Chapter 14: The Foanna

“Ross!” Ashe’s hands gripped his shoulders as if never intending to free him again. “Then you did come through--”

Ross understood. Gordon Ashe must have feared that he was the only one swept through the time door by that freak chance.

“And Karara and the dolphins!”

“Here--now?” In this black bowl of the citadel bay Ashe was only a shadow with voice and hands.

“No, out with the Rover cruisers. Ashe, do you know the Baldies are on Hawaika? They’ve organized this whole thing--the attack here--trouble all over. Right now they have one of their subs out there. That’s what cut those cutters to pieces. Five days ago five of them wiped out a whole Rover fairing, just five of them!”

“Gordoon.” Unlike the hissing speech of the Hawaikans, this new voice made a singing, lilting call of Ashe’s name. “This is your swordsman in truth?” Another shadow drew near them, and Ross saw the flutter of cloak edge.

“This is my friend.” There was a tone of correction in Ashe’s reply. “Ross, this is the Guardian of the sea gate.”

“And you come,” the Foanna continued, “with those who gather to feast at the Shadow’s table. But your Rovers will find little loot to their liking--”

“No.” Ross hesitated. How did one address the Foanna? He had claimed equality with Torgul. But that approach was not the proper one here; instinct told him that. He fell back on the complete truth uttered simply. “We took three of the Baldy killers. From them we learned they move to wipe out the Foanna first. For you,” he addressed himself to the cloaked shape, “they believe to be a threat. We heard that they urged the Wreckers to this attack and so--”

“And so the Rovers come, but not to loot? Then they are something new among their kind.” The Foanna’s reply was as chill as the sea bay’s water.

“Loot does not summon men who want a blood price for their dead kin!” Ross retorted.

“No, and the Rovers are believers in the balance of hurt against hurt,” the Foanna conceded. “Do they also believe in the balance of aid against aid? Now that is a thought upon which depends much. Gordoon, it would seem that we may not take to our ships. So let us return to council.”

Ashe’s hand was on Ross’s arm guiding him through the murk. Though the fog which had choked the bay had vanished, thick darkness remained and Ross noted that even the fires and flares were dimmed and fewer. Then they were in a passage where a very faint light clung to the walls.

Robed Foanna, three of them, moved ahead with that particular gliding progress. Then Ashe and Ross, and bringing up the rear, a dozen of the mailed guards. The passageway became a ramp. Ross glanced at Ashe. Like the Foanna, the Terran Agent wore a cloak of gray, but his did not shift color from time to time as did those of the Hawaikan enigmas. And now Gordon shoved back its folds, revealing supple body armor.

Questions gathered in Ross. He wanted to know--needed desperately to know--Ashe’s standing with the Foanna. What had happened to raise Gordon from the status of captive in Zahur’s hold to familiar companionship with the most dreaded race on this planet?

The ramp’s head faced blank wall with a sharp-angled turn to the right of a narrower passage. One of the Foanna made a slight sign to the guards, who turned with drilled precision to march off along the passage. Now the other Foanna held out their wands.

What a moment earlier had been unbroken surface showed an opening. The change had been so instantaneous that Ross had not seen any movement at all.

Beyond that door they passed from one world to another. Ross’s senses, already acutely alert to his surroundings, could not supply him with any reason by sight, sound, or smell for his firm conviction that this hold was alien as neither the Wrecker castle nor the Rover ships had been. Surely the Foanna were not the same race, perhaps not even the same species as the other native Hawaikans.

Those robes which he had seen both silver gray and dark blue, now faded, pearled, thinned, until each of the three still gliding before him were opalescent columns without definite form.

Ashe’s grasp fell on Ross’s arm once more, and his whisper reached the younger man thinly. “They are mistresses of illusion. Be prepared not to believe all that you see.”

Mistresses--Ross caught that first. Women, or at least female then. Illusion, yes, already he was convinced that here his eyes could play tricks on him. He could hardly determine what was robe, what was wall, or if more than shades of shades swept before him.

Another blank wall, then an opening, and flowing through it to touch him such a wave of alienness that Ross felt he was buffeted by a storm wind. Yet as he hesitated before it, reluctant in spite of Ashe’s hold to go ahead, he also knew that this did not carry with it the cold hostility he had known while facing the Baldies. Alien--yes. Inimical to his kind--no.

“You are right, younger brother.”

Spoken those words--or forming in his mind?

Ross was in a place which was sheer wonder. Under his feet dark blue--the blue of a Terran sky at dusk--caught up in it twinkling points of light as if he strode, not equal with stars, but above them! Walls--were there any walls here? Or shifting, swaying blue curtains on which silvery lines ran to form symbols and words which some bemused part of his brain almost understood, but not quite.

Constant motion, no quiet, until he came to a place where those swaying curtains were stilled, where he no longer strode above the sky but on soft surface, a mat of gray living sod where his steps released a spicy fragrance. And there he really saw the Foanna for the first time.

Where had their cloaks gone? Had they tossed them away during that walk or drift across this amazing room, or had the substance which had formed those coverings flowed away by itself? As Ross looked at the three in wonder he knew that he was seeing them as not even their servants and guards ever viewed them. And yet was he seeing them as they really were or as they wished him to see them?

“As we are, younger brother, as we are!” Again an answer which Ross was not sure was thought or speech.

In form they were humanoid, and they were undoubtedly women. The muffling cloaks gone, they wore sleeveless garments of silver which were girded at the waist with belts of blue gems. Only in their hair and their eyes did they betray alien blood. For the hair which flowed and wove about them, cascading down shoulders, rippling about their arms, was silver, too, and it swirled, moved as if it had a separate life of its own. While their eyes ... Ross looked into those golden eyes and was lost for seconds until panic awoke in him, forcing him after sharp struggle to look away.

Laughter? No, he had not heard laughter. But a sense of amusement tinged with respect came to him.

“You are very right, Gordoon. This one is also of your kind. He is not witches’ meat.” Ross caught the distaste, the kind of haunting unhappiness which colored those words, remnants of an old hurt.

“These are the Foanna,” Ashe’s voice broke more of the spell. “The Lady Ynlan, The Lady Yngram, the Lady Ynvalda.”

The Foanna--these three only?

She whom Ashe had named Ynlan, whose eyes had entrapped and almost held what was Ross Murdock, made a small gesture with her ivory hand. And in that gesture as well as in the words witches’ meat the Terran read the unhappiness which was as much a part of this room as the rest of its mystery.

“The Foanna are now but three. They have been only three for many weary years, oh man from another world and time. And soon, if these enemies have their way, they will not be three--but none!”

“But--” Ross was still startled. He knew from Loketh that the Wreckers had deemed the Foanna few in number, an old and dying race. But that there were only three women left was hard to believe.

The response to his unspoken wonder came clear and determined. “We may be but three; however, our power remains. And sometimes power distilled by time becomes the stronger. Now it would seem that time is no longer our servant but perhaps among our enemies. So tell us this tale of yours as to why the Rovers would make one with the Foanna--tell us all, younger brother!”

Ross reported what he had seen, what Tino-rau and Taua had learned from the prisoners taken at Kyn Add. And when he had finished, the three Foanna stood very still, their hands clasped one to the other. Though they were only an arm’s distance from him, Ross had the feeling they had withdrawn from his time and world.