Long ago the Demons had gone from their lairs,
though they had left foul traces of their existence be-
hind them. The stinking sickness, the coughing death,
the eaten-skin illsчthese had fallen on the People too
in the past, for once they had been imprisoned in the
Demons' lairs. Only a small handful of them had
escaped.
The memory of such deaths had kept them away
from the lairs for many lifetimes. Gammage had been
the first to dare to return to live in the Demons' forsak-
en shells. And that was because his thirst for knowl-
edge had taken him there. Gammage came of a
BREED TO COME
strange line differing yet again from many of the Peo-
ple.
Absently Furtig brought his hand to his mouth,
licked the fur on it clean of an itch-causing leaf smear.
He was of Gammage's own clan line, and they were
noted for their boldness of curiosity and their dif-
ferences in body. In fact they were not too well re-
garded. Once more his lips wrinkled, his tail twitched
a little. Warriors of his family did not find it easy to
take a mate, not even when they won in the Trials.
Their restlessness of spirit, their habit of questioning
old ways, of exploring, was not favored by any pru-
dent cave mother who wished security for future
younglings.
Such would look in the opposite direction when
Gammage's kin padded by. And Gammage himself,
awesome as he was, had little repute nowadays.
Though the clans were willing enough to accept the
infrequent, but always surprising, gifts which he had
sent from the lairs in times past.
The hunting claws, which clicked softly as Furtig
shifted his weight, were one of Gammage's first gifts
to his people. They were made of a shining metal
which did not dull, break, or flake with the passing of
years as did the shards of metal found elsewhere. Set
in a band which slipped over the hand, they snapped
snugly just above the wrist, projecting well beyond
the stubby fingers with tearing, curved hooks, like the
claws one grew, but far more formidable and danger-
ous. And they were used just as one used one's natu-
