Sorceress Of The Witch World

XVI

“Please—” I felt shy, an intruder, as I spoke softly, for I feared that my words might resound through that hall, perhaps awaken Hilarion from his preoccupation and bring him back too soon.

My mother turned her head to look at me. Perhaps there was that in my expression which held a warning, for I saw a new alertness in her eyes.

“You are afraid. Of what, my daughter?”

“Of Hilarion.” I gave her the truth. Now I had my father’s full attention as well. Though he still had his arm about my mother’s shoulders his other hand went to his belt as if seeking a weapon hilt.

“Listen.” I spoke in whispers, not daring to use mind touch—such might be as a gong in a place so steeped in sorcery.

“I told you part of the tale, but not all. Escore is rent, has long been rent by warring sorcery. Most of those who wrought this have either been swallowed up in the darkness they summoned, or else have gone through gates such as this into other times and places. But it was they who started this trouble in times far past, and upon them rests the blame for it. We do not know all concerning Hilarion. It is true that I do not believe him to a master of darkness, for he could not control the blue fire were he such. But there were those here who followed neither good nor ill, but had such curiosity that they worked ill merely in search of new learning. Now we battle for the life of Escore . . . and I had a hand in reviving this old war when I unknowingly worked magic to trouble an uneasy old balance. Also, I did other damage and that not too long since. I will not have a third burden to bear, that I brought back one of the adepts to meddle and perhaps wreck all that my brothers and our sworn comrades have fought to hold.

“Hilarion knows far too much to be loosed here and taken to the Valley. I must learn more of him before we swear any shield oath for his company.”

“We have a wise daughter,” commented my mother. “Now tell us, and quickly, all you did not say before.”

And that I did, leaving out nothing of my own part in Dinzil’s plans and of what came of that. When I had done my mother nodded.

“Well, can I understand why you find this Hilarion suspect. But . . .” Her face had a listening look, and I knew that she was using then a tendril of mind search to find him.

“So—” Her gaze from looking inward was turned outward and we had her attention again. “I do not think we need fear his concern with us, not for awhile. Time must be far different between this world and that other. Even more so than we had guessed. He seeks that which is so long gone even the years themselves have lost their names and places on the roll of history! Because he must believe this is so, he is now lost in his own need for understanding. Ah, it is a hard thing to see one’s world swept away and lost, even while one still treads familiar earth. I wonder whether— Do you really believe, my daughter, that Hilarion can be so great a menace to what you must cherish?”

And I, remembering Dinzil, crushed down any doubts and said yes. But it would seem that my mother was not yet fully convinced. For, at that moment, she opened a mind send between us that I might read, though maybe only in part, what she had learned from Hilarion. And the pain and desolation of that sharing was such that I flinched in body as well as mind, to cry out that I did not want to know any more.

“You see,” she said as she freed me, “he has his own thoughts to occupy him now and those are not such as we can easily disturb. If we would go—”

“Then let us do it now!” For in me arose such a desire to be out of this place which was Hilarion’s, and away from all thought of him (if I could so close my mind on part of the past), that I wanted to turn and run as if rasti or the Gray Ones hunted behind.

But though we did go it was at a more sober pace, for we still had Ayllia with us. I began to think about her and what we would do with her. If the Vupsalls were still at the village perhaps we could awaken her sleeping mind and leave her nearby, maybe working some spell which would cloud the immediate past so she would not remember our journeying, save as a quickly fading dream. But if the raid had indeed put an end to the tribe I saw nothing else but that we must take her with us to the Valley wherein Dahaun and her people would give her refuge.

My father left one of the packs of food and water where it had fallen on the floor. But the other he shouldered, letting my mother and myself lead Ayllia. So we went out into the open. Then I, too, learned the surprises time can deal: I had entered here in the coldest grasp of winter, but I came out now into the warmth and sun of spring—the month of Chrysalis, still too early for the sowing of fields, and yet a time when the new blood and first joys of spring stir in one, bringing a kind of restlessness and inner excitement. Still, to my reckoning, I had only been away days, not weeks!

The snow, which had lain in pockets in this long deserted place, was long since gone. And several times our passing startled sunning lizards and small creatures, who either froze to watch us with round and wary eyes, or disappeared in an instant.

I was a little daunted by the maze of streets and ways before us, for I could not clearly remember how we had found our path through the citadel. And after twice following a false opening which brought us up to a wall, I voiced my doubts aloud.

“No way out?” asked my father. “You came in without hindrance, did you not?”

“Yes, but I was drawn by the Power.” I tried now to remember each and every part of how Ayllia and I had come here. Looking back it seemed that our road had been very easy to find from the time we entered twixt those outer gates where the carved guardians gave tongue in the wind. This sprawl of passages and lanes I did not recall.

“Contrived?” I asked that aloud.

We had come to a halt before that last wall when an opening which seemed very promising had abruptly closed. About us were those houses with the blue stones above their doors, their windows empty and gaping, and something about them to chill the heart as winter winds chill the body.

“Hallucination?” my father wondered. “Deliberate by bespelling?”

My mother closed her eyes, and I knew she was cautiously using mind seek. Now I ventured to follow her, fearing always to touch a cord uniting us to Hilarion.

My mind perceived, when I loosed it, what the eyes did not. Simon Tregarth was right, that a film of sorcery lay over this place, erecting walls where there were none, leaving open spaces which were really filled. It was as if, upon closing our eyes, we could see another city set over the one which stood there before. The why of it I did not know, for this was no new spell set for our confounding by Hilarion; it was very old, so that it was oddly tattered and worn near to the first threads of its weaving.

“I see!” I heard my father’s sharp comment and knew that he in turn had come to use the other sight. “So . . . we go this way—” A strong hand caught mine, even as with my other I held to Ayllia, and on the other side of the Vupsall girl my mother walked. Thus linked we began to defeat the spell of the city, going with our eyes closed to the light and the day, our minds tuned to that other sense which was our talent.

So we came to a street which sloped to the thick outer wall, and that I recognized as the one up which we had come on our flight before the raiders. Twice I opened my eyes, merely to test the continuance of the confusion spell, and both times I faced, not an open street, but a wall or part of a house. I hastened to drop my lids again and depend upon the other seeing.

One without such a gift could not have won through that sorcery as we discovered when we came at last to the gate. For within an arm’s length of escape lay a body stark upon the ground, arms outflung as if to grasp for the freedom the eyes could not see. He had been a tall man and he wore body armor, over which thick braids of hair lay, while a horned helm was rolled a little beyond. We could not see his face, and for that I was glad.

“Sulcar!” My father leaned over the corpse but did not touch it.

“I do not think so, or else not of the breed we know,” Jaelithe returned. “Rather one of your sea rovers, Kaththea.”

As to that I could not swear for my glimpses of them on the night they had come to Vupsall had been most limited. But I thought her right.

“He has been dead some time.” My father stood away. “Perhaps he trailed you here Kaththea. It would seem that for him this trap worked.”

But for us it failed and we passed through the wall, between the brazen beasts who would howl in the tempests.

There we found signs that this was indeed a place others found awesome: set up was a stone slab, dragged, I thought, from the ruined village. And on it lay a tangle of things, perhaps once placed out in order and then despoiled by birds and beasts: a fur robe now stiff with driven sand and befouled by bird droppings, and plates of metal which might once have held food. Among all this was something my father reached for with a cry of excitement, a hard ax and a sword. He had never been more than an indifferent swordsman, though he had put much practice into the learning of that weapon’s usage, swords not being used in his own world. To a warrior, however, any weapon, when his hands are empty, is a find to be treasured.

“Dead man’s weapon,” he said as he belted on that blade. “You know what they say—take up a dead man’s weapons and you take on perhaps also his battle anger when you draw it.”

I remembered then how Kemoc, when he came to seek me in Dinzil’s Dark Tower, had found a sword in the deep hidden places of a long vanished race and had taken it, to serve us well. And I thought that since a man’s hand reached instinctively for steel, one had better judge it for good instead of ill.

But my mother had taken something else from that offering table and stood with it in her two hands, gazing down into it with almost a shade of awe on her face.

“These raiders plied their looting in odd places,” she said. “Of such as this I have heard, but I have not seen. Well did they treasure it enough to offer it to the demons they believed dwelt here!”

It was a cup fashioned, I think, of stone, in the form of two hands tight pressed together save for an open space at the top. But they were not altogether human hands: the fingers were very long and thin; the nails, which were made with gleaming metal, very narrow and pointed. In color it was red-brown, very smooth and polished.

“What is it?” My curiosity was aroused.

“A mirror for looking, to be used as one does a crystal globe. But into this one pours water. I do not know how it came to this place, but it is such a thing as must not remain here for— Touch it, Kaththea.”

She held it forth and I laid fingertip to it, only to cry out.

I had touched, not cold stone as I expected, but warmth, near to the heat of a live firebrand. Yet my mother held it firmly and seemed not to feel that heat. Also from that light touch I felt an instant inflow of Power, so I knew it for one of the mighty things which could be as a weapon for us, even as the sword came naturally to my father’s hold.

My mother pulled loose a wisp of tattered silk which also fluttered on the offering table and wrapped it about the cup, then she opened her tunic a little and stowed the bundle safely within. My father belted on the sword openly and also thrust the ax into that belt for good measure.

The finding of that pile of plunder outside the gates suggested one thing, that the raiders and not the village people had been the victors in that snowbound struggle. I was sure that the raiders had left this here; never had I seen the Vupsall willing to leave their treasures behind, save in the grave of Utta. Yet I must make sure Ayllia’s people were gone before we left this place.

When I explained, my parents agreed. It was mid-morning now and the sun was warm, pleasantly so. As in the city, there were no pockets of snow left, and some early insects buzzed lazily; we heard the calls of mating birds.

Until we were well down the cape, setting foot on the mainland, I walked tensely, expecting at any moment to be contacted by Hilarion, to feel his summons, or his demand as to where we went and why. But now that we were back in the budding brush and in a world normal in sight and sound, a little of that strain ceased. I was still aware, however, that we might not be free of that companion I wanted least to see.

It was plain, when we scouted the village, that it was deserted, and not by the regular wandering of the tribe. The torn skins of the tent-roofs of those tumbled stone walls flapped here and there.

As scavengers in search of what we might find to make our journey westward easier, we went down into the ruins. I found the hut from which I fled—when? Weeks, months earlier? To me that period was days only. The sea raiders had been here. Utta’s chest had been dumped open on the floor, her herb packets torn, their contents mixed as if someone had stirred it into a perversely concocted mess.

My mother stooped to pick up a leaf, dry and brittle, here, a pinch of powder there, sniffing and discarding with a shake of her head. I looked for those rune rolls which had guided me to the citadel. But those were gone, perhaps snatched up as keys to some treasure. We did find, rolled into a far corner, a jar of the journey food of dried berries and smoked meat pressed together into hard cakes. And at the moment this meant more to us than any treasure.

Ayllia stood where we had left her by the outer door, nor did she seem to see what lay about her, or understand that we had returned to the village. My father went to hunt through the other tent-huts, but he was quickly back, motioning us to join him.

“A place of death,” he told us bleakly. “One better left to them.”

I had had no friends among the tribe, but rather had been their prisoner. Neither would I have willingly been their enemy, yet in part would these deaths always rest on my shoulders; they had trusted in my gift and I and it had failed them. My mother read my thoughts, and now her arm was about me as she said, “Not so, for you did not willfully deceive them, but did what you could to leave them to their own destiny. You were not Utta, nor could you be held to a choice which she forced upon you. Therefore, take not up a burden which is not yours. It is an ill of life for some that they feel blame lying upon them when it comes from an act of fate alone.” . . . Words which were meant to comfort and absolve and yet which, at that moment, were words only, though they did sink into my mind and later I remembered them.

We had no snow sleds with mighty hounds to drag them, nor real guide except that we knew what we sought lay to the west. But how many days’ travel now lay between us and the Valley, and what number of dangers could lie in wait there was a guess I did not care to make as a challenge to fate.

I thought I could remember the way upriver and across country to the place of the hot stream. But my father shook his head when I outlined that journey, saying that if the hot stream valley was so well known to the nomads it was better we avoid it and instead strike directly west. This was thought best even though we could not make fast time on foot, especially with Ayllia, who walked to our control but must be cared for as a mindless, if biddable, child.

So we turned our backs upon the sea, and upon that cape with the citadel black and heavy between sea and sky when I gave a last glance northward to it. Our supplies were very few, the ill-tasting meat we had brought out of the ashy world, and the jar we had found in the village. At least there was no lack of water, for there were springs and streams throughout this land, all alive now in the spring, having thrown off their winter’s coating of ice.

My father, picking up two rounded stones from the ground, fashioned an odd weapon such as I had never seen before, tying them together with a thong, and then swinging the whole about his head and letting it fly in practice at a bush. There it struck and with the weight of the stones the cord wove around and around, to strip buds from the twigs. He laughed and went to unwind it.

“I haven’t lost that skill, it seems,” he said. And a few minutes later he sent the stones winging again, not at a bush, but at an unwary grass dweller, one of the plump jumpers which are so stupid they are easily undone. Before we stopped for the night he had four such, to be roasted over a fire and eaten with the appetite which comes when one has been on sparse and distasteful rations for too long.

The warmer air of the day was gone. But after we had eaten we did not stay by the fire in spite of its comfort. My father fed it a final armload of the sticks he had gathered, and then led us to a place he had already marked for our night camp, well away from that beacon which might draw attention to our passing.

He had chosen a small copse where the winter storms had thrown down several trees, the largest landing so as to take several others with it and providing a mat of entangled limbs and trunks. In that he hacked out a nest, into which we crowded, pulling then a screen of brush down to give both roof and wall to our hiding place.

I wished we had some of the herbs from Utta’s store, but those had been so intermingled by the raiders that I could not have sorted out what was needed most. So the spell barrier they might have given us was lost.

But my mother took from her belt a piece of metal which glowed blue, very faintly, when she passed her hands caressingly up and down its length. This she planted in the earth to give us a wan light. I knew it would blaze if any of the Shadow’s kin prowled too near. But against the common beasts or perhaps even the raider and nomads, we had no defense which was not of our own eyes and ears. Thus we divided the night into three parts; I had the first watch while the others slept, so closely knit together that we touched body to body. And I grew stiff because I feared to move lest I rouse those who so badly needed their rest.

My eyes and ears were on guard and I tried to make my mind one with them, sending out short searching thoughts now and then—but only at rare intervals, since in this land such might be seized upon and used to our undoing. There were many sounds in the night, whimperings, stirrings. And at some my blood raced faster and I tensed, yet always did it come to me at testing that these were from creatures normal to the night, or the winds . . .

And all the time I strove to battle down and away the desire to think of Hilarion and wonder what he did at this hour in that deserted pile which had once been the heart of his rulership. Was he still lost in his memories of a past time which he could never see again? Or had he risen above that blow, and drew now on his talents—to do what? He would not chance the gate again, of that I was sure: his long bondage to Zandur had decided that.

Zandur . . . I turned eagerly, defensively, from those dangerous thoughts of Hilarion, to wondering what had chanced with Zandur. Had our ripping forth from his place of Power put far more strain on his machines than Hilarion believed, perhaps crippling his stronghold? We had expected him to follow us; he had not. Suppose he was left so weakened that the next time the tower people struck they would put an end to his underground refuge, finishing the immemorial war that had caused a world of ashes and death.

But Zandur memory, too, might be an opening wedge for a searching by Hilarion, so I must put it from me. There remained the farther past, the Green Valley, Kyllan, Kemoc—I had been months out of Escore. Was the war still a stalemate there? Or were those I cared for locked in some death struggle? I had regained my mind search in part—enough to reach them?

Excitement grew in me, so much so that I forgot where I was and what duty lay upon me. I closed my eyes, my ears, bowed my head upon my hands. Kemoc! In my mind I built his face, thin, gaunt, but strong. There—yes, it was there! And having it to hold, I reached beyond and beyond with my questing call.

“Kemoc!” Into that summons I put all the force I could build. “Kemoc!”

And—and there was an answer! Incredulous at first, then growing stronger. He heard—he was there! My faith had been right: no death wall stood between us.

“Where? Where?” his question beat into my mind until my head rolled back and forth and I strove to hold it steady in my hands.

“East—east—” I would have made more of that, but my head was not moving now with the struggle to mind send; it was shaking with a shaking of my whole body. Hands on my shoulders were so moving me, breaking by that contact my mind touch so that I opened my eyes with a cry of anger.

“Stupid!” My mother’s voice was a cold whisper. I could not see her as more than a black bulk, but her punishing hold was still on me. “What have you done, girl?”

“Kemoc! I spoke with Kemoc!” And my anger was as hot as hers.

“Shouting out for any who listens,” she returned. “Such seeking can bring the Shadow upon us. Because we have not sniffed out its traces here does not mean this land is clean. Have you not already told us so?”

She was right. Yet, I thought, I was right also, for with Kemoc knowing that I lived aid might come to us. And if some gathering of evil stood between us and the Valley we would be warned by those wishing us well. As I marshaled my reasons, she loosed the hold on me.

“Perhaps and perhaps,” she said aloud. “But enough is enough. When you would do this again, speak to me, and together we may do more.”

In that, too, she spoke what was right. But I could not put from me the exultation which had come with Kemoc’s reply. For in the past, ever since I had shared in Dinzil’s defeat, I had been severed from that which made one of three. As I had painfully relearned my skills from Utta it had been working alone. But to be again as I was—

“Will you ever be?” Again it was my mother’s whisper, not her thought, to strike as a blow. “You have walked another road from which there may now be no returning. I demanded for you three what I thought would serve you best in the world into which you were born: for Kyllan the sword, for Kemoc the scroll, for you, my daughter, the Gift. But you shared in a way I had not foreseen. And perhaps it was worst for you—”

“No!” My denial was instant.

“Tell me that again in the future,” was her ambiguous reply. “Now, my daughter, trouble us with no more sendings. We need rest this night.”

Although it went sore against my impatient desires, I made her that promise. “No more—tonight.”

Again I settled to scanning only the outer world, that of the night about us, until that hour when Jaelithe roused to take the watch and I willed myself resolutely into slumber.

Shortly after dawn my father awakened us all and we ate of the jar cakes. It was more chill than it had been the day before. Now there was a rime of frost on the branches about us.

Though my father had been much afield along the borders, my mother riding with him as seeress for the rangers, yet they had not gone afoot. Neither had I ever before this time traveled for any space in that fashion, for the nomads had made use of their sleds, walking and riding in turn when they were on a long trek. So now we all found this a slow method of covering the ground, one which wearied us more than we would have guessed before we began it. We tried to keep an even pace, slowed as we were by Ayllia.

The Vupsall girl would walk at our direction, just as she ate what we held to her lips, drank from the cup we gave her. But she went as one walking in her sleep. And I wondered if she had retreated so far from reality that she might never be whole again. As she now was we could not have left her with her people, even had we found them. They would have given her only death. Such as she were too much of a drag upon a wandering people. Utta had lasted so long only because of her gift, and Ausu, the chief’s wife, because she had had a devoted servant to be her hands and feet.