by Andre Norton
“Yes.” She could be as laconic as he. In her mind, Tirtha weighed impulse against prudence, not quite sure as yet which might serve her best. Then she added, “Hawkholme was of Karsten. As you see, I am of the blood Yvian strove to erase from a land where he and his were, to begin with, intruders and invaders.”
“You return to no easier a fate than was granted those who were horned. That still holds. Too many seized and killed and profited by that blooding.” He did not seem greatly moved, rather he spoke as if merely pointing out that they were two travelers united only for a limited purpose.
“We have learned something.” Tirtha bit off each word as one would bite upon a binding cord. “There is no such thing as trust in Karsten for us. Still, I have that which takes me there.”
Further than this she would not go. He had hand-grasped for his allotted time in her service. There was no reason to think that any further quest beyond the mountain-crossing would draw him. Nor, she thought, was he one with whom she would willingly share secrets, being who and what he was.
So Tirtha spread out her cloak and rolled in it, pillowing her head on one of her saddle bags before she resolutely closed her eyes, saying:
“We share night watch. Rouse me at the time the red star shines.”
He inclined his bare head, accepting, as she had wondered if he would, that they would share, as if they were comrades, the needful duties of any camp. While she settled herself to sleep, summoning that nothingness of mind as she was able to, he made no move to reach for the rolled blanket that was part of his own gear, only sat beside the fire which glinted red on his claw, alternately revealing and hiding his well-cut features, their emotionless mask as complete as that of the helm he had worn during the day.
Though Tirtha had willed herself to sleep, it was not a dreamless one. What followed was that vision, or series of visions, which had haunted her for years, until each detail remained so engraved even on her waking memory that she could have recited all she saw and something of what those sights meant. She knew that there was true dreaming, which was part of the Far-sight. She might not be a Wise Woman, but she was a full daughter of the Old Race, and she never believed that all vestiges of the Power had vanished from any of her blood, even though her kin had not held grimly to such knowledge as had their cousins of Estcarp.
There the Power had made the race thin. For the Witches gloried in gifts that they would not surrender for any man. So, fewer and fewer children had been born, until the race came near an end through their pride. However, since the Witch Women had united in the Turning, their last great battle, and most of them had died of it (their bodies unable to hold and project the forces they summoned and still survive), there had come a change.
He who ruled in Estcarp now—Koris of Corm—was only remotely of the kin. There were also the Tregarths who guarded the marches of the north as once they had held these very mountains where she sheltered this night. Simon Tregarth was an Outlander, not of the kin at all. His Lady was a foresworn Witch who, in her day, had been outcast because of her choice of him, and who, by some quirk of strangeness, had NOT lost her Power when she married him. These three ruled Estcarp, and their influence was felt. So there was no longer any recruiting of Witches, save among those of such manifest talent that they withdrew from life by their own desire. There was more mingling, more wedding and bedding. Those from the Border shared blood with Sulcar and with their kin of Estcarp. There were more children in the holds, and also there was some traffic with the mysterious east—that Escore where the children of Simon Tregarth and his Lady had gone to seek the ancient foundations of their line. There was war there still, but it was with old evil. Had Tirtha not been who and what she was perhaps the east would have drawn her also.
Drawn her! She walked again easily down a hall—wide—only half lighted by dim, wall-set bars of light, the secret of whose ever-burning had been lost long since. There were shadows that moved among shadows, had a sometime life of their own. But what they did, when, or why, had no meaning for her.
Though she had never come this way except in a vision, still it was better known to her than many of the places into which her actual wandering had taken her. This was a part of her as no other place, waking or sleeping, could ever be. She had come here in dreams since childhood, and always it remained the same, save that its hold on her grew stronger and deeper, more real than all else in life.
This was the hall of a hold—a place near as long established as the ancient walls of Estcarp itself. There at the high table were the tall chairs of a lord and lady. Those shades she could not see clearly were tenuous, forming a company around her. Tirtha knew that this was a time of formal meeting, that though she could not hear, yet there was deep meaning in what was being discussed.
Most of her attention was for what stood on the table, midway between the two tall-backed chairs. That was real and fully visible! A casket gleamed with a light issuing from it, for the cover had been raised and thrown back. The carvings on it did not seem set or sustained as they should have. Rather they possessed a life or purpose of their own, appearing to change shape, to crawl and move, so that she could not ever be sure of them. Some, she realized in the moments when she could catch them at rest, were words and symbols of Power.
Nor had she ever seen what the casket held, for its lid was raised at an angle which prevented direct sight. Only—this was the very heart and substance of all she witnessed here—it was more alive than those who had cherished it.
Now the dream followed its set pattern. That wisp of half shadow which was the left hand of the lord and the one which was the right hand of his lady moved forward as one. Together they clasped the lid of the casket, closing it.
Tirtha felt the old and familiar rise of cold fear in her. Now was the coming of the evil. She could not escape it—ever—because for some reason it was necessary that she see—see and know—see and remember!
That shadow, which was the lord, held its grip on the lid of the casket for a long moment. The glow of life, which the girl had felt dwelling within it, dimmed. It might be that by some warning a flow of the Power had been alerted, was taking certain steps of its own for needed protection. Reluctantly—Tirtha always sensed that reluctance as sorrow or foreboding—the lord pushed his treasure toward the lady.
A pillar of mist she was, with only a round ball for a head, extensions which were not hands or arms, but served her as such, no more than fragments of fog. Yet she took up what her lord passed to her, arising while that flitting company stirred about the far edges of the wide hall as if hurried, pushed into action—and the lord stepped from his place to join them, moving out of the range of Tirtha's vision.
She never followed him. No, it was the casket that was of importance and that drew her now as the mist woman raised it, pressed it to her unsubstantial form, close to where a human heart might beat. Then she, too, turned and went.
It would seem that Tirtha then also became a specter, a thing without body or form, for she followed that other as if she floated—shadow herself—in this half-and-half world. Down the hall they went to the space behind the high table. And the pace of the lady wraith was swift—she might have been running, time itself her enemy now.
Thus they came to a paneled wall against which the shadow flattened herself oddly—as though releasing a secret lock. A narrow opening was revealed, and she squeezed into a dark place—the power of the thing unseen drawing Tirtha with it.
This was a place where Tirtha felt, even though she possessed no body in her dream, the touch of Power—Power which had built up and lingered—drawn and fed by talent used for years, perhaps centuries, to guard the casket.
There was a stone table in that small windowless chamber; the walls were tapestried by misty hangings. The aura of this hidden chamber was enough to make known to any who came what it was, a place into which only the talent trained might come. Still—even though that be so—Tirtha in the dream was not walled out, forceless and empty-handed
though she was.
The shadow lady, still holding the casket against her breast, freed one misty hand and raised it high, making a gesture that seemed to bring the edge of her palm and fingers to strike against the center of the stone table.
That massive block appeared to quiver on the very spot which she had struck. Now the lady looked as if she must free herself of any touch speedily, moving up her hand—or that wisp of mist which served her for such—into the air above. Tirtha, though she had never witnessed otherwhere any such ritual, knew well that this was mastery of an ancient kind in which mind controlled matter and made it obey.
The casket, set in place on the table, quivered as had the rock—rooting itself there, the envisioned girl believed. Still the shadow woman stood and wove her ensorcelments—she might have been locking and bolting unseen doors, making very sure that this place might not be breached.
And—
Tirtha stirred, the silence of her vision—dream broke—she was being touched, and she was again in the flesh, able to feel, even as she was able to hear a whisper very close to her ear where her cloak hood had fallen or been pulled away. There was a faint puff of breath against her cheek. She opened her eyes upon darkness, but she did not move, for a hand kept her pinned where she lay.
“Quiet!” The whisper came again.
She had been shaken so suddenly out of that other place that she was not yet truly aware she had returned to the camp on the ledge. There was no longer any sign of the fire. She roused enough to realize who knelt by her, holding her in place, perhaps even ready to slip his hand across her mouth to muffle any sound she might make, being so summarily aroused.
Tirtha was too well trained a rover to do that. She remained where she was, her ears straining now to pick up sound. He must have known she had been awakened, for his hand left her body speedily, and she had a flash of thought that to touch a woman, even for such a reason, would be difficult for a Falconer. But he did not move away.
One of their ponies stamped and blew. Then the man was gone in a flash of movement. Tirtha realized that he must be on his way to make sure that no sound from their two mounts might betray them. Still she listened.
At last a sound came from a distance, though she could not judge how far away. There was a scrabbling as if something strove to find a path across none too secure gravel or loose earth. She remembered that not far distant there was one of those mounds of debris left from a slide, such being still only too common in this shaken hill country.
Tirtha sat up, throwing off the enfolding material of the cape. She had her well-worn sword, her bow lay beside her, but night did not favor an archer. Slowly, with caution, she reached out, feeling for a pile of stones she had noted near their fire hole. They were still warm from the heat of the vanished flames as her fingers curled about the top one, which fitted well into her hand. It was heavy, and she had used just such a rough weapon before to good purpose.
The Falconer wore a dart gun at his belt. However, unless he was one of those legendary fighters trained to fire correctly at a sound, that weapon would serve him little better than her bow could aid her. He had a sword also, and she had little doubt that it was now in his hand. There was his claw also, and that—Tirtha could not suppress a small shiver, stupid though she knew any shadow of distaste might be—that was as able a weapon at close quarters as anyone could wish.
The scrabbling had stopped. Yet Tirtha was certain that whatever sniffed about had not gone. No, it had another way of locating its prey.
She did not gasp, she was struck too hard by the new attack to do more than reel back against the rock. The thing hunted with its mind! She had met that blow, which was meant to locate them, with the instant instinctive mind lock that was part of her heritage. But was the Falconer able to counter such a seeking? She knew very little of how his race thought or what defense he could raise against such a questing.
Unfortunately, a mind lock of this kind worked two ways. She dared not relinquish her tight mental cover to seek out the nature of the thing waiting in the dark. That it used mind-send at all meant that they had not been tracked by any outlaw raider, for it was only the Old Race who could seek thus. She herself could handle beasts so, but she had never attempted to trail one of her own kind. That was an abomination which was of the old evil, against which all her blood had stood since they had come into Karsten or into Estcarp.
Now there arose something else, wafted by a rising breeze—a thick animal odor. Not an honest one, such as any beast she had ever known would give forth. This was foul, as if dregs of filth had been stirred or some utter rottenness had breathed a great sigh.
No snow cat, none of the rare verbears rumored to have come into these mountains since the Turning, would so befoul the night air. This was something different. She sent a fraction of her thought to the ponies—surely all their instinct and fears would be speedily roused by that stench. But her would-be soothing thought met a barrier, and she was no longer left to wonder what the Falconer might do. Perhaps the long years in which his kind had schooled and lived with their birds had sharpened a native talent. He was holding a mind wall about their mounts, and to that Tirtha speedily lent her own strength of will.
3
SINCE that thing below trailed by thought-touch, then the barriers they both had raised must have alerted it to the fact it was discovered. Tirtha arose noiselessly. The thick soles of her boots were soft enough not to crunch as she inched to the lip of the ledge, listening, striving also to see, though the moon was under cloud and starshine could not aid her. She had only nose and ears to serve her.
A second rattle of loose stones sounded. She judged that the stalker had not been able to avoid a misstep. The sound was certainly closer—just as that rank stench was stronger.
Then—
There was a dull yellowish glow—two such on a line. Eyes! And a kind that did not need any reflected light to betray them, possessing within themselves that which was perceptible in the dark.
Perhaps the lurker had better than human sight, an ability to pierce the night for its prey. Still, the eye-gleam betrayed it in turn as it climbed. She could now hear a steady scrabbling, as if claws searched out irregularities in the wall up which it must come to reach them.
Tirtha laid aside her stone, reaching for the pouch on her hip. She had had a chance to renew its contents back in Romsgarth, and she knew well how to use one certain packet among the rest. This might not work against the unknown, but that was not certain until tried. She located it by touch, an envelope of the same supple serpentskin as her belt. Through that skin she felt the grating of grains inside, and with care she shook some into the palm of her other hand.
Those eyes never blinked nor broke a steady stare—they only drew closer. She watched carefully for a second pair—or a sound revealing that the climber was not alone. She was well aware that what strove to reach them was wholly of the Dark—a thing such as the Songsmiths averred dwelt in the halls of Ever-Night. There came the faintest of sounds on her own level. The Falconer had left the two ponies, was coming to stand ready at her side. Tirtha longed to ask if he knew what manner of creature threatened them, but she hesitated to speak while she held the thought barrier.
Her cupped hand ready, she reached through the dark with her other hand until her fingers touched a mail-sleeved arm. She squeezed, hoping that he was astute enough to recognize it as a signal. Then, leaning farther forward, watching those evil, pale discs now raised to hers, sensing that her mind barrier was under assault, Tirtha turned over her palm, releasing the coarse dust it held. There was no breeze to hinder what she would do. Thus she could hope that fortune would move to favor them.
A moment of waiting was followed by a squall such as could not break from the throat of any known animal. The evil eyes blinked and blinked again as the thing hurled itself up at their perch.
The Falconer had jerked out of her hold. Her own worn sword was drawn. Something as large as a pony hooked appendages over
the edge of the ledge while it screamed and spattered a foul moisture, which burned her skin as might fire sparks.
Tirtha stabbed outward, felt her blade strike a hide so tough that ancient steel could not penetrate. Beside her sounded the snick of a dart gun. One of the blinking eyes vanished. There was another scream, a last heave of the misshapen body. Then their attacker lost its hold, to fall outward, its cries tearing the night. They heard a heavy sound, which must have marked the striking of a body against some projection on the down slope. A rattling of stones followed, as if the falling creature had started another landslide.
Though the noisome smell remained, plainly the thing was gone, and there were no more cries nor any sound of struggle as a last shift of sliding stones died away. One of the ponies cried out now—in the throes of a great terror. Tirtha was quick to add her talent to that of the Falconer, suggesting to the beasts that all danger was past—and she judged it was, that nothing was left to fear.
As their mounts quieted, Tirtha dared to go and run her hands along the ponies’ rough coats, dank with sweat, using touch systematically to convey peace, soothing the distraught animals. Once her hands slipped across her companion's only hand, and she realized that he was aware of this need also.
With their mounts reassured, Tirtha returned to the edge of the ledge. It would appear that the Falconer did not expect another attacker, at least not yet. Still he knew that this was a time for strict watch. The creature they had defeated might be only a scout for more of its kind. She glanced up at the sky, guessed that dawn was not far off. There could be no move until they had more light. Once more her companion joined her, and for the first time, she dared a question: “What was that?”
Tirtha was half surprised at his answer.