by Andre Norton
Even as I considered that the worry which had been with me since I left the ship so unceremoniously developed at last. There were flyers in the air, only dots as yet, but they came from the direction of the far drifting craft and they were headed in a seaward sweep, as if they already knew that I waited for them, easy prey.
It was the nature of the island which saved me. The rocks which formed it were ridged. Gullies ran between some of the taller ones and there were other slabs which were tilted enough to form shelter against anything overhead. I speedily worked my way into one such niche and waited.
My exertions had begun to tell. In addition to my sore feet, my back and legs ached. Also I realized it had been some time since I had eaten. In fact, so long ago had been my awaking from a doze on this morning and the taking of some very dry biscuit and a scrap of salted fish, I had gone without food for some time. Even more than the pinch of hunger, the need for water closed upon me. It was a sorry jest that I should be surrounded by liquid I could not drink. The realization of that made me twice as thirsty.
In a little the rain helped. I could reach out of the hollow in which I had taken cover, rub my hand across one of the standing rocks and bring it back wet to lick. Though that was indeed far from slaking the need in me.
However, hunger, certainly at the moment, was the least of my worries. My knife sheath was empty. I had no weapon, and from overhead came one of those ear-shattering screams of the flying horrors. One of them swooped down close enough for me to see, and counter-wise it sighted me. Still to reach me it would have to drop so close to the ground—where there were upstanding threats of broken rock—that I think this problem did impress any mind the creature possessed, no matter how heated the thing was by rage.
I reached around and found several pieces of stone. Then my fingers caught under the edge of something larger, and I struggled to free a length of what could only be metal.
Its corroded skin flaked off in my grasp, but there was still a hard core. When I had it fully out of the ground I discovered I was holding a length which would compare favorably with a sword, although it lacked hilt or cutting edge.
To have even that made me bolder. I tried to count from the entrance of my fort the number of the attackers. To withstand such a pack as had descended upon us earlier was more, I knew, than was possible. They need only leave a token number of sentries on guard and wait for thirst and hunger to either weaken me or drive me out.
Yet I could only count five who skimmed back and forth, and two of them had wounds. This was a beaten enemy, still that very fact might make them only the more set to take me.
One of them alighted on the crest of the rock perhaps a good stone's throw away from me. The fiery eyes were fixed and it threw back its grotesque head, giving voice to a throat-searing scream. I picked up one of the stones I had earlier loosened against just such a chance and threw.
The fragment of rock struck a little to the right of the thing, and shattered, one piece apparently ricocheting to hit the body of the flyer, who now leaped up and down as if rage filled it so fully it could not remain still. Another bound took it into the air and it arose quickly out of my field of vision. However, they were certainly very far from giving up the fight.
Two more swooped down to also alight, farther back than had stood the earlier one. These no longer screamed, but mouthed harsh cluttering noises as if they were engaged in planning some coming difficulty for me.
I drew the rod I had found back and forth with one hand, scraping at it with the edge of another stone, wanting to clear it of all marks of corrosion so that I could see if there was any weak place along its length. It was not solid but rather bent under pressure, as limber as a whip.
The stones I had garnered earlier I made the best use of that I could—and was able to hit another of my attackers foursquare, sending it flapping and squalling to the ground, from which, though it made attempts, it did not rise again. However, I did not put an end to it. That was left for its own fellows. Two of them dived and, to my sickened disgust, caught the wounded creature by the wings and literally tore it apart. Why they turned on their own I could not guess, unless in frustration at not being able to take the fishing craft.
From the earlier mist the rain became a thudding downpour. Water spouted off the rocks, running seaward through the gullies. Under dark clouds we passed into a kind of twilight through which I was unable to see far beyond the crevice in which I sheltered.
There came no more screams from my attackers and I began to think that they had also been forced to seek some kind of shelter. At least the running stream of rain which fell to invade my hideout gave me drinking water. I sucked up palmsful, hoping that such a fill would also ease some part of my hunger.
The darkness was thicker. I had no idea of the hour. It could well be that night was really upon me. There was a rising wind which, at intervals, sent the rain slicing inward to my poor shelter. I was soaked to the last thread on my body and, though certainly my life had never been lightstone and I had known a number of miserable times, it now seemed to me that this was the worst I had yet met.
The falcons, if those intrepid birds still lived, would not be winging aloft in the midst of this. While had the ship kept to the last course I had seen before it, it must be going farther and farther from me. Once more I was greatly tempted to try the mind touch. If I could not raise anyone aboard the scouting craft, might I be able to contact either Kemoc or Orsya? Those with whom I had so lately sailed might well believe that I was dead—fallen into the sea and so totally lost.
I reached within the shirt the rain plastered so tightly to my body and brought forth Gunnora's gift. Though my flesh was cold, and I was beginning to be wracked by shivers, the carven stone within my palm was warm. I stared down at it. I did not know if it was meant to be used for scrying, and I still did not altogether trust my talent at piercing distance under a vague but perhaps deadly threat.
Still I tried to concentrate my full thought upon it, seeing first the stone, and then transposing Orsya's face upon that base. The amulet seemed to swell larger as I concentrated, but I was still aware that my hand held it. However, that connection with the real world faded. There was only the stone. Orsya—my thought went out—I tried to use it as a Falconer might use his bird, sending the mind search questing for our mother ship and she who was on it.
Only that search I could not complete. As fingers inserted in an ear can shut out sound or deaden it to the faintest of murmurs, so did my talent meet a barrier which turned it back upon me. The result of that return flow of energy was like a dagger thrust. Though I had heard that this might happen in times of stress, never had it been so with me before.
Swiftly I cut my thought search.
Still, on the surface of the amulet there was a swirl of movement. The outlines of what could be a head were forming. And I knew that it was not of my calling!
Two dark pits of eyes, a nose, a mouth which was set in a grin like that of a dead man struck down in battle. Only this was no warrior—at least any nation known to me. That rictus grin was softening, the lips no longer bared teeth to the full. While the blind pits which marked the eyes were filling, growing more and more like part of normal features. I was looking at a face which was no longer of the dead, but the living. There were eyelids closed across the onetime skull pits and slowly those were lifting. Then I was staring into eyes which seemed as large and knowing as my own.
This was. a woman. That I guessed and knew it for the truth. I could see no hair above a high brow, nothing but the fact itself. Now the lips were moving again not to utter speech but in a smile which seemed to hold in it true welcome.
Gunnora? For a fleeting moment I held that thought. Then it was gone. No, not the All-merciful One—but a personage of Power, of command over my own kind even as the Harvest Lady ruled from her women-sought shrines.
There was satisfaction in the look I met. A fisherman might survey so a full net. I felt greater unease and I strove
to cover the amulet with my other hand. Only to discover that I had no longer any command over my own flesh and hone.
Though it had grown very dark within the space where I crouched there was light about me—the warm gold of the sun. The warmth spread from the amulet to my whole body. I was aware of this but it did not matter. I was alert, waiting, as a messenger for some warlord might wait, impatiently, to be dispatched with orders to initiate some important maneuver.
Then—
The light in the eyes went out—candle flames puffed by a breath which was not mine. Once more the face changed to become skull-like—death Out of life. Now I held only the stone. Yet from, it radiated the warmth. In me there was something else becoming more sharp and distinct even as the face had grown.
In spite of the storm, the fact that the remaining flyers might come at me, I pulled out of my defensive pocket and stood under the thick curtain of cloud, rain plastering my hair and my torn clothing fast to my skin. I stooped and picked up the supple metal wand I had uncovered. At least in that much my own mind still obeyed me. For the rest—I was a game piece moved on a playing board.
I slipped and slid. The earth between the rocks appeared to have a greasy film but the covers I had tiled about my feet answered for my progress. Though I expected to attract the flyers, to be a target for them, I heard no cries, saw nothing save the remnants of the body of that wounded one which its own companions had slain.
Now I reached the highest point of the island. So dark was the storm that I could make out very little. I had been brought here by a will I could not break.
The amulet still glowed. I glanced at it from time to time, watching for any change, but that did not come. Moved by that other will I turned around, cautious about my footing, to face south. The island on which I stood extended in that direction and it was that way I must go.
Thus I set out, climbing over ridges, striding through runnels between them where the streams of rain washed nearly calf high as I splashed along. Loneliness pressed on me more than it ever had in my life of roving. I think that I felt that because I was well aware that I went in submission to a command I did not understand. Though I went slowly with due care for every step lest I stumble and fall. A broken bone suffered here might well mean death.
On I went. Twice the way I followed narrowed to a rough ridge where the sea washed on both sides. It would seem that here the islands I could not see anymore in their entirety were like beads loosely set on a chain.
I do not know how long that journey lasted. In the darkness there was no way of measuring time. My body ached, and how I swayed dizzily from one handhold of upstanding rock to the next, striving to keep moving. For on me the pressure was growing heavier.
At last I fell and a wave broke over me, setting me coughing—as the water filled my nose—spitting the salty liquid out of my mouth. Under me as I lay there was no rock—luckily. Rather my hand swept across what felt like sand. I caught my breath and then crawled on my belly, so spent at last I could do no more, away from the lapping of the waves, well up into what appeared to be a rising mound of the sand, and there I lay. With great effort I pulled the hand which held the amulet to my now aching head, and darkness closed in so there was no longer any thought or feeling.
Did I sleep or swoon? At least I did not dream, or I did not carry into waking any such memory. I awoke to warmth on my nearly bare shoulders and I pulled my arms under me to help lever my body up.
The clouds and the rain were gone. A sun was in the sky and the heat on my body was such that I felt I lay half in a fire. I twisted around to survey my surroundings.
There was sea before me with reefs reaching out. Seeing those I marveled at the fact that I must have so blindly taken that road. It was not one I would have followed had I been given full sight. The island from which I had started was well out toward the horizon.
Remembering, I looked skyward. There was no winged thing to be sighted. However, here in the open I felt very exposed, so crawled as might an infant back to a wall of stone which arose up and up, a formidable barrier to any further retreat. To the west that wall continued. Farther along there were no, reefs and the sea washed directly at the foot of the cliffs. I looked eastward and from what I could see I had reached that part of the mainland which curved out.
My stomach cramped and my hands shook, the right letting fall the amulet so it swung once more against my breast. By some change, for I could not remember that I had intended it so, I still held the length of rod I had found on my first place of refuge.
To me at present the first need was food. Not for away were rock pools doubtless left by a receding tide. I crept to the nearest. There was a fish of some size who must have been dumped into that basin by the earlier inroad of the sea.
My past had taught me many things, one never to disdain anything which might be food because I shrank from eating it raw. It took me some time to catch the intrapped fish and kill it with a sharp pointed stone. I scraped the scaled skin free with the same weapon and ate, making the most of my prey to the last scrap of meat.
Where I was now the cliff was sheer and I had no intention of going west where it arose from the sea itself. But there was a fringe of dark grey, sanded beach to the east and the cliff showed broken in places. Still unsteady on my enwrapped feet, from which the improvised coverings were, hear worn away, I started on in that direction. This was a very empty world to which I had come. Save for some sea creatures to be found in a tide pool or two along the way, there was no life here.
Fortune favored me, or else that which pushed and kept me on my bruised feet watched over me for purposes of its own, for I came to a real break in the cliff. Down that poured a stream of water which fell in a miniature cascade into the sea at that point. I scooped the liquid up in both hands and drank my fill. It seemed to me that where the stream had cut a path would be the best place to attempt to go inland.
For a while it was a difficult climb and I would rest now and then, the water spreading about me, my body trembling from the demands I made upon it. The cliffs arose on either side to shut off any view of what I might be climbing into and my fear of being surprised by the winged things kept me going, hoping to find some kind of shelter once I reached the upper reaches of those walls.
At length they began to fall away, widen out, so there was room on either side of the water. Then I saw the first growing things which I had sighted since we had sailed from Varn. There was a greenish network across some of the rocks, wet with spray from the stream. It was not moss but rather resembled a netting, such as a spider would have fashioned. When I tried to pick up one end of a piece I discovered it was most securely rooted. These nets became larger and denser as I advanced. Then, ashore, in the grey soil showed stalks of a pale yellow-green—long narrow leaves outspread upon the ground with a center stem standing high. Those ended in a round knob and from them came a sickly odor. Stuck to those knobs here and there were insects, some still struggling for freedom.
At length the last of the cliff walls opened well out and I found myself at the edge of a wide stretch of rolling open land. As it was in the valley of Varn there were no trees. Clumps of brush gathered here and there, tangling branches from one to the next, forming a growth which nothing could penetrate. Some of these strange copses were of quite wide extent. The leaves were dark in color and, though there was no hint of breeze in the air, these were in constant, trembling movement.
I continued to follow the stream as about that the land was open and looked to offer the easiest going. Also there were signs of life within the water itself. I overturned rocks and found armored things which were near enough to what I had seen on sale in northern fish markets as to reassure me of their food value. Though I had nothing in which I could stew them as was customary for their proper serving. Once more I ate raw flesh, forcing it down. I had seen no signs of those herbs which grew along stream banks in the lands I knew.
Once as I wavered on I saw a serpent whose red-yellow sca
les made a bright patch to serve as a warning. I stood very still using the one end of the rod I carried to thump against the ground. The reptile, feeling the vibration, fled, as all his kind will unless one by chance corners them. But this Was another sign that the land I had come to was not a healthy one for travelers.
The sun was well down the sky and I could not pick out any stretch of the land ahead I thought fit for a camp. Thus I squatted down beside the stream to rebind the coverings on my feet and try to make some plan for what was to come. With me still, perhaps even more pulling at me, was that feeling I must go on, that there was something waiting for me which must be faced.
By now I had surrendered to it so long I did not think I could ever break out of the spell it had put on me. We all know of geases and what those ensorcellments can do to the unfavored who have been so cursed. Was this in truth a geas? If so, who had placed it on me and for what reason? I could only belive that it was one which would not do me well and I longed at that moment for the company of the Lady Jaelithe, for perhaps she alone in all this world could read that which held me, and so aid me in what must be some coming battle.
14
I disliked being completely in the open, yet the nearest copse was so entangled, vinelike branches embracing one another, that I knew I could not find refuge there. Nor could I see anywhere within the range of sight a place as satisfactory as the rocks among which I sheltered before. At length I decided to go on. The sky above was clear and as for as I could calculate this would be a moon-crested night. Underfoot the ground was promisingly level and I had the stream for a guide.
My pace was slow. I wanted nothing so much as to squat down for rest on one of the patches of sandy soil which spotted the valley floor. Yet move I did, until I could no longer place one foot before another, so came to sit by the running water from which I scooped enough to satisfy thirst. I had heard many tales of the Waste of Arvon—had seen a portion of it when I had gone a-hunting Gunnora's shrine.