by Andre Norton
The amulet in my hand not only blazed light but heat sprung up from it. If that burning was some counter of that which we hunted to get me to drop what I had come to look upon as my personal defense it failed. I had had enough practice with the changes which might occur that I closed fingers about it and held on even when it became a live coal in the intensity of the heat it generated.
The Lady Jaelithe grimaced and then raised both hands. Her fingers moved as if she wove the empty air into living fabric. I saw Orsya's hands go out also and between them stretched two lengths of what could only be seaweed cords on which shells were strung. This burdened string she switched from side to side, lowering and elevating each hand one at a time. Kemoc had made no move of offense or defense but his face was closed, wiped clear of all expression.
There was movement though. The two Falconers, Captain Sigmun, were on their feet, starting towards the stairway. Their faces also were closed, their eyes staring straight ahead. I scrambled to my feet and lunged forward. The hand closed about the amulet thudded into Captain Sigmun's back, bruising flesh against his mail shirt. From that touch a small wave of blue light ran, swept both up and down He gave a cry, throwing out his arms, and then pitched forward, to lie unmoving in the sand.
With the Falconers it was otherwise. Their birds turned upon them, flying into their faces and screaming. I saw blood run from a scored cheek. As Sigmun had done, the men sank to the sand and their birds flew circles about them still screaming.
My amulet moved, striving to turn as if it would work itself between my fingers. I looked down upon it. Once more the well-remembered symbols incised there changed. I saw the face which was a skull, and this time the flesh it put on was scant cover. It remained closer to death's visage than that of the woman it had been before. There was baleful light in those skull hole eyes, no smile curved those lips.
Lady Jaelithe jerked halfway around to face me. Her hands remained in the air but how they were still. I could guess what she wanted, but this was my battle. I knew only one way to fight it. I looked at the skull head and fought to summon Gunnora's grain sheaf and vine—that promise of fruitfùlness which she was able to grant. This one was death—but Gunnora was life!
A small fear moved inside me. They said that I was of the Dark, the evil, Death's handmaid. However, if that were so I could not have stood even within the outer court of Gunnora's House. If this thing now in my hand was evil and thought to find me easy molding to its will—that was not so!
The grain, the vine! So stood the grain, tall, head heavy as it was in the field at harvest time. I had helped to cut such grain, to bind it into stocks, to feel its promising weight. There was the vine to fasten together—and the fruit that supposed was dark red, round plumpness from which, when one set tooth to break the skin, there burst that which refreshed after the heaviest labor, lightened the heart, gave hospitality to friends and weary travelers. This was life at its fullness—not death.
See it, I would, stock and vine, grain and fruit. That ugliness which hid it from me was not greater than Gunnora, to that I would in no way admit. life—not death. I had no body, I was nowhere in the world—that inner essence which was me confronted the evil which was the skull.
It opened its fleshless jaws and it howled. I could hear that, the menace in it, just as I could feel it plucking at my will, striving to tear my determination from me. There was something beyond mere pain of body which slashed at me. Threat became deadly promise. Still I held. Grain and fruit, grain and fruit.
The skull became transparent in places so that I could see what I determined could be there. Once more it solidified and covered the emblem of life, lashed out at me so that I was near spent. But still I held.
Then both the skull and that which I had sought were gone!
My eyes were blinded; I was in the midst of a fire which roared and reared to enwrap the whole of me. There was no defense I had against this—nor was one needed. Instead all the pain which had gnawed at me was burned away. What was left was strong, able—held Power!
I blinked again. As when I had awakened that morning I found that I had moved unknowing from where I had been. For I stood at the foot of the stairway. That which I still held in my hands was no longer the stone which had come to me in Gunnora's shrine. Rather it was now a disc of gold through which moved motes of rich, dark red—the gold of the grain, the red of the fruit. And she who wore it was also changed, that I knew. But how and why—that I could not yet say. I was only sure that my feet had been set on another path, of which none knew much in those late days but which it was my duty—and my joy—to walk.
I did not move away from the foot of the stairway, but I half turned so that I could see the others. The Falconers and Sigmun had recovered to the point they were sitting up. However, the other four of our company had drawn up in a line in front of me.
I looked to the Lady Jaelithe and to Orsya and I held out my hands.
“Sisters, there is that which must be done.”
Each came forward and accepted the hand I offered. I saw Lord Simon make a slight movement as if to stop his lady and Kemoc lay hand on his father's arm. Mighty were they both in different ways and well did the people of Estcarp and Escore give them all honor. Only this was an affair of Women, at last I knew that.
She of the skull face might have been routed on her first attack but she had never been defeated and was not now in retreat.
The three of us began to climb those stairs. I could feel that which tried to wrap us around, to encompass us, first mind and then body. Those it had entrapped before, during all the eons of time it had been in existence, had not been as we. The man with the axe might have taught it caution if it had been able to learn. But the mind of this thing was limited, it did not live, was not able to change patterns of thought, except in the ways which were meant long ago to defend it against those who had no gifts.
Its attack upon us grew the greater the higher we climbed, if such as it could feel apprehension, I believed it must do so now. We were outside the pattern—the pattern of the Dark. Up we went, pitted step by pitted step.
We stood at the top of that stairway, high above the graveyard of ships from more than one time and world. Before us, dwarfing us, was that windowless, doorless block of a black so deep that it appeared to draw light to it and swallow it.
At that moment perhaps its uneasiness had grown to the point where it willed defense. Out of the sky came the winged monsters, shrieking aloud. They came and they sheered off, keeping a good distance as they died out their hatred. The glow of the great jewel I wore grew ever brighter, surely a warning.
That which we had come to find was before us, but how we could enter into that dark cube was a puzzle. Shadows moved outward from it to begin a kind of in-and-out, weaving dance. Red eyes gleamed and they were gone. Talon paws appeared, to take substance, and then fade into nothingness once again.
“Aaaaiiieeee!” Out of the very air itself seemed to come that echo-arousing call.
17
He came from the east, to the land side of that cube, and he walked slowly, his shoulders a little slumped as a man draws in upon himself when facing the rigors of a winter storm. In his hands was the axe I had seen him use to such purpose, and he swung it slowly back and forth. Though there was no mist here, he could be cutting a path through a barrier which perhaps only he could see.
There was little change in him since I had seen him last through the eyes of the man he had rescued. He certainty was no older and his movements were the vigorous ones Of a man of middle years. He was chanting as he came, the unknown words making a pattern which might be strange to my ears but which I recognized for what they were, sounds meant to set up a rhythm which energized his own defenses against this place of the Black.
It was Orsya who matched him—though her voice was not weighty, rather it began as the sound a river might make when it found its clear path half walled by rocks, and then it was the pelt of storm rain. However, it did not
drown put his chant, rather became a part of it, filling out places, so that is was a smooth power, completely whole.
In my mind there grew a picture. This land; was not barren after all, far within it there was that which would bear were it given promise of future harvest. I found myself humming the work song of planting in the fields. The (Lady Jaelithe's hands were moving, translating into her form of Power all the force which lay in what our voices summoned.
It arose to a great crescendo of sound and then one of the Lady Jaelithe's hands pointed at the cube as if to guide what we had wrought.
Only that which confronted us here was awake now, and it was not angered, for I could not sense any emotion, rather it turned to its ever-abiding hunger for a weapon and it sent out a discordant wailing.
Instantly we were silent for what we had built here might well be taken over and used by that. I could feel the compulsion it would set upon us. This might be one of those from the Dark edging about a camp fire, seeking for one who sheltered by the flames to come forth to where it might take its prey.
We stood silent and quiet. Though I had never entered such a struggle as this before, I was ready to believe that the surest way to open a door to it would be to launch another attack.
What it wanted, I was sure of that, was not our bodies—rather our life energy. It was that upon which it feasted, which it had been set to draw to it. There had come fresh energy into it lately, but not enough, there was never enough. If it had so absorbed all the crews from all those ships, it had feasted well in the past, and it was slavering so to feast again. Yet it was not alive by any measurement that I knew.
A screeching broke the silence. The flying monsters coasted down about that great cube, though none alit on its crest. Nor did they fly against us. Had they come to view some deeds of their master? And who was that master?
My question might have been spoken aloud. On the side of the cube facing us there glowed a circle of light, grey as a bone which had laid in some murky place for untold years. And bone it was, for the light twisted and turned to form a sheath of bones standing upright. Those twirled and fell or whirled aloft and there was a full skeleton surmounted by a skull which I knew, no matter how much one skull might resemble another. This was she who had dared to use Gunnora's gift to print herself on my mind and memory.
Very slowly, as if it required infinite effort, she was building a form over those bones, but it was painfully thin—so that the visage and the body was like unto the woman I saw die of hunger in the rock land. I think that she struggled to reach a more tangible, better form.
She must, I though, be drawing on that which the cube had stored. It was only by fits and starts that she achieved more return for her purpose. Her head was fully woman now, and from it streamed hair which did not fall down across her wasted body but rather clung outward from her now hidden skull across the surface of the cube.
There was a suggestion of beauty in her face but that head above the skin-and-bone body was enough to arouse disgust and fear, not any awe or admiration.
Then, of a sudden, she left off her efforts. The bones and their thin grey envelope disappeared as though cut off at some source; only the head remained. That took on the likeness of youth and beauty such as perhaps few mortal women ever wear. Still this was of the Dark.
She smiled, and the tip of her tongue crossed the full redness of her lower lip. She had turned her gaze not toward us, but rather to the axe man. I think that was because he was a man and such she had found in the past to be ripe for harvesting. Only he showed a stone-silent face as one might see graven on some of the old statues in Arvon.
As we had earlier sang so now she trilled and the notes were sweet as the juice of a sun-riped berry, save more like that of a berry which had hung on the brier too long so there was a hint of decay beneath the surface.
Not only was her visage faintly foul, but that odor we had sniffed from the beach arose about us here. The stench of a battlefield ten days old at the height of summer. I did not know whether I saw true or not but the cube seemed to shudder like a living thing so that foul stench could have been thrown off.
The axe man stood rocklike under her probing. Then the cube actually heaved. Out of it spun a long tentacle, whipping for his legs. I moved, the jewel of Gunnora's aglow in my fingers. But his axe fell clean and straight. The writhing appendage fell to the ground, to be gone an instant later.
The face on the cube lost something of its languorous smile. Now it mouthed words, and each of those appeared from those twisted lips like a fiery pellet of spit. From where they landed on the rock before the cube trails of smoke arose.
There was a rage there, so hot one could well feel it in the air. Those flying horrors screamed and arose in a body, flying back away from the cube, though I did not believe they had left the field entirely.
That rage was building and. with it came something else—action I could not yet understand but which was fatal—if not against us, then others. The sun was darkening—or rather being veiled from us by clouds. I could see lines of energy rising: from the four corners of the cube, slanting up, reaching for those clouds and the natural forces behind them. Darkness came as quickly as if night had shut down like the lid of a chest being closed upon its contents.
Yet the darkness was not complete, for around each of us as we stood there was a halo of sharp, eye-hurting light. That did not reach our bodies although that was what it was striving to do—to destroy those same bodies—and eat! The head on the cube stretched forward, the mouth open to show small, sharply, pointed teeth. I thought of the were beasts and how some part of them showed their brand even while they Walked in human guise and I thought that what I saw was not unlike a were. Was the woman a prisoner of the cube even as she believed herself to be in command of the power and mystery it represented?
We were not caught by that visible push of energy, but the sky opened above us. There came such a deluge of rain that we might have been standing under a fountain in full play. That in no way deadened or defeated the light; it passed directly through it to beat us. I put out my hands, allowing the amulet to hang in full sight, and I was grasped on one side by the lady jaelithe, on the other by “Orsya. So linked we stood strong against that sky flood.
He of the axe had fallen back a few steps and set his shoulders against a rock. Unlike that brilliant, searing light which outlined the three of us, he had red flame encircling him, one in which tongues of the fire bent this way and that but were not drowned by the storm. I saw his lips move. Perhaps he was chanting again but the roar of the storm was such we could not hear him.
What I had heard of gates was that they were marked by age-eroded stones. This one, if it controlled a gate, was very different. But then perhaps a sea one would have to be.
I had not more thought of that when that glow was recalled from about us. It was no longer steady, rather it pulsated as if the energy which drove it was weakening. The rage was still there, perhaps the greater, since added to it was frustration. Long had .what ruled this place been invincible, with no question or power raised against it. Even now it could not believe we were able to withstand its will.
My jewel's light spread out and out to encircle the three of us. Then it spun like a wheel, growing greater with every revolution, until it also enclosed the axe man and his fire. Having circled us at ground height it began, at a point directly before me, to rise, shaping itself into something not unlike a pointing finger. Only, before it reached the level of the face, that was gone.
The rain ceased, there were no clouds. The sun, now well to the west, lit the sky. Only pools remaining in rock Hollows told us that what we had seen was the truth. On my breast the jewel called silently and the light it had loosed returned to it.
First of us to move was the axe man. He strode to a position before me just below where that face had formed. Raising his weapon he aimed a mighty blow, one which would have shattered even steel, I think. Yet his axe showed no harm, only it abounded
with such force as to near make him lose his balance. With his other hand he rubbed vigorously at the arm which hung limply at his side, though its fingers still grasped the weapon. I heard him give a grunt but we had no time to exchange any other sounds for the flying things were back, and this time they dashed themselves straight at us. Perhaps all our Power was weakened by our ordeal for nothing fended them off this time, and I flailed, vigorously with my rod, while the man before me used his axe, shearing off wings and feet so ably that I was sure he had fought just such creatures before and had learned well the trick of it. Lady Jaelithe also had a sword in her hand and Orsya whirled about her that bit of kelp rope which had strung on it the sharp-edged shells.
We killed and heard from the head of the stairway two battle cries. Then Lord Simon and Kemoc were with us and we drove off the flyers, nor had any of us taken hurt. It seemed to me that we had been very lucky, unless Power we had not consciously summoned was working for us now.
What we would do at the coming of night I did not know. I was loathe to leave this position by the cube, for I understood very well that one victory does not win a war. She whose face had appeared to us was not of the breed who surrendered. No, their commitment to what they would do is both full and final.
Lady Jaelithe was of one mind with me on that as she said:
“The dark can well be what leads powers of evil to wax, as the light for us. Therefore must we play sentry this night.” Then she spoke directly to the axe man:
“Brother in Power, how is it with you?” For he was rubbing his left hand up and down his right arm, though he had used his axe valiantly moments earlier and the odorous dark blood of the flying things dripped from the blade of his weapon.
“Sister of Lightning.” His voice was low and gutteral and he spoke the trade tongue with a thick accent, though we could still understand him. “What black magic holds in this place?”