by Andre Norton
Sulerna raised a soapy hand, gave it a quick wipe on her wide apron, brushed the sweaty hair out of her eyes, and retied the string which was supposed to hold her hair in place.
Then—
It had come as the softest of touches such as might have been delivered by a fingertip as impalpable as smoke. The girl’s hand flew to her cheek over the spot.
The Wind!
Sulerna was as sure she had felt its wandering touch as if she possessed the very ancient powers and could see the heart of that force which could both save and smite. But the Wind had gone long ago, and many felt themselves the poorer for that.
Those of Firthdun held more tightly to the old faith and belief than most of their neighbors. However, only Widow Larlarn, who had turned her small nearby holding into a nursery for healing herbs, joined now with the dun kin at certain times to listen to the reading from a wood-backed book so old its hard surface was cracked and gouged by time.
No, those of Firthdun never scoffed at the old tales. How could they? Once the Wind had visited here, even as in the grove at full moon each month the womenfolk gathered to do homage to the Caller, She who was the only mistress the Wind had companied with when it had been free of the bonds laid upon it by the Covenant.
A sudden surge of a strange life-not-life coursed through the young dunswoman as she stood, still shielding her cheek where it had been touched. For a moment or two, all living beings about her, even the bird soaring high above as well as the earth under her muddy clogs—everything that was vibrant with life had been a part of her or, rather, she of it.
“Well, this be the last of it—thank the moon!”
Another girl, a wide and high-heaped washing basket tightly clasped in her hold, came up beside Sulerna. Dumping the basket onto the ground, she woofed forth a noise combining equal parts of relief and exasperation.
“One would think”—the newcomer had stooped to pick up a smock, which she held an arm’s length away and frowned at—“that they slid around on their bellies out in the fields. I swear your brother Elias can stand there while dirt wraps itself around him!”
Sulerna paid no attention to her sister-in-law’s complaint. She held her head high, turning it slowly from side to side. Surely there would be no more than just that one touch!
“Aaagreee!” It was neither a true word nor a whistle she uttered but a sound not akin to the world she knew.
“Sulerna!” The other young woman stared at her openmouthed, then laid a hand on her shoulder and gave her an impatient shake. “What would you do? Have them all down upon you for kin judging?”
Few threats were more dire, but the new-wakened one showed only a joyous face in answer. “Ethera, I swear by the moon, I felt it—the Wind! It touched me here—” She put a finger back on her cheek. “The Wind, Ethera—think of it! What if the old wards be broke, and it comes to us again? It will bring us the whole of the world, even as the old tales tell. . . .”
“Sulerna—” Now both Ethera’s hands were on her shoulders, and the bemused Sulerna was being shaken in their strong grip. “The Wind is gone; that is all old babble from the past. Let Grandmam hear you spouting such nonsense—!”
The light faded from Sulerna’s face. “Haraska is a dreamer,” she said with the beginning of a sullen note in her voice.
“And how many times since you were first frocked and set on your feet has Haraska true-dreamed?” Ethera demanded. “There are none to spin dreams now. The mountains are bare, and even the traders come our way no more than once a season or so. You know that the forest is warded. All heed the Covenant—even the Wind!”
The dunsgirl turned to her scrub board in fury. Everything the other said was true, and she knew it well. Still—she wanted once more to touch her cheek. Instead, she got her hands resolutely busy in the soapy water again.
No branch swung, no leaf rustled in that dark rim of trees that was the final end of the known world as far as those of Styrmir were concerned. The Forest loomed like a dark curtain, and there was nothing on the other side of which the inhabitants of the valley knew enough to draw them.
But the Forest held its own world. Life and death were known to it; but, more than that, here blew the Wind, uniting all. It bore messages of import for each kind of being it reached. Seeds stirred in the ground under its probing; animals mated, produced their young, and fared forth to live. And there were also the Great Ones, who made no attempt to rule within the tree bounds but were all sworn to the service of Her Who Could Call.
Mighty among the Forest’s children were the Sasqua. These were not of the human kind. In fact, so unlike were they that men or women meeting them might at first feel terror, unless the Wind had made it plain there was nothing to fear from those tall, furred bodies whose muscular strength was apparent in their every move.
There was no power in the Forest greater than the Sasqua except the Wind, and they were also a part of that. They owed no allegiance to any save Her of legend who could—and had—called the Wind, but they visited Her shrine only when Her silent summons went forth.
This morning, a number of them were down by one of the Forest streams, harvesting a fresh-grown reed that they had discovered long ago was of usefulness manyfold. Not only were its roots sweet to the taste, but the reeds themselves, when rolled back and forth between the huge hairy hands of the Sasqua until the fibers were pulped, could be woven into nets for the taking of fish and the carrying of tubers and fruits.
Hansa squatted beside a pile of the stuff she had pulled and now and then sent a wistful glance at her neighbor, whose guttural laughter was quick to bubble forth and who had one cubling at breast and another playing beside her, striving to pull apart one of the tough reed stems. Grapea always had strong cubs, and she could take pride in remembering them even after they had struck out on their own. Hansa wrapped her arms about herself and squeezed. She had not had her first bearing season yet, but she hoped with all her heart that, when a little one came, it would be like Grapea’s get.
Hansa fell to twisting reeds, hardly knowing what she was doing; rather, her mind was full of the joys of a cubling to be and what it would mean to share a night nest with a small being.
At that moment, the Wind sang in her ear, and the Sasqua female sat gape-mouthed at its touch. Cubling to come, yes, but more—something so strange that Hansa could not sort it out before that fleeting message had vanished. She was to be given—she could not be sure what but a gift of great importance. However, this was not a thing to be spoken of among her kind; and there was a time between the present and its arrival which she could not reckon.
Up on the mountain trail, it had begun to rain; and the handlers of the pack animals cursed bitterly. It was too easy here for the footing to turn to slippery mud; and there were places not far ahead now where the trail dwindled to a mere thread, to be followed by only a very surefooted man or animal.
Well, thought Irasmus, trying to make his cloak cover him as much as possible, the weather had given him his answer. Tonight he would make his move. That stout fellow there, tugging at the hackamore of a reluctant pony, would not have much longer to damn the day, these reluctant animals, or his own mistaken choice of employment.
The pack train had coiled down into a fairly level cup where a spring fed a pond. Pretus, the caravan master, gave the signal to camp, and his men were happy enough to obey. Irasmus had held his horse to a much slower pace and had stopped well behind the now-rising tents.
The mage gave once more that cricking, rockrat cry and was not surprised to hear it answered from almost immediately behind him. Rain was not favored by his present servants, and their tempers had not improved during the last half hour’s travel. He swung out of the saddle and allowed his horse to back into a crevice between two rocks. The beast certainly wanted no meeting with those now flitting out of cover, and he did not blame it.
The creatures were a motley lot, with only one thing in common—excessive ugliness of body and feature. Green-yellow skin,
much disfigured by warts and pits, certainly gave them no countenance a man would enjoy facing. Their eyes shone with a peculiar red-gold fire in the fast-falling dusk; and their slavering mouths gaped, showing discolored fangs. They boasted no hair on their elongated heads, which were mainly lumps, now slick with rain.
Though their joints sometimes protruded at what seemed almost impossible angles, the beings scuttled forward rapidly. In size, if they stood upright (their usual stance was a stoop), they could match Irasmus in height. Their clothing was rudimentary—either bits of hide crudely laced together or cloth that looked as if it had reached the state of rot that would lead it to fall speedily from an energetic body. From them arose a thick miasma of foul odor.
Their leader, Karsh, shambled forward. Spittle shot forth from his wide mouth along with his words as he addressed his would-be master.
“Hungry!” The nightmare raised one huge and long-taloned paw and slashed it through the air not far from the young man, who showed no sign of any emotion but complete disdain. “Eat,” Karsh added.
“As you shall,” Irasmus replied. “But these have weapons—”
Karsh’s mouth sprayed froth even farther, and he held up his clawed hand yet higher. “So also we!”
“But not,” the sorcerer returned calmly, “iron ones.”
Karsh’s jaws came together with a snap. “Gobbes kill from shadows. No time those”—he indicated the busy camp below—“have for weapons drawing.”
Irasmus shrugged. “Warning; take it for what it is worth. But listen well, for you are bound to me by blood, and my orders shall be obeyed. I will go down to the camp. We will wait until they build their cook fire. What they have to cook will not altogether agree with the eaters.” He did not know how much of what he said could be understood by the out-world creature, but he drew as sharp a mental picture as he could of men clutching their throats and reeling back from the fire. “It is for you,” he continued, “to take out the sentries and so make sure there is no alarm.”
Those bulbous eyes the color of swamp slime stared at him for a long moment. The mage waited but refused to believe that all would not happen as he had ordered. He had deliberately called these things into his service, and the spell that held them was a potent one none of them could break. The gobbes were very low-grade demons, and any powers they might try to raise could not stand against what he had learned.
Karsh apparently accepted the situation. “We do,” he gabbled.
Two under the creature’s command slipped back into the shadows, and Irasmus did not doubt they were about to do as they had been ordered—to remove expeditiously and noiselessly any watchers Master Pretus had assigned to guard.
Remounting, the sorcerer began the slow ride down into the valley. This time he did draw his wand from its sheath and held it ready. The confusion at the camp was his aid, for no one paid any attention to him. He did not add his mount to the horse line but fastened it some distance away before he walked among the others.
Gaszeb, the cook—if making the sorry concoctions the travelers had been forced to stomach could be called “cooking”—had already set up the stout rod that held his all-purpose pot over the fire and was busy tossing into it, with more or less accurate aim, handfuls of the dried lizard flesh that were all the meat left after the winter.
When Irasmus approached, the cook had turned to grab at a too-limp sack that held some undoubtedly now-moldy barley to be added to the mess beginning to bubble in the pot. A single glance around assured the mage that he was under no observation, and his wand moved, its tip aimed at the pot. A thin thread of dull red snaked into the stew, and for a moment he moved the thread back and forth as if from a distance stirring the kettle.
“So, young sir.” Irasmus instantly whipped the wand into hiding as Master Pretus came closer. “Slim fare for active men. Better if we could eat like the beasts and so find us grazing! We be still three days from Ostermur, and that is a port, so they have foodstuffs from overseas to make up for this we gag down now.”
“The trail runs straight to Ostermur?” Irasmus asked as if he had never seen a map.
“There be a side path down to Styrmir, but after such a winter the folk of that valley will have nothing worth trading for. Ostermur is more promising.”
“Come along! Come along!” Gaszeb waved a great ladle to direct their attention to the pot as a young boy trooped over balancing a tower of bowls. Most of the men had already finished their immediate tasks and were able to line up for a well-filled bowl. Irasmus himself accepted one but did not raise it to his lips, making signs that he wished it to cool first.
A moment or so later, the sorcerer was not disappointed by the results of his own addition to the meal. With a whoop of pain and rage, one of the horse handlers spewed out—unfortunately across the feet of the man next to him—the mouthful he had taken. And he was not the last to be so stricken.
The saboteur emptied his portion quietly onto the ground. That action might have been a signal, for out of the night there came, sending both men and animals screaming in pain and terror, such an attack as their world had not seen for a thousand years or more. The gobbes were hungry; and the feast, to their minds, was ready. Shrieks of torment were stilled. Those who attempted to run were dragged down and suffered the fate of their comrades. The reek of blood was as strong as the stench of fear and pain. And the sounds—
The Wind might have been forbidden to course the outer world but, during the years since its binding by the Covenant, it had ventured forth a little, curious, seeking what it had once had—communication with all. What it gathered now, its innermost heart shrank from in horror. Then, very distantly, anger awoke, and power was shaken out of slumber.
3
IT HAD BEEN A NIGHT OF STORM, LIGHTNING LASHED around the ancient towers and walls; yet all wards had held. Only, just after dawn, there had been one occurrence which for he who had witnessed it had seemed ominous.
Unable to sleep, his drowsy thoughts presenting him in broken images such pictures as he never had any intention of drawing, Harwice had arisen when the sky was hardly more than gray.
As always after he had dressed, the artist mage sought the table on which he had left the sketches done yesterday. A new cover was needed for one of the Covenant missals, and he had been trying one design after another, attempting to find or achieve a motif that carried more meaning than these scrawls which had been his latest efforts.
Now the seer stopped short, and the candlestick he held shook a little so that the flame danced. The lightwas feeble, but it was enough to make plain what lay there: a depiction of the huge scale which was the ward and the heart of the Covenant.
But . . .
The table must have been jarred. Harwice put out a hand now to test its steadiness, but it stood solid and unmoving even when he increased his grip and shoved. Yet somehow, during the fury of the night just past, one of his small paint pots had been overset; and a dribble of murky red, like clotted blood, had fallen directly onto his sketch, blotting out the standard of the scale and leaving only the pans loose from any support and ready to spill all they had.
A warning—an omen—a matter he must speak about in open council? Sometime during this day, the dream painter would at least share this incident with Gifford, who had forgotten more about omens than any one man could ever hope to learn.
However, when he went searching for the archivist, Gifford was not, as customarily, in his stuffy room, a spider in a web of books. It appeared that he had been summoned elsewhere; Harwice’s strange experience would have to wait for the telling.
The chamber was very old. Time itself had welded one great collection of wall blocks to another until they stood, and would stand, intact through the passing years which were no longer counted here. Yet there was color to temper the somberness of the room: richly brocaded cushions on the chairs and panels of fabric that rippled like wind-touched pools on the walls.
Archivist Gifford, who had just entered this
room to make a report, paused before one of those panels and,as if his gaze had commanded obedience, the ripples gathered and began to form shapes. These sharpened and separated until it was as if the mage looked out a window down a long stretch of countryside that wore the bright-green livery of spring, with flowering bush and tree to set the season’s seal firmly upon it.
“Styrmir?”
The single-word question from someone entering after him broke the spell. That expanse of land, rich in peace and plenty, disappeared, its colorful components dispersing to match the shaded bands on the other hangings. The archivist, who had been watching, turned to face the speaker.
Both scholars wore breeches and doublets of muted purple with loose robes the hue of sword-blade steel. The plainness of those garments was broken by a twisting of embroidered runes, which differed in tint and design on each of the two men. The men varied slightly in size also, the newcomer, with his thick crest of white hair, topping his fellow by several inches. Gifford was more full of body and face, with a splotch of ink on one cheek where a writing finger had been absentmindedly wiped. His hair was much more sparse and was held down by a round cap, as if the thinness of that natural covering brought a chill to his nearly bare scalp.
“One can remember even through the veil of years,” Gifford said slowly. “Do you never regret the Withdrawing, Yost? Happiness and peace are reckoned to be the innermost desire of all our kind. Those of Styrmir have held that belief for centuries, and they raise no temples to any gods while the winds blow free.”
Archmage Yost seated himself in one of the chairsthat stood with its back to the banners on the walls. His features were sharply chiseled, and he had none of the lines of laughter, such as his companion displayed, bracketing his eyes beneath their bushy overhangs of white bristles.