by Andre Norton
“This scum, who gathered what he would of your learning, now takes elsewhere what pleases him—and takes it harshly, in blood and death. Yost, he and his works are a seeping sore open at your very border! You may well guess what he would have for himself—your place. Would you have him open one of the Great Doors—call up what he cannot control? How couldeven so learned a one as you hope to stand against such a loosing? You and your kind helped forge the seal of the Covenant—surely you know what lies behind it, ever waiting?”
The archmage’s eyes flashed gold fire. “If we break the Covenant, are we any less guilty than he?”
“It is no one wrapped in Wind who does this thing. Caution has always ruled your kind. You depend upon the sanctity of locks—thus, what is prisoned by one man may be freed by another. Long ago, the Wind I call was made to swear away its full power, and that bargain has been kept. Now this Son of Dark prepares to ravish a whole land whose people have some kinship with us, for does not the Wander Wind visit them? And this evil came from your domain, Yost.”
“He is not of us! And there is only one way we can strike back and still remain within the Covenant—”
“The old belief that the defense of a land must be rooted among its own people? Faugh! If you have chosen your army so, they shall die in their first engagement. That one seeks to open a door, and there will be none left to stand against him, not in that stricken land. Yost, I call upon you against all your oaths, your laws—I summon you now to stand against the Dark!”
As the earthborn uttered these last words, a shimmering played about the man; and he and that which had contained him wavered and were gone.
She who had thrown that challenge did not step away from the Stone more than half a pace or so; Her hands could still rest easily upon it. Now they moved up and down, stroking the surface, and in this manner She made her way completely around it. Still came no sound of the Wind; rather, there remained a silence sosteady that the breathing of those watching could be heard.
When She had again reached the place from which She had started, She stood yet further back. The points of glitter that had gathered about the dark-filled hole now scattered up and down the length of the rough pillar. As they moved, they gathered here, fled apart there, until they had outlined two figures on the Stone as plainly as if nature herself had painted them on its face.
“See, daughters and sons?” The Green One looked over Her shoulder at the nearest grouping of the Forest people. “Once I might have called, and the Death Wind itself would have swept this filth from the surface of the clean earth. Oaths hold—but changes may also be made so that they will serve our purposes.
“Listen now to the word I lay upon you. Death stalks the land before our tree borders, and it will . . .” The woman hesitated for a long moment; then she stepped forward once more and laid a forefinger to the head of each of those outlined figures of light.
“Keep the bonds until the day that will come for their breaking. Unfortunately, the mage Yost has the right of it—I could not wield what I now hold to break the shackles of the Covenant—even our Mother Wind will not be able to do more than bear a faint dream of green-knowing. But, mark you this, Sasqua of the True Blood—there shall come those who can fashion other and greater clubs than your own! Set your watch upon the Wind Stone; at its call, answer. Go not beyond the shadow of the fringe trees about the bounds of the valley, no matter what ill you may witness inflicted on the innocent there. It is not our choice, yet we must, as the mages, now stand apart.”
For a last time, She touched those two figures sketched on the Stone. So indefinite of shape were they that one could only be sure they represented bipeds. This time, it was not their heads she sought but that ambiguous portion of their sticklike bodies which might, in a living creature, enfold the heart.
Once more, the heavy clubs struck the ground about the Green One, and this time the females also crooned what might have been a lullaby. Three times they did so, pausing after each repetition, though the woman did not make them any sign.
“Thrice called—” Now Her words were absorbed into the rising of a breeze and, around the Stone, the land came once more to life. Those of the Forest knew the lift of fear. Some of them, for whom the past was swallowed up by every sunset, could never keep in their small heads the memory of what had happened here; but the Wind would hold what must be learned again and, perhaps, relearned many times.
The body of the earthborn now touched, then closed over, those pictures; and, as if the Stone had returned Her embrace, She seemed to melt into the rock face itself. As Her children drew a long breath of awe, the light patterns dissolved into the motes of which they had been shaped, to resume their dance again over the gray surface like dust in a shaft of sunlight.
One of the most massive of the Sasqua raised his head, his broad nostrils expanding as if, against his will, he was catching some foul scent—a rank reek no waft of the Wind would carry.
“The dark one has come—” His message mingled as always with the voice of the Wind, and his face was now a fearsome mask promising ill to what must bemet. “We hold the woods—we go not into the accursed land. But”—he had come forward to stand by the Stone, being careful that he did not touch it—“let it be known that, if any true of heart comes seeking shelter under the Wind’s wide wings, such a one comes in safety. This She has not forbidden, and it is, this one thinks, such action as might be a part of what She would do.”
Swingers of clubs, singers of Wind, trickle of cublings, the children of the Forest split apart, and the glade was left to quiet and—for the time—peace.
There was, however, no peace for Styrmir. Irasmus and his straggling caravan had made straight for the broken fang of the tower that rose stark against a dusky sky. Clouds were gathering there, though those were not driven by any natural force. Flowers, which had showed bright as lanterns in fields and hedges, now paled and drooped, their ash-gray petals falling earthward as if an early frost had cut them down.
Time and again, Yurgy half raised his hands as if to touch the ears that no longer served him. No birdcall, not even the frenzied bleating of his plundered flock, were to be heard any longer; but he could catch—and would, had he been able, have shuddered away from—the growled gabble that served for speech to the gobbes about him. Like one held by chains, he paced beside the mage’s shambling horse. No longer could he pick up the pain and terror which beat the beast along the path his rider would follow; nor did he try to look up at the man in the saddle. From that direction flowed a monotonous murmur of words that meant nothing to the young herdsman but that seemed tochange in tone from plea through excitement and on to triumph.
For Irasmus, this ride down his newly claimed land was an intoxicating experience. He had never doubted—at least, not for the past half year—that he would do just as he was now doing. Still, he found its accomplishment as heady a draft to his spirit as might be apple cider to the parched throat of a worker who had spent the morning swinging a scythe.
This young lout who had been taken so easily—a good rich drink the mage had taken from him, who was young and had the full strength of untroubled innocence in him. There would be more such—many more—for his quaffing. But he must not be impatient. The one who practiced the most efficient craft was not always the first runner in the field.
Nor, after he had reached the tower, did the others who were brought to him, so rightly named by the Forest Lady the Son of Darkness, prove to have any defenses. There had to be examples, of course, such as would never fade from memory, and the gobbes were excellent tools with which to mete out punishment, always hungry as they were in this world not their own.
Thus Styrmir became a place of the living dead—not all at once, however, for it amused Irasmus to spin out his pleasure. He could afford to move slowly, as there had been no whisper of opposition. In fact, upon occasion he wished that he might suck out all the gifts at once from these land grubbers, make them watch the devastation of everything tha
t made up their lives. There were times when his talent leaching became as dull as having to sit in the Place of Learning and listento one of those prosy lore lovers dissect this and that facet of the power, when all knew that full control of it lay within their touch. Old men, they had lived too long and clung too much to the ancient legends; and no spirit or ambition was left in them. Nonetheless, Irasmus had been careful so far not to attempt any of the various methods he knew that would allow him to spy on Yost and his ancient flock. Slow and sure, slow and sure—he had to keep reminding himself.
At first, the Forest held no interest for the new ruler of Styrmir, who was too intent upon gathering from his unwilling captives—and from what they planted, tilled, and cherished—the major portion of the power he continued to store so carefully. But, as his demon servants drove the valley people to repair the tower to be a fit place for their master, he sometimes rode out a little way from that central point of the land he claimed.
The wizard had made some useful discoveries on a number of those occasions when he had thought to enlarge his knowledge of the land. There was one dun—kin, clan, whatever these clods called them—that appeared to possess a greater measure of talent than the others. He had so far left that particular holding alone, not even allowing the gobbes their clamored demand for a share of its flocks. If there were any truth in the rumors that some of these earthworms had any unusual talents, he wanted to make very sure of their nature before he took them.
Irasmus had come to drain, not to be drained. It was a laughable thought that any in Styrmir could stand against the knowledge he had so carefully garnered, so warily tested. Still, Firthdun and its folk stayedunharmed within his net. And perhaps they did possess some instinct keener than their fellows’ for, from the day of his coming, they had shut themselves away from even their neighbors in the valley.
At its homestead, that clan went about its usual round of tasks as though nothing else mattered and Styrmir remained as it had always been. He who observed them with such interest had some of them listed. Seven males—one very elderly; another well past the prime of life; several youths of little power, and children.
Then there were the females. No one who had studied at the Place of Learning was stupid enough not to know that there was woman talent that both stood apart from that of males and sometimes was superior to it. Of womenfolk, Firthdun held an ancient of whom his spy birds saw little, as she remained in the house; one of middle years; two of budding youth; and a child. There was, moreover, another female who had taken up residence with them, and she was a point to be carefully considered. What had brought her there on what must have been the very day Irasmus had come into the valley—and what held her there? Of course, as of this day she had no home to return to, because the gobbes had made one of their belly-filling raids and had left the woman’s homestead a smoldering ruin behind them.
Yes, in spite of the new ruler’s confidence and success, Firthdun remained in his mind like an itch between the shoulders. The sooner he had to do away with it—holding and holders—the better.
Why did his thoughts keep returning to the younger of the two girls? It was as if something he had forgottenpricked at his memory now and again. Very well—tonight he would be back at those books which had been arranged with such scrupulous care in his chosen tower room. From that sealed chamber in the Place of Learning, the supposed scholar had taken, on general principles, the full contents of a shelf but had so far been able to adequately decipher only four volumes. Well, they were enough for his present situation.
His curiosity oddly aroused now, Irasmus turned his mount back toward his stronghold. Turning, he caught an unusually sharply focused view of the Forest edge. His distance from it was such that he could not be truly sure he saw—what? A tree walking, retreating further into the gloom?
Utter nonsense, of course.
7
AS THE FLOWERS WITHERED, SO DID ANY COLOR OF cheer fade from the land itself. Men and women now plodded leaden-footed to the fields, dull-faced children with them; but that which possessed them now brought all to work only to feed its own ravening hunger. Even the crops had a grayish look, and many of the heads of the upward-pushing grain showed the spotting of decay before they even had a chance to ripen.
Yurgy no longer had a flock to urge to the uplands—what remained of that pitiful herd was the sport of the gobbes. He did not have a home, and deep in him that loss was an abiding pain which ate at him night and day. He had not been born of Firthdun; however, the law of fosterage had brought him there when he was barely able to set one foot firmly before the other. The tie was a very distant one but strong enough so that that clan had taken in the orphan.
Other duns in the Valley were reduced to ruins. Forsome reason no ordinary human could possibly guess, the master had not yet sent his force upon Firthdun, almost as though he savored the fear his continued failure to attack must be breeding there. The numb emptiness in Yurgy’s mind—for it would seem that he was now brain deafened, even as he had been ear deafened—only let him wonder vaguely at times what kept Irasmus’s hand from squeezing the life from the boy’s foster dun as he had wrung dry all others.
Yurgy slopped water from the ill-smelling well they had reopened in the courtyard of the stronghold. Perhaps because he was the first one Irasmus had taken into bond, he had remained a member of that crew the mage led.
Now he was aware that the demons’ master—and his—had come riding back into the area that ringed the base of the tower, but Yurgy did not raise his eyes from his task. It was only when the crooked, taloned fingers of Karsh, the leader of the gobbes, closed in deliberate torment on his shoulder that he looked up. Distantly, he noticed that even his lord’s brilliant richness of clothing was dimmed by these walls that the men and women labored each day to raise higher, set firmer in their ancient pattern.
“Slug.” The master’s finger crooked. Yurgy could not have disobeyed that summons had he wished to do so—not with the gobbe chief’s hold upon him. Somehow, he found himself able to look into the face of the man who was regarding him as a reader might turn upon an open page.
“How many seasons have you?” came the next demand.
It had become harder and harder to summon words—for little had those of Styrmir now to speak of, as the Dark had well nigh swallowed them up. Only now, for a moment or so, it seemed that Yurgy was thinking more clearly than he had for days, and with that sensation came a new surge of fear. The boy coughed, nearly choking, as if a puff of dust had caught him full in his face, but he answered as quickly as he could.
“I was counted scythe-worthy last harvest.” He found those words almost meaningless.
The master was smiling. “Not too old, and not too young to delay us much,” he commented, though the sense of this remark escaped his listeners. “It does not become any man to waste a tool. Get you to the kitchen, slug, doff those rags of yours, and scrub your noisome body.” He raised his hand and pinched his nostrils together to make very clear his opinion of this son of the soil. “Then come with Karsh. You may”—he nodded his head at his own thoughts—“be what I need.”
Still bearing the now-full buckets, the chief gobbe keeping shadow close at his shoulder, Yurgy entered the lowest room of the tower. The greasy smell of an ill-kept kitchen was strong, and that reek was laced with the stench that was ever a near fog about the demons. Two women of the Valley were busied there already, the first at the fireplace, the other chopping gory meat on the table. The one performing the latter task bore a bruise on her cheek and over her chin, and blood had trickled in a thin stream from the corner of her mouth, leaving a stain she had made no attempt to wipe away.
The workers spared only a quick glance for those who had entered, but the bruised woman gestured to put the pails under the table. Karsh favored her with a horrific grin.
“This one”—early on, the master had somehow made it possible for the two different species to understand a common speech—“he washes and goes alo
ft.” The gobbe jerked his thumb at the nearby staircase. “Let him go bare—the lord has no liking for rags too close to him.”
The woman carving the meat jerked the last bucket back out from under the table, not looking at the boy. The other scrabbled with already-grimy fingers in a scorched bowl, then slapped a lump of lardy soap into his hand. This done, they turned resolutely back to their labors and ignored him. Karsh, however, lounged at the foot of the steps, staring at Yurgy’s bared flesh as if it suggested some table dainty.
When the youth was as clean as his crude efforts would allow, he tipped the bucket into the sour-smelling drain. A chill struck at him as, though the fire burned well and there was heat in the room, he felt a kind of shame he had never known in his lifetime before.
“Up!” his gobbe guard commanded impatiently, as Yurgy’s feet found the steps even colder. There was a small landing at the end of that short flight and a closed door to the right; but the stairway continued, and Karsh signified that he should do the same.
There was an odd change here. The stink of the kitchen was gone, and for one moment of excited hope, Yurgy thought that the Wind had sent a messenger down from the next level in welcome and protection.However, just as quickly, he realized that, while the scents intermingled now to form a cloud which apparently shut away the rot-tainted realities of darksome living, this was not woven of the freshness of flowers or growing things, and it carried no lightness to the heart, no joy for the mind.
The next floor of the tower also had a shut door awaiting; and the steps did not end but were much rougher, newer work that narrowed until the gobbe would have had a hard time forcing his way above. However, the creature made no attempt to do so but only brought his fist down with a drum note against the door, holding the boy at the same time in the grasp of his other hand.
No sound came from beyond the portal; instead, it swung open, and Yurgy faced an inner curtain of black, so dark as to suggest that there was nothing behind it. Karsh allowed the youth no hesitation but shoved him through an almost-invisible opening in that barrier—and into such light and color as he had almost forgotten could exist.