Authors: Andre Norton

Moon Mirror (20 page)

Alathi pawed at the neck of her jerkin. The band about her throat was heating again. Words once more came to her even as she passed him by:

"She
is the Great One whom no
man
dares name, though Her names are as many as there are nations, clans, and kin. She
holds life in one hand, in the other the sword of death, maintaining the balance of the world. She welcomes the fall of seed into the waiting furrow, the growth that arises from the seed, the reaping of it when it ripens. She faces, unfearing, the coming of cold and of the winter sleep. For this is the pattern—”

One of the men against the wall put out his hand swiftly, then shrank back. Perhaps the force that dwelt in her now had shown itself in some way—perhaps even Coultar had signed some order. Alathi slid between them as if they were not there.

More words spilled from her jerkily as she ran. These were different, clicking, guttural, so unlike her own speech that the very sound terrified her. She could not stop uttering them— they seemed to arise from a mind portion where not even memory still lay.

Before her now was only the narrowing ancient road, down which she must go, helplessly. Nor did she fall into silence, for she singsonged, croaked, sometimes repeated phrases which made some sense, until her mouth dried and her throat ached. Nor could she rest while that inner one remained in command.

The walls, formed by the heights, drew together, now she was in a tunnel, a dark way. At its entrance had shimmered a haze curtain across which colors crossed, even as such had swept across the neckband's silver surface.

“Lord of the Watch Tower of the West—” She was once more speaking sense. “I am summoned. Speed you my way, for to this summoning there must be no hindrance—”

Through the haze she burst, feeling a flash of intense cold, as
if she had broken a skim of ice across a winter prisoned pond. The way was no longer dark, the haze encased her.

Now the fear which had struck at the beginning of this wild and unaccountable action ebbed, not to rise again. In its place welled excitement akin to that she had felt days earlier when she had first seen Coultar.

“By the Lady....” Those words she had willed herself. “By the favor of the Lady... .”

The haze swirled faster about her, its colors like jewels whirled about on cords—blazing into fantastic brilliance. She came forth from the tunnel.

Abruptly whatever had driven her withdrew, even as a man might snap his fingers. Alathi swayed, now aware of a sharp pain in her side, her aching feet, the dryness of her mouth. But those were of the body—they meant little or nothing in this place.

Here were no rocks, no earth. Rather there lay a mirror of silver water in a round basin filling all the space between straight cliffs, those as smooth as if they had been deliberately chiseled so that none might find footing upon them. Across the mirror once more played those flashes of vivid color, rippling as might the waves of the salt sea.

The surface of the pool (or lake, for it extended for a far distance) was opaque. One could not see below. Around it ran a curbing near as tall as her waist. She staggered toward that, energy seeping out of her, not only weak and trembling, but bereft, as one whose treasure has been snatched by an enemy.

She fell to her knees behind the curbing, her hand steadying her. As Alathi clung there, near to the edge of consciousness, she saw the other wonder of this stretch of water. The sun shone down, well on its westward journey. Only the brilliance of that was not mirrored below.

Rather there rested on the surface a disc, growing outward from the heart of the lake. No shadow broke the pale, perfect round. Still there appeared upon it certain changes of color. Alathi, marking those, first dully and then with awakening recognition, knew what it resembled. Just as the moon was so clouded here and there so did the same patterns appear.

She wailed, voicing the low, keening cry uttered by the women of her own people as they leapt and danced beneath silver rays in the ancient rites of their sex. Alathi's body twitched as if she would dance—as if—

She pulled herself up, shrugged off her backpack, not caring where it might fall. From her thigh sheath she drew her long sword knife; from her belt her “claw"—such must not be worn here.

Straight she stood, watching that disc on the water grow ever more distinct, as if it were solid. Deep in her throat Alathi voiced a sound which was very old, reaching back into the first beginnings of her people, beginnings which even legends could not touch. She took a high step, to balance on the top of the curb, her eyes only for the moon shape.

Then—

Pain!

So sharp that it split through her skull like the blade of an axe. She wailed, writhed, fell back into a darkness which she thought fleetingly was death. No fear—just loss, a loss which was also pain—then nothing at all.

Distant sounds broke through the envelope of the dark. She strove to hold the dark intact. It promised safety and rest from troubling. Flashes of memory followed, too fleeting to be held.

“—Hill Cat! Best cut her throat, lord. They're as treacherous as a bal-serpent and nearly as deadly. Do they not dance evil down from the moon and spread it abroad in the dark of night?”

“Stand away! This one has in her what 1 have long sought. If you fear, Damstiff, then back with you. She is indeed a holder of power past your guessing!”

Alathi felt the band of fire about her throat. Only it did not burn, rather from it she drew strength, urging her out of the safety she had sought in the dark. She was aware of her body though she did not yet open her eyes, lay limp in another's hold.

Those voices used the hated dick-dick of lowland speech. Fragments wheeled through her mind in broken pictures. She could not hold onto them long enough to gain meaning—

“Ahhhhh!”

A scream rang in her ears, pierced through her head. She had been lifted, was being carried—No! The pool—they would take her from the pool!

The dash of steel, a smell ... she had scented that before. The map ... an old map and from its creases this same spicy odor. He who held her was moving. Did she have a chance to
wriggle free? A second scream choked off in the midpoint as if a throat could no longer give it passage.

Alathi opened her eyes and, at the same moment, made her bid for freedom, twisting her body sharply. Coultar held her, but his head was half turned away as if his attention were drawn elsewhere. She was free of his hold, tumbling, to bring up, back against an earth wall—in the tunnel.

One of the guardsmen staggered by her, his hands to his face, weaving from side to side as if blind. Another, his mouth twisted by fear, leaned against the wall opposite her, seeking to aim, in spite of trembling hands, his crossbow. Then he screamed, a high cry like a woman's, hurled the weapon from him. Out of it, as it crashed on the pavement, curled a feather of pale smoke, then white flames leaped.

He whose weapon that was screamed again, pulled himself away from the wall, still staring at the crossbow, his features a mask of terror passing the bounds of sanity.

Alathi looked to Coultar. He held no steel—perhaps he had dropped weapons when he had taken her captive. Swinging nearly completely around, his face that of a sentry alert to attack, he looked back to the pool. Both of his hands were now heart high, and in the right one was that disc.

Those with him had all fled. Knowing that she had nothing now to fear from them the girl straightened. Strength came flowing back. She willed it to her as she might at the end of a training bout. Her breath no longer came in ragged gasps, rather smoothly as a precious draught of water in the desert. With herself once more under control she became more and
more aware of a force which filled this narrow way. It was so strong that she believed she might put forth a hand and gather up its substance.

It was not aimed at her. Coultar's face grew more tense, he began to breathe faster. His lips were forced back against his teeth in a half snarl of effort as he visibly fought for speech:

“By Curwen, by Thethera, by Skula, by the oak, the ash, the red thorn, by the waxing moon—the moon that is full—that which wanes. By—”

He passed into another language, one in which the sounds began low in his throat, ascending note by note to a higher pitch than she could believe any man might naturally utter.

The disc he held was no longer that. Rather he cupped a length of white flame. His fingers writhed, blistered before her eyes, still he held it, and stood, rock firm.

“By the Law of the Worlds, and that which lies between them, by those who walk still our paths, and those who have gone before,” he dropped into intelligible speech again, “In the name of Herne, Thoth, Abyis, Lord of Light, by Suth, and Korn, also the Watch Lords of the East, West, North, and South, do I stand here. Two things that have contact—” he held the flame a fraction higher—"will come together. A power strengthens a power. O,
She
who—”

The flame in his hand leaped free. To Alathi it sped. He wheeled to face the girl as that flame struck against the latched hoop at her throat, clung, changed. She felt no fire, from this uniting came no harm to her.

Alathi raised hands to the disc once more formed, then she
stretched out the right slowly to the man who had held it earlier. A wall might have fallen—she saw. He was no merchant—rather a seeker—one who was a stranger, still closer than any kin.

She gasped, for his body seemed to flow, to change. This was not the man she had followed secretly across the waste of Ghritz. Though something of that one remained. Only more had been revealed.

“Who are you!” she asked.

“There is the Lady.” There was a weight in his words as if he were one of more authority than she had ever met. “There is also He who comes with the winter—into whose hands
She
passes the Sword, that He may complete that circle which balances the world—Life and birth, death and sleep, before life comes anew. I am one who is vowed to that Lord of Winter. He has been lost from the time and people of my birth world; thus I must journey into another time and place to call upon him again for the sake of my own land.

“Evoe, Evoe, Pan! Evoe, Herne! Evoe, Thoth!” He threw back his head. His voice came as a great shout which seemed to rock the very world under and about them.

Again he changed. Here stood a dark-skinned man who wore the sported skin of some beast about him over a white kilt; another with a head of close-curled hair, his body bare save for a small strip of hide, the badge of kinship with the world of beasts; a man in armor; one in a long robe across which ran runes in scarlet, to glow and fade. He was all these, yet also the Coultar of the here and now.

“I swear by the wide and fruitful womb of my mother, by my honor among men, by the blood shed in the Circle—” He spoke softly, as if he sought some answer from her. Though her ears still rang from his shouts, she could hear.

Alathi answered, knowing, even as she spoke, that she had said the words before many times. When and in what places? That did not matter now—this was the time, the place, to which she had been led so that she might say them again and so enter into what waited.

“I swear by my hope of the Great Glory beyond, by my past lives, my hope of future ones yet to come—”

At last their hands might meet. Around them surged the power. Not driven by it, but a part of it, they went back—Hill Cat and merchant no longer. What they were now they must learn.

They came out to the pool. Alathi understood. In each life there waits a door to the Inner world ready. Some never found it. That she had was as fair a fortune as the stuff of dreams.

“Blessed Lady, I am thy child—”

“—thy child,” he echoed her.

Together they climbed upon the curbing; together they leaped, hand in hand, out into the great waiting moon mirror. It closed about them, drew them in. However, their search had only begun, their feet but touched upon the first steps of the widest and straightest road of all.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

“Desirable Lakeside Residence,” from
Saving Worlds
(Roger Elwood, ed.), © 1973 by Doubleday & Co. Reprinted by permission of the author.