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Barron remembered vague stories of various groups of Darkovan nonhumans. The next time theypaused to eat cold food from their saddlebags and rest the horses, he looked for Lerrys, who was stillthe friendliest of the three, and asked him about them. “Are they only beyond the far ranges? Or are therenonhumans in these mountains too?”

“Oh, yes. You’ve been on Darkover how long, five of our years, and you still haven’t seen any of our

nonhumans?”

“One or two
 
kyrii
 
in the Terran Trade Zone—from a distance,” Barron told him, “and the little furred people at Armida—I don’t know what you call them. Are there others? And are they all—well, if they’re nonhumans, I can’t ask, ‘are they human,’ but do they meet Empire standards for so-called intelligent beings—time-binding culture, viable language capable of transfer to other I.B.’s?”

“Oh, they’re all I.B.’s by Terran Empire standards,” Lerrys assured him. “The reason the Empire doesn’t deal with them is fairly simple. Humans here don’t have much interest in the Empire
per se
 
, but they are interested in other humans as individuals. The nonhuman races—I’m no expert on them, but I suspect they have never tried to get in touch with the Empire for the same reason they don’t have much contact with humans on Darkover. Their goals and wishes and so forth are so completely different that there’s no point of contact; they don’t want any and they don’t have any.”

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“You mean even Darkovans have no contact with nonhumans?”

“I wouldn’t say
 
no
 
contact. There’s some small amount of trade with the trailmen—they’re what you might call half-human or subhuman, and they live in the trees in the forests. They trade with the mountain people for drugs, small tools, metal and the like. They’re harmless enough unless you frighten them. The catmen—they’re a race something like the
 
cralmacs
 
, the furred servants at Armida.
 
Cralmacs
 
aren’t very intelligent; feline rather than simian, but they do have culture of a sort, and some of them are telepathic. Their level is about that of a moron, or a chimpanzee who suddenly acquired a tribal culture. A genius among the
 
cralmacs
 
might learn a dozen words of a human language but I never heard of one learning to read; I suspect the Empire people gave them pretty wide benefit of the doubt in classifying them as I.B.’s.”

“We tend to do that. We don’t want later squawks that we treated a potential intelligent race as higher

animals.”

“I know.
 
Cralmacs
 
are listed as real or potential I.B.’s and let alone. The catmen, I suspect, are a hell of a lot more intelligent; I know they use metal tools. Fortunately I’ve never been close to them; they hate men and they’ll attack when they feel safe in doing it. I’ve heard that they have a very elaborate feudal culture with the most incredible tangle of codes governing face-saving behavior. The Dry-towners believe that some of the elements of their own culture came from cultural interchange with the catmen millennia ago, but an I.B. xenthropologist could tell you more about that.”

“Just how many races of I.B.’s are there on Darkover anyway?” Barron asked.

“God only knows, and I’m not being funny. Certainly no Terran knows. Maybe a few of the Comyn know, but they’re not telling. Or the
 
chieri
 
; they’re another of the nearly human races, but they’re as far above humans, most people think, as the
 
cralmacs
 
are below ’em. It’s for sure no Terran knows, though; and I’ve had more opportunity than most.”

Barron hardly heard the last sentence for a minute, in his interest in the nonhumans, then suddenly itpenetrated. “
 
You’re
a Terran?”

“At your service. My name is Larry Montray; they call me Lerrys because it’s easier for a Darkovan to

pronounce, that’s all.”

Barron felt suddenly angry and irked. “And you let me make a fool of myself trying to speak Darkovanto you?”

“I offered to interpret,” Larry said. “At the time I was under a pledge to Valdir, never to mention that I

was a Terran—not to anyone.”

“And you’re his ward? His foster son? How’d that happen?”

“It’s a long story,” Larry said. “Some other time, maybe. In brief, his son, Kennard, is being schooled on Terra with
 
my
 
family, and I’m living here with
 
his
people.” He scrambled to his feet. “Look, Gwynn’s looking for us; I think we ought to get on. We want to reach the fire tower before nightfall tomorrow, if we can—the rangers there are due to be relieved—and it’s still a long way into those hills.”

It gave Barron plenty to think about, as they rode on, but his thoughts kept coming back, with aninsistence he could not understand—it was as if some secret watcher, far back in his mind, kept dwelling

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on that point almost with frenzy.

A Terran could pass as a Darkovan. A Terran could pass as a Darkovan. A Darkovan could passhimself off as a Terran. A Terran could pass as a Darkovan. In these mountains, where Terransare never seen, a Terran willing to pass as a Darkovan would be safe from anything human, andattract no unusual attention from nonhumans…

Barron shook his head.
 
That’s enough of that
 
. He wasn’t interested in the Darkovan mountains exceptfrom the viewpoint of doing his job well enough to redeem himself with the Empire, and get his own job,or something like it, back, and start over again on another planet, in a spaceport job.
 
If Larry, or Lerrys,or whatever he calls himself, wants to amuse himself living with a family of weird, Darkovantelepaths and learning more than anyone else cared to know about nonhuman and such, that’s hisbusiness; everybody gets their kicks in his own way and I’ve known some dillies
 
. But he wasn’thaving any.

He clung to that with an uneasy concentration all that day, doggedly ignoring the beauty of the flowersthat lined the mountain road, snubbing Larry’s friendly attempts to pick up the conversation. Towardevening, as the ride steepened. Colryn whiled away the time by singing Darkovan legends in a tunefulbass voice, but Barron shut his ears and would not listen, closing his eyes and letting his horse take theroad along the mountain trail; the horse knew more about it than he did.

The sound of hoofs, the slow jogging in the saddle, the darkness behind his closed eyes, was firsthypnotic, then strangely familiar; it seemed normal to sit unseeing in his saddle, trusting himself to thehorse beneath him and his other senses alert—the smell of flowers, or conifers, of the dust of the road,the sharp scent of some civet-smelling animal in the brush. When Lerrys drew abreast of him, Barronkept his eyes closed and after a time Lerrys spurred his horse and overtook Colryn. Colryn went onsinging in an undertone. Without knowing how he knew, Barron recognized that the singer had shifted tothe opening bars of the long
 
Ballad of Cassilda
 
.

How strange it sounded without the water-harp accompaniment. Allira played and sang it well,though it was really a song for a man’s voice:

The stars were mirrored on the shore,

Dark was the dark enchanted moor,

Silent as cloud or wave or stone,

Robardin’s daughter walked alone.

A web of gold between her hands

On shining spindle burning bright,

Deserted lay the mortal lands

When Hastur left the realms of light.

Then, singing like a hidden bird…

He lost track of the words, hearing a far-off hawk-cry and the small wounded scream of some animal in

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the bush.
 
He was here, he was free, and behind him, ruin and death
 
.

The song went on, soft and incessant;

… A hand to each, he faltering came

Within the hidden mountain hall

Where Alar tends the darkened flame

That brightened at Cassilda’s call…

And as his brilliance paled away

Into the dimmer mortal day,

Cassilda left the shining loom.

A starflower in his hand she laid;

Then on him fell a mortal doom:

He rose and kissed Robardin’s maid.

The golden webs unwoven lay…

His mind spun in a strange dream as he listened to the song of the love of Cassilda, the sorrows of Camilla, the love of Hastur and the treachery of Alar.
 
It must be strange to be Comyn and Hastur,and know oneself sib to the God
 
…

I could use a god or two for kinsmen now
!

What are these old gods really? The forge people used to say that Sharra came to their fires
—
and they didn’t mean the spirit of fire, either! The old telepaths could raise powers as far beyondmy bird forms, or the fire shields, as these are beyond a trailman’s knife
!

“Barron! Don’t fall asleep here, man; the trail gets dangerous!” The voice of Gwynn, the big Darkovan, broke into his dream, and Barron shook himself awake. Was it another hallucination?— No, only a dream. “I must have been asleep,” he said, rubbing his eyes. Gwynn chuckled. “And to think that five days ago you’d never been in the saddle. You learn fast, stranger. Congratulations! But you’d better keep your eyes open from here; the path gets rough and narrow, and you probably have better judgment than your horse—even though there
 
is
 
an old proverb that says, ‘on an uphill road give your horse his head.’ But if you fell here—” He gestured at the thousand-foot drop on either side of the pass. “We ought to try and get through and down into the valleys, before nightfall. There are Ya-men around these heights, and perhaps banshees; and although there’s no sign of the Ghost Wind, I’m not any too eager to meet them just the same.”

Barron started to ask what they were and stopped himself.
 
Damn it, I don’t care; I’m already tooentangled in this business, and Gwynn and the others are here to guard me
 
. There was no reasonhe should think about these supposed dangers or even know what they were.

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Nevertheless, the unease of the others penetrated to him, and he found himself pulling close to them inthe narrow neck of the pass. It was almost an anti-climax when they topped the pass without incident andbegan to ride downward.

They camped that night in the valley under a shelter of the gray-blue boughs, which smelled of spice andrain; there was less talk and singing than usual. Barron, lying awake in his blankets and listening to thenightly rain sliding off the thick boughs, felt an apprehension he could not check.
 
What a hell of a world,and why did I have to get stuck in it
 
?

Already he had half forgotten the delight and fascination he had felt during the first journey through thefoothills. It was part of that strangeness within which he wanted to forget.

They arrived at the ranger station late the next day; Barron, unpacking his crates by lamplight in thelarge, airy room allotted to him, realized grudgingly that at least Valdir had spared no pains to make aguest comfortable. There were ample shelves and cupboards for his working tools, benches and spacewith good light—the pressure lamps produced unusual amounts of light from the relatively crude fuelsextracted from resins and oils of the local trees. A broad window of clear glass—not common on Darkover, not much desired, and evidently provided for the comfort of the Terran guest—provided anunbelievable panoramic view of mountains, and ridge after ridge of forested and rocky slopes andheights. As Barron stood at the window, watching the huge red sun of Darkover setting behind thepeak—the mountains here were so high that the sun was hidden even before the night’s mist formed—hewas touched again with that uncanny sense which made his heart race; but by sheer force of will he kepthimself from succumbing to it, and went out to explore the station.

From where it sat at the top of one of the tallest peaks, it commanded a view—even without climbing tothe tower behind—of what seemed like hundreds of square miles of forested country; Barron countedfifteen small villages, each lying sheltered in a fold of the hills, each only a cluster of dim roofs. At thisdistance he could see why telescopes would be needed; the view stretched so far that it vanished in hazethrough which no unaided eye could penetrate and which could easily hide a thin coil of smoke. He couldeven see the faraway roofs of Armida, and, high in the hills, a dim pale spire which looked like a castle.

“With your lenses,” Larry told him, joining him at the doorway of the station, “we will see forest fires while they are still only small blazes, and save our timber. Look.” He pointed to the side of a faraway ridge which was a black scar in the green. “That burned five years ago; it was out of control only for a day or two, but even though every man from seven villages turned out, we lost I forget how many square miles of good timber and resin trees. Also, from here, we could see and give the warning, if bandits or something attacked.”