by Andre Norton
“It would seem that Lotis had him not so tight bond as she thought,” Karla answered first and there was a certain satisfaction in her voice. “He disappeared—”
“Through one of the doors,” Oxyle cut in. “He said that he had farseen you and you were in need.”
That reflection in the mirror! So it had drawn Ylon into the under world. But she willed her hand to cease shaking as she emptied the goblet.
“Show me the door,” she said.
Would the dwellers beyond allow a second intruder—treat him as fairly as they had her? She had no way of answering that, but she did know that she could not let him wander below if there was any way of helping him.
“I have told you all I know,” Twilla continued. “Now—” she looked to Oxyle, “show me where he went.”
She was aware of some protests but she kept her attention fixed on the Forest Lord and at last he nodded.
“If this be your will—so be it.”
Once more the summoned mist whirled them to one of the darker corridors, Twilla recognized this. It was where Ylon had guided her after their chance meeting—bringing her to Lotis.
The mist gave some light, but there was another source of illumination. Before one of those closed doors were set out in a triangle three tapers, the flames of which burned blue and wavered as if constantly caught by wandering drifts of breeze.
Behind these stood Lotis. She did not look at them, perhaps she was entirely unaware of their arrival. She held in one hand a short branch which supported a single leaf at its tip and with that she was drawing a pattern in the air. Faintly blue were those lines which shone for a moment after the branch passed.
What she might be doing Twilla was not certain but that it was not for Ylon's good she was sure.
Oxyle took a single stride forward. His hand lashed out to interrupt the sway of the branch, bearing that earthward.
Lotis snarled, her mask beauty drawn into a grimace which promised ill. She whipped up the branch again, this time as if she would lash Oxyle across the face with the supple length of it.
Twilla went into action. Since Oxyle had broken part of the pattern of the sorcery wrought here she could do her part. She kicked out, sending the candles flying, their flames sputtering out.
Lotis swung on her with that threatening branch but Oxyle caught at the woman's arm.
“You have broken the oath!” His eyes were blazing. “What foul games have you been playing?”
She laughed and that sound was like the screech of some evil bird. “I deal with my own, weak of heart. It is time that we have true leaders of the older ways! Would such as Eudice—Serana—yes, and Khargel— have let these outlanders live? The land can be roused—”
As she spoke she was backing away. Now she raised her branch wand in both hands and snapped it, throwing the pieces straight at him. The mist whirled, enclosed her, and she was gone.
Oxyle stared down at the upset candles and the broken branch. He now wore his own mask and it was one Twilla would not wish turned upon her.
“So—” he spoke, his voice was soft but there was another note in it. A beast aroused to its defense might utter a growl which had much the timber. “So—”
It was their quarrel Twilla thought, but something Lotis had been doing here was a threat to Ylon. Now she moved to the door.
“Ylon went this way?” she asked.
For a moment Oxyle stared at her as if he did not know who she was, so closely caught he was in thoughts of his own. Then he nodded.
Before he could speak or move, Twilla gathered her strength and plunged through that door, feeling again the jelly-like resistance which gave easily before her push. Once more she was in total darkness and with no guide as to the path ahead.
She held up the mirror. This time that thin haze of light did not answer. An outstretched hand found the rough surface of a wall and touching that she went forward slowly. Perhaps it was Lotis's meddling which had deprived the mirror of its light power here. Twilla felt the burden of uncertainty as she slowly paced through the dark.
It was always dark for Ylon—it would be until he won his freedom from Lotis. There was a fear which went with the loss of sight—she felt twinges of it now. But still she went, though ever more slowly, one hand rubbing the surface of the mirror hoping to summon some faint answer.
She took another step and there was no solid surface, so, overbalanced, Twilla plunged forward, striking painfully against rock as she fell, until she landed on rubble which added to her bruises. The girl could not move at first. Slowly she stretched arms, legs, tested for broken bones. Every movement brought pain but she still had control over her body, she was not injured to the point of being helpless.
If she had fallen here—what of Ylon?
She called his name, then listened with all her might for any sound of a moan or cry in return. Still on her knees, the rubble painful against the press of her flesh, Twilla swept out hands, searching for any body which might lie here.
There was nothing. Even if he had been injured he must have dragged his way on. She got up and went on, one step at a time, searching and now and then calling out. But it would seem that she was alone in the darkness.
She turned to the slope, down which she had come; there were no handholds she could trust. If she dug her fingers in, the stuff scaled off and shifted down. There was only one path and that she had to follow. But her fall had been a sharp warning. She went even slower, sliding a foot ahead with care before she planted any weight upon it.
Time had no meaning, there was the dark, there was the path, and she had to take it. Her caution saved her another mishap as she came up to a barrier against which her foot stubbed with force enough to bring a cry of pain out of her and turn her slightly.
Light! Very faint and distant, but still light! Twilla gave a gulp which was almost a sob. She turned toward that distant promise and struggled on.
After another age of shuffling she came to the source of that light, a slit in the wall—whether it was meant for a door or not she had no idea but she could pull herself forward into—through it.
This was another such cavern as the one in which she and Wandi had found the ensorcelled under men. There was activity here not too far away. By the grayish glow from the lichen-curtained walls she sighted a party of the small men. They were gathered around a bundle on the floor. Twilla edged forward.
She could see more clearly now. There was Ylon! But he was enmeshed in a silver net like a trapped animal. One of the small men approached the prisoner holding out a sword.
Twilla scrambled along the wall, ran toward Ylon and his captors. She must stop this!
“No!” she cried out as she ran unsteadily. The mirror was her only weapon and she held it in both hands.
At her cry the captors, startled, turned to face her.
“No!” she gasped again. At least that one with the sword had not yet struck any blow. Mirror—if the mirror would only answer her!
She lifted the disk. But Ylon moved within the netting. It tore, fell from his shoulders, away from his body as he stood up. While, with startled cries of their own, the under men retreated. But Twilla had already recognized one of them.
Utin! At least he knew who she was, perhaps on demand he would take them to Chard.
She spoke his name. He stood where he had been, though his fellows withdrew, the astonishment in their expressions as they looked at the now-free captive plain to read.
If she only spoke the underspeech! But perhaps he would recognize his name when she called him:
“Utin!”
“Twilla—?” Ylon turned his head to stare in her direction, that seeking look on his face. “Is it you?”
“Yes,” she was beside him now, then moved again to stand between him and the under-men.
“Utin—” she said that name firmly and then added another “Chard!”
If he would only understand and the priest leader be summoned. She had fulfilled the mission he ha
d given her—or at least in part. She could tell him that the Council would be willing to listen to him.
“Chard!” she repeated more loudly.
Utin spoke, a guttural roll of words. One of the others took off, running across the cavern. Had he sent for the priest leader, she could only hope so.
Now he edged forward until he could pick up a dangling end of that silver net. He pulled it across his forearm testing each portion as it came into his hands. It was plain that he was hunting some fault which had made it break under Ylon's struggles.
But Twilla's attention was for Ylon now. “They have not harmed you?” She surveyed him, looking for any sign of a wound.
He was smiling as if they were wholly out of danger.
“Caught me like a fish,” he said lightly. “But it certainly was a flimsy net. You—you are safe? The child—?”
“Back with her own. It is—” she got no chance to add to that for the messenger was trotting back and, behind him, Chard was certainly in sight.
“They bring their leader,” Twilla told Ylon hastily. “He knows me—I am sure he will listen to me.”
She was still standing before Ylon and would continue to do so as long as the members of that company still held swords, and several of them did.
“Wisewoman!” Chard's accent could not distort his words. “You come again—and you have this bond one—” He regarded Ylon with a shade of disgust.
“This is my friend—he came seeking me—so I must seek him in turn. He is of my blood—”
“But bound to the forest!”
Utin gabbled a sentence of some length and now Chard looked puzzled.
“What power has this one?” he demanded of Twilla indicating Ylon. “There was laid upon him the binding to hold. He is not of forest blood yet he stands free! What are his powers?”
Twilla shook her head. “I do not know. But do you bind those who are not your enemies?”
“Did you not yourself tell us that those of his kind would bring trouble to us? They move up the river even now. We have set the guards but they may have powers we do not know—as this one seems to have. If we have a captive of their kind we can discover what will work the best against them.”
“Experiment with me,” Ylon commented though he did not seem upset by that.
“Lord Ylon is no enemy of yours,” Twilla stated flatly. “He is bound to the forest—but perhaps not so much as he once was.”
“They have taken his sight, if not his wits, after their own ways. Certainly he hated them for that. And in hating the forest he would gladly lead in his kind for vengeance.”
“Sound-enough reasoning,” Ylon commented, “if it were true. I know not who you are who wishes to pass judgment on me, but you can do no worse than my own people have already done. When I first returned to them with the forest doom laid on me they held me in fear and would have none of me. Those of my blood kin turned against me. Then did I return to the forest—though not for the purposes they must believe—and that will fan their anger against me the hotter. This is a wide land— if a truce could be made—”
“Who is this Wisewoman? She speaks of under- and overground coming once more to friendship, now you suggest that these of your own kind might be enticed to council.”
“Stranger things have happened,” Ylon returned.
“We shall see. For now you and the Wisewoman will abide with us until we know what should be done.”
19
ONCE MORE TWILLA was escorted through passages but this time Ylon strode beside her, and she had taken his hand in hers. He walked with confidence as if he could indeed see the rough rock walls around them, their hangings of the luminous lichen. Then they reached the center of the underground with before them the hall. This time there was no feeling of abandonment. But rather an assembly of workers bent on many jobs, some at forges and the others delivering the raw material for their hammers or on other errands.
Twilla walked a careful way with a low murmur now and then for Ylon's guidance. And at last they reached those chambers which seemed to be Chard's own. Small flying lizards had whirled almost dizzily around them as they went. One almost landed on Twilla's shoulder and then sheered off at the last moment.
Ylon ducked his head, he must have caught the warning sound of wing beat. Twilla swiftly explained their escort. But the creatures did not follow them any farther than the door leading into Chard's first chamber.
“Rest—” The priest waved his hand toward low stools with padded leather seats and Twilla steered Ylon to one, dropping down beside him on another she had pulled closer.
Chard himself no longer was faced with the piles of inscribed metal plates Twilla had seen at their last meeting. But there was a worn look about him as if he had indeed been busied for hours at tasks which could not be postponed.
“Wisewoman,” he said, “we perhaps did ill in letting you go before—Our eyes and ears along the river report that those coming up stream have been laboring hard to clear way one of the great trees brought down by the sinking of the earth. Already these have completed their mission—that which was the body of the tree has been drawn away.
“However, the invaders have not withdrawn. There are those who are still searching for our riches in the river gravel, and those who lurk and slink about, venturing slowly upstream. They have found the road by which you and the child dared the current.”
“Wandi—” Twilla replied. “Her father was among those who labored—she went to him.”
She hesitated and then added: “However, perhaps that was for the better, under lord. Those of my kind love their children well. Knowing that one had been taken by the forest spells would only rouse them to greater efforts.”
Chard regarded her intently. “Had she been indeed under forest spell she would remember nothing upon her return. But this one does, of that I am sure.”
“So Lotis failed this time!” That coming from Ylon broke in to startle them. There was a note of strong emotion in his voice. “Just as she is failing to hold my bond.” Ylon smiled then, a wry quirk of lips.
“Of this Lotis I know nothing,” Chard replied. “As all the forest women she has her powers. But—” he had turned that searching gaze on Ylon now, “you may not feel bonds, outworld man. Perhaps she means to let you run a little for her own purposes. Only—” now he held up his hands, setting fingertip to fingertip and eyeing them both, “the netting did not hold you.”
“You believed it would?” Twilla wanted to know.
“Yes. In the old seasons before we were left in our own bondage such was a defense against those wanderers who came over mountain. There were never many but they pried, and spied, and some of them had knowledge of the nature of rocks and the treasure which such can hold.
“We trapped them—those that the forest did not take in their turn. And silver bonds held, for it is our silver work which can stand against cold iron which your people can use without hurt, even as our smiths can handle mage-forged silver—while the forest ones cannot. Silver is of our power and we turn to it when we must.
“You were trapped.” He addressed Ylon directly. “Yet you stood free when it suited you to do so. This can only mean that a forest bond still with you allowed this. Therefore, outman, do not believe yourself free, it may well be that your tree mistress holds you only on a longer leash.
“Thus—” Chard continued after a moment as if he wanted that thought to sink well in, “you may also be eyes and ears—for those above. Though perhaps I should not say eyes—”
Twilla tensed at that strike against a maimed man, even as she had days ago striven to offset Lotis's malice at the feasting table.
“And I—” she asked swiftly, “am also now an enemy? You have said that the freeing of the child has brought ill—that was my doing.”
“You have given blood oath—” the priest replied. “And that oath lies upon your own power, you will diminish that if you break your word—not only that—” he was the one to smile now—a
none too pleasant smile—"surely you are learned in the rules of power— if you use that which you can summon against another, and that other,” he suddenly reached behind him and brought out the boar-headed staff, “has a defense—the very force of your ill-used attack will turn on you!”
“I have done what I said I would do—I carried your message to Oxyle of the Council—”
“Yes? And what does that one say in return?”
“I do not know. For I learned that Lord Ylon,” she put out her hand and laid it on Ylon's, “had gone into your dark ways in search of me. So—fearing disaster— I came after him.”
She remembered the strange ceremony she and Oxyle had interrupted, that Lotis had been engaged in, and swiftly she added:
“Lotis of the forest was busied with things of power at the threshold of that doorway through which Lord Ylon had gone. We broke her spelling.”
Chard had rested the staff on the low table and now he shifted it around, leaning forward and peering into the eyes of the boar. He uttered some words in that guttural language of the underworld. The red eyes guttered, and, to Twilla's amazement appeared to blink slowly, breaking the steady glare of the yellow-red gems again and yet again.
Chard's face grew taut. His own eyes appeared to hold some of the same baneful glitter as he raised them to stare at Twilla.
“Kharge’s spewing—his poison lives still! So the taint there abides! Then, for all our need, there can be no truce between above and below! Your words have been wasted—”
“No,” Twilla was quick to return. “Oxyle broke Lotis’s spell. He has no wish to follow the old pattern which made trouble here and aloft.”
“Then let him prove that by giving us back our women!” Chard thumped the staff down on the table.
“If,” it was Ylon who interrupted, “there is a struggle for power in the forest—then cannot your taking Oxyle's side be advantage to both of you?”
Chard threw up his hands in an impatient gesture. “Words! Of what use are words without deeds to back them? Listen, bond man, if this Lotis is bringing ancient foulness to life again—then we shall move in turn. And this time—well, perhaps that which Khargel held in the past has lost some force through the walling of time.”