Free Beast Master's Planet: Omnibus of Beast Master and Lord of Thunder (Beastmaster) by Andre Norton, Lyn McConchie Page B

bracelet, concha belt—all masterpieces of the smith’s art—the ceremonial jewelry of a Dineh warrior. Old, old pieces he had seen before, made by brown fingers, dust long before he had been born—the designs created by the artists of his race.
    Seeing those, Storm knew he had been right in his surmise. Not only had Grandfather somehow known—but he had found it possible to forgive the grandson who had walked the alien way—or else he could not resist this last mute argument to influence that grandson! It might have been his own death that Na-Ta-Hay had foreseen—or perhaps the death of his world. But he had sent this legacy to hisdaughter’s son, striving to keep alive in the last of his own blood a little of the past he had protected so fiercely, fought so hard to hold intact against the push of time and the power of alien energy.
    And now out of the night did there come a faint sound of a swinging chant? That song sung for the strengthening of a warrior?
“Step into the track of the Monster Slayer.
Step into the moccasins of him whose lure is the extended bowstring,
Step into the moccasins of him who lures the enemy to death.”
    Storm did not put the contents of this last packet with the things to be left in Larkin’s care. He took up the jewelry, running his fingers across the cool substance of silver, the round boss of turquoise, slipping the necklace over his head where it lay cold against his breast under his shirt. The ketoh clasped his wrist. He rolled the concha belt into a coil to fit into his trail bag.
    Then he got to his feet, the blanket folded into a narrow length resting on his shoulder. He had never worn a “chief” blanket in all his life, yet its soft weight now had a warm and familiar feel, bringing with it the closeness of kinship—linking the forgotten hands that had woven it to Hosteen Storm, refugee on another world, lost to his people and his home.
    Lost! Dumbly Storm turned to face the east, toward the mountain ranges. He threw his hat down on the blanket roll, baring his head to the tug of the wind from those high hills, and walked forward through the night, doubly lighted by the two small moons, coming out over a little rise that could not even be named “hill.” He sat down, cross-legged. There had always been a strong tie between the Dineh and their land. In the past they had chosen to starve in bad times rather than be separated from the mountains, the deserts, the world they knew.
    He would not remember! He dared not! Storm’s hands balled into fists and he beat them upon his knees, feeling that pain far less than the awaking pain inside him. He was cut off—exiled—And he was also accursed, unless he carried out the purpose that had brought himhere. Yet still there was this other hesitation in him. Without realizing it, he reverted to age-old beliefs. He must have broken his warrior’s magic. And so he could not meet Quade until he was whole again, once more armed against the enemy—the time was not yet ripe.
    How long he sat there he did not know. But now there were streaks of orange-red in the mauve sky. It was not the same promise given by the sun to Terra, but with it came the feeling that his decision had been rightly made.
    Storm faced the band of growing color, raising his arms and holding up into that light first his bared knife and then his stun rod—the arms of a warrior—to be blessed by the sun. He pointed them first at the life-giving heat in the sky and then at the earth, the substance from which the Faraway Gods had fashioned the People in the long ago. He had not the right, as had a Singer, to call upon those forces he believed existed, and possibly, this far from the land of the Dineh, the Faraway Gods could not, would not listen. Yet something within Storm held the belief that they could and did.
“Beauty is around me—
This one walks in beauty—
Good is around me—
This one walks in beauty—”
    Perhaps the words he recalled were not the right