"You are free—" Selrena spoke, not to Farree but directly to the girl. "There is"—she held the fingers on her right hand wide and came up to Atra, setting her hand so on the crown of the winged girl's head—"is, however, something of Them about you." Her fingers burrowed into the girl's matted hair and Atra gave a small cry of pain, wavering where she stood. Farree turned, caught and held her. Out of her hair Selrena had drawn what looked like a very loosely woven cap of thin wire. It was held tight knotted and she had to tear it free, each tug of her fingers bringing a gasp from Atra. Selrena threw it from her with the gesture of one who had held foulness.

It struck the pavement and Fragon studied it for a long moment. He nodded to the earth dweller who had been their guide. The creature aimed a kick with one of his outsize feet, setting the circlet spinning until it brought up against one of the smoky crystals which helped to support Fragon's throne. There was a flash of light bright enough to be seen even in this place of many lights. Nothing was left of the cap but a wad of smoking metal.

"Ahhhhh—" Atra's hands threaded through her hair back and forth. She might have been seeking some other bond which held her. Her wings expanded, brushing Farree back and away. They swelled and small silvery designs were visible along them as they moved. Head held high she looked to Selrena.

"Thanks to you, Lady. What debt does Langrone now owe you—or is there still any Langrone kin to offer such? I saw many fall to the mutilating knife and their blood guilt rests on me—for some I called to their torment, being captive to Them!"

"True enough." Beast Mask faced her, and there was nothing but coldness in his or her harsh voice. "There is more than one debt, Daughter of Langrone, since it was Noper here who had you go forth—"

The creature who had led them showed a row of yellow fangs in what might be a smile.

"Not so!" That was the lord of the red wings. "Come the inner ways perhaps she did, but it was this one of her own kind who had her go forth." He nodded to Farree who noted that the winged people were edging away from any contact with the strange beings who followed Beast Mask.

"Have done!" It was not a roar of a voice but one which cut through the mind like a blow, and Farree was sure he was not the only one to receive the force of that order. "This is no time to remember old troubles between our people. Glasrant brought her forth from the first bondage. Sharp Nose sent to him those who served him well. It was a thing done together. It is of more importance that Glasrant tell us what may come from this other ship which brought him– Who are these slave dealers, Son of Langrone? And what new injuries do they think to deliver here?"

Farree shook his head violently. "No injuries—they brought me—"

"For bait!" hissed someone among Beast Mask's company.

"No." It was Farree's turn to sweep his hands across his aching head. That wall within his mind may have been shaken, shattered in places, but still all he could remember came in faded bits and patches as if he looked upon some chronicle in Zoror's collection which had been half destroyed by damp and the nibbling of insects. He knew that it was true he was of the winged people who stood in companies here, and that he had been handed over to smugglers by one of his own people who wished the power Farree, once an adult, might claim. He had an instinctive dislike for Fragon, as if he sniffed now and then some foul odor which puffed from the mist robe. Also he was wary of Selrena and the black-winged ones which made up her escort. But even now he could remember so little—

Selrena must have been following his thoughts. "What you remember—do!"

That was an order Farree discovered he must obey. He began with the misty half life he had led in the Limits, coming into clarity only with the death of the spacer who had kept him in bondage and his own escape. The dangerous days which followed were so much alike in the constant peril which they offered that they were a single blur of misery, in which only his tie with Togger made one small patch of light. Then there was the coming of Maelen and Vorlund and the seeming miracle that they cared enough to lift him out of the foul mud of the Limits and admit him into the tight circle of their friendship.

There came the voyage to Yiktor and the meeting with the Thassa after the Guild had made its move to take them over. When he thought of the Thassa and of Maelen's people there was, for the first time, a stir among those who listened, who read from the pictures in his memory. It was Vestrum who broke through what was nearly a trance in which Farree spilled out the past.

"These Thassa—of what world are they? From whence do they come? And what powers have they?"

"Why not ask that of they themselves?" Selrena countered. Those who followed her broke apart to form a pathway and down that came Maelen, the flickering lights of the crystals seeming to center about her slender body in the sober-colored space covering, making it resemble the robe of one who was equal to Selrena or perhaps more than the Darda. At her shoulder walked Vorlund and he, too, appeared kin to the Darda, as powerful in his way as Vestrum. While behind the two was Zoror looking eagerly from right to left as if to crowd into memory every small detail of the scene.

Maelen and the two with her made a small gesture to Fragon, no more than they would have used in greeting one of their own kind with whom they had little to share. But Maelen smiled at Selrena and raised her two hands before her, her fingers moving in intricate patterns as if she wrote some message on the air.

For the first time Farree saw an odd expression on the Darda's face—a trace of confusion. Vestrum stepped to her side and his eyes were intent on the off-worlder. One of his small flute-playing creatures made a sudden quick movement, squatting down before his feet between him and Maelen.

From its pipe there arose a thread, thin, sweet-noted air. Maelen listened for a breath or two. Then from her own lips there came a song without words, note matching the note of the player. Wonderment was on Vestrum's face. Selrena's hands moved of themselves, her fingers lifting and falling to the measure of that wordless song.

Among those who were winged there was a stirring, a fanning of pinions as if they would take off to the spaces above Fragon's seat, though none of them did. In Farree there was also an answer—a lightness of heart such as he had not felt since they had started this venture. He found a hand slipping into his and he knew that Atra also was making her own answer to the weaving of this spell. Only Fragon, the beast-masked one, and his crooked company did not move. The faces of some of them were screwed up into masks as ugly as that their leader wore.

"You are—of the Blood!" Vestrum spoke first when the piper was finished and Maelen's own song died away. "Of the lost ones, the far travelers who are apart!"

"I am Thassa," she answered him. "My people are so old that we have forgotten our far past. Long ago we put aside what we had held to—settled homes, land, save for riding over it, possessions, all which had weighed down our spirits. We cut ties with the past—seeking only that which would give us life with the Little Ones—knowledge which brought good, not harm—"

"You are of the Blood!" Vestrum repeated. "And of the Lost Ones! We are few here. There only half a hundred of us left. And of those many have withdrawn into worlds they have created where they choose to be gods, or heroes, or"—he looked to Fragon and then away again—"devils. We age with weariness and the knowledge that wherever we go They will follow to bring their deaths and their ills, and, at last, all destruction of what we know. Do you now take to the stars and seek distant kin? If so, you have succeeded—I will say that you are of the Blood!"