She arose with that languid grace which was a part of their delicate jeweled bodies and came to stand beside him, a child in size, making his Terran flesh and bones awkward, clodlike in contrast. She stretched out her four-digit hand, her slender arm ringed with gemmed circles and bands, measuring it beside his own, bearing that livid scar.
"We are different, star man, yet still are we both dreamers. And dreams hold power. Your dreams brought you across the dark which lies between sun and distant sun. Our dreams carry us on even stranger roads. And yonder"—one of her fingers stiffened to a point, indicating the skull—"there is another who dreams with power, a power which will destroy us all unless the pattern is broken speedily."
"And I must go to seek this dreamer?" His vision of climbing through that nose hole was to be realized then.
"You go."
Thorvald stirred and the Wyvern turned her head to him. "Alone," she added. "For this is your dream only, as it has been from the beginning. There is for each his own dream, and another cannot walk through it to alter the pattern, even to save a life."
Shann grinned crookedly, without humor. "It seems that I'm elected," he said as much to himself as to Thorvald. "But what do I do with this other dreamer?"
"What your pattern moves you to do. Save that you do not slay him——"
"Throg!" Thorvald started forward. "You can't just walk in on a Throg barehanded and be bound by orders such as that!"
The Wyvern must have caught the sense of that vocal protest, for her communication touched them both. "We cannot deal with that one as his mind is closed to us. Yet he is an elder among his kind and his people have been searching land and sea for him since his air rider broke upon the rocks and he entered into hiding over there. Make your peace with him if you can, and also take him hence, for his dreams are not ours, and he brings confusion to the Reachers when they retire to run the Trails of Seeking."
"Must be an important Throg," Shann deduced. "They could have an officer of the beetle-heads under wraps over there. Could we use him to bargain with the rest?"