Zarsthor's Bane

4

“He’s gone!”

Her cry brought the boy shoving past her. Then he was on his feet, completely unheeding of any other eyes which might be watching from below. Brixia tried to catch at him, remind him of their present peril. But her move came too late, he had plunged into the brush on the other side of that pocket-sized clearing. Plainly nothing mattered but his Lord as far as he was concerned.

Brixia remained where she was. Now that they were safe out of that keep trap, there was no need for her to company longer with the two of them. No need at all. Only, no matter how much her prudence insisted upon that, still she was, a moment or so later, moving reluctantly to follow the boy.

Of Uta there was no sign either. Perhaps the cat, for some purpose of her own, had gone with Lord Marbon. Slowly Brixia pushed through the bushes in the same direction the boy had taken.

Chance continued to favor them with cover, for beyond the bushes there was a sunken trough in the ground, much overgrown with vines and brush. Newly broken twigs and torn leaves marked that as the path. Brixia advanced along the cut warily. Though there was little danger of being surprised by any wild thing large or vicious enough to attack without warning, there might well be other things loose in this dank place—things suited to nest among such growth.

For there was much about these bushes, the vines, which was forbidding. Fleshy leaves were a dark green, so dark as to appear smoked into blackness. Some were veined with red or a rusty yellow-brown—like dried blood. From those which had been crushed by passing of those she trailed there arose a musky odor, unpleasant, different from any vegetation she had smelled before.

The branches and stems were black, and that blackness, touching against Brixia’s arms, her body, left streakings upon her flesh and clothing as if they exuded moisture. She used the spear as best she could to push low hanging limbs out of her way.

Now the girl suspected that this path, cut between two ever rising banks, could not be natural. Had it been fashioned by some now dried stream it would have run from the north—down slope. But this angled east to west along the side of the ridge. It must have been made to hide those emerging from the bolt hole, guide them towards the Waste.

Twice Brixia halted, determined to turn back, or at least scramble up out of this ill-omened path. Yet each time she surveyed the growth along its walls doubtfully (the brush obviously thicker there) she shrank from forcing an opening through it.

During her last halt she heard enough to bring her spear to ready. No voice had been raised in a true whisper, no crashing sounded from ahead or behind. She stood, seemingly isolated, in a dull, dark green walled tunnel utterly alone.

No—that did not issue from small gust of wind lifting the thick puffy leaves, nor—

The girl faced toward the way she had come, striving to identify the sound. It was a—a chittering—a clicking, as if teeth struck upper jaw against the lower. She had heard once or twice a noise not too unlike it when Uta had watched a bird beyond her reach.

“Uta!” Brixia called softly—at the same time knowing deep in her mind that this was not the cat. The sound was spaced—it might form words of so alien a tongue that she had no hope of translation.

From behind? No, as she listened, tense, she was sure that sound did not echo up the tunnel which had grown deeper until the brush along its walls met to form a roof over her head. It—she stared downward—and a cold fear grew in her—it was as if that came from underground!

Every instinct urged her to go crashing ahead in instant flight. But—perhaps that was what was wanted of her. Instead, making an effort for control, she paused, her head a little on one side, listening to that clicking. Then she saw—the way ahead only a fraction visible under the combination of dusk and the overshadowed path, was shifting! Under the thick layer of leaves which made a rot-muck into which her feet sank there was a—sinking! The ground itself—yes, she could feel a change in it! She had a sudden and horrifying vision of the path falling down, away, into some gulf, taking her with it. And that in the hidden burrow under her feet there awaited—

She dared no longer hesitate here! Fearfully Brixia kept eyeing the ground under that mat of leaves reduced to slime which bespatted her bare feet with every step she took. What if some—some thing would now rear up to make sure of her capture?

The girl broke and ran. With a rising of the walls, or the sinking of the path, the way was clearer. She did not have to fight so hard to get through. By straining for sight she could see the tracks in the mould. The others—or one of them—was still ahead. Now she wanted nothing more than to be in the company of her own kind.

She hated and feared the blur of shadows. While the stench of both the broken leaves and the muck stirred up underfoot was sickening. Brixia hurried on, aware now that the path under her feet was now steady and rising, as if aiming to cross over the ridge height. Twice she slipped as that climbing angle steepened. Here there were marks in plenty to show that the others had fallen or been forced to scramble ahead with increasing difficulty.

Slightly ahead, was a tangle of broken branches, crushed leaves, some twigs still quivering. Thrusting through at the same spot she came out in the open under a lowering sky. Yet there was enough light left to hearten her a little. Before her a ledge jutted into open space. On three sides that looked to be without any escape and for a dazed moment or so she wondered if the boy and Lord Marbon had somehow fallen off this exposed perch. Having very little head for heights, Brixia (there being none to witness her lapse from confidence) drew near the left hand side of the ledge on hands and knees, even then quailing before looking down.

What she saw was astounding. There was no mistaking here the hand of man—or else that of some intelligent being who had altered nature to serve its purpose. For below, hugging what was otherwise a steep cliff, descended a flight of stairs. Weather worn, covered with lichen, those steps angled steeply down to the floor of a narrow valley. While on the cliff which side-flanked these were hollows and ridges of carving—also weather worn and mottled by lichen.

Dusk deepened fast. In the limited light those lines and depressions seemed to leer or scowl, forming faces so alien that Brixia quickly turned her eyes away from the wall. Below she heard a rattle of falling stone and saw movement. There was a curious hazy cover for the ground below—quite a distance below as if the base of this narrow valley was far under her perch, much deeper than that on the side of the ridge from which she had come.

There the shadows lay very thick. But these were not yet dark enough to mask the two who stood by an outcrop of stone. Even as her gaze centered on them, the larger broke from the grasp of the smaller. Brushing aside his companion when the other tried to stop him, the taller kept on westward, striding with the measured step used by the practiced traveler.

Determined to catch up, Brixia arose, fighting the feeling of being about to pitch forward from heights, and began to descend the stairway. One hand went out to find holds in the carvings, for the wide open space to her right made her head swim. Deliberately she schooled herself to look only at what lay immediately before her.

By the time she reached the end of that way, for she had dared not hurry, the other two were again well ahead. This second valley being strangely bare of any vegetation, she could see them in spite of an odd wavering of outline.

Brixia rubbed her eyes, thinking that perhaps it was her own sight which caused that difficulty in seeing more distant objects. For whole moments the way was clear, then again, when she looked down at her own feet or at one of the outcrops of stone (and those were many) all was a blur.

At least the air here was clear and she could breathe without drawing into her lungs the stifling stench clinging to that upper path. Here, though, the footing was hard for her unshod feet, drifts of gravel and small stones tormented even her well toughened soles. At last Brixia was reduced to a slow pace, lest she render herself too foot sore to move. She regretted those sandals lying back in her pack—abandoned in the dale. Several times she was tempted to raise her voice in a shout to those ahead, begging them to wait for her. With the dark so close upon them surely sooner or later they too would be driven to halt.

The girl had seen nothing of the cat since she had entered that passage in the keep, and Brixia wondered now if Uta had indeed come down from the upper ridge at all. Somehow it was important that Uta be one with them. She found herself worrying lest Uta had gone off on her own.

The dusk thickened, and, with that deepening of the dark, the girl became more and more wary. Perhaps that strange, invisible, charterer of the covered way did not follow here, but the sense that she was not alone, that there was that which spied upon her, gripped tighter with each hobbling step which she forced herself to take.

To halt here was more than she could do. She wanted company—any company—to banish that feeling of being utterly at the mercy of some unknown. Now and again she paused for the space of a breath or two, listening—to discover that in this valley were none of the reassuring noises which filled nights in the open. No insect chirruped or buzzed, no bird called—the silence was complete, so that her own breathing sounded loud in her ears, an accidental scrape of her spear haft against the stone as sharp as the war horn of a keep company.

There was—Brixia tried to subdue her imagination. It was not true that she walked amid a throng of unseen things! Nothing moved save herself. Shaking with more than the chill of the night Brixia steadied her body against a stone which stood shoulder high beside her.

Her fingers moved over a pit, a ridge—She turned her head to look. A face—!

What sorcery made the crude carving stand out against the stone, visible through the dark, she could not guess. It was as if her touch had awakened inanimate stone into a spark of life.

A face—? No, there was nothing remotely human in the features of that mask. The eyes were huge, round, and each was centered with a small spark of flame which formed a pinpoint of greenish white light. Where nose and mouth should have appeared there was rather sketched, in a diabolically realistic form of art, a wide muzzle-mouth a little agape, enough to show the tips of sharply pointed fangs.

For the rest—Brixia made herself look, refusing to be cowed—once she had gotten over her first astonishment—it was really but lines on stone—there was nothing more—just that mouth and the eyes. Perhaps the ones who had wrought that expected the viewers’ imagination to build the rest in their minds alone. Shame at being shaken by such a trick thing, Brixia struck the stone with her spear and then hurried on, in spite of the pain of her feet. She refused to look over her shoulder as she went, though she was troubled by a feeling that there was something in sly pursuit.

There was no doubt in her mind, that she now was traversing a place of the Old Ones. And, Brixia thought, of a species who were not inclined to favor any human encroachment on their territory. This was not, as that place Kuniggod had taken her to, a refuge. Rather it posed an abiding threat to those of her kind.

The narrow cut of the valley, as much as she could see of it in the dark, widened out into a much larger area. Once more the girl hesitated. To wander on into the night with no guide was perhaps folly. If those she sought followed a trail, she had seen no sign of such since she had descended the cliff stairway. But at least here the foot punishing gravel had given away to patches of grass.

Moving from one of those to the next she could not keep a straight line, but did save her feet from further torment. While ahead—Would those other two be foolish enough to light a fire again? Here in the open that could only center on them the attention of any prowlers abroad in the night.

The Waste had always had an evil name, and there were rumors of all kinds of non-human life which were to be encountered here. Its sinister barrenness formed a western border to the Dales which supported, of her own kind, only the outlaws and a few strange men who were attracted by remnants of what they thought they had discovered concerning the Old Ones. It was to the Waste that the lords of the Dales had, in their extremity of the seasons just past, gone for help against the invaders. And from the Waste had come that help—the wereriders—whom all men knew were not men at all but a daunting combination of man and feral beast. That story had spread even to the few contacts Brixia had dared to make, landmen in hiding, as surly and suspicious as she herself had become but sometimes willing to exchange a handful of salt for a brace of leaper skins.

She had in her drifting, her fleeing and hiding, during the past two years skirted the Waste many times. Mainly because human enemies continued to lurk between her and what refuges might still exist farther east. She had watched the swarming of outlaws to and from its borders. But she had never ventured out into its depths.

That the Lord Marbon with his disordered wits might do this—that could be expected. But that she need follow him—Brixia dropped to crouch on one of the patches of grass, rubbing at her feet, her eyes wide, her ears alert as she looked and listened—The dark hid most of what was to be seen, but there were sounds out of the night here, not that frightening silence which had held the valley.

While—she held her head high—Into her nostrils Brixia drew air scented with a fragrance which could be at the other end of a balance from the rotting stench of the narrow upper path. Sweet, fresh—she thought of meadow grass lying in the early morning, webs on it pearled with dew—flowers just opening to the day. There was a garden—open to the sun of mid-morning—its blossoms ready to be harvested and dried for the sweetening of bed clothes and body linen—It was—

Without being quite aware of what she did Brixia got once more to her feet—moved on into the night, drawn by that scent which grew ever the stronger. So she came to the foot of a tree—Oddly twisted were its branches, and those lacked leaves. But it was aflower and the flowers were white. Seeming to extend from the tip of each petal—like the glow of a small candle—was a wisp of light.

Brixia put out her hand, but did not quite dare to touch petal or branch. She was standing in awe and wonder when a hoarse croak aroused her.

The girl faced about, her spear at ready. Faint as was the light diffused by the flowers she caught a glimpse of what lurked there. Though they were little, the noise they made when they saw her mindful of them was loud as something twice their size could have raised. Small, yes, but in them lay horror.

If a toad might rise upon its hind legs, show evil intelligence in its bulbous eyes, fangs within its gaping mouth—then that might approach in appearance these croaking things. Save that these toad creatures had no smooth skin—rather that was covered with ragged patches of very coarse hair—hair—or fine tendrils. A longer growth weaved from each corner of their mouths, matching similar ones set one above each eye. These were in constant motion as if the unwholesome threads had a separate life of their own.

Brixia set her back against the tree trunk They did not move in upon her as she had expected them to do. That their purpose was utterly evil she had no doubt at all. For there beat into her mind a cold hatred of all she was and they were not. Instead of an open attack, they began to circle to the right, moving one after another at a lurching gait—a ghastly parody of one of the round dances mankind indulged in at feast times.

They were silent now, but as each passed her, knowing eyes were turned in her direction, and in each she read the foulness of their desires. Round, they must be making a circle of the tree. Brixia herself slipped around its bole, keeping that ever within touching distance of her shoulders, striving to see if she were entirely ringed about.

What they desired, the girl could not guess. But she knew well there was a purpose to this capering. Faint memories of some of Kuniggod’s stories came to her. There was a way of working magic by the repetition of ritual words, or in the performance of certain acts in a set pattern. Was that what was happening here and now?

If so—she must break their pattern before their magic was complete. How to do that—?

Holding her spear ready, Brixia dashed from the tree towards the nearest portion of the circle. The things gave before her, but they merely drew back a fraction, to continue their circling just beyond the reach of her spear. While from them came a feeling of malicious amusement. She was sure they did not fear her, that they intended to prance so until their purpose was achieved.

If she was to break through that circle, over leap them, or use her spear to hinder them long enough to be free—would she truly be free at all? To venture away from even the meagre light given forth by the tree flowers was to be caught dark-blind in their own territory where they could hunt her down with ease.

Brixia backed once more under the branches and the upstanding blossom lights. She was sure that the circle narrowed slightly with each revolution that the dancers made. Soon she would have to make up her mind firmly and keep to it. Either break free or suffer whatever they wished to happen. Such indecision was not usually hers but neither was she accustomed to facing an enemy so far removed from all she knew.

Under the tree there was a sensation of safety. Which might be only a suggestion born from her need and hope. Brixia touched the back of the trunk, gave a start. She might then have fingered warmth of flesh. In that instant of contact there had sped a message into her mind. Had that really happened? Or again was she bemused and misled—perhaps by the same magic the creatures evoked?

There was one way of making sure of that. Setting her spear in the crook of her arm Brixia gently pulled down a branch only a little above her head. Again, out of nearly forgotten years, she recalled something of those words Kuniggod had always used when she went harvesting among the garden plants. What she said to each shrub, bush or smaller green things, before she culled its blossoms. For Kuniggod had firmly believed that growing life had a spirit also which should be recognized and appeased by any gleaner.

“For my use spare me of your bounty, green sister. Rich is your store, the fruit of your body. Beauty is yours and sweetness—and that which you freely give, that alone shall I take.”

The girl placed her hand above a flower. The light its petals shed erased the wind and sun browning of her flesh, instead gave the soft lustre of a water gem to pearl her fingers. She did not need to exert any strength to free the blossom from its parent stem. No, it was as if it loosed itself, to settle gently in her grasp.

For a long moment she hesitated, even forgetting the dance of the toad things, expecting that, once free of its branch , the wonder she held upon the flattened palm of her hand would fade, lose its gentle radiance. But it did not, and there grew in her such a sense of peace, of Tightness with the world as she had not remembered since that morning she had awakened in the place of the Old Ones.

Once more she spoke to the tree—or maybe not to a tree but an entity she could not see, could not touch with any sense, save that stir within her.

“My thanks to you, green sister. Your free gift is my treasure.”

Moving, not by any conscious will, but as one who is asleep, and, within a dream acts out some deep hidden desire, Brixia let fall the spear, leaving herself defenseless by the standards of her kind.

Flower in hand she walked from the shelter of the tree toward that circle which had narrowed to a point just beyond where the outmost branches overhung the ground. Towards the whirling figures, whose dance had grown even faster, she went confidently, grasping the blossom. A cloud of fragrance moved with her.

There was a croaking screech and the toad immediately before her stopped short. Its mouth stretched as it uttered hoarse gibbering sounds which might have been speech but none known to mankind. Brixia stretched out her hand. The flower’s light streamed between her fingers.

The toad thing cowered away, crying out in anger. For a moment only it faced her defiantly. Then it turned to pelt away, still gibbering, into the dark. Those who had flanked it in the dance broke line also. They did not beat such a quick retreat, rather snarled and gabbled at her, moving their paw hands in awkward gestures. Though those paws held no weapons it was plain they threatened.

Between them and the girl the flower held its constant light, not bright, but not dimming either. The creatures edged backwards. Brixia made no move to follow them beyond the line their dance had set—the limit of the tree’s overhanging branching. She knew, though not how, that the canopy of that growth represented a barrier of a sort, and for her a refuge.

There was an attempt to begin the dance once again. But, though those a little beyond her croaked and gestured, none would pass where she stood flower in hand. At last they broke in earnest, pattering off into the dark. Though they did not altogether desert the battlefield, for, as she returned to settle under the tree she could hear croaking calls, gibbering, arising through the darkness, and guessed that she now lay besieged.

She was hungry and she was thirsty. Another brief thought of the pack she had left in the dale at the beginning of this adventure made her sigh at her folly. But both hunger and thirst were muted—they might have tormented another part of her, detached from the person who sat under the tree, nursing the bloom, its petals as fine and firm as if carved of some treasured gem stone.

On impulse Brixia breathed more deeply of that fragrance. Nor was she fully conscious of what she did then as she turned to the tree behind her shoulder. Placing the flower carefully on the ground, she knelt and embraced the trunk with her arms, setting her mouth to its smooth bark. Her tongue touched that bark, swept back and forth across its surface. Though her flesh did not have the rasping abilities of Uta’s, it would seem that she did so fret the wood. For there was moisture now rising to her licking. Drops oozed out which she could suck.

Neither sweet nor sour, having a taste she could not honestly give any name to, that moisture dribbled, flowing faster as her tongue continued to lick the bark, answering the sucking of her lips. She swallowed, sucked, swallowed.

Thirst was gone, and hunger. Brixia was filled, revived. A murmuring enveloped her, blotting out the calls of the toad folk. Brixia lifted her head, laughed joyfully.

“Green mother you truly are! For your strength do I give thanks, Lady of the flowers! Ahhh—but what thanks can such as I render unto you?”

There was a sadness born in her. This was the emotion someone might know if she looked through a doorway into a place of great joy and yet dared not enter therein. If this was magic (and how could it be else than that?) let no man hereafter decry such magic in her hearing. The girl leaned once more against the tree and set her lips to the bark, not now for filling and comforting, but in wonder and joy.

Then she turned and curled up, the flower beside her face, her spear lying forgotten. With perfect faith in her safety she slept.