The Warding of Witch World

38 Into the Land of Ice, North

It was impossible to force the packhorses to follow the road provided by the stream—not only because of their complete refusal to be dragged into the lapping water, but also because the rough bottom of the cut threatened broken legs for the small beasts.

Yet the party was reluctant not only to leave a larger part of their supplies behind, but to let the animals themselves drift free on the tundra, where it was very plain that something was eager to slay all invaders.

Inquit and Kankil of them all were able to round up the small beasts and hold them quiet while Frost went from one to the next, touching each with her jewel and so setting upon them some warding—though how strong that would be against what had already struck here, the travelers had no way of telling.

Their gear was then broken down into individual packs, and they assumed layers of spare clothing over that which they already wore, in protection against the freezing cold which they were certain awaited them ahead. Into a larger pouch she could swing from her belt, Trusla managed to stuff the jar of sand.

They had a last very hearty meal, consuming supplies which could not be taken. The horses had already wandered off, grazing as they went. They did not scatter apart far but kept close enough that they might be in a recognized herd.

The horses were finally gone, small black dots to be seen only in the distance but certainly heading on the back trail, when, after a rest period Stymir urged on them all, the travelers gathered together for their own departure. Each was equipped with a staff of sorts—mainly a stout spear—from the spare supplies. Because of the rough footing, they had to proceed at a slow pace and make sure that every step was as stable as possible. Still there were falls, plunging the unfortunate forward into the water—which luckily never reached more than thigh high.

The crevice—though it offered only the narrowest strip of footing on either side of the stream—did not narrow as they went. But it did close overhead so that they moved through a strange dusky world, transparent in places and elsewhere containing dark blots that were perhaps rocks carried forward by the eternal invisible movement of the ice.

“It is warmer!” They had halted for a breathing space and Captain Stymir drew off his heavy glove to plunge his hand into the water. He was right, as the others’ experiments quickly confirmed. The stream, which had been only faintly warm when they had first found it, was distinctly heated to a higher degree.

One good result of this appeared to be its effect on the size of the fissure, as that continued to widen until they could splash along at its sides in lower water.

“Aaaagha.” Odanki, who had been in the lead, suddenly halted, with so little warning that Frost had to catch at his pack to keep herself on her feet. There seemed to be a jog here in the way they were following. The ice wall which projected, forcing the stream to one side, was opaque and dark. Trusla, expecting to see a rock of some monstrous size, pushed a little on until Simond caught her in a nearly bruising grip.

This was no rock! What it might be she could not, for a moment, understand. In some places the encasing ice had thinned enough so she could see what seemed to be a cluster of snakes, each of them larger than a man’s leg in girth, frozen together in a contorted knot.

Above those rose a dome which ended in a great beaklike projection, and there were two saucer-sized pits which might once have sheltered eyes.

The ice had melted back a little in one place so that the tip end of one of those snakelike appendages was freed to trail down to the water. But from the position in which the creature had been frozen it seemed that it was about to launch itself straight at them if they tried to pass, if it could at its will break its prison.

“Sethgar!” The Sulcar captain stood looking up at the thing which towered well over him. “But—but demons do not lie in ice!” He looked to Frost. “Lady, we have a very ancient tale of such as this—that they acted as do the Hounds of Alizon but the masters they obeyed were beyond the power of men to battle.” He suddenly caught at his fur overgarment and brought forth the plaque.

There was a glow about it and he spat out an oath, nearly dropping it into the water, as if it had burned or cut his fingers. At the same time Frosts jewel flared red.

“It is dead, long dead.” Inquit used the tip of her spear to poke at that dangled bit the ice had released. It quivered under her prodding, but that was all.

“This Sethgar,” Simond demanded. “It was a thing of the sea, was it not?”

Certainly they could not see any form of legs—only those lengthy snakelike appendages.

“Yes. But…” the captain was staring down at the plaque he held. Once more it resembled a small window through which they could see into… where? Another world? Trusla wondered.

The strange black ship was far clearer in every detail now. And, plainly clinging to the deck near the bow, was a dark mass which could be just such a creature as they faced now.

“It seems”—Frost cradled her jewel against her—“that if your legend of coming through some ice gate in the north is correct, then we are finding proof of what hunted your people here, and we follow the proper trail.”

Stymir visibly shuddered. “Lady, some tales are told for the pleasure of listeners who, sitting by a comfortable fire, enjoy to shudder at what does not exist. To see a demon come to life is no light thing.”

“It is no demon.” Odanki had advanced, spear in hand. Now he struck the ice wall which covered the monster. A chip or two broke off, but there was no other change. “This is old, old, and long since dead—the ice will release it in time and it will rot into nothingness like any dead thing.”

Joul uttered a cackle of laughter. “The Latt has the right of it, Captain. It is true that even men have been lost in ice crevices only to be spouted forth years later looking as they did when they went in.”

In Stymir’s hold the plaque appeared to dull and he looked down at it and then shrugged. “So be it. But the Lady is right—what we search for must lie ahead.”

There was no way here to establish any resting place. Though their pace from the start had been a slow one, bodies began to ache from the constant care one must take to avoid the perils of the footing. They ate sparingly as they went and Trusla began to wonder if she could keep up—the ice crevice appeared to have no end.

Odanki had scooped up Kankil and the little one rode on his shoulders, chirping now and then, perhaps to herself, for no one answered her.

The mist came first, Trusla suddenly realized that the water had been growing ever warmer as they went and now there was a thin cloud rising from it ahead.

Luckily the passage widened ever larger and there was a stretch of mixed earth and gravel on either side of the stream which was fast becoming truly hot. But, in spite of their efforts, they were lagging, though advancing doggedly.

Now there was a smell also, one which irritated throat and nose and set them coughing. It was perhaps borne by that stream.

Trusla dug her spear butt into the ground and pulled herself on. Simond had tried to take her pack beside his own some time back, but she refused. Each must give all one could to this venture.

Then they came out of the hold of the ice, into a world they could not believe at first look existed. They must have been struck down by some glamorie during that march.

There was a sharp slope to the ground ahead. The stream developed rapidly high banks and from it the strong odor arose, thick enough to drive them back from the water.

At a space beyond, the ground was free of any hint of ice, and green with a growth not unlike that of the summer-freed tundra. There were clumps of color which could only be flowers, and the air above them was so humid and sultry that their bodies, under all their layers of clothing, were as wet as if they had just climbed from baths.

Then, as if to announce their coming, straight out of a patch of mud of many colors there arose with a roar a plume of spray. Audha cried out and jumped back, catching a heel in the thick vegetation and sprawling on her back, nursing one hand with the other as if some droplets of the spray had reached her.

They were cautious in their venturing farther into this strange place of heat amid the cold. They saw the rise of the mountains beyond, and more glaciers there, but here the heat was almost that of midsummer in the south and they were panting, striving to move farther away from that muddy space which made up about half of the open earth. This was spotted with holes which fountained up at startling intervals to add to the heat and the smell.

At length they retreated to a grouping of rocks behind which the glaciers showed not too far away. Waterlogged clothing had to be shed, though whether any of this would dry they could not guess.

The grassland had inhabitants. Odanki dug out from a shallow den a fat little creature which both the Latts seemed to recognize, and one of Simond’s arrows gave them a beast not unlike one of the leapers of their homeland, save that it was thicker of body.

So they ate and then their bodies demanded rest from the trials of the day. It was, Trusla thought, early morning when she settled on a still-damp bank cushioned by the moss beneath.

For the shaman there appeared to be no rest. The Estcarpian girl was too spent to do more than watch, but when Frost and the Latt woman drew a little away, she realized that Inquit intended a use of

Power, though Frost did not seem ready to rouse her talent. Perhaps she was anchorage for the shaman.

Trusla expected to dance once more in her dreams—to follow the pattern laid in her mind upon the sand. Instead…

Like one of the house pests of the ancient holds it came nibbling—seeking. Though it exerted no great Power, Trusla was well aware that it held such in abeyance. Curious—she presented some puzzle to what came spying.

Then there was a very clear picture. She was not a part of this but only a watcher—though there was a part of her which fought to aid.

They were fleeing, those white-sailed ships. Sulcar ships, she knew, even if their main sails were painted with strange patterns. Behind them all the sea and sky was dark—not with the honest dusk of night, but rather as if something like a great sword blade swept across the sky and sea.

There were lights on each ship, the strongest coming from their bows. Not from lanterns, she was certain, but rather as if each vessel had a life force of its own.

Out of the sea, near a lagging rearguard ship, arose huge snake—even greater than she had seen as part of the ice-bound creature. Those strove to seize upon the ship. But the light at the prow suddenly blazed high, and the sea thing fell away as if blinded.

So they came—with the Dark ever behind them. Now she could see that the waters boiled with a multitude of the monsters. But she sensed that on one of those ships rode a great will, one who had honed talent and Power into a weapon, wasting nothing of what he could control until this hour when it was needed most.

Out of the curtain of the Dark burst another ship and this one she also knew—for she had seen its likeness in the plaque which had drawn them here. It flashed forward though it carried no sails, like a thing with sentient life.

The Sulcar ships drew into line, sailing as close to each other as they dared. They were like a thread forced through the eye of a needle, and the black ship was fast upon their wakes.

There was a burst of light, so eye searing that Trusla cried out and all was darkness. She was in Simond’s arms and he was calling her name with concern. There were others around, but all she could do for the present was to cling to him and wait for her dimmed eyes to clear.

One of them came to kneel beside where Simond held her, eyeing her scarchingly.

“You have dreamed!”

Through even Simond’s calling her name those three words sounded clearly. And Trusla answered:

“I have—seen—” For certainly that had been no dream, such as one small talent wove.

Then there was another beside the Latt shaman, and with her coming was a glint of light which made the world about Trusla fully real again. She told them—of that flight of ships before the curtain of the everlasting Dark, of the black ship which had come to cut the waves of their wakes, and then of the light which had left her blinded so she had not seen any more of that flight.

“The gate,” Frost said. In her hold her jewel lost that spark of light which had fully aroused the girl. “And those who fled—surely they had Power of their own. What kind, Captain? What did your ancient kin use to defeat the Dark which would have followed?”

He shook his head. “Lady, some Power we have over storms and freaks of the sea. But none else which any of our blood could tell you. Could it not be that this destroying light came from that which pursued?”

“Yet you stand, Sulcar man, in a world you swear was never yours to begin with. No, I think that your far kin won free. Free and able to leave the warning which you carry now—the likeness of their enemy.”

“In the ice…” the Latt shaman was no longer looking at Trusla; rather, it was as if she stared inward. “I dreamed also—not of the past as did this one, but of what happens now and—”

She got no further, for out in that mud and steam there whipped up into the air a great lash and the heat of it reached them even as far as they were from the fount.

There was a second such and a third, driving them back against the wall of stone and ice. And each was closer. So they moved toward the north for the boiling spray which now seared the green growth in the direction from which they had come. At last they appeared trapped in a shallow break of the wall while back and forth across what had been a richly green land beat whips of steaming mud and water, the fumes of which set them coughing and fighting for good air to breathe.

Trusla saw a swing of light. Frost’s jewel, flaming like an earth-tied star, swung back and forth. Beside her the shaman was—in spite of coughing—chanting. The girl saw Inquit’s hand raise, in it one of the long feathers she must have pulled from the edging of her cloak. Three times she waved it and then let fly, and fly it did—out into that streaming mush of what had once been land.

It was not a bird—no, as it went it became more like a long-shafted dart, flung straight as a small hunting spear. Into a rain of blistering mud it winged.

The column, fed from some inferno below, broke as if the shaman had sliced it with a great sword. The light from Frost’s jewel caught another threading pillar, setting it awhirl inside a narrow space.

They knew this upheaval for what it was: no act of nature. Rather, the attack of something which was alien—alien enough perhaps not to realize that they had such protection or strengths. If it had not realized that, it accepted such knowledge quickly. No more geysers arose from the mud, though long streaks of stinking, steaming earth had withered the green which had first welcomed them.

Trusla choked rackingly and still held to Simond. But that oppressive feeling that they were being confronted by something entirely alien to all they knew had withdrawn now.

“Qwayster.” Joul had drawn his sword as if to use that in defense. “The breath of Qwayster!” Beside him Captain Stymir stood, a gray cast under the sea tan on his face. He was coughing, tears streaming from his blue eyes, a small red patch on one arm showing under a smoking hole burned in his tunic.

“Have you given us a true name, seaman?” Frost asked, her jewel still at ready, though no more fountains were rising. “Do we now face some adept known and named?”

It was the captain who was shaking his head. “Demon, Lady. Another out of ancient tales: a force which could be commanded by one of great Power—to use the earth itself as a weapon. Was it not so with you of Estcarp when you made the southern mountains turn to your will?”

“That took the Power of all the sisterhood,” she said slowly. “Do you tell us now, Captain, that our enemies may be legion?”

Inquit stopped smoothing the edge of her cloak as if she had been soothing it for the loss of the feather. “Not many but one. But very old. It has slept long and now it wakes. Did I not dream also? Yes, we are on the proper road, but that one has been astir for only a short time. It was the wild magic doubtless that called her forth.”

“Her?” Simond’s surprise was plain.

The shaman smiled. “One woman does not mistake the magic of another, young lordling. To touch talent to talent is to learn. Yes, what we are to race is no adept, but one as wily and perhaps as Dark-filled as any who fought in the Great War to blast our world long since. Only this one is not of our universe. She thinks, she seeks, she feels her way—she is wily as an old wasbear with cubs to defend, and as greedy as a direwolf pinched by winter hunger. She will watch—and I think perhaps continue to test as. But she is not going to waste any great Power until we face her in her own place, where she feels that she is strongest.”

“And where is that place?” demanded the captain.

“It shall call us as she wishes. Nor must we fight such a call, for only face-to-face can we make the final testing. Your talk of gates, southern-born, is true. This one was caught on our side of one, entrapped in the Power which closed it upon her kin. She took the way of long sleep, waiting for that which would aid her. Then the wild magic broke the web she herself had woven.”

A woman—if such could be counted a woman, Trusla thought. But then the witches had wrought great things and there were tales that there had been women also among the ancient adepts. Only—the girl shivered—the thought that it was female made it somehow more monstrous.

They spent what was left of the night in the small patch of green which had survived the attack of the mud. The choking steam subsided. Odanki and Simond went on scout when the camp roused and they had eaten, edging along the wall of the valley. Trusla was not aware until she was repacking her shoulder bag that Audha had disappeared. The Sulcar girl was always so quiet and retiring that half the time one forgot that she was one of them.

If Audha had not followed Simond and the Latt hunter, then she could have only gone in one direction—backtrailing. And Trusla was still dubious about those attacks of mud.

She spoke to Inquit, and by the shaman’s sober face she apparently shared Trusla’s concern. It was then that Kankil caught at the edge of Trusla’s tunic and urged her along, chirping as usual but not as if she went in any fear.

“We go—the little one knows,” Inquit said. At her agreement, which Kankil seemed to understand, the small one loosed her hold on Trusla and bounded ahead.

They still kept to the edge of the cliff’s foot. None of the masses of mud had reached this far and there was a green fringe. Kankil gave a sudden squeal and threw herself on her knees, clawing aside the thick mass of leaves to reveal bright berries. She gathered a pawful of these and brought them back to the shaman and then went to harvest some for Trusla. The fresh taste of the fruit seemed to banish some of the stale remains of yesterday’s memories.

Though they were tempted to stop and harvest more, they went on, coming to a place where a great wedge of rock extended out into the valley. It had been well scoured by the ice which had carried it here, but now, Trusla noted, as she had not when they had passed it before, there was an opening of sorts between it and the cliff and it was into that Kankil pattered.

Once more they strode over uneven gravel, but there was no stream to wade this time. Instead Inquit pointed to a scraped place on the wall as if someone had left a sign on purpose.

It was beyond that, under the overhang of the rock, that they found a new road. Trusla eyed it in wonder before turning to In-quit for confirmation.

“It—it is a stair!” But who had it served? There was none in this country to have built such a range of wide steps. Yet it was plain that that had been done.

But they had not yet tried that trail when they sighted something else—a sight which halted even the agile Kankil.

Set to one side of this way was a ledge, chiseled into the rock with the same precision and craft which had built the stairway. And on it…

Trusla gasped. A row of skulls had been set with care, but what made them so hideous was the fact that each bony dome of the bodiless head had been covered with a luxuriant growth of the same moss as that which grew over the ground below, so that it would seem the weathered bones were hilly haired.

Inquit’s first astonishment seemed quickly past. She had approached the line and was studying them carefully, though she did not touch any.

“Not man as we know,” she said. “Look at the size of the eye holes, and this ridge of bone above those. Also they are wider in the jaw. No, not men.”

Trusla was willing to accept that verdict without any examination of her own. There were races in Escore which certainly bore little resemblance to humankind and yet held intelligence as great or greater than her species. It could well have been that some such had once lived here.

Now the shaman seemed to have lost interest in the line of skulls. Instead she brought out the long-bladed knife which served her for so many purposes. With the point of this she was digging along a space between the skulls and the edge of the ledge. Soil, roots of plants, and small stones scattered under her assault. But what she had uncovered was not the natural roughness of the rock but deeply incised lines which had the appearance of runes.

Beginning on the left Inquit touched each of those symbols with knifepoint again, and repeated some click-click of her native speech. However, she was shaking her head decidedly. “Not a spell of my knowledge. Best leave it alone. And best of all move to find Audha. She may be bound where it is dangerous to go.”