Dragon Scale Silver

5 The Curse of Ingaret

The wise woman went to her quickly, then looked to me again.

“It is but a swoon, and she is better not hearing what you would say, for she is frightened of such things—the learning.”

“Yet you serve her.”

“Ah, but I am her foster mother and she does not reckon what I do. But from her childhood she has feared the Curse, for it has lain heavy on her House.”

“The Curse?”

“What lies beyond that—waiting—” She pointed to the window.

“Tell me, for I am not one who swoons. But, first; Wise Woman, what is your name?”

She smiled and I smiled in return at what we both knew, that she had one name for the world and one for the inner life.

“No, you are not one unable to bear the worst which may be told or shown you. As for my name—here I am Dame Wirtha—I am also Ulrica—”

“Dame?” For the first tune I noted she did not wear the rich-colored robes of a Lord’s household, but rather gray, and that the wimple of one of the abbeys covered all but her face. Yet I had heard that the Dames and the Old Knowledge did not meet. Also that those of the abbeys did not go beyond their enclosures after their final vows were taken.

“Dame,” she repeated. “War upsets all. The House of Kantha Twice Born was overrun by the Hounds this year past. And since I escaped I came to Brunissende—as I took vows only after she was handfasted. Also Kantha Twice Born had the Old Learning herself in her time and her daughters are of a different thought than those of other abbeys. But we have shared names—or do you have another?”

I shook my head. There was something of Aufrica in this Dame, but more which was herself alone. And I knew I could trust her.

“I was Blessed at my first naming, given after the custom of my mother’s people—”

“The Witches of Estcarp! Would you had now what they can control, for your need will be great if you think to do what brought you here.”

“Tell me of this Curse, for it must be that which has taken Elyn.”

“There is a record that the First of the House of Ingaret, from whom my lady is descended, had a taste for strange knowledge, yet not the patience nor the discipline to follow the known roads. Therefore he took risks such as no prudent men would think on.

“By his lone he went into the places of the Old Ones and from such a journey he brought back a wife. It was in this very chamber that they lay together, but they had no children and the lord began to fret, for he would have a son to follow him. He took steps to prove that the fault was not his—siring a son and then a daughter on women he kept in secret. Could any man be greater fool than to think he could hide such matters?

“He came hither one night to take his pleasure with his lady wife and found her sitting in a great chair, like that in which he sat when he gave justice in the hall. Before her on stools sat the women he had used to beget the babes, and they were as if dazed, staring straight before them, while on their knees rested their children.

“When he faced his lady, blustering, demanding to know what she did and why, she smiled at him very sweetly, and said that she but saw to his comfort that he might not have to journey forth in night and ill weather to seek those to satisfy his body—she had brought them under his roof.

“Then she arose and he found he could not move. She put off the fine robes he had given her, and the jewels he had set upon her, all these she tossed to the floor. Straightaway they became torn and tattered rags, broken base metal and glass. Then, with her body bare and beautiful in the moonlight, she walked to this very window and drew herself up on the sill.

“Thereupon she turned to look once more on Ingaret and she said words which down the years have never been forgot:

“ ‘You shall desire, you shall seek, and in the seeking you shall be lost. What you had you threw away, and it shall call through the years to others, and they shall also seek, but that seeking shall avail no one.’

“Then she turned and leaped through the window. But when the Lord Ingaret, released from the spell which had held him, raced to look down—below there was nothing. It was as if her leap had carried her into another world.

“He gathered together then his chief men and he acknowledged on a raised war-shield the boy as his son, gave a daughter’s necklet to the girl. Of their mothers—after that night they were ever maze-minded and did not live long. But the lord did not wed again. In the tenth year following he rose at night and rode out of Coomb Frome, nor was he seen again.

“Through the years other men, some lords, some heirs, some husbands of heiresses, all close to the rule of Coomb Frome, looked from this window at full moon, and then rode out—to be seen no more. Until the window was tight-barred and the family would come no more to this Keep. So that in the latter days none vanished so—until your brother.”

“If it had been many years—then perhaps this which waits is the greater hungered. You have the needful for far-seeing?”

“You would try that here? The Dark Powers must have potent rooting within this very room.”

Her warning was apt. I knew what I attempted would be highly dangerous. Yet it was needful.

“Within the moon-star—” I suggested.

She nodded, then hurried into an inner chamber. I turned to the saddlebags I had carried with me and brought out the cup. Almost I feared to drop its wrappings lest I see it black. But, although the dark tide had grown higher on the bright silver, yet there was the space of two fingers’ breadth untouched at the top. Seeing that I had hope.

The Dame came forth with a wide basket in which were small jars and bottles. First she took up a finger of white chalk and, stooping, she drew, in sharp, sure lines, the five-point star on the floor in line with that barred window. At each point she set a white candle.

That done she looked upon the cup I held. And she drew a startled breath.

“Dragon scale—where got you such a thing of power, Lady?”

“It was fashioned by and for my mother before my birth. From it I was named, as was Elyn, from it we drank farewell, so that it now bears the stain of his danger.”

“Power indeed had your mother, Lady, to bring such as that into being. I have heard that it could be done, but the price is high—”

“One she paid without question.” And I knew pride as I answered.

“Yes, for only one of courage could do so. You are ready? I have given you such protection as I know.”

“I am ready.”

I waited until she poured within the cup a blend of liquids from two of her bottles. Then I stepped within the star while she lit the candles. As they burned brightly, I heard her croon the Summons. But her voice was very faint and far away, as if she were not almost within arm’s-length but across a dale ridge.

But my eyes were on the interior of the cup where the liquid began to bubble. A mist from it filled my nostrils, though I did not turn my head aside. The mist drifted away and the liquid was a still mirror.

It was as if I were suspended in air, perhaps on wings. Below me was the spiral of the pillars. The curve of it wound around and around to a center heart.

And in that heart were people. They stood so still—unbreathing. Not people then, but images, so finely wrought they seemed alive. They, too, were in a spiral, one very near the heart, the others curling outward. And the last in that line—

Elyn!

As I recognized him, something knew me, or at least that I spied upon it. Not anger, no, rather contempt, amusement, scorn that so small and weak a thing as I would trouble it. Yet it was also—

I exerted my will, was back again among the steadily burning candles.

“You saw him?”

“Yes. Also I know where to find him. And that must be done swiftly.”

“Steel—weapons—will not save him.”

“Be sure I know that. Yet before she has never taken one tied to such as me. She has grown sure of herself, very sure, and that may work against her.”

Two things only, and small, but in my favor. Certainly no missing lord of Coomb Frome had before been sought by a Wise Woman blood-tied to him. Yet the time was so short. If Elyn stayed too long in that web he would be as those others, an image, not a man.

“There is a way privately from this Keep?” I asked.

“Yes. You would go at once?”

“I have no choice.”

She gave me things from her own store, two amulets, herbs. Then she took me by a hidden way between the walls, made for escape should the tower be besieged.

And she had her own serving maid bring a horse. Thus I rode out at dawning, armed and mounted, pulled by the thin thread my far-seeing had spun. How far I must go I had no idea, so that I kept the horse to the best pace I could since time was now my enemy. I slipped past patrols, mainly by using the craft of a Wise Woman to distort their sight of me. At last I was in the wild country beyond which was a maze of sharp-cut ravines and thick brush, so that I had to dismount many times and find a way by breaking or sword-slashing a path.

After one such bout of labor I stood, my hand on the saddle horn, resting before I pulled up again on the blowing horse. Then I knew I was being followed.

That such brush might conceal outlaws I was aware. Or even those from the Keep, mystified by their lord’s seeming return and new disappearance, come to track me. Any interference might be fatal to Elyn.

At least in such broken country I could find cover from which to watch my back trail and decide what to do. Sword in hand, I urged my horse within a screen of brush so thick that even autumn loss of leaves did not make it transparent. There I waited.

Whoever came was a master at woodcraft. And I thought of how my brother had ridden with those who struck hard behind enemy lines. But he who advanced so silent-footed, whom I might not have seen had he not inadvertently startled a bird, was Jervon.

Jervon, whom I had in the main forgotten since I had arrived at the Keep. But why? He should be making his own plans to join his lord.

I stepped from behind my screen.

“What do you on this road, swordsman?”

“Road?” His face was shadowed by his helm but I saw his eyebrows tilt upward. So did he look when he was amused. Though amusement had not come often during the days we had been together. “I would not call this wilderness a road, but perchance my eyes have been deceived. As for what I do here, well, did I not earlier say that one does not ride alone when company is offered—not in these days?”

“You cannot go with me!” My voice was a little high as I answered. For I sensed the stubbornness in him. And the road I followed was to such a battle as perhaps he could not imagine, and in which he would be enemy instead of friend.

“Very well. Ride on, my lady—” He agreed so readily that my anger sparked.

“And have you trail behind? I tell you, Jervon, this is no place for you. What I do is the art of the Wise Women. And I must also face a curse of the Old Ones—one strong enough still to man-slay.” I owed him the truth, for in no other way might I convince him that I was right.

But his expression did not change. “Have I not known this, or much of it, from the beginning? Go to war with your spells, but this is still debatable ground and there are human wolves as well as those strange menaces you have better knowledge of. What if you are attacked with steel and bolt before you reach your goal, or while you must keep your mind and strength for your sorcery?”

“You owe me no oath service. In fact you already have a lord. Seek him out as if your duty.”

“No oath did I give you, Lady Elys. But I took oath to myself. I stand at your back while you ride this way. And do not look to cast some spell on me to bring my will to naught. The Dame at the Keep gave me this.”

He reached within the throat of his mail shirt and drew forth a pendant of moon-silver wrought into a looped cross, and I knew he was right. Unless I expended on him strength I would need later, I could not overcome the protection that carried. But it was a shield for him where we went. Though I wondered at the Dame sending after me anyone unlearned in any Wise Craft.

“So be it,” I surrendered. “But this I lay upon you—if you feel aught—any compulsion—say so at once. There are spells to turn friends into enemies and open gates to great peril.”

“That I agree to.”

Thus I did not ride alone for the rest of the day. And at nightfall, which came early at that season, we halted on a ridge top where there were two great spires of rock standing. Between them we dismounted.

“You know where you go?” Jervon had traveled in silence most of the afternoon. Were it not for the sound of his passage behind me from time to time, I might well have forgotten I had a trail companion.

“I am drawn.” Though I did not explain farther. Now I was too much aware of something in this country before us, a troubling, an uneasiness, as if something which usually slumbered deep now stirred. And I was well aware, that learned as I was, I certainly could not provide an equal match for such as the Old Ones.

“Are we yet near or far?” he asked.

“Near—we must be near.” For so I read that troubling. “Which means—you must remain here.”

“Remember what I said.” His hand was on the loop cross. “I follow where you lead.”

“But in this country you need not fear any human,” I began, then read in his eyes that no word of mine would move him. Short of attacking him with sword, or spell, I had no chance at staying him. Though I wondered at his stubbornness, for which I could see no reason.

“You face a peril you cannot understand.” I put into that warning all the force I could muster. “We deal now not with those who fight with steel and strength of arm, but with other weapons you cannot dream of—”

“Lady, since I saw what the weapons of the Hounds did to Dorn, I keep an open mind concerning all and any arms.” Again there seemed to be a quirk of humor in his speech. “Also, since that day I have been, in a sense, living on time not mine, since by rights I should have died with those I loved and who made up my world. Thus I do not wager my life—for that I feel I no longer own. And there is in me a great desire to see how you wage war with these unheard-of strengths and unknown arms you speak of so knowingly. If we are close—let us to the battlefield then!”

There was so much decision in his words that I could not find any to answer him. But went to look down-slope before us, seeking the safest path, for we were about to descend into a country which stretched wide and unusually dark, even though twilight still lay along the ridges.

What I saw was surely one of the Old Roads, or rather a trail, and that ran in the right direction so we could follow it. It was a narrow way, suffering us only at intervals to ride abreast. And it led into a woodland, wandering back and forth between trees with trunks so huge in girth that they must have been centuries growing.

Very still was this wood, only now and then the sigh of falling leaves. But never the cry of a night bird, nor rustle of ground animal such as was normal. And always the feeling of something awakening slowly.

“We are waited—” Jervon’s voice was low, yet it was almost like a shout in my ears. “We are watched—”

So he was sensitive enough to feel it too. Still, as yet, there was no arising of menace, no threat in that stir. Just the sense that our coming registered in some way.

“As I warned you.” For the last time I tried to move Jervon to withdraw before it was too late. “We deal with other ways than those of men. Yes, we are watched. And what will come of that watching I cannot say—”

But he did not answer me and I knew that no argument I could use would move him.

Within the maze of trees the path turned and twisted so much I lost all sense of direction. But I did not lose that thread which tied me to what I sought. And I knew this way would bring me there.

We came at last from under the shadow of the trees into moonlight. And there I saw what had been in the far-seeing—the spiral of pillars. They stood gleaming, ice-cold and frost-white, in the center of an open space.

I heard a sharp exclamation from Jervon and turned my head, startled. On his breast the loop cross had sprung to vivid fire, as if it had been fashioned not of moon-silver but of some huge gem. And I knew that what powered it had been awakened into the strongest life it could possess by the emanations from the spiral.

There was warmth also against my knee, and from the saddlebags came a dim radiance. I fumbled with the clasp, brought out the cup. There was left only a thin rim of silver undarkened—so little time had I left! But even that thread responded, too.

“Stay you here—” I gave that order. He might not obey it, but I must keep my mind on my own actions, think only of Elyn and what must be done to save him. Jervon had made his choice—on him be the result.

With the cup in one hand and in the other one of the things the Dame had pressed upon me, a wand of rowan peeled clean and then steeped in the potent juice of its own fruit, being after laid for the nights of the full moon exposed in a place of Old Power, I went forward. That was light enough weight, nothing compared to the sword which dragged at my hip. Yet I did not free myself of that, for it was wrought of metal which my mother and father had sought in strange places, so that in its way it was a talisman.

Thus with wand and cup, the knowledge that I alone could face what lay there, I stepped past the first pillar and began the winding path it marked.