Sorceress Of The Witch World

III

There was an ache running through my whole body. Now and then I was shaken so that the sullen, constant pain became a twinge of real agony. I lay upon something which swayed, dipped, was never still, but which added to my misery by movement. I opened my eyes. Before me, across ground where the sun made a blaze to set tears gathering under lids, ran the three hounds, straps from their collars fastened to the sled on which I now lay. I tried to sit up, to discover that, not only were my wrists and ankles trussed tightly together, but over me was an imprisoning fur robe made fast to the framework of the sled.

Perhaps that was meant for warmth as well as a safeguard, but at that moment of realizing my helplessness, I saw it as another barrier between me and freedom.

The sleds I had known in Estcarp had always been more cumbersome, horse-drawn. But at the pull of the huge hounds this one moved at what seemed to me a fantastic speed. And we traveled more silently. There was no jingle of harness, no chime of bells which it was customary in the west to hang on both harness and sled frame. There was something frightening in this silent flight.

Slowly I began to think more clearly. The pain was centered in my head and that, added to the shock which had come with the avalanche, made any planning now a task almost too great. My fight against the bonds was more instinctive than reasoned.

Now I ceased to struggle, slitting my eyes against the too bright sunlight, enduring the misery of my aches and pains, as I set myself to the needful task of piecing together what had happened.

I could remember rationally now up to the blow the stranger had dealt me. And it was apparent I was not rescued, but his prisoner, on my way to his dwelling or camp. Also all I knew of Escore, which I was ready to admit was very little (even the Green People did not stray far from their Valley stronghold), mostly came from rumor and legend. Yet never had I heard of such a man and such hounds.

I could not see my captor now, but thought his place must be behind the sled. Or had he sent me on alone in the care of his four-footed servants, to be made sure of before he turned his attention to other survivors?

Other survivors! I drew a deep breath, which also hurt.

Kyllan . . . Kemoc . . .

There was this, which I clung to with all that was within me, as a mountain climber might cling to an anchoring rope when his feet slipped from some precarious niche: so deeply were we united, we three, that I do not think one of us could go from this world without the others knowing instantly that a fatal blow had been dealt. Though I had lost my power, yet there was still such a need and hold that I could not believe my brothers dead. And if not dead—

Once more I fought against the cords holding me, to no avail, thumping my head against the frame of the sled behind me. The answering stab of agony was so intense that I nearly lost my senses again. Now—now I must override fear, bring to what lay before me such coolness and mind alertness as I could summon.

Among the Wise Women I had learned such discipline as perhaps even warriors need not bend to. And I called upon what was left to be my armor and support now. One thing at a time. I could not hope to aid, if aid they needed, those who were the most in the world to me, unless I won my own freedom. And to present myself as a captive who needed constant watching was to defeat any chance I might have.

I knew so little about my captor, what role I must play to outwit him. My best chance at present was to be what he had thought to make me, a cowed female whom he had beaten into submission. Though this would be difficult for one of the Old Race, especially from Estcarp, where the Wise Women had been considered the superiors of males for so long that it was bred into them to take the lead without question. I must indeed seem worse than I was, weak and easily overborne.

So I lay motionless in the sled, watching the bobbing of the hounds pulling it, trying to marshal my thoughts. Had I been able to tap the Power as once I did, I would have been free from the moment I roused, for I had no doubt that I could have brought both hounds and master under my domination. It was as if someone who had always depended upon her legs now found herself a cripple, and yet was faced with the necessity of walking a long and perilous road.

Twice the hounds came to a halt and sat panting in the snow, their long tongues lolling from between their fangs. The second time they did so their master came up beside me to look down. I had had warning enough from the crunch of his feet on the snow to shut my eyes, presenting, I trusted, a most deceptive picture of unconsciousness. I dared not look about again until the hounds were once more running.

When I did, cautiously, I saw that the surface over which we sped was no longer unbroken ahead, but that there were signs that other sled runners had here beaten down the snow. We must be nearing our goal. Now more than ever I must fix my mind on the part to be played—that of a broken captive. But as long as I could I would sham unconsciousness, that I might learn more of these people, for, by the number of tracks, I thought I could assume that my captor was not alone, but had companions in plenty ahead.

The hounds ran downslope into a valley where trees showed dark fingers against the snow, stark and clear, though the sun was now down, leaving only a few lighter streaks in the sky. The trees sheltered those we sought, but I saw the leap of flames marking more than one fire. And there arose a chorus of howling, which the hounds pulling me answered in full throat.

It was a camp, I noted between almost closed lids, not a place of permanent dwellings such as the Green People had. Though it was already dusk among the trees I could make out tents, ingeniously set to make use of the trees as part of their structures. I was reminded of Kemoc’s tale of his stay among the Mosswives, whose dwellings were walled with moss hanging from the branches of age-old trees.

But these were not moss walls, rather sheets of woven hide, cut into strips and then remade in large sections, supple and easy to handle, draped and staked to form irregular rooms, each about some tree, the fire set before the door and not inside.

At each there stood, barking furiously at our coming, two, three, four of the hounds. Men came out to see the cause of their clamor. As far as I could detect in the limited light, they were all of the same general cast of feature and coloring as my captor, so much so that one could believe them not of just one tribe or clan but from a single inbred family. As the sled slowed to a stop on the fringe of the wood, they gathered close about it, which was my warning to counterfeit as best I could one who had never regained her senses.

The cover which had been part of my bonds was thrown off and I was picked up, carried to where odors of cooking fought with those of fresh hides, hounds, and strange bodies. I was dropped on a pile of stuff which yielded under me enough to cushion my aching body, yet not enough to spare me an additional throb of pain.

I heard talk I could not understand, was pulled around, felt warmth, and saw light even through my closed lids as some torch must have been held close to my face. I had lost my cap somewhere during my journeying and my hair hung free. Now fingers laced in it, pulled my head even farther to one side and I heard excited exclamations as if they found my appearance surprising.

But at last they left me and I lay, not daring to move yet, listening with all the concentration I could summon to learn if I was still in company. If I was not, I wanted very much to look about.

I began to count in my mind. At fifty—no, one hundred—I would risk opening my eyes, though I would not turn my head or otherwise stir. Perhaps even such a limited field of view would give me an aid in assessing my captors.

When I reached that hundred further caution kept me still for another. Then I took the chance. Luckily the last inspection of the tribesmen had left me lying with my head turned toward the open flap of the tent and I could see a small measure of what lay beyond.

Under me was a pile of furred hides tucked over fresh-cut branches which were still springy enough to give an illusion of some comfort. To my right I had a quarter view of some boxes covered also with hide from which the hair had been scraped, the resulting leather painted with bold designs, though that paint was now faded and flaking. I did not recognize any symbols that I knew.

Against the other side of the doorway was a shelved rack, made of uprights notched to have the narrow shelves set sloping toward the back. These were crowded with bags, wooden boxes, and unpainted pottery which was well-shaped but bore no decorative patterns. There also hung two hunting spears.

The light by which all this could be viewed caused me the greatest amazement. From a center pole stretched two cords running from one side of the tent to the other. Along these were draped strips of filmy stuff which was like the finest of the silken strips Sulcar raiders sometimes brought from overseas. Entangled in this netting of gauze were myriads of small insects, not dead as one might see them in a spider’s larder, but alive, crawling about. And each insect was a glowing spark of light, so that the numbers together gave to the tent a luminance, dimmer, yes, than that familiar to me, but enough to see by.

I was staring at these in surprise, which betrayed me when the stranger came in and caught me open-eyed and plainly aware. Angry at my own foolishness, I tried to play my chosen role, assuming an expression I hoped he would read as fear, wriggling back on the bedding as one who would flee but could not.

He knelt by the side of the bed and stared down at me critically, appraisingly. Then he suddenly thrust his hand inside my jacket with brutal force, in a manner I could not mistake. Now I did not have to play at fear; I knew it, and what he would do, as well as if I could still read minds clearly.

I could no longer hold to my role of cowed female. It was not in me to allow without a struggle what he would do. I bent my head vainly, trying to snap my teeth into the hand which was now joined by his other, ripping loose my jacket and the tunic beneath. And I brought my knees up, not only to ward him off, in an effort but to battle as best I could.

It would seem that this was a game he had played before and he took delight in it. He sat back on his heels and there was such a grin on his face as promised evil of another kind than I had known. Perhaps drawing out and prolonging my degradation was also pleasing to him, for he did not proceed as I thought he would. Instead he sat watching me as if he would think out each step of what he would do, savoring it in fantasy before taking action.

But he was never to have his chance. There was a sharp call and the head and shoulders of another appeared under the, tent flap, letting me view my first tribeswoman.

She had the same broad features as my captor, but her hair was coiled and pinned into an elaborate tower on her head, the pins being gem-set so that they glinted in the light. Her fur coat was not tightly belted, but swung loose to show that under it, in spite of the chill of the weather, she wore nothing above the waist but a series of necklaces and collars of jeweled work. Her breasts were heavy and the nipples were painted yellow with petals radiating from them as if to stimulate flowers.

While she spoke to my captor she stared at me with a kind of contemptuous amusement, and her air was one of authority such as would set on a minor rank Wise Woman. Somehow, I had not expected to find this among these people, though why I had deemed it a male-dominated society I did not know, except for the way the stranger had served me.

Their words were oddly accented and they spoke very fast. I thought that here and there I caught a part of speech I did dimly recognize, yet I could make no sense of it at all. Again I yearned for my lost power, even a small measure of it. Only one who has held such and lost it can understand what I felt then, as if a goodly half of me had been emptied, to my great and growing loss.

Although I could not understand their words, it was plain that they speedily grew to be ones of anger, and that the woman was ordering my captor to do something he was loath to do. Once she half turned to the door behind her and made a gesture which I read as suggesting that she call upon someone else to back her commands.

The leering grin had long since vanished from his fat-lipped mouth. There was such a sullen glowering there now as I might have feared to see had I been the woman. But her contempt and impatience only grew the stronger and she swung again as if to call that help she had indicated stood outside. Before she could do so, if that was her intent, she was interrupted by a low, brazen booming which rang in one’s ears as if the air reechoed it.

And, hearing that, I for a short instant of time forgot where I lay and what ordeals might yet be before me. For that sonorous sound awoke in me something I thought I had lost forever—not only a bit of memory but instantaneous response which was for me so startling I wondered that I did not cry out as one suffering a sore wound.

Though my Power had seemingly been rift from me, memory had not. I could call to mind the skills, spells, domination of will and thought which had been taught me, even if I could not put them to use. And memory told me that what had sounded through this barbaric camp was a spirit gong. Who might use that tool of sorcery in such a place I could not guess.

The woman’s triumph was plainly visible, my captor’s scowl uneasy. He drew from his wide belt a long bladed knife, stooped over me to saw through those twisted cords which held my ankles tightly together. When I was free he hoisted me to my feet, his hands moving viciously over my body in a way which promised ill for the future if he could not have his way now.

Placed on my two feet by his strength as if I had no will of my own, he gave me a push forward which would have sent me helplessly on into the wall had not the woman, with muscles to match his, not caught me by the shoulder.

Her nails dug in in a grip which was cruel. Holding me, she propelled me out of the tent into a night which was alight with fires. Those about the flames did not look up as we passed, and I had the feeling they were deliberately avoiding sighting either of us for some reason. There still hung a trembling in the air, a vibration born of the gong, which had not died with the sound.

I stumbled along, both upheld and forced forward by the woman, past the fires, other tents, deeper into the woods, by a winding way which the trees gave us. With the fires well behind us now it seemed very dark and our path completely hidden. But my guard—guide—never faltered, walking confidently as if she could either see better in the dark than I, or had come this way so many times that her feet knew it by heart.

Then there was the wink of another fire, low, with flames which burned blue instead of crimson. And from it rose an aromatic smoke. That, too, I knew of old, though then it had spiralled from braziers and not from sticks set in the open. Had I been brought to a true Wise Woman, perhaps some exile out of Estcarp come over-mountain even as we in search of the ancient homeland?

The fire burned before another tent and this was larger, almost filling the small glade wherein it had been pitched. A cloaked and hooded figure did sentry duty at its door, stretching forth a hand now and then to toss into the flames herbs which burned sweetly. Sniffing those, knowing them well for what they were, I was heartened by this much: this was no power from the Shadow. What was fed, or could be summoned to such feeding, was not of the dark but the light.

Magic stands in two houses. The witch is one born to her craft, and her power is of the earth, of growing things and what is of nature. If she makes a pact with the Shadow then she turns to those things of evil which abide on earth—there are growing things to harm as well as heal.

The sorceress may be a born witch who strives to climb higher in her craft, or she may be one without the gift who painfully learns to use the Power. And again she chooses between light and dark.

Our Wise Women of Estcarp were born to their craft and I had been one of them, though I had not vowed their vows, nor taken on my breast the jewel as one of their sisterhood. Perhaps I could once have been deemed sorceress, since my learning went far beyond the simple witchcraft I could have wrought without struggle and preparation.

Which did I front now, I wondered as my guide bore me on toward the tent doorway? Was this a witch, or a learned sorceress? And I thought perhaps I should be prepared for the latter, judging by the evidence of that gong.

While the tent in which my captor had put me had been wanly lit by his entrapped insects, this was brighter. There were the strips of gauze with their prisoned, crawling things, but there also was, on a low table meant for one who knelt or sat crosslegged rather than in a chair, a ball of glimmering crystal. I was impelled to enter and that light which seemed to swirl fluidly within the container flared to sun brightness.

“Welcome, daughter.” The accent was archaic by Estcarpian standards, but the words were not the gabble I had heard used elsewhere in this camp. I went to my knees before the globe, not compelled by my guide, but the better to see who spoke.

The Old Race do not show signs of age, though their span of years is long, until they are close to the end. And I had seen few—one or two among the Wise Women—who ever showed it so plainly. I thought that she who huddled, bent and withered, beyond the table of the crystal must indeed be very close to death.

Her hair was white and scanty, and there had been no attempt to twist and pin it into the style favored by the tribeswoman. Instead it was netted close to her skull, and that I knew, too, for it was common to the Wise Women. But she was not lengthily robed as was their fashion. Around her shoulders was the bulk of a fur coat and that hung open showing a necklace with a single large jewel as a pendant lying on her bared body where her ancient breasts were now unsightly flaps of leathery skin. Her face was not the broad, thick-lipped one of the tribe, but was narrow, with the cleanly cut features I had seen all my life, though very deeply wrinkled, the eyes far sunken in the head.

“Welcome, daughter,” she repeated (or did the words just continue to ring in my head?). She reached forth her hands, but when I would have completed that old, old greeting and put mine palm to palm with hers I could not for the bindings on me. She turned to my guard, spitting words which made that woman cringe hastily down beside me, slitting at the cords with a knife.

My hands rose clumsily, the returning circulation prickling in their numbness, but I touched her skin, which was hot and dry against my own. For a moment we sat so, and I tried not to flinch from the mind which probed mine, learned my memories, my past as if all had been clearly written on an oft read roll.

“So that is the way of it!” She spoke in my head and for so little I was cheered, that I had received her thought so clearly, as I had not been able to do, even with Kyllan and Kemoc.

“It need not remain so for you,” she was continuing. “I felt your presence, my daughter, when you were still afar. I put into Sokfor’s mind, not openly, but as if he had thought it for himself, to go seeking you—”

“But my brothers—” I broke upon her sharply. With her power could she tell me now the truth? Did they still live?

“They are males, what matters it concerning them?” she returned with an arrogance I knew of old. “If you would know read the crystal.” She dropped my hands abruptly to indicate the glowing globe between us.

“I have no longer the power,” I told her. But that she must already know.

“Sleep is not death,” she answered my thought obliquely. “And that which sleeps can be awakened.”

Thus did she echo that faint hope I had held when I had started for Estcarp. I had not only feared that my emptiness might be filled by some evil, but I wanted, I needed, to regain at least a small part of what had been so rift from me.

“You can do this?” I demanded of her, not truly believing she would say yes, or that it could be so.

I sensed in her amusement, pride, and some other emotion so far hidden and so fleeting that I could not read it. But of them all pride was the greatest and it was out of that she answered me now.

“I do not know. There is time, but it is fast being counted bead by bead between the fingers.” Her left hand moved to her waist and she dangled into my sight one of those circlets of beads which, each strung some distance from the other, are smooth and cool and somehow soothing to the touch. Wise Women use them to govern the emotions, or for some private form of memory control. “I am old, daughter, and the hours are told for me swiftly. But what I have is yours.”

And so overjoyed was I by this offer of help, never thinking then that I might be enspelled by her power, or that no bargain benefits but one alone, that I relaxed, and could have wept with joy and relief, for she promised me what I wanted most. Perhaps some of Dinzil’s taint remained within me, that I was too easily won to what I desired, and had not the caution I should have held to.

Thus I met Utta and became one of her household, her pupil and “daughter.” It was a household, or tenthold of women such as was fit for a Wise Woman. I do not know Utta’s history, save that, of course, that was not her true name. An adept gives that to no one, since knowing the true name gives one power over its owner. Nor did I ever learn how she came to be one with this band of roving hunters, only that she had been with them for generations of their own shorter lives. She was a legend and goddess among them.

From time to time she had chosen “daughters” to serve her, but in this tribe there was no inborn gift to foster and she had never succeeded in finding another to share her duties even in the smallest part, or one who could comprehend her need for companionship. And she was very lonely.

I told her my tale, not aloud, but as she read my thoughts. She was not interested in the struggle for Escore, light against dark; long, long ago she had narrowed her world to this one small tribe and now she could not nor would not break the boundaries she had so set. I accepted that when I found she might help me regain what I had lost. And I think that the challenge I represented gave her a new reason to hold to life. She clung to that fiercely as she set about trying to make of me again at least a ghostly copy of what I once had been.