by Andre Norton
Puzzled, Craike went back to the building. The stone was undressed, yet the huge blocks which formed its base were fitted together with such precision that he suspected he could not force the thin blade of a pocket knife into any crack. There had been no effort at ornamentation, at any lightening of the impression of sullen, brute force.
Wood, split and insect-bored, formed a door. As he put his hand to it Craike discovered the guardian the long-ago owners of the fortress had left in possession. His hands went to his head; the blow he felt might have been physical. Out of the stronghold before him came such a wave of utter terror and dark promise as to force him back, but no farther than the edge of the paved square about the building’s foundation.
Grimly he faced that challenge, knowing it for stored emotion and not the weapon of an active will. He had his own defense against such a formless enemy. Breaking a dead branch from a bush, he twisted about it wisps of the sun-bleached grass until he had a torch of sorts. A piece of smoldering tinder blown from the fire gave him a light.
Craike put his shoulder to the powdery remnants of the door, bursting it wide. Light against dark. What lurked there was nourished by dark, fed upon the night fears of his species.
The round room was bare except for some crumbling sticks of wood, a series of steps jutting out from the wall to curve about and vanish above. Craike made no move toward further exploration, holding up the torch, seeking to see the real, not the threat of this place.
Those who had built it possessed Esper talents, and they had used that power for twisted purposes. He read terror and despair trapped here by the castellans’ art, and horror, an abiding fog of what his race considered evil.
Tentatively Craike began to fight. With the torch he brought light and heat into the dark and cold. Now he struggled to offer peace. Just as he had pictured a girl in flight in place of the doe, so did he now force upon those invisible clouds of stored suffering calm and hope. The gray window slits in the stone were uncurtained to the streaming sunlight.
Those who had set that guardian had not intended it to hold against an Esper. Once he began the task, Craike found the opposition melting. The terror seeped as if it sank into the floor wave by wave. He stood in a room which smelt of damp and, more faintly, of the rotting food piled below its window slits; but now it was only an empty shell.
Craike was tired, drained by his effort; and he was puzzled. Why had he fought for this? Of what importance to him was the cleansing of a ruined tower?
Though to stay here had certain advantages. It had been erected to control river traffic. Though that did not matter for the present; just now he needed food more.
He went back to the rock of offerings, treading a wary path through the disintegrating stuff. Close to the edge he came upon a clay bowl containing coarsely ground grain and, beside it, a basket of wilted leaves filled with overripe berries. He ate in gulps.
Grass made him a matted bed in the tower, and he kindled the fire. As he squatted before its flames, he sent out a questing thought. A big cat drank from the river. Craike shuddered away from that contact with blood lust. A night-hunting bird provided a trace of awareness. There were small rovers and hunters, but nothing human.
Tired though he was, Craike could not sleep. There was the restless sensation of some demand about to be made, some task waiting. From time to time he fed the fire. Toward morning he dozed, to snap awake. A night creature drinking and a screech overhead. He heard the flutter of wings echo hollowly through the tower.
Beyond was that curious blank which had fallen between him and the girl. Craike got to his feet eagerly. That blank could be traced.
Outside it was raining, and fog hung in murky bands among the river hollows. The blank spot veered. Craike started after it. The tower pavement became a trace of old road he followed, weaving through the fog.
There was the sour smell of old smoke. Charred wood, black muck clung to his feet. But his guide point was now stationary as the ground rose, studded with outcrops of rock. So Craike came to a mesa jutting up into a steel gray sky.
He hitched his way up by way of a long-ago slide. The rain had stopped, but there was no hint of sun. He was unprepared for the greeting he met as he topped the lip of a small plateau.
A violent blow on the shoulder whirled him halfway around, and only by a finger’s width did he escape a fall. A cry echoed his, and the blank broke. She was there.
Moving slowly, using the same technique he knew to sooth frightened animals, Craike raised himself again. The pain in his shoulder was sharp when he tried to put much weight upon his left arm. But now he saw her clearly.
She sat cross-legged, a boulder at her back, her hair a rippling cloud of black through which her hands and arms shown starkly white. She had the thin, three-cornered face of a child who has known much harshness. There was no beauty there; the flesh had been too much worn by spirit. Only her eyes, watchful-wary as those of a feline, considered him bleakly. In spite of his beam of good will, she gave him no welcome. And she tossed another stone from hand to hand with the ease of one who had already scored with such a weapon.
“Who are you?” she spoke aloud.
“He who followed you.” Craike fingered the bruise on his shoulder, not taking his eyes from hers.
“You are no Black Hood.” It was a statement, not a question. “But you, also, have been horned.” That was another statement.
Craike nodded. In his own time and place he had indeed been “horned.”
Just as her thrown stone had struck without warning, so came her second attack. There was a hiss. Within striking distance a snake flickered a forked tongue.
Craike did not give ground. The snake head expanded, fur ran over it; there were legs, a plume of tail fluffed. A dog fox yapped once at the girl and vanished. Craike read her recoil, the first uncertainty.
“You have the power!”
“I have power.” He corrected her.
But her attention was no longer his. She was listening to something he could hear with neither ear nor mind. Then she ran to the edge of the mesa. He followed.
On this side the country was more rolling, and across it now came mounted men moving in and out of mist pools. They rode in silence, and over them was the same blanketing of thought as the girl had used.
Craike glanced about. There were loose stones; and the girl had already proven her marksmanship with such. But they would be no answer to the weapons the others had. Flight was no solution either.
The girl sobbed once, a broken cry so unlike the iron will she had shown that Craike started. She leaned perilously over the drop, staring down at the horsemen.
Then her hands moved with desperate speed. She tore hairs from her head, twisted and snarled them between her fingers, breathed on them, looped them with a stone for weight, casting the tangled mass out to land before the riders.
The mist curled and took on substance. Where there had been only rock there was now a thicket of thorn, so knotted that no flesh creature could push through it. The hunters paused, then they rode on again, but now they drove a reeling, naked man, a man kept going by a lashing whip whenever he faltered.
Again the girl sobbed, burying her face in her hands. The wretched captive reached the thorn barrier. Under his touch it melted. He stood there, weaving drunkenly.
A whip sang. He went to his knees under its cut; a trapped animal’s wail went on the wind. Slowly, with a blind seeking, his hands went out to small stones about him. He gathered them, spread them anew in patterns. The girl had raised her head, watching dry-eyed, but seething with hate and the need to strike back. But she did not move.
Craike dared lay a hand on her narrow shoulder, feeling through her hair the chill of her skin, while the hair itself clung to his fingers as if it had the will to smother and imprison. He tried to pull her away, but he could not move her.
The naked man crouched in the midst of his pattern, and now he chanted, a compelling call the girl could not withstand. She wren
ched free of Craike’s hold. But as she went she spared a thought for the man who had tried to save her. She struck out, her fist landing on the stone bruise. Pain sent him reeling back as she went over to the rim of the mesa, her face a mask which no friend nor enemy might read. But there was no resignation in her eyes as she was forced to the meeting below.
IV
By the time Craike reached a vantage point the girl stood in the center of the stone ring. Outside crouched the man, his head on his knees. She looked down at him, no emotion showing on her wan face. Then she dropped her hand on his thatch of wild hair. He jerked under that touch as he had under the whip which had printed the scarlet weals across his back and loins. But he raised his head, and from his throat came a beast’s mournful howl. At her gesture he was quiet, edging closer to her as if seeking some easement of his suffering.
The Black Hood drew in. Craike’s probe could make nothing of them. But they could not hide their emotions as well as they concealed their thoughts. The Esper recoiled from the avid blood lust which lapped at the two by the cliff.
A semicircle of the black jerkined retainers moved, too. The man who had led them lay on the earth now, moaning softly, but the girl faced them, head unbowed. Craike wanted to aid her. Had he time to climb down the cliff? Clenching his teeth against the pain movement brought to his shoulder, the Esper went back, holding a mind shield as a frail protection.
Directly before him now was one of the guards. His mount caught Craike’s scent, stirred uneasily, until the quieting thought of the Esper held it steady. Craike had never been forced into such action as he had these past few days. He had no real plan now; it must depend upon chance and fortune.
As if the force of her enemies’ wills had slammed her back against the rock, the girl was braced by the cliff wall, a black and white figure.
Mist swirled, took on half substance of a monstrous form, was swept away in an instant. A clump of dried grass broke into flame, sending the ponies stamping and snorting. It was gone, leaving a black smudge on the earth. Illusions, realities—Craike watched. This was so far beyond his own experience that he could hardly comprehend the lightning moves of mind against mind. But he sensed these others could beat down the girl’s resistance at any moment they desired, that her last futile struggles were being relished by those who decreed this as part of her punishment.
And Craike, who had believed that he could never hate more than he had when he had been touched by the fawning “hound” of the mob, was filled with a rage tempered into a chill of steel determination.
The girl went to her knees, still clutching her hair about her, facing her tormentors with her still-held defiance. Now the man who had wrought the magic which had drawn her there crawled, all humanity gone out of him, wriggling on his belly back to his captors.
Two of the guards jerked him up. He hung limp in their hands, his mouth open in an idiot’s grin. Callously, as he might tread upon a worm, the nearest Black Hood waved a hand. A metal ax flashed, and there came the dull sound of cracking bone. The guards pitched the body from them so that the bloodied head almost touched the girl.
She writhed a last frenzied attempt to break the force which pinned her. Without haste the guards advanced. One caught at her hair, pulling it tautly from her head.
Craike shivered. The thrill of her agony reached him. This was what she feared most and had fought so long to prevent. If ever, he must move now. And that part of his brain which had been feverishly seeking a plan went into action.
Ponies pawed, reared and went wild with panic. One of the Black Hoods swung around to face the terrorized animals. But his own mount struck out with teeth and hooves. Guardsmen shouted, and above their cries arose the shrill squeals of the animals.
Craike stood his ground, keeping the ponies in terror-stricken revolt. The guard who held the handful of hair slashed at the tress with a knife, severing it at a palm’s distance away from her head. But in the same moment she moved. The knife leaped free from the man’s grasp, while the severed hair twined itself about his hands, binding them until the blade buried itself in his throat and he went down.
One of the Black Hoods was also finished, tramped into a feebly squirming thing by the ponies. Then from the ground burst a sheet of flame which split into balls, drifting through the air or rolling along the earth.
The Esper wet his lips; that was not his doing. He did not have to feed the panic of the animals now; they were truly mad. The girl was on her feet. Before his thought could reach her she was gone, swallowed up in a mist which arose to blanket the fire balls. Once more she cut their contact; there was a blank void where she had been.
Now the fog thickened. Through it came one of the ponies, foam dripping from its blunt muzzle. It bore down on Craike, eyes gleaming red through a tangled forelock. With a scream it reared.
Craike’s hand grabbed a handful of mane as he leaped, avoiding teeth and hooves. Then, somehow, he gained the pad saddle, locking his fingers in the coarse hair, striving to hold his seat against the bucking, enraged beast. It broke into a run, and the Esper plastered himself to the heaving body. For the moment he made no attempt at mind control.
Behind, the Black Hoods came out of their stunned bewilderment. They were questing feverishly, and he had to concentrate on holding his shield against them. A pony fleeing in terror would not excite them; a pony under control would provide them with a target.
Later he could circle about and try to pick up the trail of the witch girl. Flushed with success, Craike was sure he could provide her with a rear guard no Black Hood could pass.
The fog was thick, and the pace of the pony began to slacken. Once or twice it bucked half-heartedly, giving up when it could not dislodge its rider. Craike drew his fingers in slow, soothing sweeps down the sweating curve of its neck.
There were no more trees about, and the unshod hooves pounded on sand. They were in a dried water course, and Craike did not try to turn from that path. Then his luck ran out.
What he had ignorantly supposed to be a rock ahead, heaved up seven feet or more. A red mouth opened in a great roar. He had believed the bear he had seen fleeing the fire to be a giant, but this one was a nightmare monster.
The pony screamed with an almost human note of despair and whirled. Craike gripped the mane and tried to mind control the bear. But his surprise had lasted seconds too long. A vast clawed paw struck, ripping across pony hide and human thigh. Then Craike could only cling to the running mount.
How long he was able to keep his seat he never knew. Then he slipped; there was a throb of pain as he struck the ground; it was followed by blackness.
It was dusk when he opened his eyes, fighting agony in his head and his leg. But later there was moonlight. And that silver-white spotlighted a waiting shape. Green slits of eyes regarded him remotely. Dizzily he made contact.
A wolf, hungry, yet with a wariness which recognized in the prone man an enemy. Craike fought for control. The wolf whined. Then it arose, its prick ears sharp-cut in the moonlight, its nose questing for the scent of other, less disturbing prey; and it was gone.
Craike edged up against a boulder and sorted out sounds. There was a rush of water. He moved a paper-dry tongue over cracked lips. There would be water to drink, to wash his wounds, water!
With a groan Craike worked his way to his feet, holding fast to the top of the rock when his torn leg threatened to buckle under him. The same inner drive which had kept him going through the desert brought him down to the river.
By sunrise he was seeking a shelter, wanting to lie up, as might the wolf, in some secret cave until his wounds healed. All chance of finding the witch girl was lost. But as he crawled along the shingle, leaning on a staff he had found in drift wood, he kept alert for any trace of the Black Hoods.
It was mid-morning on the second day that his snail’s progress brought him to the river towers; and it took another hour for him to reach the terrace. Gaunt and worn, his empty stomach complaining, he wanted nothing
more than to sink down in the nest of grass he had gathered and cease to struggle.
Perhaps he might have done so had not a click-clack of sound from the river put him on the defensive; his staff was now a club. These were not Black Hoods, but farmers, local men bound for the market of Sampur with products from their fields. They had paused and were making a choice among the least appetizing of their wares for a tribute to be offered to the tower demon.
Craike hitched stiffly to a point where he could witness that sacrifice. But when he assessed the contents of their dugout, the heaping basket piled between the paddlers, his hunger took command.
Fob off a demon with a handful of meal and a too-ripe melon would they? There were three haunches of cured meat and other stuff on board.
Craike voiced a roar which could have done credit to the red bear, a roar which altered into a demand for meat. The paddlers nearly lost control of their crude craft. But one reached for a haunch and threw it blindly on the refuse-covered rock, while his companion added a basket of small cakes into the bargain.
“Enough, little men,” Craike’s voice boomed hollowly. “You may pass free.”
They needed no urging; they did not look at those threatening towers as their paddles bit into the water, adding impetus to the pull of the current.
Craike watched them well out of sight before he made a slow descent to the rock. The effort he was forced to expend warned him that a second such trip might be impossible, and he inched back to the terrace dragging both meat and cakes.
The cured haunch he worried into strips, using his pocket knife. It was tough, not too pleasant to the taste and unsalted. But he found it more appetizing than the cakes of baked meal. With this supply he could afford to lie up and favor his leg.
About the claw rents the flesh was red and puffed. Craike had no dressing but river water and the leaves he had tied over the tears. Sampur was beyond his power to reach, and to contact men traveling on the river would only bring the Black Hoods.