The Forerunner Factor by Andre Norton Page B

even the house tops if she must. Still—she had to know.
    She used her oil sticky fingers to free the wrist band of her sleeve, seek out the carvings, not looking at what she did, rather keeping a wary eye on the other. He had not moved and his hands, free and empty, hung in plain sight.
    As the girl pulled out the small packet which contained the carvings, something else spun free into the light of the lamp, the violence of its spin freeing it from the scrap of cloth she had thought so firmly bound around it. It was as if fate itself had begun to betray her, Simsa thought, as she snatched for that, caught only the cloth and dumped the contents fully into the shine of the lamp.
    The ring did not glitter, the metal of its fashioning was too soft a sheen, it had been buried perhaps too long, and its single remaining stone was milkily opaque and not cut to blaze forth in glory. Yet, there was no mistaking, no hiding now what had so seemingly loosened itself through no will of hers.
    That circlet with its tiny castle mount for the unknown stone lay revealed to both of them. Simsa hurled aside the packet of the carvings, scooped, with claw-extended fingers, for the ring. She might have parted, had there been both opportunity and need, with the two other pieces of jewelry—those from the Old One’s caches, but this—no! From the first moment she had found it, something within her claimed it, knew that it must be hers alone.
    Though the off-worlder had picked up the packet, shaken the carvings free of their covering and inspected them as any prudent purchaser would, he quickly turned his attention again to her hand. For some reason, perhaps defiance, because he had handled her so easily at the window, Simsa did not thrust the ring into hiding once again. Rather she slipped it over her thumb in full sight.
    He did not bend his head any closer to view it. Still, she was as certain as if he did, that he studied it with care. Then, at last, he said—as if the words were forced from him against his will:
    “And from where came that?”
    “This?” She tapped it with the slightly extended foreclaw of her other hand. “This was the Old One’s gift—(which was truth after a fashion—had Simsa not labored to bury Ferwar, she would never have chanced on it)—I do not know from where she had it.”
    Now he did extend his hand. “Will you let me see it?”
    She would not take it off, the longer she felt its weight on her finger the more natural that seemed. But she lifted her hand a fraction closer to him.
    “X-Arth maybe,” he said very softly, almost in wonder.
    “The ring could be that of a Moon Sister, or High Lady. But here?” He must ask the question of himself rather than her, Simsa decided. She had a new flow of curiosity.
    “What is Moon Sister? A High Lady? Yes, of them I have heard.”
    He shook his head and there was impatience in his voice when he answered.
    “I do not speak of the Lady of one of your Guild Lords. The High Lady was of another world and time. She could summon powers my race were never able to measure, and the Moon was her crown and her strength.”
    Though the Burrowers gave no lip service nor bowed knees except to Fortune, Simsa thought she understood: A goddess.
    The temples of the upper city served only those with precious metal to pay for sacrifices (not that Simsa had ever heard of any surprising answer to prayer muttered or full-sung in any of those halls). If there were gods and goddesses on this world, they busied themselves only with those who already had the warm right hand of fortune on their shoulders. Only how did the symbol of a goddess known to the off-worlder come to lie under a rock down by the burial pits?
    This X-Arth he hunted—what did the Lord Arfellen have to do with that?
    “Those guards—they followed you.” She flipped the ring about so only the band was showing, the castle, as he called it, lay against her palm in hiding. “What has Lord Arfellen to do with