Warlock

by Andre Norton

  "Harath—I cannot—they are making me use the stone! Harath—they make me—"

  Iuban had caught one of her hands, was crushing her fingers, straightening them from the fist she tried to keep clenched. In his other hand she could see the blaze of the gem, afire with a life she knew was evil, though she tried to keep from looking at it.

  "Harath!" desperately she pleaded.

  "Hold—" came the answer. Harath's, together with that other's—the stranger's. "We are almost—"

  Iuban ground the gem into the hollow of her palm. With his grip on her hair he pulled her head forward.

  "Look!" he ordered.

  His compulsion was such that she was forced to his will. The glowing stone was warm against her shrinking flesh. Its color deepened. It had life, power, reaching out, pulling her, drawing her through—

  She screamed and heard shouting far off, the crackle of weapon fire. But it was too late. She was falling forward into the heart of the stone, which was now a lake of blazing energy ready to engulf her utterly.

  7

  The sickly sweetness of bruised camphor-lilies was drugging her; she could not breathe. No, she could not breathe because she was locked in here with Turan! Turan who was dead, as she would be when the air failed and she would enter the last sleep of all.

  She was Vintra, war-captive from Turan's last battle, the one in which he had taken his deathblow.

  Vintra? Who was Vintra? Where was this dark place? Ziantha tried to move, heard a harsh clink of metal through the oppressive dark. She was—chained! Chained to a wall, and no frantic fight against those bonds left her with more than cut and bruised wrists and the knowledge that she had used up precious air by her struggles.

  She was Vintra—no, Ziantha! Crouching against the wall she tried to sort out her whirling thoughts, decide which were true and which hallucinations. She must be caught in some trance nightmare. Ogan had warned her of such a danger. That was why she must never enter the deep trance alone. Nearby there must be one skilled enough to break the trance if she were caught in a killing hallucination.

  Ogan—Harath— The thought of them steadied her.

  In the tomb of Turan, Iuban had forced her to focus on the gem. This was the result. But it was real! She felt the chains, gasped in the lack of air. She was—

  Vintra! It was like the turning of a wheel in her head, making her first one person and then the other. Vintra was to die here, part of a funeral gift to Turan, because she was the only prisoner of note taken during the last skirmish at the mountain pass. In her a great rage surged against Turan and his kind. She would die here, gasping out her life like a korb drawn from its water home, but she would be avenged! And that avenging—

  The pictures in her mind— What, who was she?

  Ziantha! Once more the wheel had turned. She was Ziantha, and she must get back, out of the trance. Ogan—Harath—! Frantically the girl sent out mind-calls, begging for help to save her from this dream that was worse than any she had ever faced before on the out-plane, though it was true that when one was trained to enter a sensitive's calling one had to face all one's fears, meannesses of spirit. Ill acts were given form and substance in trances. Only when one conquered those did one win to psychic control. In the past such terrors had been real also, but now, as she forced herself to employ one familiar safeguard after another, there was no change. She had known this was different, that she had no defense here. No, she must be awakened, anchored to her own time and plane by more strength than she herself could summon.

  Harath—Ogan! She made mind pictures, cast for them.

  A faint stirring! Surely she had caught that! By all the power of That Which Was Beyond Reckoning, she had felt that answer! Ziantha turned all her talent force into one plea: draw me forth—draw me forth—or I die!

  Yes! A stir—there was an answer. But it did not come straight, as she expected. It rather flowed, like water finding its way around great rocks half damming a river course, as if it fought.

  "Harath! I am here! Come for me! Do not leave me to die in the dark, choking out life, imprisoned in what I cannot understand. Come!"

  Not Harath!

  There was a personality here. But not Harath—not Ogan. From the other plane then? She touched thought.

  Shock, horror—a horror so great that that other personality was reeling as a man might under a deathblow.

  "Help me," it cried. She could not understand. This had come at her call—why then—?

  "Dead! Dead!"

  An answer out of the dark fraught with terror.

  "I am not dead!" Ziantha denied. She would not accept that, for if she did there would never be any escape. She would be caught in Vintra.

  "Dead"—the repetition was fainter. Going—the other was going—to leave her here! No!

  She might have screamed that aloud. The sound seemed to ring around and around in her head.

  "No!"

  There was silence through which she could hear the gasping from her laboring lungs. Then—from the other:

  "Where is this place?"

  Words—not mind-send, but words to her.

  "The tomb of Turan," she answered with the truth that Vintra knew.

  "And I—I am Turan—" the voice grated. "But I am not Turan!" The denial followed the recognition swiftly, as if the same fear she had known when Vintra had taken over gripped him.

  Sounds of movement. Then a mind command, quick and urgent: "Light!"

  A glow, growing stronger. Why had she not thought of that? Straightway she sent out her own energy to feed his, to strengthen the glow.

  "There is no air, we shall die." She added her urgent warning.

  "Go to the sunder plane, quickly!"

  His command brought her mind back into the protective pattern, which she should also have done for herself. She took the steps of out-of-body, something she had always been reluctant to try. And so, safe for a time, looked about her.

  There lay the body from which she had just freed herself, tangled in chains. To her left was a two-step dais on which rested Turan, his High Commander's cloak spread over him, the lilies massed, brown-petaled, dying. Even as she saw him, candles at the head and foot of his resting place flared high.

  "The spirit door!" that other's voice in her head. "There!"

  She had not remembered, not until he spoke, for that was of Vintra's knowledge not her own. But there was the spirit door set in the rock above Turan.

  "Draw back the bar there—"

  Their only hope. For if that faintly twitching body she had just left died, then she was also lost. Ziantha made reentry, knew the life force was fast fading. With the last spurt of energy she could summon, she joined her power to the other's, fastened thought to the bar. Together they wrought; fear rose in her—they could not—

  She heard a stir, for it was dark again, since all their talent was focused on that one act.

  "My arm—my right arm—" wheezed the voice.

  She fed him her power. And then she fell into darkness again without learning whether death came with it.

  "Vintra!" Her body ached, she cried out in pain as hands pressed her ribs again and again, forcing air in and out.

  "I live—let—be!"

  There was light again. The candles flamed steadily to show the spirit door hanging open. From it came air, chill but blessedly fresh. Turan knelt beside her, now inspecting the fastenings of the chains.

  "A pretty custom," he commented. "Human sacrifice to honor a war hero."

  "You—Turan—" She tried to edge away from him. Turan was dead. Even now his body showed those wounds the priests of Vut had repaired that he might go to Nether World intact of person. Yet they looked fully healed, as if they had been ordinary hurts nature mended.

  "Not Turan," he shook his head, "though I appear to share some identity with him from time to time. Not any more than you are Vintra. But it would seem we must play parts until we find a way back."

  "You, you were the one with Harath!"
Ziantha guessed. "The one who was coming when Iuban made me use the focus-stone."

  "I was." But he did not identify himself further. "Now what is this about the focus-stone? Apparently some trick of psychometry hurled us back into this and the more I know how and why the better. Tell me!" It was a sharp order, but she was only too willing to obey it.

  He had found the trick of the chain fastening, and now they fell from her, and he kicked them away into a corner. Ziantha began her tale with the first sight of the artifact, and all that had happened to her since she had fallen under the peculiar spell that ugly lump with its hidden and perhaps fatal heart had exerted on her.

  "A gem such as that now on your forehead?"

  Startled, Ziantha raised her hands to her head. There was an elaborate headdress confining hair much longer than her own. And from those bands a drop set with a gem rested just above her eyes. She wrested the band from her so she could see the stone.

  It was the focus-stone! Or enough like it to be. Ziantha thought she could tell with a touch, yet she dared not. Who knew what might happen if she tried again?

  "Is it?" he who was now Turan demanded a second time.

  Ziantha looked miserably at the crown. She had firmly exiled Vintra, but as she stared down at the stone that other identity stirred, gathered strength. Perhaps she might learn the power of the stone, but in doing so she could also lose that other who had been meant to die here in Turan's tomb.

  "Vintra—Vintra might know—" she said with vast reluctance, but she could not suppress the truth.

  "If the stone had power enough to hurl you into Vintra and me into Turan, then perhaps its results can be reversed. We must know. Look, you are not alone; my will backs yours. And I promise you I shall not let you be imprisoned in Vintra!"

  He was Turan, the enemy, who could not be trusted (that was Vintra growing stronger, bolder). No—he was all the help she could have to win back to Ziantha and reality.

  "I will try," she said simply, though she shrank from such exposure to whatever lay within the focus of this deadly bit of colored stone.

  The ornament of the crown could be detached from the rest, Ziantha discovered. She unhooked the pendant, raised it to her forehead, and—

  Turan's hands were on her shoulders; he was calling her, not in words, but in the powerful waves of mind-send.

  "I was not able to learn—" she said in distress.

  "Nornoch-Above-the-Waves, Nornoch of the Three Green Walls— The Lurla to be commanded—" He recited the strange names and words slowly, making almost a pattern of song.

  "She who is D'Eyree of the Eyes—" Ziantha found herself answering. "Turan—what does that mean? I do not remember—I am saying words I do not understand."

  She rubbed her hand wearily across her forehead. Her hair, loosened from the confinement of the crown, fell thickly about her shoulders like a smothering veil.

  "You have returned to Vintra." He still kept that hold upon her, and his touch was comforting, for it seemed to anchor her to this body, controlled that feeling that she was about to whirl out and away from all ties with rational life.

  "But before Vintra," he was continuing, "there was another—this D'Eyree, who had the talent, was trained in its use."

  "Then I just 'saw' again—in a trance!"

  "Yes. And this you have learned for us, though you may not presently remember. This focus-stone has its counterpart, which is tied to it by strong bonds, draws it ever, so that she using it is swept farther back in time. The one stone struggles to be united with the other, and that which lies in the past acts as an anchor."

  "Vintra—"

  "Vintra did not use the talent," Turan said. "To her the stone was only a beautiful gem, a possession of Turan's clan. But it is a thing unique in my knowledge, an insensate thing which had been so worked upon as a focus that it has come to have a kind of half-life. Awakened, that half-life draws it, and those who focus upon it, so that it may be reunited with its twin. And unless that is done I believe that we are held to it."

  "But if its origin lies beyond Vintra's time—how far beyond Vintra?" she interrupted herself to ask that, fearing the answer.

  "I do not know—long, I think."

  Ziantha clasped her hands tightly to keep them from shaking. The crown clanged to the floor.

  "And if we cannot find . . ." She was afraid to complete that question. If his fears were now as great as hers—she did not want to know. What were they going to do? If they could not return—

  "At least," he said, "we shall not remain here. The spirit door is open. We'd best make what use of that we can."

  He went to stand on the bier, looking up to the dark hole.

  "You"—Ziantha moistened her lips and began again—"you—in his body—can you control it?"

  To her knowledge, and through Ogan that was not too limited, this experience was totally unknown. Of course the legends of necromancy—the raising of the dead to answer the questions and commands of those using the talent in a forbidden way—were known to more than one galactic race. But this type of transfer was new. Would it last? Could he continue to command a body from which life had ebbed before he entered it? She had come into Vintra while the other lived, merged in a way so that her stronger personality was able to push Vintra aside. But in his case—

  He looked at her, the wavering candle flames making his face an unreal mask. "I do not know. For the present I can. This has not been done before, to my knowledge. But there is no reason to dwell on what might be; we must concern ourselves with what is, namely, that to linger here is of no use. Now—" He crouched below that opening and made a leap that she watched with horror, fearing that the body he called upon to make that effort would not obey. However, his hands caught the frame of the spirit door and held for a moment, and then he dropped back.

  "We need something to climb on—a ladder." He looked around, but the grave offerings were all on the other side of the wall. There was nothing here but—

  He was moving the bier end up. Then he caught up the chains, jerking them loose from the wall ring so he had a length of links.

  "You will have to steady this for me," he told her briskly. One end of the bier was within the opening above. He draped the chain about his neck and climbed. Picking up the crown, careful not to touch the dangling gem, Ziantha came to his call, bracing and steadying the bier as best she could.

  He was within the frame of the door, his head and shoulders out of her range of sight now. A moment later he was gone. The candles were burning low, but they gave light enough for her to see the chain end swinging through and knew that he must be fully out and prepared to aid her after him.

  Moments later she shivered under the buffeting of a strong wind and the beginning of rain out in the open. Some of Vintra's memories helped her.

  "The guards—" She caught at his arm. He was winding the chain about him like a belt, as if he might have further use for it.

  "On a night like this," he answered, "perhaps we need not fear they are too alert."

  It was wild weather. Her festive garment, for they had arrayed Vintra for this sacrifice in a scanty feast robe, was plastered to her body, and the wind whipped her long hair about her. The chill of wind and rain set her shuddering, and now she could see her companion only as a shadow in the night. But his hand, warm, reassuring, closed about her shoulder.

  "To Singakok, I think." His voice, hard to hear through the wail of the wind, reached her with difficulty.

  "But they will—" Vintra's fear emerged.

  "If Turan returns, as a miracle of Vut's doing?" he asked. "The mere fact that I stand before them will give us the advantage for a space. And we need what Turan, or his people, know about that toy you carry. Guard it well, Ziantha, for it is all we have left to bring us back—if we can achieve a return."

  Perhaps there was a flaw in his reasoning, but she was too spent by emotion, by what lay immediately behind her, to see it. Vintra shrank from a return to the place of her imprisonment,
her condemnation to death. But she was not Vintra—she dared not be. And when he drew her after him, she yielded.

  They came through a screen of trees that had kept the storm from beating them down. And now, from this height, they could see Singakok, or the lights of the city, spread before them.

  "The guards or their commander will have a land car." Turan's attention was entirely on the road that angled toward the root of the cliff like a thin tongue thrust out to ring them round and pull them in for Singakok's swallowing.

  "You can use Turan's memories?" Ziantha was more than a little surprised. Turan's body had been dead, emptied. How then could this other being know the ways of the guards?

  "After a fashion. If we win through this foray we shall have some strange data to deliver. Yes, it appears that I can draw upon the memory of the dead to some degree. Now, you try Vintra also—"

  "I hold her in check. If I loose her, can I then regain command?"

  "That, too, we cannot know," he returned. "But we must not go too blindly. Try a little to see what you can learn of the city—its ways."

  Ziantha loosed the control a fraction, was rewarded by memories, but perhaps not useful ones. For these were the memories of a prisoner, one who had been kept in tight security until she was brought forth to give the final touch to Turan's funeral.

  "Vintra was not of Singakok—only a prisoner there."

  "True. Well, if you learn anything that is useful, let me know quickly. Now, there is no use skulking here. The sooner we reach the city, the better."

  They ended their blind descent of the heights with a skidding rush that landed them on their hands and knees in brush. If Turan found that his badly used body took this ill, he gave no sign, pulling her up to her feet and onto the surface of the road.

  And they reached that just in time to be caught in the full, blinding glare of light from a vehicle advancing from the city. They froze, knowing that they must already have been sighted. Then Turan turned deliberately to be full face to whoever was behind that light. They must see him, know him, if they would accept the evidence of their eyes.