by Andre Norton
“She has come—and now she must go—” the Colonel said in an even voice, much like a priest reciting some ritual. “She must go—again into the way—”
To my surprise Lisolette did not look at him at all, but she nodded eagerly.
“Yes, go free, my lady. Just as you did before when they thought they could shut you forever into the darkness! They were fools! Such great fools. Go—go quickly. And when you are on your throne again you will send for me—promise!” She clutched so tightly that the cloth of my skirts shredded even more into strips of disintegrating cloth.
“I promise—” There was nothing else I could say. She seemed unaware that the Colonel was with us. But she watched me get to my feet as she loosed her hold on me, and her eyes followed, as my companion, again with his supporting arm around me, led me around the image into the shadows where the flames from the baskets did not reach.
“She is out of her mind,” I said. “Should we leave her here—alone?”
“She is safe. Come—!” His pull on me was insistent enough to bear me along. I went, knowing that what he said was true, Lisolette knew these secret ways, had probably explored them many times over.
We faced another opening in the wall, this one behind the looming, ugly shadow cast by the squatting image. Through it, in the distance, I saw a spark of light, enough to make that open mouth of the narrow tunnel, if tunnel it was, less terrifying. The Colonel did not loose his hold on me. Perhaps he felt that, once free, I might return to the temple. Now he quickened pace, drawing me along as I had to gather up the billows of my tattered skirts so that their disintegrating folds might not trip me up.
My feet had worn through part of the thick woolen stockings and the rough stone was making me flinch and limp, but I managed to match step with him after a fashion. Now I saw that the light ahead was the candle he had taken, sitting on the floor in the midst of the way.
This had been a natural cleft in the rock and not so much had been done to smooth or convert it from that state. The Colonel let go of me at last as he stooped to pick up the candle, which, I saw to my dismay, was now hardly more than a stub.
“We must hurry,” he said imperatively, “while this lasts. There is a difficult place ahead—”
Hurry we did, his boots clicking loudly, or so the sound reached my ears, across the stone. Then he halted abruptly and threw out one arm as a barrier to bring me to a stop against it, swinging the candle out so that I could see what trap lay before us.
Whether it was of man's devising, to hide the ancient I infamous sacred place, or from subsidence of nature, we could not tell, but there was a break in the way, a gulf across which there was no bridge.
“Where do we go now?” I asked, having no wish to go closer to peer down into that dark pit opening at our feet. “Down.” He turned and surveyed me, put out one hand and jerked almost savagely at the rotting stuff of my skirt. It tore easily, fell away from me in long, frayed streamers. I gasped as I stood there now less than half clad.
“You could not climb in that,” he said impatiently. “Now.” He set the candle back on the floor of the crevice and caught at me again. “Over—there are holds for feet and hands—”
I wanted to scream that I dared not, that it was impossible for me to even try. But there was something in this man which allowed me no escape, I knew that what he ordered, that I would do—if my body could obey at all.
“I will go first, then I can guide you.” He made the candlestick fast to his belt at the back, anchoring it there with tugs to make sure of its safety, by rags torn from his shirt. Then he swung over the edge of the drop. Against my will, against every quivering nerve in my body, I made myself creep to that same lip of rock and watch him descend. He went only a little way and looked up to me.
“Turn around,” he ordered. “Slip over, I shall guide your feet to the first holds. Come!”
I did as he commanded, that which moments earlier I would have sworn I could never have faced. His fingers clasped my ankle, drew my foot down until it fitted ‘ into a hole in the stone, then the same with the other foot. Fly like, and for what seemed like hours of giddy torment, we descended in that slow fashion, always his grasp finding the places for my feet, while I gained a little courage and was able to free my frozen hold on one set of supports and allow him to guide me to the next.
Yet when we reached the bottom of what seemed to me a gulf without end, and I leaned weakly against the wall, gasping and wet with sweat so that my chemise and the torn bodice were plastered to my body, I was not even sure that I had done this at all, that it was not some kind of a nightmare.
I looked around half-dazed. He was holding the candle once again in a firm grip, half-shielded by one hand, for there was a current of air moving here which we had not felt in those stagnant ways above. There was something else, too—something that that light caught upon.
With a choked cry I pushed back against the rock which grated against my bared shoulders. A skull lay almost at my feet. Its black, blank eyeholes stared straight at me. And it was part of a huddle of bones, small bones, slender. The candlelight, dim as it was, caught a glint of metal and my companion stooped again, reaching out for what lay there.
He had held the light so close that I could see it—or did it, by some strange and eerie chance, take on for one instant some burning life of its own, making itself so known to us, enticing us to take it up? It was a medallion, set, I think, with gems, only jewels could have so sent up those points of glitter. It I had seen before—or the symbol of it—the sign Ludovika had carved below her name in the cell she had known.
“Don't!” My cry echoed from the walls about us. I found the strength to lean forward, to clutch at his bruised and scratched shoulder, dragging back his hand when he would have picked that up.
“It's hers, Ludovika's.” My voice sounded hysterical in my own ears. “It's—it's evil! Leave it—please leave it!”
He arose, to stand for a long moment gazing down at the huddle of delicate bones. “So—this is where she ended,” he said slowly, “to become a legend— She must have tried to escape. Rumor was always strong that she had followers in strange places, and that which we left above was surely no shrine for good.”
“Can we go? Oh, please, let us get away from here!” I edged along the wall, away from the bones, but more truthfully away from that which lay among them. My hand, I had caught my left hand with my right, held it tight against my breast. It seemed that my own flesh fought against me, that a compulsion to pick up that unholy symbol was so great that I must dig my nails punishingly into my flesh to prevent my taking it. I knew then there did lie some queer spell upon this place and that I must summon all the strength of will I had to stand against it.
My companion seemed unmoved. He turned away from the tumble of bones with apparently no great effort. Only now he came to me and once more put his arm, strong and warm, about my shrinking body, drawing me on to the left, leaving that strange tomb of a woman who had known too much about things better left alone.
We did not have far to go before the air about us was fresh. Our candle flickered and went out, but I suddenly did not care. I was not alone and the wind which touched us carried the scent of growing things, the cleanness of the outer world, driving away the musty dankness of Wallenstein.
Together we scraped a way between two great rocks which masked the entrance to the cleft, fought a painful path among bushes which scratched and tore at our already rent clothing, until I feared that I would finally emerge totally bare of body.
“There is a forester's hut.” My companion's voice was a whisper out of the dark, but the warmth of his body was still beside me. “We must reach there—it is unoccupied now.”
He must have carried his earlier explorations for some distance before returning just in time to save my life. For, that he had done so as Lisolette's mad obsession had overwhelmed her, I could not deny. Now he moved easily through the dark as if he had known this path, if path it was, fo
r a long time.
I found the dark bewildering, for the night was clouded, and though Lisolette had spoken of a moon, there was certainly none to be seen. However, I was able to sight the rise of a darker bulk before us. The Colonel loosened his hold on me for a moment or two. I heard the creaking of some door, and then once more his hand reached out and I was drawn inside into greater darkness.
“Stand where you are. Let me close the door and then we shall have a light.”
I was very willing. That we had come safely out of Wallenstein seemed at that moment to be such a great and unbelievable venture that I felt dazed and queer, even stupid. I could hear movements in the dark and then the candle, or a candle, blazed from a spark.
“Here, my lady.” The candle was on a rude table, but he had left it there to catch up from somewhere a coarse cloak which he flung about me. For the first time I felt the heat of my own flush as I realized what a figure I must present. However, the folds of the cloak covered me and my rags and now I was able to look about me with some equanimity.
Chapter 18
Dawn made gray what sky I could see through the small crack where I had dared loose the inner shutter and peer out. The tainted wood which came so close to the base of that rock supporting Wallenstein formed a forbidding wall before me. I could not sight a single promising path or opening.
I pulled the cloak, which was nearly my only covering, closer about me. Fatigue and the wear upon my nerves of the night's work had struck me down earlier. I could remember only dimly of lying upon a shelf like bed. Still there had been a warmth which was not born of any fire, the warmth of knowing that there was indeed one I could trust and who cared what happened to me. We had spoken together very little. That last struggle which had brought us out of immediate danger had reduced us to just accepting the fact that so far we were indeed free.
Now anxiety awoke in me again. So close to WalIenstein —and with only a demented girl a barrier between us and the knowledge of our enemies as to where we could be found. I had already clutched tightly many times over that bag of gold which was my strongest hope of future help for us both.
There was a stir in the dusky room of the shelter. I turned swiftly, having made fast once again the shutter. In the more than half dark my companion was only a dull white figure rising from a pallet which had faced mine across the room. I heard him grunt and utter some heated words under his breath and knew that his bruises and scrapes were not easy to bear.
However, he moved alertly, as a man who is trained in the instant response of a soldier under danger, coming to the table to light once more the candle. The tatters of his shirt were gone and on his wide shoulders and chest the marks of his hurts showed dark. Those must have given him pain and I wished that I had to hand some remedy to soothe them. Now I had not even water.
Water—! The sudden thought of it made me thirsty. Just as I also knew hunger.
“No sign of trouble?” He broke the silence between us as if I were a junior officer he was asking for a report.
“I saw nothing but the woods.”
He had gone to a cupboard fastened to the wall and now jerked open the door of that. “Bare,” he commented, “at least of any food. But we may be in luck otherwise—” With a long arm he swept out a bundle and brought it to the table. What he shook out there was clothing.
“Changes for bad weather perhaps,” he commented as he shook out and held up in the light some pieces of what looked to me the coarse stuff a peasant might wear. There were several shirts, a leather vest, and a pair of breeches, the latter spotted with dark patches. The smell of them, mildewed and worse, reached me clear across the room. “Not pretty, no.” He must have seen my wrinkled nose. “But when the devil drives, one does not pick one's way. And we cannot wander on in our present state.”
I was blushing again, and I squirmed a little under the protection of the cloak. Clothes had suddenly become important. While his state was little better, his breeches, in spite of showing many smears and smudges, were not torn. However he had a more villainous look, for the sprouting of a beard added a great deal to the general grim cast of his face, and his hair was an untidy thatch grayed with dust and standing very much on end.
“Where do we go?” I tried to be as matter-of-fact as he.
“Now, that”—he had seated himself on one edge of the table, swinging one foot, covered by a much scratched and battered boot, back and forth—“is an excellent question. The chase will be up—is up, of course, right now. This is largely deserted country. Any we would find hereabouts would be of the sort better avoided. They would turn us in for a copper.”
“I have money—” I brought forth the bag I had carried in secret for so long, and went to the table to empty it out.
He whistled as I brushed aside as worthless the parchment which had been one of the things to draw me into this tangle, and pushed forward the gold.
“This also—” I parted the cloak at my throat enough to indicate the necklace, which seemed to me now a collar of slavery and which I would willingly have dropped back there beside that unholy medallion of the Electress Ludovika.
“Hide that!” His command came instantly. “Such could well betray you— Its existence is known to those who you have the most reason to fear.”
He frowned down at the gold, not as if he saw the money, but rather was mulling over some thoughts of his own. “We need food, shelter—”
“And a way to get out of this cursed country!” My resentment of all which had happened to me boiled over that moment.
“And a way out,” he agreed. “Which is not going to be easily found. Oh, if we can reach the border we may be able to slip across by some smugglers’ route. If we can move fast enough—or you can— When they find me gone I shall be their first quarry. Your presence there may still be a guarded secret and they will not dare to hunt you too openly,”
I made my choice, only it was no choice at all, I realized, even as I spoke. “We go together. I am your charge—” That was an admission I had never thought to make, one which earlier would have outraged all the belief in myself which my grandmother had fostered. Still it was the truth—this escape must be our common venture to the last. What would the last be? I wondered fleetingly, and straightway sealed any such thought away.
‘Truda told me that her family has an inn near the border, there are coaches passing there on their way to some spa.” But would we dare approach that? And what of Truda? Was she, too, a prisoner in the same dark pile from which we had managed to escape? If so—how could I leave her there? She had been drawn into this affair only through me. “Truda—”—I spoke my thoughts aloud—“was she there?”
“Truda.” Again it was as if he had dropped into his own thoughts. “I wonder— Yes.” He did not give me any easy hope. “She may well have been so silenced. However, we cannot remain here.”
Once more he set turning over the clothing he had found. A shirt and a pair of breeches were pushed in my direction.
“Luckily this is not thickly settled land. These are the best to be offered to you, my lady.”
I eyed the musty garments with disfavor, knowing that he was right—I had to have something to cover my present near-naked body. Modesty in these circumstances was all a matter of degree. But I limped as I went to pick up what he had sorted out. My feet were bare now and sore from the rocky ways, though during our escape I had not been so aware of that small difficulty among such larger ones.
He gave a quick exclamation, and, before I knew what he was about or could elude him, I found myself swung up to sit on the table while he brought my feet, still ringed about with the worn-through stockings, into the full light of the candle. I flinched at his touch and saw that old grim look settle about his mouth.
“Shoes—boots—” He turned back to burrow once more in the cupboard but apparently could find nothing. “Wrappings will have to do, my lady. But whether you can manage—”
“I shall,” I vowed. He would not see me flinc
h again. Already he was tearing one of the other shirts into long strips, and, with a deftness I would not have believed him capable of (was there nothing he could not turn his hand to?), he began wrapping those firmly about my sore feet. I caught my lip between my teeth and bit hard upon it, refusing to let him know what pain his ministrations cost me.
Having put one layer about and secured that with knots at my ankles, he strode back across the small room and picked up from a stand by the empty fireplace a small hand axe, together with a billet of wood which he split quickly, ripping away the bark which still covered what had once been a sizable branch.
I fumbled beneath the cloak, guessing what he was about, and brought out that cord-wrapped knife that had been such a threat in Lisolette's hands.
“Will this serve better?”
“Good!” He caught it from me eagerly, and, again with a skill I found hard to believe was part of the knowledge of such a man, he shaped the bark into two patterns, measuring them against my bandaged feet before he bound them on with more wrappings, sitting back at last on his heels to look up at me soberly.
“The best I can do—”
“You have done better than I could hope.” I resolutely refused to acknowledge the twinges his actions caused. “I would not have thought of such an answer. Now—do we go?”
He went to that same lookout I had found by the shutter and peered out.
“I would say wait until night, but we cannot do without food, water—and we are far too near to Wallenstein. If they discover Lisolette, she may well tell them all—”
I caught up the clothes he sorted out and slipped from the table. He was already pulling on a stained shirt, drawing over that the leather vest which strained across his shoulders as he started toward the door. When that closed behind him I threw aside the cloak, dropped the torn remnants of the two petticoats which had not survived well the rigors of our flight. The breeches were large and they smelled strongly, but I drew them on, belting them with a tie torn from my top petticoat, while the shirt covered the low-cut chemise. The wreck of the red bodice and my other discards I made into a tight package as I put on the cloak once more. I had rebraided my hair as best I could and tied the ends also with rags, tucking the lengths under the collar of the cloak.