Trey of Swords (Witch World (Estcarp Series))

by Andre Norton

  Our journey was not an easy one. The land itself put many barriers in our way. And also, though we were met by those Kyllan had aroused to wish us well, we were dogged by creatures of the Dark, so that we won to the Green Valley as pursued as we had been in the flight from Karsten a generation earlier.

  But the Valley was a haven of safety—having at its entrance special deep-set runes and signs carved. And none that were not free of any dealing with the Shadow could pass those and live.

  The houses of the Green People were strange and yet very pleasing to the eye, for they were not wrought by man from wood and stone, but rather grown, tree and bushes twined together to form walls as deep as those of any Border keep. And their roofing was of the brilliant green feathers shed in season by those birds which obeyed the Lady Dahaun.

  She was of our most ancient legend—the forest woman who could call upon a plant to flower or fruit, and it would straightaway do as she desired. Yet, as all her people, she was alien. For she was never the same in men's eyes, changing ever from one moment to the next. So that she might at one breath have the ruddy, sun-tipped hair of a Sulcarwoman, and the next the black locks and ivory skin of the Old Race.

  Her co-ruler here was Ethutur, and all which remained steady about him also were the small ivory horns which arose from the curls of hair above his forehead. Yet his shifts of feature and color were not as startling as those of Dahuan.

  Under Lord Hervon's orders, we pitched tents in the Valley for our own abode. For, though it might be chill and coming into winter without the rock walls of this stronghold, within lay the mellowness of late summer.

  It would seem that here legends came to life, for we saw flying, pacing, sporting, strange creatures which had long been thought by us to be out of imagination—wrought by ancient songsmiths. There were the Flannan—very small, yet formed enough like men to seem some far-off kinsman. They were winged and sometimes danced in the air for seeming sheer delight that they lived. And there were also the Renthan—large as horses, but far different, for they had tails like brushes of fluff clapped tight to their haunches; on their foreheads, single horns curved in gleaming red arcs.

  These had borne us from the mountains, but they were not in any way ruled by their riders, being proudly intelligent and allies, not servants, for the Valley.

  There were also the Lizard people—and of those I learned much. For I made my first friend among their number. That came about because of my own private heartache.

  Crytha had come into paradise, or so she thought. She blossomed from a thin, quiet half-child, half-maid into a person strange to me. And she ever followed Dahaun, eager to learn what the lady would teach.

  Imhar was constantly at the councils of the warriors, not always on the fringe as was fitting for one of his youth. He lapped up all the knowledge of war as a house mog-cat will lap at fresh milk.

  For we had come into a Valley which was peace, but which was only a small cupping of that. Around us Escore boiled and seethed. Ethutur himself rode out as war herald with the Lord Kemoc Tregarth to visit the Krogan, who were water dwellers. And other heralds went forth to arouse what help would come at the rising of the banner.

  There was a shaping of arms at the forge, a testing of mail, and all that stir which had been so long our portion in Estcarp. Save that now we were pitted not against men but against an unholy life totally alien to ours.

  Fight I would when the time came, but in me there was a feeling of loneliness. For in all company, I had not one I could call rightly shield brother or cup mate. And Crytha was seldom in sight.

  It was the day of the storm which began the true tale of Yonan, as if up to that time I had been a thing only half finished, rough-hewn, and only partly useful.

  I had gone with a detachment of Lord Hervon's swordsmen, with one of the Green People as a guide, climbing up into the rocky walls which were our defense, that we might look out beyond and see what lay there, also select for the future those places from which we could best meet any attack. It had been a bright day when we began that climb, but now there were gathering clouds, and Yagath, who was our leader, eyed those with concern, saying we must return before the worst of the wind broke upon us.

  The clouds (or were they of the Shadow and no true work of nature?) rolled in so fast that we hurried indeed. But it chanced I was the last in line, and, as the wind came down upon us with a roar to drown any other sound, my foot slipped. Before I could regain my balance, I slid forward, my nails breaking, my finger tips scraped raw by rock I fought to hold.

  Now the dark and the wind dropped a curtain to cut me away from everything but the rock pocket into which the force of my descent had jammed my body. My mail had not served to save me from painful bruising; perhaps it had but added to that. And water poured down upon me, as if someone on the surface of the cliff above emptied one pail after another into my cramped resting place.

  I pushed with all my strength and so got farther back into this temporary prison, where a rock poised above took some of the wind and rain off me. Later. I thought, I could climb, but dared not try it yet in that rush which was becoming a stream cascading down the wall to my right.

  There were fierce slashes of lightning across the small portion of the sky which I could see, reminding me of the most effective weapons of the Green People—their force whips. Then came a fearful and deafening crash close by, a queer smell which made me think that lightning had indeed struck, and not too far away.

  The rush of water carried with it small stones, and it did not drain fast from the crevice I occupied, though that had an open end facing outward from the Valley. So the flood lapped about my knees, and then touched my thighs. I squirmed, trying to reach a higher portion in which to crouch, but there was none.

  While the drumming of the rain, the heavy boom of thunder never ended.

  I was aware now, as I turned and strove to find a better shelter, that my right ankle gave out sharp thrusts of pain, enough once or twice to make me giddy. So I subsided at last, imprisoned until the storm might pass.

  It was during one of those vivid flashes of lightning that I first saw an answering glint of light from the wall to my right. For a moment or two, that meant nothing, save there must be something there which reflected the flashes. Then I wriggled a little, to free my shoulder better, so I might feel along the wall.

  My abraded finger tips flinched from the rough stone, then they slid onto something smooth; not only smooth, but in a way oddly cool and pleasant. In the dark, I explored my find. It seemed to be a rod of some sort, extending outward perhaps the length of my thumb and only a little larger than that digit in size. I tried to pull at it, and it seemed that it was a little loose but did not yield to the small amount of strength I could exert in my cramped position.

  Yet there was something about my unseen find which kept my fingers seeking it out, touching it. That it was part of the natural rock, I doubted. It was too smooth, more like a piece of metal or crystal which had been purposefully worked. Yet the way it protruded from the native rock, with no break in that to hold it (as I was able to discover by touch), argued it could not be man-made.

  The fury of the storm continued. From my constrained perch I looked out at the world beyond the valley, but the darkness kept me from seeing anything. Save here and there some glow close to ground, marking, I was sure from all I had heard, a place where a remnant of the Power force still burned. For these we had seen in our journey from the mountains, such being called to our attention. If the glow was blue that signified a point of safety where a man might shelter. But a sickly dull white, or a green, or worst of all a red shot with black—those signaled traps for our kind.

  The storm cleared after what seemed to me a very long time. Now the water drained from the crevice. And the lightning no longer was laid whipwise over the hills. I edged forward from under the rock ledge which had been my shelter and tried to straighten up. My wet limbs, my wracked ankle, made such movement painful. I could feel rough o
utcrops to climb, but could I put enough weight on my ankle to try that?

  Then I froze. There was a sound, not of rain nor thunder—more like a skittering across the rock above me. Could one of the Dark creatures have found its way up during the cover of the flood, was it now waiting to attack me?

  There came a light, a glow. By it I saw the pointed, tooth-rimmed snout of one of the Lizard folk. And then his forefeet, so much like slender, fingered hands, came into view. The light descended slowly toward me so I saw that it issued from a stone held in a mesh of delicate wire fastened on a slender cord.

  The Lizard folk, like the other nonhumans, communicated by thought. But I had none of the mind touch which Crytha had so nurtured. I reached my hand and caught the caged stone. By that I could see my ankle. The boot was very tight and the leg above it swollen. I had given it a bad twist and it was plain I dare not put any weight on that.

  With gestures, I tried to make my dilemma plain to my rescuer. He stared at me with jewel-bright eyes, then in a breath he was gone. For help, I hoped. Though I now began to dread that, too. My ineptness had long been a matter of rough badinage among Hervon's men. Here, on my first wall patrol, I had managed to make the worst possible showing.

  With the Lizard gone, curiosity led me to duck back under the ledge and survey what I had found in the wall. When I advanced my dull light, there awoke a brilliant fire which was dazzling.

  The thing was a rod right enough, fashioned of some kind of crystal which drew light. And it glowed with a bluish sheen. Yes, it projected directly out of the rock itself, but there was no mistaking that it was the product of some intelligence. Even though to find it so encased in solid rock was surprising.

  I closed my other hand around it and tugged with all my might. The rod gave only a fraction. It was plain that to free it entirely, one must break the rock in which it hung. But that I would do! I must do! As the geas which had been laid on us all to bring us into Escore, I knew now that some force outside my own imagining was driving me to do this. That my find was important—that I would have sworn oath to.

  Now I turned quickly—there was a further noise overhead and the Lizard man came clambering down the wall with ease. To him, this stone was an open stairway. He carried a rope coiled about one shoulder, and when he reached the bottom he made signs that I was to tie one end about me.

  Thus, I found in the storm both my destiny in this long-shadowed land, and a friend—for Tsali was indeed a friend such as one could trust his life and more than his life upon.

  3

  So I was pent in the Valley for a time. But the Lady Dahaun had shared her knowledge with Crytha, who brought to me a basin of bubbling red mud. This she used to make a casing for my ankle once my boot was cut away. And as its heat enclosed my flesh, the pain faded and I slept.

  My dreams had never been real, nor of the kind one might name true sendings of the Power—such as favored ones of our Race have from time to time had as warnings. But this time i strode through a land which was as real as if I were waking. And in my hand I carried a sword—one fitted into my palm as firmly as if it were an extension of my own body, so that in my dream I could not imagine my life without that to hand.

  Yet there was on me a great sorrow and fear, not for myself but for others. And as I went, I wept silently for a loss I could not remember and yet which was very great, weighing upon me heavier than any scout's pack. I saw that the mail I wore was broken in places and rusted by stains. While my left hand was pressed against my side, the fingers bloodied. Pain gnawed under that pressure, a pain I fought against. For there was that my body must aid me to do before I yielded to death.

  Immutably death drove me; I knew that for the truth. All behind me was lost to the Shadow, save what I carried. In my dreaming mind, I knew that this sword must not fall to those who now sniffed my trail.

  But I wavered, the burden of pain nigh bearing me to the ground. While that which lay before me shimmered in my sight. Time raced for me, with it my life, oozing in sluggish drops from my side. Yet my will did not yield to either time or my failing body.

  The ground under my stumbling feet rose steadily, so that for all my determination, my pace slowed. Still I kept onward. Now there arose a mist before me. My lips shaped words I could not understand. Yet I knew that once I had known such and they had been to me weapons near as potent as the sword.

  Perhaps it was the Power of the words which carried me past the limit of human endurance. My breath came in gasps; I could no longer master the pain eating at me, but my will still held.

  I faltered at last to a halt, teetering on the lip of a drop. The mists rose from below, and I knew, in a part of my fast-dulling mind, that these were born out of what lay below—raw rock churned and set to a boil as if it were water, molten. Into this I hurled the sword. With it went out of me that strength which had kept me on my feet, brought me from the stricken field where the Shadow had triumphed.

  As I crumpled to earth, knowing that now I could meet death, and did it willingly enough. I awoke. I was sweating and my hand was fast pressed to my side. I looked down, expecting still to see the blood dripping down the shattered mail. But instead my skin was smooth, unbroken. And I knew it had been a dream.

  I had not been Yonan then—no. Nor could I have put name to the man I had been in that time. But I carried with me from that dream of death one thought—that which I had found embedded in the rock on the heights was of the sword. To my hand had it once well fitted; so would it again.

  However there was also in me a need to keep this secret; the reason for that I did not know. I endured Imhar's jeering at my ineptness. But, when Crytha came to inspect the casing on my ankle, I asked her concerning the Lizard man who had found me.

  It was she who told me his name—Tsali—and that he was one of the scouts of the heights. I envied her her gift of communication with those other life forms and asked her to give him my thanks. But I was surprised when later that day he padded into the small shelter where I lay and squatted down beside me, watching me with his jewel-like eyes.

  He stood perhaps near my shoulder in height, being large for his species. And as he squatted now on hind limbs, limber tail outthrust as a balance behind, he slipped from one wrist a cord on which white and red earth-colored beads were interstrung, counting these through his slender fingers as if he gathered something from the touch alone. I had seen his people do this before and heard some remark about it among our men—that so the Lizard folk apparently kept records among themselves.

  I stared at his crested head and longed to speak—though I knew that the words I would mouth, even in the old tongue, would have no meaning. Only those of the Green People could speak mind to mind with all who shared the Light with them, against the Shadow.

  Suddenly, Tsali wrapped his beads once more about his wrist and. from a pouch at the belt (which was the only thing he wore over his rainbow scaled body), he brought a piece of thin, smoothed stone about the size of my flattened palm. On this were carved lines of runes, the first interfilled with flakes of gold so that they were clearly visible, the second row with red, the last with ominous black.

  I had seen such before. These were for foretelling and were used by Wise Women who had not enough of the Power to become full Witches. Yet, as Tsali held this up before my eyes, I believed that these runes were different in part.

  With the plaque still in one hand, the Lizard man reached out his other to catch at my right wrist before I knew what he would do. Holding my hand with his, he raised it until my fingers slipped over the smoothness of the stone, felt the twists and turns of the deeply graven markings. Oddly enough, the stone was not cold as I thought it would be; rather warm, as if it had rested near a fire for a space.

  Under my flesh the symbols brightened and grew more distinct. First, the gold, then the red, and at length, the black. Yet my flesh shrank from the last of those rows, for I well knew, even little learned in the Power that I was, that these last were signs of ill ome
n and despair.

  Tsali had watched as the runes came to life and faded in turn, and there was about his scaled body growing tension. For it seemed that if I could not read what I brought to brighter sparking there, he could. When at length I had pointed out the last of those symbols he took the plaque and once more stowed it away. Yet he did not leave me.

  Rather he leaned forward, his eyes focused on me in such a steady stare as compelled a like answer from me. Slowly, very slowly there came a faint stirring in my mind. At first that started me into flinching away from him, my astonishment so great that I could not believe that this was more than my imagination.

  It was not clear mind speech between us, I was too lacking in skill to handle such as that. Rather, I could sense only a query of sorts. And that had to do with something from the far past—

  But there was nothing in my past which was of note, which would send Tsali so delving into my mind. I was, perhaps, the least of the House of Hervon, and not even of the full blood of the Old Race. Or—what was I?

  For one giddy moment, I seemed to whirl back into that dream when I walked to my death in order to preserve something (or destroy it); something greater than myself, yet which had been mine. And I found that even waking I remembered now in detail that climb to the lip of the cup, the loss of the sword which had been so wholly a part of me.

  But that was only a dream—not of the here and now. I was not that stranger, death-stricken from an unknown battle. I was Yonan, the half-blood, the weakling—

  I was—both!

  How I knew this now—that I could not explain. I had heard of beliefs held by some Outlanders that, though an adept can live many lifetimes in length during his space allowed in this world, other and lesser men return, to be bom again, if some task they have been set is ill done, so that they may once more choose and act. It is hoped this time for the better.

  Was the inner me such a one? Had the dream been not fantasy but a far-off truth? Who could prove it yes or no? Only my dying walk was as real to me now as if I had indeed been a part of it—yesterday—or last night when I had thought I wandered in a dream.