Free The Forerunner Factor by Andre Norton

stranger, though she had been born among them she was sure. Yet, none of them had ever matched her coloring of skin or hair. To Gathar, her main contact in the upper city, she was only a young one of a people his kind had long held in contempt. Though her management of the zorsals had won grudging respect in so far as it aided him. But to this off-worlder, she was a person one asked advice of, one whose knowledge and opinions were held in the same esteem as if he were speaking to one of the upper town.
    “He is the richest of the Guild Lords, his line the oldest,” she began. “It is he who is the first signer every third season on the trade wares brought in. He is not seen often—having many to be hands and feet for him. He is—” she moistened her lips with tongue tip—what she would say now as pure conjecture and rumor and she hesitated to add that to pad out the little she did know.
    “There is something else,” he broke that minute of silence.
    “They tell tales about him, that he is hunted in one place and cannot be found, later he comes from there and says that he was always there. He is said to go to none of the temples on the heights as do the other lords, but he keeps in his service one who talks with the dead. And that he is a seeker—”
    “A seeker!” Thorn pounced upon that as Zass would upon a ver-rat. “Is it also rumored as to what he seeks?”
    “Treasure. Yet that he does not need, for much flows ever into his stronghold and little comes out again. He hires many guards and sometimes those travel up river. Their leader may come back next season but they do not. Perhaps he sells them as fighters to the River Lords—there is always quarreling there still.”
    “You have never heard of him sending to the Hard Hills?”
    Simsa laughed. “All the treasure in the world would not send him there. No one goes in that direction, I tell you, no one.”
    “But one shall,” he leaned a little forward, caught her gaze with his and held it steady. “For I shall, Gentlefem.”
    “Then you will die—as did your brother.” She refused to be impressed by more than his folly.
    “I think not.” Now he took from his pouch the two bits of carving he had bought from her. “This I have to tell you, Gentlefem—but first answer me—how safe are you in these Burrows of yours?”
    “Safe? Why do you ask that?”
    Before he could answer, Zass straightened up on her perch over the low door of the Burrow. She flung back her head and gave a cry which brought Simsa upstanding, her claws expanding instantly in answer to an alarm which had reached her brain less than a second earlier. Then through the door itself came two winged creatures. As each seemed to erupt into the chamber, so swift was its emergence from the tunnel beyond, it gave a deeper cry in answer to Zass’s welcome, before both planed down to stand before the girl.
    There was no mistaking these—Zass’s sons. That they were here meant some catastrophe at their abiding place—the warehouse. The alien caught at her hand.
    “Can they be followed?”
    “Not save by another of their kind. And there are none such I know of who are so trained. But—” She looked from the zorsals to the off-worlder. “I do not understand what they are doing here. They would not have left Gathar for any reason unless—unless there is trouble there! Was that the reason you asked of me concerning safety? What has happened to Gathar?” More important what might happen to her who was well known to have dealings with that waremaster even if it were only because of the zorsals? Plenty knew that she had trained them and only rented out the creature’s services, refusing to sell them to him.
    “I did not get your silver from him,” the off-worlder returned. “When I would have gone back to his place, I saw the badges of Arfellen on men at his door. And I had already had warning that my questions had startled the lord. I do not know what he seeks—I have no reason to