by Andre Norton
“Hearken to me,” Smire commanded. “Master Tull finds that his spells require the sun's rays, so we must wait out the night. Thou shalt sleep here, where I may keep watch.”
“And Master Tull?” asked Nolar. “Where shall he sleep?”
“That is naught of thy concern,” Smire retorted, then had second thoughts. “But what matter if I do tell thee? To my master alone belongs the solitary vigil by the Stone, Witch. We lesser wights must bide apart until summoned.” He sniffed the air ostentatiously. “Hast thou not prepared hot food?”
Nettled, Nolar replied, “Our supplies are scant. I have moistened some fruit for Elgaret, and Master Derren has eaten the last of our dried meat. If you have other food to be heated, pray fetch it.”
Smire grinned, like a sharp-fanged weasel. “Give me that other dried fruit. What else hast thou to set before a hungry man? Of course, once the Stone is fully revived, we shall have no need for food here at all.”
Nolar's heart lurched. Elgaret had said that she sensed strange constraints on the Stone. Could it be that Tull's mastery of the Stone was actually less than he claimed? Why else would he require additional Power from Nolar and her friends? She busied herself setting out the remnants of their food.
“There is a bit of meal,” she said, “and some nuts, I think … and, yes, a pot of wild plum jam. The journeycake was broken in the rockslide, but some fragments are still edible.”
As Smire wolfed down an alarming proportion of the food, Nolar tried to probe for useful information. “You said that the Stone must be revived. But I thought that Master Tull had already drawn freely upon it to … impress Master Derren.”
“Works better in sunlight,” mumbled Smire, his mouth full. Nolar handed him one of the wine flasks that Tull had sent them on the trail. Smire downed most of its contents in two gulps.
Nolar suddenly recalled Morfew's voice reading aloud from the inscribed cloth. “ ‘So long as the light of the sun cannot fall upon it, shall all be safe.’ “ Ostbor had told Nolar very little regarding things of the Shadow. As Elgaret had just said, such perils were supposed to be confined to the far past, safely forgotten. Only … Nolar's spirit cringed as she had to accept what was being thrust upon her. If she was right in her awful guess, then Tull and Smire were from the far past.
But that part about the light of the sun—it seemed perversely backwards. Light was supposed to be the opposing force to the Shadow and all its evil trappings. If the sun's light were required for the Stone of Konnard to loose its Power, then it must not have become wholly a thing of the Shadow. And yet, Nolar was certain that Tull intended to use the Stone for evil ends. What could she do? What could any of them do?
Elgaret had her Witch Jewel, but surely its Power was miniscule compared to that of the Stone of Konnard. Her own shard had been cut from the larger Stone, and Nolar could feel it in her pocket, gently pulsing with warmth. So long as that source of strength sustained her, perhaps all was not yet lost. If only she knew more! Nolar felt sure that a true master of the Stone could expel Tull, defeat him utterly, and restore the Stone to its true purpose: healing.
She forced herself to look casually at Smire. He seemed to be half-asleep, the wine flask lolling slackly between his fingers. Could she dare try to ease Derren's dagger out of Smire's boot top? No.
Smire yawned and dropped the empty flask on the floor. “Best that thou rest thyself, Witch,” he taunted her. “Master Tull will likely require all of thy energy on the morrow.”
Nolar unpacked their spare blankets and settled Elgaret at a safe distance from one of the braziers, then rolled herself in her cloak and lay down near Derren.
Smire slyly glanced around, and appropriated Tull's great chair for himself. To Nolar's dismay, Smire now looked wide awake. He drew Derren's dagger from his boot and proceeded to carve notches on a segment of wood that he had broken away from Derren's litter frame.
Nolar despised her helplessness. She believed that Derren would try to defend her and Elgaret as best he could, but his only weapons had been lost in the rockslide or seized by Smire. With his legs injured, Derren certainly couldn't leap up and hope to overcome Smire by surprise.
Troubled, Nolar squirmed within her cloak as the cold seeped up from the floor. With her eyes shut, she was more aware that her shard's pulsing had changed to a more constant presence, almost a steady glow in her mind, as if it were a source of mental light. As Nolar concentrated on that effect, she was startled to sense a second “light” in the surrounding darkness. It was a harder light, somehow more brittle, crystalline—of course!
It must be Elgaret's Jewel. But … there was a third gleam in the mind-space. It was erratic, undirected, erupting in little leafy-green spurts. Surely it could not emanate from Smire. Nolar cautiously tried to probe where Smire was, and was rewarded by a mental impression of such deadly cold lightlessness that her whole being recoiled. No, that third spark of mental light had to be coming from … Derren.
Before Nolar could reach out, tentatively, toward it, a sickening vibration twanged along her nerves. Tull. The mage had to be focusing his Power on the Stone of Konnard. As her mind grew more attuned to the subtleties of this insubstantial inner realm of Power, Nolar could sense, if only obliquely, the broad thrusts of Tull's technique. He was addressing the Stone of Konnard, exhorting it as if it were a living mind to be persuaded. He was coaxing, wheedling, cajoling. Nolar wanted to cry out, “NO! Do not listen! He plans to thieve your Power and use it for ill!” Her very impulse to warn was beaten back by the unheeding pressure of Tull's spells. Nolar was mentally voiceless, stricken mind-dumb, just as she had been physically paralyzed by Tull's earlier spell. Unbidden, a vision slid into her mind of a great sphere of dull gray stone rolling inexorably forward. Although the shining essence of her life, Elgaret's, and Derren's lay exposed before it, the stone ground onward. Despair and blackness swept over Nolar, afflicting her with repose without rest and sleep without dreams.
Nolar was awakened by Smire, who roughly shook her by the shoulder.
“Arise, Witch!” Smire ordered. “This day thou art required to serve my master in all that he demands. Nay, do not tarry to feed the hag. I am to bring all three of thee to my master without delay.”
Derren was lying still, either genuinely asleep or feigning stupor. Nolar longed for a private word with Derren, but Smire scooped up the Borderer in his arms.
“Follow me,” Smire commanded. “Lead the hag thyself. Hurry!”
Nolar anxiously eased Elgaret to her feet. The Witch squeezed her hand in covert reassurance, still maintaining her outward appearance of oblivious withdrawal.
Smire preceded them through a narrow passageway barely illuminated by faint early dawn light seeping in from beyond. Nolar had no chance to whisper to Elgaret, for Smire kept glancing back to be sure she was following closely.
No furred or fabric hanging shielded the opening into the Chamber of the Stone. Huge slabs of rock flanked the entrance, one tilted well out of vertical. Nolar assumed that the Turning had shifted the slabs. When she moved into the chamber itself, she saw just how the Turning had everything to do with the literal exposure of the Stone of Konnard. Ample light illuminated the Stone, because the Turning had displaced and splintered the roof slabs, opening the chamber to the cold, pale sky. The light of the sun, she realized, was indeed once more able to fall directly upon the Stone.
It loomed in the center of the chamber, a tapered mass of stone, perhaps seven feet high at its peak, widening to five or more feet at its base, where it was over three feet thick. It reminded Nolar of drawings she had seen of ancient shields made to protect the warrior's entire body. Its surface matched that of her shard, smoothed, even polished, basically cream and white in color, veined with dark green and some spangled streaks of crystalline material that instantly brought the Witch's Jewel to mind.
As soon as she stepped within the chamber, Nolar knew exactly where her shard had been chiseled away—down on the left, near the back of
the base. Somehow, she had expected that the Stone would reclaim its fragment, but she felt no attraction drawing her shard to the main mass. Nolar was, however, keenly aware of the vast store of Power resident in the actual Stone of Konnard. Her shard projected only the slightest hint of its parent's puissance. She could have stood for hours, gazing at the intricate patterns lacing beneath the clear, polished surface, but Smire, having stretched Derren out on the rough stone floor, grasped Nolar's arm and drew her to one side.
Seizing Elgaret by both arms, Smire pushed her down to sit on a stone block that had fallen down from the shattered roof. There were no chairs or furniture in this chamber, except for one low table of black wood set squarely in front of the Stone.
Nolar glanced curiously at the three objects lying on the table, gasped, and wrenched her gaze away.
Smire saw her aversive reaction and laughed. “Thou dost not care for Master Tull's implements, eh, Witch?”
Nolar merely shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. The three items should have been innocuous enough: a pierced metal hand bell, a long-bladed dagger with an ornate hilt, and a small brazier containing only a handful of coals. But each of them was made of the dull black metal that so offended Nolar's every fiber. Their aspect was so totally evil that Nolar viewed them with both mental and physical loathing. A thought beat frantically in her mind: if that hideous bell should sound, she feared that she would go mad.
Smire waved a hand casually at the objects, but Nolar noticed that he made no move to touch any of them.
“Master Tull exerted considerable effort to summon these needful things,” Smire boasted. “When we were dispatched hither,” he said, grimacing at remembered injury, “all of his magical implements were denied to him. They allowed only the furnishings of the one chamber to accompany us.”
So that explained the scarcity of furniture and supplies, Nolar thought. Her stomach twisted within her as she realized that the food that Tull had sent to them was not from last year's storage, but had truly been over a thousand years preserved by magic.
Tull himself suddenly swept into the chamber, making up for his lack of physical presence by an aggressive energy of movement. “My hour has come,” he proclaimed. “It is time to commence!”
Despite his tone of supreme confidence, Nolar thought that he looked overstrained. His eyes had a feverish sheen like those of a sick man after a wasting illness.
Tull took his place before the table, running a finger lovingly down the dark blade of the dagger. “The night was long,” he said, “but I have employed it to splendid account. I have made a Seeking, and I find a most heartening absence of all those meddlesome vermin against whom lately I strove. I am thus totally free to pursue my original goal, the achievement of which they so cravenly prevented before.”
Nolar drew a deep breath, and said quietly, “A thousand years and more have passed since your time. All has changed. A second Turning of the mountains has broken the spell that imprisoned you. Those who bested you are indeed gone.”
She had not thought that Tull could turn any more pale, but his face blanched at this news.
Smire was similarly shocked. “A thousand years?” he whispered hoarsely. “Master. What shall we do?”
Tull drew himself up, his expression hardening into a fanatical mask. “So that is why I cannot sense them: they have all perished!” He gave a wild shriek of laughter. “Dost thou not see, Smire? I am now the only Great One left. This world is mine. I have but to use the Stone to open a Gate, and my Power shall know no limits!”
Tull stabbed a finger at the brazier, which burst into murky flame. As Tull chanted, Nolar felt again the horrid paralysis deadening her limbs. With her last conscious strength, she slid her shard out of her pocket, clutching it in her right hand. Its warmth pulsed through her palm, then spread up her arm. The dead numbness retreated. Could the shard's Power block Tull's spell? Would there be time for it to restore feeling to the rest of her body?
Tull gestured at Elgaret, who rose slowly to her feet. Her left hand reached toward her throat, and suddenly her Jewel blazed openly on its chain, outside her robe. Smire looked startled, but Tull seemed untroubled, evidently assuming that he was still in full control of events.
Nolar wondered whether the Witches of Tull's time had possessed Jewels, and if not, suspected that Tull might well be underestimating Elgaret as an opponent.
Derren, too, amazingly, was moving, raising his body to a sitting position. Without the internal support of her shard, Nolar could not understand how Derren was able to move at all, yet his right hand was creeping up to his throat.
Tull's eye caught the movement, and he paused to peer at the Borderer. “What have we here? Another amulet? Have it out, then,” he demanded, “where we may see it.”
Derren struggled to extract a silver leaf-shaped medallion hung on a chain around his neck. His hand fell back, spent by the exertion.
Tull dismissed the amulet with a scornful snap of his fingers. “The token of some forest godling, I've no doubt. Little good it will do thee here! Disturb me no further; I approach the heart of this spell.”
He was interrupted by a calm, decisive voice. “Not so.”
It was Elgaret, but an Elgaret of such imposing presence that Nolar could feel the Power radiating from her. The Witch's eyes were open, one clear, the other dimmed, and her hands moved freely to enfold her Jewel.
“You are out of your proper time, Mage,” Elgaret said firmly. “Both you and your wicked schemes belong to the far past.”
Enraged, Tull audibly ground his teeth, then spat at Elgaret, “Who art thou to dare defy me?"
Elgaret raised her Jewel. In a ringing voice, she declared, “I am Estcarp! I stand for the Light, with the Light, and these, my companions, are held within the protection of the Light.” Her Jewel flared brilliantly.
Smire cringed away from the dazzling glare, and even Tull flinched, but after a moment's recovery, Tull scrabbled on the table behind him and snatched up the dagger.
“No feeble Witch can stand before the full might of the Shadow,” Tull roared. “There is no protection against that everlasting Dark which shall enshroud all things. Here, Smire. Produce for me the lifeblood of that man!”
Smire obediently extended his hand, and curled his fingers around the dagger's hilt.
“Wait!” said a sudden clear voice. It was Derren, obviously fully alert. “I have aught to say upon this proposal.” To the complete astonishment of the company, he rose to his feet. “I can commend your petrifying spell in this one regard,” he observed. “When my flesh was restored from being stone, so too were my broken bones. The Stone of Konnard, it seems, is still a healing force, no matter what ill you may have intended it to inflict upon me.”
With a snarl, Smire threw himself at Derren, but the Borderer, evidently acquainted with knife fighting, side-stepped Smire's initial thrust and danced away, looking about for some object he could use in his own defense.
With frenzied gestures, Tull resumed intoning his spell. Elgaret countered with a chant of her own, as blinding flares of light pulsed from her Jewel.
Nolar found her body able to move, yet constrained from without, as if she were trying to swim through a vat of thick syrup. She extended her right hand, openly displaying her shard, which throbbed with a creamy light of its own, partaking of the main Stone's lustrous glow.
Smire, meanwhile, had maneuvered Derren into a corner, and now raised the cruel dagger for a mortal thrust. Tull and Elgaret fell silent, each evidently absorbed in exerting the full extent of will to influence the uneven conflict.
As Smire lunged forward, Derren touched his amulet and loudly spoke a Name. His silver medallion blazed brighter than an array of a hundred full moons. Smire shielded his eyes with his free hand, then cried out in horror as the evil dagger twisted out of his grasp, turned in the air, and buried itself up to the hilt in Smire's chest. Smire's body fell, twitching, to the floor, and before their eyes, slowly crumbled inw
ard upon itself. Cheated for over a thousand years of its due processes, time was compressing Smire into the dust that he should naturally have been. His equally ancient clothing also fell away, suffering the same fate as its owner. Appalled, Derren gazed down at the residue, unable to move.
Tull shrieked more words and reached toward the abominable bell. Nolar, desperate to prevent its sounding, searched for any means to distract Tull. Her childhood image of the fishmonger formed abruptly in her mind, and Nolar simply thrust it at Tull, together with the whole tangle of her associated memories and feelings. She poured into her untaught Sending all of her pent-up fears, frustrations, and loathing for what he had done to Derren and what he had threatened to wreak upon her defenseless world.
Tull staggered back a step as Nolar's Sending struck him. To be compared to a … a fishmonger! He—Tull the Dark One, Tull the Great! It was intolerable. He would blast the impudent Witch where she stood … but the rhythm of his spell had been fatally disrupted.
“Stand with me, Sister,” Elgaret called out. “Wield your Stone to free its parent of this unclean tormentor.”
Nolar raised her shard and focused her mind with all her might upon the gleaming Stone of Konnard.
Tull froze, indecisive. His moment to seize total advantage had passed. A glaze of fear began to show in his eyes.
Elgaret chanted, the light from her Jewel spearing Tull so that he writhed in its glare. Nolar could see that his hand, thrust out toward the accursed bell was no longer moving, and gradually, his pale skin was turning gray. She had seen that same strange hue once before, when Derren's legs had been transformed to stone. Nolar stared at Tull's face. His expression was set in a rigid mask of malevolent spite. Even as she watched, his features grayed, his eyes dulled, and Nolar knew with utter certainty that Tull's petrification spell had been turned against his own flesh. Tull had become a statue of lifeless rock. For a moment, his purple robes hung slack, then darkened and shriveled into thready rags.
Slowly, the unearthly radiance faded from the Stone of Konnard. The almost unbearable degree of Power that had oppressed the chamber's very air now quietly drained away.