm information to be added to that already in the file, then he requisitioned everything useful the more helpful supply officer would let him have, including a finder, though Ferni himself had not been certified to use one.
“Don’t you even try to use it,” the supply officer instructed sternly. “They do wicked things to the minds of those who are not inured to them. Leave the cover on the basket port. Land as near to her as you can get, put all the stuff out of the flier, then get out of there. Don’t try to rescue her. Wait until we get set up to do that. I know M’urgi, and she can take care of herself. She knows the tribes as well or better than anyone else in the Siblinghood.”
All this I saw, heard, knew of while lying on the bosom of the night. By dawn he had packed my personal belongings from the inn and was already hovering over the grasslands by the river. At first light, the shadow trail showed dark among the grasses, and he had not followed it far before he saw the smoke of our campfires. He hovered, waiting. I emerged from a hut, tribesmen gathered around me. I pointed upward at the flier, then down at the nearest clearing, and beckoned.
He put the flier down, took the supplies out, and laid them at the edge of the clearing. The last thing he moved was the basket with the finder in it, setting it carefully among the other tools of the ghyrm-hunter’s trade. He returned to the flier, saw me come out of the trees among the tribesmen, saw me wave at him with a lifting motion, which he obeyed. As he turned the flier away, he saw the men carrying the supplies back toward their camp. He was wondering, I think, whether they would move the camp at once to keep him from finding it again. No doubt he knew I would lead him to them again if they did so.
On the ground, I supervised the arrangement of my supplies.
“In my own place,” I demanded, pointing to the kit that held my personal things. Then at the basket, “That! Don touch that. I move it ovah on rocks, away from us. Don go near that!”
“I wahn see,” said their leader, reaching for the clamps that held the lid. “I see firs, no hahm.”
“Ssssss,” I hissed. “You see, you die! I see, I die. You wahch!”
I opened the port on the basket. The tentacle came out, reaching, moving side to side with a sound like the slithering of snakes. The men backed off, muttering among themselves. The smell reached them, and they went farther away. After a long minute, I took a newly delivered knife from its sheath and held it toward the tentacle, which screamed an ear-shattering sound and retreated into its basket. I closed the port and turned, hand on the lid clamps of the basket. “Now you wan see?”
Though the leader shook his head, he was obviously not content. “You hab this why?” he demanded.
I smiled sweetly at him. “Is findah, Dahk Runnah. Is findah ob ouder ghyrm. You say I find, you kill’m. Ah don dink so. I dink when ah find, you dry kill’m, dey kill you.”
“What we do?” he cried. “Mus do sompin!”
“We mus do sompin, yea, yea, sompin. But you wahn muck it? No? Den we dalk. We plahn. We dalkin’ much by the fiah. Now you go, get yoah people. Bring dem heah. I look dem ober, see dey hab no ghyrm, show you how knife wuk, an we make plahn.”
After more discussion, more argument, finally settled by Dark Runner, the tribesmen agreed to do as I asked, and two of them set out across the grasses to fetch the rest of the tribe. I, meantime, with a fine display of hauteur, told the ones remaining I was not to be disturbed, retired to my hut, rolled myself in the blankets provided there, reminded myself of a shaman’s discipline, and fell instantly asleep.
Meantime Ferni—as I learned later—though less worried than formerly, was no less agitated, for he had run headlong into an un-common and frustrating blockage in the normal operation of the Siblinghood. He had visited two other posts, saying he needed help, but the only people on duty were people who couldn’t authorize it; the people who could authorize it were somewhere else, having a mysterious meeting with someone or something important; they would get back to him.
In a fury of stamping about and muttering, “Well, if that’s the way they’re going to be, the hell with them.” His thoughts turned, as they frequently did, to Naumi. He would give up on the Siblinghood, for the moment at least, and go to Thairy for help. As Naumi had pointed out, he was only two days away, and Ferni knew I would be quite safe for two days, or for ten times that. Which did not mean he would put off rescuing me any longer than necessary, but which did mean he could take the time without feeling he had forsaken me.
By midafternoon, he was on his way. Half a day later he was at the transshipment point, where he rented a bed for a few hours and caught the earliest possible ship that would drop him at Point Zibit at noon, midnight, dawn, he didn’t bother to find out which. He did, however, have a hope that not only Naumi would be there
