Trey of Swords (Witch World (Estcarp Series)) (15 page)

When Dahaun and I saw each other for the first time there was between us instant knowledge that we sought the same road. She took me into her household, where I first learned how much there
was
for me to learn, and how little I had been able to give because I lacked such knowledge. I was like one long athirst in a desert waste who is offered a flagon of cool water. But I knew that also as one who thirsted, this I must take slowly, a sip at a time. For the talent too strongly seized may turn upon one.

The Valley was a beleaguered fortress—of the Power against the Shadow. For in this land of Escore there had been much ancient evil wrought by adepts who had set themselves above the rules of the Talent, feasting their crooked spirits on what they could warp nature into doing. And that ancient evil, though perhaps much weakened by time, was now waking, gathering its strength to rage again.

Within the Valley, we were told, safety lay, for it was guarded by such strong runes of Light that naught which carried the foul mark of the Dark might come. Yet our men (together with those who were not men in form and yet gave liegeship to the Light) patrolled the upper reaches of the heights, beating off attacks that strove to win up sheer rock to come at us.

Then—one morning I awoke and my hands were sticky with clay such as I had seen along the riverbank. And in me there was such an uneasiness that I felt as guilty as one who unbars the door of a keep to let through the enemy. Still also this I could not speak of, not to the Lady Dahaun, nor to my foster mother. But I had that to keep me busy. Yonan had been injured in a fall upon the heights—and might have died save that Tsali of the Lizard folk found him wedged into one of the crevices there.

I was glad that I must tend his ankle, occupy myself in other ways. For, though I had at once washed that clay from my fingers, it seemed to me that I still somehow carried the stain of it on my flesh, and the uneasiness which was part of it lay at the back of my mind where I firmly imprisoned it. Three times I tried to speak, and found that I could not shape the words; and so my unquiet grew, and I used what skills Dahaun had taught me—still there was no suggestion that anything of the Shadow had won through our barriers.

But I was reluctant to sleep that night, wishing even I might be watched by someone—yet this I also found myself unable to ask for.

The dream came as suddenly as if I had passed through a door. And it was as vividly real as awakening, so real that all which lay behind me at this moment seemed more of a dream or vision than where I stood now.

This was a hall—not like those I knew in Estcarp —unless very ancient Es might hold such. The walls appeared so far away on either side that they were hidden by dusk. But the pillars on either side were tall, and their carvings of strange monsters very clear. A light which was not the warmth of sun, nor that of any lamp, but which seeped greenly-yellow from divers of the pillars themselves, gave me full vision.

There was someone waiting here—someone I must meet—

I did not seem to walk normally as I flitted forward down the well-marked aisle; rather it was as if I were drawn through the air, weightless and without the power to resist. Then the aisle ended in a circular space. And on a pillar which was the center core of that, was a skull—life-sized and carved of what seemed the clearest crystal. Still the brain pan was filled with whirling, dancing light of rainbow colors, one shade eternally fading or deepening into another.

And resting one hand lightly on the base where the skull was placed stood a woman. She had some of the same look of Dahaun's people, for she changed color—her hair flaming near to scarlet, then deepening to brown, and at last to black; her skin one moment ivory, the next sun-browned. Yet I knew that she was not of the Valley.

Power radiated from her as if she aimed that directly at me. And, though her coloring changed so from one moment to the next, her features did not lose their own set expression. Her full lips were curved in a small, secret smile, as if she dwelt exultingly upon some knowledge she would share with no one.

Her body was clothed only by whirls of mist which also writhed and moved, revealing now a crimson-nippled breast, again a smooth thigh, the beginning of a slight curve of belly. There was something utterly wanton in that play of clothing which was faintly disturbing, reached perhaps that part of me which was not here in answer to her sorcery.

“Crytha!” She flung out one hand in a parody of friendly welcome. And her voice echoed in my mind, not in my ears. “Well met, little sister—”

There was that in me which cringed at her careless claim of kinship. I was
not
of her blood—I was not! And perhaps my instant revulsion troubled the spell she had set upon me, for I saw her smile disappear, her eyes on me burn with anger.

“You are what and who I will you!” So quick was she with the leash of ownership. “You will do as I say. Come to me—”

I could not fight that compulsion any more than I could have broken chains which might have been forged about my wrists or limbs. To her I went.

“Look you!” She waved a hand toward the skull with its blaze of inner fire. That was now brighter, harsher, alive!

Without my willing it my hands went forth and touched the temples of the skull, one on either side. Into me swept another will, imperious—overriding the last remnants of what I was. I was given my orders; I knew what must be done.

“So!” the woman laughed. “We have chosen well, eh, Targi—'’ She spoke to the skull as if it were a living being. “Now you”—contemptuously she looked at me—“go you about your task.”

Out from the pillars came scuttling shapes. Thas—the underground people, such as had already tried once to betray us. The leader of that band caught at my hand and I could not draw away. Under his urging I turned to the right.

We went through burrows; how many and where they ran. that I could not tell. All which burned within me, with near the same blaze which the skull had shown, was what I was to do. For it came to me that there were limitations on the woman and the skull. What meant so much to them they could not accomplish because these ways were forbidden them. Perhaps the passage ran somewhere under the cliffs of the Valley and, even deep in the earth, the safety runes had a measure of power. If so, such did not now work in my favor. I could pass this way easily enough, but I could not free myself from the tasks laid upon me.

The rest—it became disjointed, more like the broken episodes of a dream wherein one slides from one bit of action to the next without any logical connection. I remember mouthing words which someone else—either the woman or the skull had locked into my brain. And then—

There was something wrong. I could feel the ensorcelment lock even tighter on me. But beneath that prisoning arose baffled rage. I had not completed my task—there had been unseen interference. The Thas surrounded me, pushed and pulled me along their black burrows. What happened after—I could never piece together.

But there came a time when I knew I moved above earth, I saw faces which I should remember, only the hold on my brain would not yet let me. Then—

Then I came fully awake—or alive—once more. I stood in the open air and around me blew sweet wind, the chill of which I did not mind, because it carried the freshness of the world I knew. And there was Yonan, and with him another who wore strange armor and carried a great double-headed ax. There was also Tsali and then—up from the depth before us which must make the Valley —Dahaun came and with her Lord Kyllan, who was hand-fasted to her—others behind.

I cried out—this must be real—not another dream. But only when Dahaun took me into her arms was I sure of that.

2

The barrier against speech no longer held, and I told Dahaun freely what had been my dream. Though dream, it seemed, it was not. I
had
been drawn out of the safety of the Valley—and that by the betrayal of a part of my own wayward mind. For they showed me a figure wrought of clay. And set to its rounded head were hairs from my own; about its form was wrapped a rag which I had once worn. And this I knew without telling was of the Old Evil. So had I been reached and worked upon by a greater force than we had suspected had yet striven to break our boundaries.

When I described the woman who abode with the skull, Dahaun frowned; still, there was puzzlement in her frown. She made me stay within her own quarters, taking care before she left me to use a wand, white and fresh-peeled, to draw around the cushions on which I rested certain tokens confined by a circle. And, before she had done, the need to sleep had so weighted my eyelids that I drifted away. Though I struggled, for I feared above all to lose my will and thought and be drawn into dreams.

Dream again I did, and not happily. I was not now physically a part of that second visit to the hall of pillars and the skull as I had been the first time. Yet I could see—I could hear.

There was a change in her who had woven that earlier spell, for I was as certain as if oath had been taken that it was the woman who had reached out to draw me to her through the runways of the Thas; I so much under her spell I did not know where I went.

She no longer showed the pride and arrogance which had clothed her better than the mist at our last meeting. And her beauty was marred, as if time had served her ill. But still she was one to be feared and I did not forget that. Though at this time she did not look in my direction nor show any sign that she knew of my presence there.

Rather she stood by the base on which the skull rested and her hands caressed the crystal of its fashioning. Those blazing lights had died, or been muted so that only a near-colorless fogging of the inner part remained.

I saw her mouth and lips move, believed that she chanted or spoke to the thing she fingered. There was a kind of passion in her face which was greater than wrath—although that emotion underlaid the other. I could sense the forces she strove to bend, to break, to control by her will—and her frustration and despair that this she could not do.

Then she stooped to set her lips to the fleshless mouth of the crystal. She did that as I believed a woman would greet a lover, the one who was the center of her life. And her arms went around the pillar so that the “face” of that grinning thing pressed tightly against her ruby-tipped breasts. There was something so shameless in that gesture that I fell revulsion. But I could not flee, for that which had drawn me here still held—dream though it was.

She turned her head suddenly, as her eyes sought me. Perhaps she now knew that some portion of me had been drawn once more into her net. I saw exultation blaze high in those eyes.

“So—the spell holds yet, does it, younger sister? I have wrought better than I hoped.”

Her hands arose in the air to trace lines I did not understand. Straightaway that which was me was locked fast. Now she came away from the skull, and so vibrant was the Dark Power in her that her hair stirred of itself, arose in a great flaming nebula about her head, more startling than any crown a queen might wear. Her lips were slightly parted, their burning redness like a gathering of blood on her ghostly fair skin.

She came one step and then two; her hands reached out for me, that triumph swelling in her and about her like some robe of ceremony.

“There is yet time—with an able tool—” I think her thought was more her own than sent to me. “Aye, Targi,” she glanced back for a breath at the skull, “we are not yet lost!”

But if she had some plan it had failed her. For in that instant the spell broke, the woman and the skull she tended so passionately vanished. I opened my eyes again upon the hall of Dahaun to see the Lady of Green Silences standing at my feet. While over me she shook a handful of near-withered herbs, leaves of which broke off at the vigor of her gestures, shifting down to lie on my body. I sniffed Illbane, that very old cure for the ills of the spirit; with it langlon, the tri-leafed, which clears the senses, recalls a wandering mind.

Only I knew what had happened, and I cowered on my bed of hides and springy dried grasses. Tears which were born both of fear and the sense of my own helplessness filled my eyes, to spill down my cheeks.

Dahaun, though she looked grave enough, reached out and caught my hand even when I would shrink from her, knowing now that some part of me had been attuned to the Shadow and that I was held by all which had and was most evil in this land.

“You dreamed—” she said, and she did not use mind touch but rather spoke as she would to a small child who awakes terrified from a nightmare.

“She—I was drawn again—” I mumbled. “She can draw me to her will—”

“The same woman—?”

“The same woman, the skull, the place of pillars. It was as it was before.”

Dahaun leaned forward, her eyes holding mine locked in a gaze I could not break, for all my feeling of guilt and trouble.

“Think, Crytha, was it
exactly
the same?”

There was some reason for her questioning. I dropped my guard and drew upon memory, so that in my mind hers could see also what I had witnessed. Though I began to fear for her, lest some of the taint sleep with the knowledge, to infect her also.

She sat down cross-legged by my bed place. Crushing the last of the Illbane between her hands, she leaned forward, to touch those now deeply scented fingers to my temples.

“Think—see!” she commanded with assurance. ,

So I relived in memory, as best I could, what I had seen in the dream.

When I had done she clasped her hands before her.

“Laidan—” She spoke a single name. “And—Targi—”

“Who is Laidan?” I ventured at last.

“One who mixed—or mixes, since it seems that she must still live in some burrow of hiding—the worst of two races within her. Laidan was of the People by her mother's right—her father—” Dahaun shrugged. “There were many tales in the time of her bid to rule as to whom he might be—though he was not one of us. It is most commonly accepted that she was sired by one of the Hill Lords who accepted the rule of the Shadow—willingly. Laidan—and Targi—” she repeated thoughtfully.