by Andre Norton
And felt warm, living flesh beneath his own.
“Yaggha!” The sound came from the wrong side of him, but it signified his disgust. He caught the guilty hand with his other and held it in a tight grip, lest it master him again and—do what? This was only a picture in a book, and a book can be closed.
Using both hands, Yurgy slammed the cover and sank back into the chair. Sweat stood in beads on his forehead; his whole body seemed afire in a way he could not understand. And there was no Wind to calm and cool. Bits of those paintings danced alluringly even yet through his mind, in spite of all he could do.
***
Mage Gifford sat in his desk chair, also with a book on his knees; however, he was staring down as if the page lay by the toes of his boots. His round face seemed to have lost flesh in the past few days; new lines were etched there, and his lips had a downward droop.
“Do we then have to make this innocent pay for the ills we ourselves fostered by neglect?” That question was fired with a sharper crack than anyone in the Place of Learning had heard from the archivist in years.
Harwice, on his left, uttered a small sound that was only the ghost of a sigh. A sketch block on his knee, he set crayon to paper with a hand that appeared to move of its own accord, limning in swift, clear lines an object or scene; he immediately crumpled the page, and uttered an oath.
No change was evident in Archmage Yost’s expression or bearing; yet it might well have been that the fires in his eyes were near to being quenched.
“The Valley folk are—were—kin of ours once, not subjects of the Forest, though the Wind they could truly hear.” Harwice hurled another ball of paper from him. “Thus it is one of our own whom we leave in the grasp of evil—an evil bred within our walls.”
“Yes.” A single word of agreement from Yost, spoken flatly, and with no emotion. “It is the price to be paid for freedom, for, as is known, a people are only free who fight for themselves and a just cause.
“You have read the runes as well as I. This monstrous act will, in time, bring forth that to which Irasmus shall cling and which will, at last, deliver him into the embrace of the shadow lord for whom he longs.Not that that will bring him any of the power he seeks! We have nigh spent ourselves this night to catch a dreamer who is not trained to the talent. The wise one who might have stood guard with him is dumb and as a child who must be cared for. Also—”
Gifford nodded, his distress even more visible. “She also—”
“The Caller?” Harwice’s crayon was suddenly still, and his hands rose, molding the air as the stuff of his art. This time he outlined a woman, about whose slender body flowed nearly invisible drapery—the evidence of those powers She could command.
“No!” Yost was as emphatic with his denial as he had been earlier with his assent. “We but prepare now for what She has already urged upon us. Although”—he paused for a long moment—“She heeds, and I do not think that, in the end, She will refrain from taking a hand—a year or so from now.”
“When it is too late!” Harwice snarled. “She was never one to partner another.”
The loremaster placed the book on the carpet by his feet. “So be it. But what we have taken upon ourselves must be paid for, and it would be wise to look forward to that day and be prepared.”
Yurgy stood up and backed away from the table and book. He had a feeling that he must not take his eyes from it, lest it open again and spill out the foulness it held.
The boy bumped against the trundle bed from which he had arisen such a short time before and fell back upon it. His hands rubbed back and forth across his eyes, though what he saw now was not through them;just as the jingle, clamor, and seductive crooning which circled him struck deeper than by the ears clean nature had given him.
Sulerna . . . The youth hunched his shoulders as if he took a storm of blows he could not escape. She—she had been foster sister . . . as much his kin, in his belief, as a womb sister could be! He wanted to tear from his mind the thought he was fighting now.
“Wind?” In the heart of Irasmus’s own domain, Yurgy dared to try and reach for that which was gone forever. But there could be no aid from that source—not here!
In spite of the boy’s great turmoil of spirit, his eyes, his hands still pressed tightly over them, closed, and out of nowhere there came at last blessed peace.
“Think you this act well done?” Yost asked. He did not turn his head toward Gifford, and there was a chill in his question.
“Brother, though we cannot break his chains, we can give him at least some relief from the pinch of them. And we know that Irasmus will not guess what we do.”
“Not yet!” The crayon Harwice held snapped. “This I say: let the full strength come soon, brothers. These torments are of the Dark, and no true one among us wants such trials of the spirit to last.”
The moon was full tonight. The sparks on the Stone shone with a silver fire as their interweaving grew faster and more agitated. About those swirls of colored motes was something that hinted for the first time of menace. Above them was the hole, tight-curtained bydarkness; while down from the sky whistled the Wind, to search out that entrance, twist through it, and be swallowed up by the unlight as if it so attacked a bitter enemy.
Hansa emerged from among the trees, her large feet moving with a grace unusual for one so large and bulky. Her furred shoulders were wreathed in heavy circlets of flowers, whose scent filled the air as she moved. She was smiling dreamily, as her kind knew smiles, and she hummed; so it seemed as if even the fury of the Wind about the Stone was stilled a little.
Straight up to the Stone she came; and her hum of contented joy grew louder. The mad dash of the light specks slowed, changing pace; and they began to cluster into thicker lines and bands and rose to frame the dark hole.
So tall was the Sasqua female that she had to stoop a fraction until her thick lips could come into line with that shadow-centered disc.
“Awee, awee-ee.” Hansa’s hum had become a song. Her arms lifted as if she now held a precious bundle against her breast. “Awee-ee, awee.” It was a lullaby she voiced, the oldest song known to her species; and it held more than a little of the talent that was theirs alone.
The hole changed. Its dark veil disappeared, and the Forest’s daughter was looking at the face of a human woman whose countenance was twisted with fear and stained with blood, yet whose eyes held a determination that held off even death.
The Sasqua showed no surprise. Instead she sang again, “Awee-ee!” in triumph and joy. The woman’s bruised and swollen lips moved, but no sound issuedfrom them. Only her eyes met Hansa’s; and present and future touched for a breath’s space out of real time. Then the curtain fell once more.
But Hansa still stood before the Stone, drawing her fingertips lovingly down its surface and singing, softly now, “Awee—” for a cubling not yet born.
10
YURGY CROUCHED IN THE CHAIR BY THE SMALL table, even as an animal might strive to squeeze its bulk into a hole too narrow to hold it. His hands still blindfolded his eyes, until the pressure against his closed lids was enough to cause real pain. But the book remained closed—truly closed. If only what lay within it did not continue to leak into his thoughts, spreading a poison he could not escape!
There was no night or day in this windowless tower chamber for, by some use of power he did not understand, the lamps flamed always, seeming never to exhaust their oil. He could but stumble across to his bed and throw himself down with eyes sealed tight, sometimes biting at the fingers that wished to busy themselves turning those foully ornamented pages. Lately—he could no longer keep any tale of time—he found that the scrambled script at the fore of the volumemade sense in places. Nor could he banish from his mind the vile suggestions made by the pictures.
He tried—oh, Wind, how he tried! Yet never but once had he tried the way which, he inwardly believed, might help him the most: to picture the kitchen at Firthdun, Haraska at her baking, others of the kin busy here
and there. That longed-for safety had been so divided from him now that it had nearly become a fragment of a dream.
After only a moment of his continued struggle, the boy had become aware he was not alone. Someone had been waiting for just such a chance to read his home memories—and for a purpose wholly evil. He fought fiercely to forget what he had once been and how he had so peacefully lived amid kin goodwill. Sometimes, instead, he tried to recall the fields in which he had helped with both sowing and reaping, to catch and hold with all his mind strength the brilliant passage of bird or butterfly, avowing aloud as he did so, “This is real!”
However, even if they were real, such memories brought him no strength. He returned to the Styrmir that had been, only to have it almost immediately vanish. In place of the heart-lifting vision of home, he beheld forms and witnessed actions that made his body heat, twist, and turn on his bed until he had to stuff a thick corner of the coverlet into his mouth to keep from crying out.
Yurgy might well have lost all control over both mind and body, except that surcease did come at intervals, in a sleep born of the drain of all energy.
***
Sulerna sat beside Haraska, tenderly wiping, from time to time, the drool that threaded from the crooked corner of the old woman’s mouth. Always the young woman was aware that, if her grandmother’s eyes were open at all, they fastened only on her. Sometimes her jaw worked, splutters of saliva flying, and it was plain that Grandmam would speak but that some barrier kept her dumb.
More and more, Sulerna came to believe that Haraska was trying to deliver some sort of warning. She said as much to Mistress Larlam, only to be secretly daunted when the healer agreed with her.
“Yes, that could well be it. If she is permitted to do so by the Great Power, she may yet be enabled to give you her message.” Thus the girl became as careful a nurse as possible and seldom left her patient’s side.
Though the kitchen was now part sickroom, the dun kin still gathered there of an evening to share the small scraps of rumor or knowledge they had managed to gather. They were careful not to openly stray beyond the boundary marks of Firthdun or try to contact such pitiful near ghosts of those they had known as might plod along the roads, hauling a wobble-wheeled wagon that held all that was left of lost prosperity. Still, no matter how dull brained and listless those of Styrmir had become, it did seem that, when not being herded by gobbes, they sometimes commented on events concerning the master and his tower. Not that any obviously believed matters as they now stood would ever change again; yet at whiles they would pass on cautions as to this or that action or attitude which was better avoided.
It was young Jacklyn who, having kept hidden fromsight in one of the berry bushes which hedged the lane, brought home a piece of news that did have meaning for those of Firthdun.
“ ’Twas Oblee as said it,” the boy announced with importance. “He and Jannot was told to bring in the fowl from far side, nigh the forest edge. The dark lord did send one o’ the demon faces with ’em, but them gobbes—it seems they be a right lazy lot and, when the master’s eyes be not upon ’em, they takes it as easy as pleases ’em. Well, this day there were another party of gobbes—hunters. And they was carryin’ somethin’—
“Grandsire”—he turned to the man who now stood for the dun in assembly, even if none such still existed—“two o’ them demonish things had ’em a head, swingin’ from a pole they carried between ’em! ’Twarn’t any head of folk like us, neither. ’Twas big and hairy all over, with teeth as long as a double barn nail—leastways, that’s what Oblee said. The gobbes was a-laughin’ in their nasty way—even jumpin’ like they was tryin’ to dance. When they seen the other gobbes with Oblee and Jannot, they yelled somethin’ in that snarled-up talk o’ theirs—they never talk straight—and they all started for the tower.
“Somehow, he knew they was a-comin’—like he always seems to. They puts the head down before him and waits, teeth a-grinnin’ like they thought he’d be a-passin’ out sweeties. But he didn’t be takin’ their gift kindly at all—he points that there wand at ’em, and they scream and twist and roll on the ground yammerin’. All the rest of their kind backs off, lookin’ like they expects to get some o’ the same.
“Then”—Jacklyn reached what seemed to him to bethe main point of his report—“that One, he twirls his wand, and out of the tower comes—Yurgy!” The boy paused for effect, enjoying the complete attention he was receiving.
“Yurgy!” echoed several voices.
“Aye!” Jacklyn confirmed with relish. “And he weren’t dressed in no rags, neither. He had on good cloth breeches and a jerkin.
“Not a look he spares Oblee or Jannot or the wizard’s pets, mind you. He just stoops and picks up that head by its hair—has to use both hands, he does, like it be main heavy. Then he just turns ’round and goes back into the tower. The master follows—and now he does be lookin’ pleased.”
“Yurgy serves—him!” Sulerna could not suppress her doubt of that portion of the boy’s tale. Haraska’s good hand suddenly caught at the girl’s apron, keeping her from getting to her feet. The oldmother’s watching eyes seemed to have a leap of life flame in them.
“ ’Twas him as brought that black one down on the Valley,” commented Elias, the brother closest to Sulerna in age. His body might be almost whip slender, but it was well known to all that he possessed not only a quick and easily roused temper but was a master of wrestling tricks and one not to be rashly challenged except by the ignorant. Elias himself had never favored Yurgy; the foster brothers were close together in age but in all else as separate as day from night.
His sister turned on him quickly. “Yurgy is no gobbe!”
“It may be”—Elias watched her with a slightly malicious expression—“that the master likes someonebowing and scraping around him as is not a twisted monster—”
“Say penance for your words, youngling!” Grandsire seldom raised his voice; however, when he did, all within hearing listened. “Has there been any hint that anyone of the Valley serves this raiser of demons willingly? Belike Yurgy met him first and was seized upon because the dark lord could wring out of him what he would know.”
“He should long ago be questioned out by now,” muttered Sulerna’s brother, not to be silenced till he had spoken his mind. “They said he came from the tower and took the head within, nor did he look on any others there—they might have been naught. Is that not as you told it, Jacklyn?”
The younger boy nodded vigorously. “Oblee, he said as how it was told that Yurgy be never seen save together with the master, and for days he be not seen at all. Always, when he comes among others, he stares ahead as if he sees what other men do not. Dorata had it from her sister that he has a room of his own within the tower and is served with decent food, such as be set before the lord himself. She had so much to say about it all, when she got started, her man had to give her a swat to shut her up when a gobbe came near.”
Mistress Larlarn pulled her shawl tightly about her shoulders, as if she had been touched by a chill. “This night, dun kin, do we speak power words for Yurgy. Do not think he is gone from us by his own will, for he is Light born, and thus perhaps his fate is far worse than that of the ones who have been set to building or field grubbing. He comes of the true Old Blood and, in hischildhood, the Wind once touched him fully; though none knew it then, not even himself, save—”
She paused, and Grandsire nodded gravely. “We stand as strong as we can for the Wind, Mistress. Always have we had truedreamers in each line of birthing; but, at one time, your kin were greater still—Forest born!” He saluted her reverently, and she acknowledged his gesture with one of her own.
“The head—” The healer now changed the subject. “It would seem that the gobbes may have broken the Forest barriers.” She smiled a little; then her face assumed an almost sly look, as if she were about to enjoy some action those about her could not guess.
At that moment, an incoherent cry drew their attentio
n elsewhere. Haraska, free of close watch, had sought to sit up and had nearly fallen to the floor. Mistress Larlarn and Sulerna waved the others back and, together, they once more settled their charge in as much comfort as possible. The kin drew away toward the fire, but not until Sulerna caught the name “Sasqua.” She then remembered Haraska’s tales of the older days when men and women, and children as well, sometimes ventured safely within the Forest and there met the Wind in all its splendor with nothing to fear from its strange servitors.
Meanwhile, a good distance from the threatened dun the Wind lifted years-laid leaf carpets, ripping roughly through the branches of great trees and nearly snapping tender saplings. It sang no longer of content and well-being; instead, its voice resembled a beast’s snarl of ever-growing fury. Still, there was that which kept the mighty power from its desire—old bonds, wards centered in the Stone of the glade. In that place,the sparks of light would this night remind none of the moon’s touch. Rather, they darkened and, if they did not truly drip, they yet showed the glisten of splotches of newly shed blood.
The Stone remained the anchor, and the bonds held. Even in anger, its full force could not turn against its own kind—that side of life of which it was keeper, not killer. Thus, its first burst of rage quieted, and all aspects of the land that had felt it knew relief—for now.
Yet blood called payment for blood. Threading through the lessened voice of the Wind came the heavy beat of clubs drumming against earth, rock, or any surface near those who held the weapons. The drummers, also, the Stone held—but not the being who came in a kind of dancelike motion over the uneven Forest floor.
If a living leaf, or even a tree-high pile of such fall castings, could produce the faintest of greenish ghosts, so might this night walker be described. It had no true form, unless one could picture a well-leaved branch that could bend hither and thither. All growths rooted in reality appeared to draw back and away from the entity, much as they might seek distance from a flame that threatened them.