Web of the Witch World

9 TORMAN’S LAND

SIMON OPENED his eyes. The pain in his head seemed one with the greenish light about him. He moved and what supported him responded by rocking in a way which was a warning even his dimmed consciousness could understand. He looked up—to face nightmare!

Only the transparent shell of the cabin window kept that toothed horror from him. Its claws raked the surface of the flyer as it lumbered across the nose of the machine. Unable to move, Simon followed that slow progress with his eyes. It had some vague resemblance to a lizard, but its bulk and awkward movements were unlike the eagle litheness of those creatures as he had seen them in his own world. This thing had a leprous, warty skin, as if it had been striken by some foul disease. Now and then it paused to view him, and there was a malignity in those large whitish eyes which gave terrifying purpose to its deliberate advance.

Simon turned his head with care. The door was open, sprung by the crash. A few more feet, and a little maneuvering by the lizard thing, and it would achieve its goal. He moved his hand by inches, drew the dart gun from his belt holster. Then he remembered the women. With all the care he could muster, Simon changed position, the flyer rocking. The lizard hissed, seemed to spit. A milky liquid hit the cabin window, trickled down its cracked surface.

He could not see Loyse who was immediately behind him. But Aldis sat there, her eyes tightly closed, both hands again over the Kolder talisman, her whole tense position testifying to intense concentration. Simon dare not move far enough to reach the door. The flyer seemed balanced on some point and it dipped nose down at any change of the distribution of weight within.

“Aldis!” Simon spoke loudly, sharply—he must break through the web she had woven about herself. “Aldis!”

If she did hear him the urgency of his voice meant nothing. But there was a breathy sigh from behind him.

“She talks with them,” Loyse’s voice, a shadow of sound, worn and weary.

Simon caught at the hope it gave him. “The door—can you reach the door?”

Movement and again the flyer rocked. “Sit still!” he ordered. And then saw that the movement, as dangerous as it had been, had aided them in this much, the lizard thing was slipping, despite all its efforts, down the inclined slope of the flyer’s nose. Its claws could not dig into the sleek stuff of the machine’s surface.

It opened its mouth and gave voice to a hooting honk as, still scrabbling for a foothold, it went over the edge. On the ground, if the swamp surface could be termed “ground,” it might yet find its way to the open door. Simon thought he dared not delay.

“Loyse,” he said quickly, “move as far back as you can—”

“Yes!”

The flyer rocked. But the nose was rising, he was sure of that.

“Now!” From the tail of his eye Simon caught a glimpse of hands in action. Loyse was adding to his instructions with an idea of her own as she gripped Aldis by the shoulders and dragged her back in turn. Simon slid along the seat, his hand now on the edge of the open door. But he could not get in the right position to exert much strength and he could not bring it closed.

The flyer rocked violently as Aldis struggled in Loyse’s hold, lying back upon the girl who had her in a fierce clutch. Simon struck and the Kolder agent went limp, her hands falling away from the enemy talisman.

“Is she dead?” Loyse asked as she pulled from beneath the limp weight of the other woman.

“No. But she will not trouble us for a space. Here—” Together they pushed Aldis to the back and that change of weight appeared to establish the flyer so that it no longer swung under them, providing they moved cautiously. For the first time Simon had a chance to survey what lay beyond, though he kept watch on the door, his gun ready.

The half-immersed, dead wood, the scummed pools, and weird vegetation—this was like nothing he had seen before. Where they were he had no idea, nor could he tell clearly how they had come here. The stench of the swamp was in itself a deadening thing which clogged lungs and added to the pain in his head.

“Where is this place?” Loyse broke the silence first.

“I don’t know—” Yet far in the back of memory there was something . . . A swamp. What did he know of a swamp? Outside the moss on the long dead trees stirred with the dank wind. There was a rustling in a clump of pointed reeds. Reeds . . . Simon frowned with pain and the effort at remembering. Reeds and scummed pools —and a mist—those he remembered from far away and long ago. From his own time and world? No—

Then all at once for a second or two he was an earlier Simon Tregarth, the one who at dawn had come through a gate onto a wild moor under the rain. The Simon Tregarth who had run with a fugitive witch before the hounds of Alizon hunters—and they had skirted just such a bog while the witch had appealed to its in-dwellers for aid, only to be refused. So they needs must cut across the edge of the swampland and find elsewhere a refuge. The Fens of Tor! Forbidden country which no man save one had been known to enter and return from again. And that man had fathered Koris of Gorm. He had brought his Torwoman out and held her to wife, in spite of his people’s hatred and fear of such blood mixing. But the heritage he had so left his son had been sorrow and loss. Tor blood did not mix, the Tor marshes were closed to all outsiders.

“Tor—the Fens of Tor,” Simon heard Loyse gasp in answer.

“But—” She put out her hand. “Aldis was calling for aid. And yet Tor does not mix with outworlders.”

“What does anyone know of the secrets of Tormarsh?” Simon countered. “Kolder has entered Kars, and I will swear that it walks elsewhere, as in Alizon. Only the Old Race cannot accept the Kolder taint and know it instantly for what it is. That is why Kolder fears and hates them most. Perhaps in Tormarsh there is no such barrier to mingling.”

“She called. They will answer—and find us here!” Loyse cried.

“That I know.” To go out into that swamp might well mean death, but it held also a thin promise of escape. To remain pent in the crashed flyer would lead but to recapture. Simon wished that his head did not ache, that he knew only a little of where they lay in the swamp. They might be only yards away from the border through which he and Jaelithe had fled. The trees, he decided, provided their best road. For all those which still stood, or leaned, an equal number lay prone, their length in a crazy pattern furnishing at least a footway over the treacherous surface.

“Where will we go?” Loyse asked.

It might be folly to head into the unknown, but still every nerve in Simon screamed against remaining to be picked up by any force Aldis might have summoned. Slowly he unhooked that belt with its betraying boss. The long dagger and dart gun he would need. He looked at Loyse. She wore riding clothes, but had not even a knife at her belt.

“I do not know” he replied to her question. “Away from this place—and soon.”

“Yes, oh, yes!” Carefully she edged about Aldis, balanced to look out the door. “But what of her?” Loyse nodded to the unconscious agent.

“She remains.”

Simon looked out below. There were tufts of coarse grass crushed beneath the flyer. The machine had landed on the edge of what might be an islet of solid ground. So far, so good. The grass had been flattened enough so that he thought they need not fear any life lurking in it. Wherever the lizard thing had gone, it had not yet appeared near the door. Simon dropped out, his boots sinking a little into the footing but bringing no ooze of water. Holding out his hands to Loyse, he eased her down and gave a little push towards the rear of the flyer.

“That way—”

Simon pulled at the door, setting the flyer to rocking. But the jammed metal gave as he exerted his full strength. That would shut Aldis in and—well, he could not leave even a Kolder-ruled woman to the things which made this foul country their home and hunting ground.

The ridge of ground on which they had crashed ran back, rising higher. But it was only an island, giving root room to the grass, a bordering of reeds, and some stunted brush. On three sides were murky pools—or perhaps only one pool with varying shallows and deeps. The water was scummed, and where cleared of that filthy covering, an opaque brown beneath which anything might lie in cover. As far as Simon could see the best path out still remained via the sunken tree lengths. How waterlogged and rotted those were was now a question. Would they crumple under the weight of those using them as bridges? There was no way of knowing until one tried.

Simon kept the dart gun, but he handed the knife to Loyse.

“Do not follow on any log until I have already cleared it,” he ordered. “We may be only going deeper into this sink, but I do not propose to try the water way.”

“No!” Her agreement was quick and sharp. “Take care, Simon.”

He summoned up a tired smile which hurt his bruised face. “Be very sure that this is advice I shall hug to me now.”

Simon caught a branch of a moss-wreathed tree which stood at the edge of the grass plot. A measure of the ancient bark powdered in his grip, but there remained still a hard core firm to his testing. Holding to that, he swung out, to land on the first of the logs. The wood did not give too much, but bubbles arose in the water, breaking to release so vile a stench that he coughed. Still coughing he worked his way along to a mass of upended roots where he rested. Not that the mere walking of that way was fatiguing in itself, but the tension in his body had stiffened his joints to make every effort twice as hard. To climb over the roots, find footing again beyond was a task which sapped his strength yet more. He stood there, to watch Loyse come the path he had marked, her pale face set her body as stiff as his. How long did it take, that crisscross trailing from log to log? Twice Simon looked back, sure that they must have come some distance, only to see the flyer still far too close to hand. But at last he did leap to another grass-covered ridge, hold out his hands to Loyse. Then they sat together, shivering a little, panting and rubbing the hard muscles of their legs which seemed to have locked during that ordeal.

“Simon—”

He glanced at the girl. Her tongue moved across her lips as she stared at the stagnant water.

“The water—it can not be drunk—” But that was not a statement, it was a question, a hope that he would say she dared. His tongue moved in his own dry mouth as he wondered how long they would be able to stand up to temptation before they were driven by thirst to scoop up what could be rank poison.

“It is foul,” he replied. “Perhaps some berries—or a real spring later on.” Very pallid hopes, but they could help to stave off temptation.

“Simon—” Resolutely Loyse had raised her gaze from the slimy pool, was gazing back over the path they had come. “Those trees—”

“What about them?” he asked absently.

“The way that they grew!” Her voice was more animated. “Look, even with those that have fallen, you can see it! That was no grove! They were planted—in lines!”

He followed her pointing finger, studied the logs, the few trunks still standing. Loyse was right, they were not scattered. When they had been rooted firmly they had stood in two parallel lines—marking some long lost roadway? Simon’s interest was more than casual, for that way ended at the islet where they rested.

“A road Simon? An old road? But a road has to lead somewhere!” Loyse got up, faced away from the trees at the island.

It was little enough to cling to, he knew. But any clue which might be a signpost in this unwholesome bog was worth following. A few moments later in a line from the trees Simon came upon evidence to back their guess. The coarse grass was patchy, rooted only here and there, leaving bare expanses of stone. And that stone was smoothed blocks, laid with a care for the joining of one to the next—a pavement. Loyse stamped upon it with the heel of her boot and laughed.

“The road is here! And it will take us out—you shall see, Simon!”

But a road has two ends. Simon thought, and if we have chosen to go the wrong way this could be only leading us deeper into Tormarsh, to confront what or whom dwells there.

It did not take them long to cross the ridge of higher ground come once more to where water spilled across a dip. But on the other side of that flood stood a tall stone pillar, a little aslant as if the boggy ground had yielded to its weight. On top of that was a ragged tangle of vine, the loops of which drooped in reptilian coils about a carven face.

The beaked nose, the sharply pointed chin, small, overshadowed by that stronger thrust above it, the whole unhuman aspect—

“Volt!” So had that mummy figure they had chanced upon in the sealed cliff cavern appeared in those few minutes before Koris made his plea and took from its dried claws of hands the great ax. What had the seneschal said then? That Volt was a legend—half-god, half-devil—the last of his dead race, living on into the time of human man, giving some of his knowledge to the newcomers because of his loneliness and his compassion. Yet here had once been those who had known Volt well enough to raise a representation of him along some highway of their kind.

Loyse smiled at the pillar. “You have seen Volt. Koris has told me of that meeting when he begged of the Old One his ax and was not denied. There is none of the Old One lingering here, but I take his stone as a good omen, not one of ill. And he shows us that the road runs on.”

There was still that stretch of water ahead. Simon searched the bank of the island and found a length of branch. Stripping away its rotten parts for a core tough enough to serve his purpose, he began to sound that waterway. Some inches of ooze and then solid stone, the pavement ran on. But he did not hurry, feeling for each step before he took it, having Loyse follow directly behind him.

Below the pillar bearing Volt’s head the pavement emerged on the higher land once more, and as they went, that strip of solid surface grew wider, until Simon suspected that this was no small islet but a sizable stretch of solid ground. Which would provide living space, and so they could not fear discovery by the Tormen.

“Others have lived here.” None of the vegetation grew tall and Loyse pointed out the blocks of stone which vaguely outlined what had once been walls, stretching away from the road into spike-branched brush. One building? A town or even the remains of a small city? What pleased Simon most was the density of the growth about those blocks. He did not believe that any living thing, save a very small reptile or animal, could force a path through it. And here, on the relative open of the ancient road, he could see any attacker.

The road, which hitherto ran straight, took a curve to the right and Simon caught at Loyse to bring her to an abrupt halt. Those blocks of stone, which had elsewhere tumbled into the negation of any structure, had here been moved, aligned into a low wall. And beyond that wall grew plants in rows, the tending of watchful cultivation plain to read in the weedless soil, the staking of taller stems.

It seemed that here the sunlight, pale and greenish within the swamp world, focused brighter on the plants where buds and blossoms showed as patches of red-purple, while winged insects were busy about that flowering.

“Loquths,” Loyse identified the crop, naming a plant which was the mainstay of Estcarp weavers. Those purple flowers would become in due time bolls filled with silken fibers to be picked and spun.

“And look!” She took a step closer to the wall, indicating a small hollow niche constructed of four stones. In that shelter stood a crudely-shaped figure, but there was no mistaking the beaked nose. Whoever had planted that field had left Volt to protect it.

But Simon had sighted something more—a well-trod path, which was not a part of the old road, but ran away from it to the right, winding out of sight on the other side of the field wall.

“Come away!” He was sure that they had made the wrong choice, that the road had brought them into Tormarsh and not toward its fringe. But could they retrace their trail? To return to the vicinity of the flyer might be going directly into enemy hands.

Loyse had already caught his meaning. “The road continues—” Her voice was lowered to a half whisper. And the way ahead did look rough and wild enough to promise that it was no main thoroughfare for those of Tor. They could only keep on it.

There were no more fields walled and planted. And even those scattered blocks of ruins disappeared. Only the fact that now and then they spotted a bare bit of pavement told them the road still existed.

But their earlier thirst was now more than discomfort, it was agony in mouth and throat. Simon saw Loyse waver, put his arm about her shoulders to steady her. They were both staggering when they reached the road’s end—a stone pier which extended into a hellish nightmare of quaking mud, slime and stench. Loyse gave a cry and turned her head against Simon as he wrenched them both back and away from that waiting gulf.