by Andre Norton
Now she was curious enough to fall in behind as the anisgar continued on its way. They were not retracing the way Twilla had come, for the creature pushed off to her right almost as soon as they had left that hump-marked trail.
Somehow Twilla was not surprised when it led her to an open space where a storm long since had sent crashing to earth one of the trees. The anisgar gave a hop to the moss-carpeted top of the downed trunk to once more sound its sharp voiced call.
Mist whirled and out of that curtain Oxyle stepped, Karla close behind him.
“Hail Rittengan!” The forest lord called to the anisgar with words totally strange to Twilla. The bird lowered its head and he stroked the gray feathers there. Suddenly he withdrew his hand and sniffed at the fingers. He frowned.
Karla had already looked beyond the bulk of the bird and caught sight of Twilla.
“Moon Daughter!”
Oxyle's glance followed hers.
“Where—” he began and then paused before he continued. “This one was captive and is now free—your doing, Moon Daughter?”
Quickly Twilla spoke of the foul thick fog, of the whiffs of fragrance which had led her to it, and the action of the mirror.
“Lotis!” There was sheer loathing in Karla's voice.
“Lotis,” Oxyle repeated more somberly. “She has gained more than we believed. Khargel's hoard of knowledge is closed to her—what other source—”
Twilla interrupted. “The Dandus priest. I overheard speech among the outlanders—he boasted of a ‘friend’ within the forest.”
“The man is dead,” countered Oxyle.
“But how much did she learn before that death?” demanded Karla. “We do not know. And those who follow the dark have their own way of shadowing what they learn so that they may seem far less than they are, until they are put to the test. She took your messenger—” the woman gestured toward the bird. “Had it not been for the smile of fortune that Moon Daughter came that way how would our plans have gone?”
Oxyle's mouth set in a grim line. He did not answer her but rather turned to the anisgar holding out one hand. The gray bird ducked its head to rest that on the palm of the man's hand while Oxyle stared full-eyed into its own eyes. So they were for a space of time, Karla and Twilla watching.
The anisgar threw up its head again with one of those cries. Then it sidled along the trunk of the tree, reaching the other end where the half-exposed roots tilted high. Oxyle motioned Twilla back. Karla had already retreated to the very edge of this clearing. The girl did likewise on the other side. The anisgar fanned its wings, ran at some speed a little way along the trunk and took off at an angle Twilla would not have thought possible, soaring upward toward the small visible slice of sky overhead. Then with a last cry from above it was gone.
Karla had already turned to Twilla. “What fortune did you have, Moon Daughter?”
Twilla reported her meeting with Leela, and that with Johann. Also that Leela was undertaking to see that the amulets would be distributed farther. Oxyle listening, was again frowning.
“What power have you set to work, Karla?”
“Upper world power, lower world united,” she returned serenely. “Catha was my aid. This is woman power, Oxyle, and it has its place—which is here and now.”
“There shall be no meddling—” the forest lord began.
“Meddle!” Karla snapped. “We do what is needed. It is because no one ‘meddled’ that we struggle now against the sendings of that brain-darkened Lotis! She should have been brought to answer for her meddling long ago.”
“There is the law.” Oxyle looked uncomfortable as if he really could not summon a strong answer to that accusation.
“We abode by the law and we might have ended in a power-raised sleep. Lotis broke the law and now is a rottenness within our ranks when we should be facing the outlanders. Catha has her own powers and is not subject to the law of yours. While I think that it was broken long since and we need every weapon we can put hand on. Our amulets will cause no harm, rather they will win these outland women to more peaceful lives. Also their power is not everlasting, but it must serve until those invaders come to a better state of mind.”
Oxyle did not look convinced. “You have taken this action upon yourself,” he replied. “Upon you will rest the burden if it goes awry.”
“And upon you—and the council,” retorted Karla, “rest the burden of letting Lotis go her way. Has she not even dared to net your messenger, the anisgar? What if he had never been able to reach the nestings of his kind? Then all your plans would go for nothing.”
He shrugged. “One error must not be balanced by another. Lotis is truly without the law. I would not have others take power to themselves. Perhaps these amulets will do as you promise, gain us some time, breed dissension in their ranks. We shall have to wait and see.”
Having set the subject aside with a half warning he turned again to Twilla. “What news have they concerning these iron crawlers which Ylon says they will send against us?”
She repeated what she had heard from Johann and the two soldiers concerning the action to come.
The lizards had come to rest again on her, sitting with folded wings, small heads high as if they listened and understood everything she said.
When she had done Oxyle again held out his hand as he had to receive the head of the anisgar and the lizard playing ornament on her cap took flight, came to rest on the outstretched palm. Oxyle brought up his hand so that the creature's eyes were on a level with his own, and, as he had done with the anisgar, he stared at it.
With a sudden fan of wings the small flyer took to the air and, followed by its two companions disappeared down the nearest forest aisle. Twilla felt oddly deprived as they left her.
“Now let us see this trap for true power,” Oxyle said. “We must make sure that it will not act again, for our forces will be about in the Woods very soon and we want no more entrapments.”
Twilla guided them to the way marked by the buried and half-buried stones. The last traces of the curdled mist was gone. They could now see a circle of stones each shoulder high. The ground within that circle held no carpeting of dead leaves, rather it showed as slabs of the same stone flattened in an uneven flooring. In the middle of that was a jar of dull black, its open mouth pointed skyward.
Oxyle did not step within the circle. From his belt he drew a length of silver, slender and pointed like a throw dart. This he hurled at the jug. It struck fair and full on the round side of that and the container broke, broke and crumpled into coarse dust.
“So,” Oxyle commented. “Another bit of the Dark learning—well removed. But now there must be a search made—for there may be other traps—perhaps even stronger.”
30
TWILLA SAT AGAIN at the table in the castle hall. She felt overlooked as if dismissed from any action impending. There was a lot of coming and going but none spoke to her and of Karla and Oxyle there was no sign.
She was holding one of the goblets between her palms when she saw Ylon coming down the long room, his hand against one wall for guidance. Looking at him she could see those subtle changes which she had noted in herself. There was no longer any sign of beard on his gaunt face. His own weathered skin was leached to an uncommon pallor. In so much he resembled the forest men.
But none of them went sightless. And, watching his slow advance, Twilla's hands clasped the goblet with force as if she would leave an impress on the metal of its making. Then she was on her feet going to meet him.
He paused, his head turned a little, he might be studying her with those sightless eyes.
“Twilla?” That was not a question and she had not spoken to give him a clue, somehow he knew her.
“Yes.”
“What is happening in the outlands?” He turned away from his guiding wall toward her and she was quick to touch his arm so he came with her to the table.
“Much.” She poured from the standing flagon into another goblet and pushed that i
nto his hand. Swiftly she retaled her visit to Leela, all she had learned from the fishergirl, and the scraps she had overheard the soldiers exchange.
His face was impassive as he listened to the end when she spoke of the entrapped anisgar and what had happened thereafter.
“A man may be dead,” he said when she was done, “and yet poison he has poured remains. My father"—he hesitated—"my father has always been called a just man, keeping strictly to the letter of the laws by which he lives. But this matter of the priest, the child, the fire, and afterward the treatment of the women—those are the acts of hired mercenary, not of one of House blood. Yet he was always against dark teachings—”
Ylon frowned down at the table he could not see. “This country, perhaps the very air bespells a man for the worse. I say my father has been changed. There is more than one kind of blindness which can be set upon a man.”
“He was not bespelled by the forest—he has not come here,” protested the girl.
“No, it is the Dandus priest, to that I would swear.” He drank from his goblet. “But the man is dead! Surely “his influence can no longer entrap those he would have ruled!”
Twilla thought of Leela's words—"What if a priest, dead from his own spells, left behind him seeking thoughts to fasten to the minds of others? And if this has happened,” she speculated, “will such soon fade?”
“We shall soon discover,” he answered somberly.
“Ylon—what of Lotis?” Twilla asked suddenly.
He scowled. “I do not know whether it is because I am no longer of service to her, or if, in some way, I am freer in the forest. She can no longer summon me—though she has tried—oh, yes, she has tried!” His head went up and now his expression was that of the fighter he had once been.
If Lotis no longer bound him—what of his sight? Would that, too, return? Somehow Twilla dared not mention that. It was a subject too close, which always must lie in his own thoughts.
“The crawlers have reached the town,” he said abruptly. “Oxyle's messenger has seen them. It cannot be long now before my father will move. There is this, you must understand, he sees himself as challenged and if he cannot outface that challenge he might well lose the support of his men.”
“The nets?”
“The under men bring them even now. They are to be taken to the forest edge. Perhaps by sunrise tomorrow we shall be able to see whether power of mage thought can overturn power of armor's weight.”
“You have doubts?” Twilla asked.
He shrugged. “There are no possibilities which cannot be met—if fortune takes a hand. But it seems that the nets have taken at least one river intruder and hold him well. Whether they can bring the crawlers under control—who knows?”
“Ylon, where do you stand in this battle, if battle it comes to be?” she asked, her eyes intent upon his face.
He did not answer at once. Rather he drank again from the goblet setting it down carefully when he had finished.
“I am no longer Ylon, Harmond's son. By his will he cut me free of duty to blood ties. I do not like what has happened. That the foulness of the Dandus priest has besmirched my father. The forest, through Lotis, constrained me to bondage, but that is now also broken. I am free to choose. What I want"—he paused again, turning the goblet around and around on the tabletop—"is a fair peace. If my father strives to fasten his will upon the forest, in one way or another he will lose and that loss may be hard for all our race. If he can be persuaded to a truce talk—But to incline him so demands that he must be made to see that there are powers greater than he can summon, but powers which will not attack without provocation. I have spoken with Oxyle. He has promised me this—that if the crawlers are safely stopped, I shall be the one to state terms—”
“You believe that your father will listen?” Twilla remembered only too clearly Ylon's outcast state in the village.
“If the nets do as promised he will have no other choice.”
What if they thought him a traitor? Twilla shivered. They could well cut him down before he had a chance to speak at all. Yet she knew that this was something Ylon had set himself to do, a way of proving that he was not un-man as they had labeled him.
Time flicked by as it did within the castle. She was never certain how fast hours sped within the forest boundaries, but Twilla was sure it was on a different scale from the accounting of the outer world. She sat with Ylon but they no longer spoke. Perhaps he was lost in his own thoughts. Lotis—again hot anger arose within her—Lotis had set him on this path, and, whatever would come in the end, could be laid to her sorcery. Twilla had known rage and hate before but that was pale against the emotion she now fought to control.
Where was Lotis? Did her own kin hunt her down, or were those stifling laws of theirs against such action? Truly Lotis had already proven traitor to those of her blood, surely they would not let her remain free to perhaps entangle and defeat what they now wished to do.
The traffic back and forth through the hall had thinned as time passed. Then of a sudden there came a small party through one of the doors, and Twilla recognized Chard to the fore of a detachment of armed under men. Over their heads fluttered a flock of the lizards and they marched in a line, bearing with them rolls with the gleam of fresh-worked silver. One party so burdened came on, to be followed by a second.
Mist swirled in and Oxyle stepped out.
The forest lord raised his hand in salute. “Well met, weapon smiths. And well timed your coming. These crawlers are already on their way. Come,” he whirled out his hand and a coil of the mist circled up from the floor, wreathed the first party of the small men and their burdens and swept them away as another mist began to grow.
Ylon stood up. Twilla was quick to join him. When the second party from underground had been carried off Oxyle beckoned to the girl. She caught Ylon's nearest hand and urged him forward. Then there was mist about them also, and they entered those breathless seconds of transport.
As it cleared the duskiness about them was that of the shade of the great trees, while before them was the ragged fringe of brush which marked the edge of the forest domain.
Beyond that the sky was a streaked shell marked by the dawn. Oxyle advanced to the very edge of the brush. Throwing back his head, he sent shrilling into the air a sound so like the trumpeting of the anisgars that Twilla could almost believe he had taken on some of their nature.
There was the flapping of great wings in the air just beyond the brush. Then settled into the tall grass anisgars themselves. Twilla counted as they landed there, their long necks weaving back and forth, those saw edge bills open a little, twelve of them.
Oxyle did not go to them as they clustered together with any further sound. But there was sound coming from the open lands beyond. First merely a discordant creaking like a distant echo but growing stronger every moment.
There was a trilling above Twilla. She saw there not only the lizards, their skin wings widespread, but with them asprites. There was no signal given which Twilla could see, but that cloud of many wings flashed out from among the trees into the morning air and the ever-brightening light made them plain to see. They wheeled on toward the scars of the fire and Twilla somehow guessed that it was that landmark which must have been decided upon for a proper place to immobilize the strange war machines, if they could indeed be rendered harmless.
What part the small winged creatures had in the coming engagement she could not guess, unless they were set to play a similar game against mounted men as the asprites had done to her service before. They were now circling the burned patch, they venturing no farther than that.
That hollow creaking grew louder. Then a thin line of horsemen was plain to be seen, the high grass brushing their stirrups. At their coming the asprites and the lizards went into action.
Twilla heard the neighs of startled horses and the shouting of men. That long line began to draw together until the flyers apparently herded them into a more compact mass. The horses wild unde
r such attack reared, strove to rid themselves of their riders and be gone.
What they had escorted into battle could be seen. None of the ripples of the prairie land were able to conceal the first vast bulk moving at what was indeed a crawl forward.
Behind that dark blur was its twin. Foot soldiers marched beside the crawlers. As the ponderous war machines advanced closer to the burned area there was a constant troubling of the air and Twilla, though she could not pick out any individual form, was sure that the lizards and the asprites were again at attack. There were shouts from the men and bared weapons flourished in the air as if to cut down some small foe entirely too fast to be struck.
What moved the crawlers Twilla could not guess. They were certainly not being horse drawn and they moved at hardly more than a slow walking pace. While the escorts, both mounted and afoot, were being driven in, herded toward one or other of the lumbering monsters.
The under men were on the move. Those bearing the first of the nets uncoiled them. A number of them acting together caught up their handiwork and sent it flying up over the brush, throwing with the same skill Twilla had seen fishermen use to spread out a net across as wide a span of water as possible.
Six of the anisgars arose from their squatting position and fanned around the net taking up position equally spaced. Almost as one they dipped their heads and their saw bills caught upon the edges of the net. Together they moved out farther, dragging the net among them. Then, with an effort but managing it, they took to the air carrying the silver strands now aglitter in the sun.
The second net was already being hurled outward and the remaining birds caught it as deftly as their fellows had done.
Out both small flocks wheeled and the brilliance of the nets caused a flashing which brought cries from the oncoming force. The anisgars having adjusted to the weight they supported moved purposefully at a speed which brought them over both the crawlers and the men mounted and on foot now clustered about them.