by Andre Norton
Her disappointment was so keen, she gave a little cry of disbelief. A thing of power this doubtless was, but as locked against any use by her as if she had never freed it from the rod! None of the symbols on it were familiar. Not even at Lormt had she come across such meandering lines, such swirls, as were inscribed here in red paint or ink. They did not even form lines as if they were some enciphered message—rather sprawled here and there, some large, some small, in no reasonable pattern.
“Perhaps it is a map.”
Almost, Tirtha had forgotten the Falconer. He moved beside her again to stare at what she held, his slanting brows drawn together in a half-frown.
“A map!” Tirtha had reason to consult such in the past. Though nothing had been done since the writhing of the mountains to lay out guides for travelers into the borderlands, she herself had contrived to fit together bits of information which she believed would guide her to her future goal. She had set down, memorized, and destroyed them methodically. Nothing she had ever seen or heard of matched this peculiar scrawl. Yet it had not been done roughly, she could perceive that the longer she studied it. The pictured symbols must have definite meaning, yet it was a meaning that eluded her.
“Not of this.” With a wave of his hand her companion dismissed the countryside around them. “I think it is a different kind of map—perhaps of a place, a hold even, rather than the countryside.”
“But there are no lines for walls, no. . . .” she began her protest.
His frown had lightened. “I think everything that might have been used in that fashion was deliberately omitted. So that the place could not be identified. This is a seeker's guide, one pointed at a special place, perhaps a treasure.”
She did not miss that quick glance he had given her, before his eyes went back to the paper again.
“Also,” he continued, “it is a part of that witchery.” He raised his head toward the symbol on the cliff face. “It could well be that there is sorcery in what is written here, and only one endowed with your talents—you of the Old Race—can make much of it. He—this man you speak of as a stranger—was of your blood. He carried this, and it meant much to him. Could he have been seeking out just such an aid as that hanging up there to make it plain to him?”
So he shared that guess with her. Well, there was a good chance he was right. However, that dead seeker must have known much more than she did. That presented a new fragment of mystery. In Estcarp only the Witches pretended to any use of the Power. It was not given to any man to read such a puzzle as she held—nor would a Witch believe that in a man's hands the rod could ever have given up its secret.
Therefore the rider must have been instructed what to search for. Tirtha drew a long breath and rerolled the layered skin, pushed it back in its container. Stooping, she picked up the cap, but she did not restore it to the top of the rod. There might just be a chance that time and fortune would give her a means of penetrating the secret of what she had found, and she had no intention of sealing it away. Another time there might not be a way of forcing it open.
She stored it in her belt pouch, and they returned to the meadow. But as she went, Tirtha was busy with scrambled thoughts. The Falconer's guess—which could only be a guess, of course. Was this really some clue to the inner parts of—say—a hold hall such a one as she had envisioned? Had the dead stranger and she both been drawn by a stroke of fortune or troubling of Power past their understanding to make this journey at the same time and in search of the same thing? It was a disturbing thought, but she could not force it out of mind.
5
THEY chose to camp in the protected valley, returning to the crude shelter they had earlier discovered, turning their ponies loose, though hobbled, to share the meadow with the Torgian. Because of that symbol on the rock wall Tirtha dared a fire. Also, at the coming of dusk, the intricate design there began to glow blue, even as a portion had done at her testing. Whatever virtue it possessed was still locked in it, and Tirtha believed that this was indeed a pocket of safety where they need fear no monstrous prowler of the night.
The rations they carried were so limited she made a very careful division of what she had brought out of Romsgarth. However, the Falconer ventured down stream to return, swinging from a reed thong, a brace of plump water hens, which he rolled in mud and pushed well down into the coals of the fire. So they fared better than she would have thought, the feathered skin peeling away from this feast with the mud.
They did not choose to lie within that half-shelter. The night was not cold and somehow Tirtha wanted not to be pent in. It seemed the Falconer shared her desire for freedom. However, she agreed readily that, in spite of the glowing symbol on the rocks, it was well to keep watch turn by turn. This night it fell to her to stand sentry first.
Once the Falconer had rolled into his blanket, she did not remain long by the fire. Hearing the even breathing of the sleeper, she got to her feet, followed the faint path meadowwards. The three beasts grazing there paid her no heed. All the defiance and fear, she sensed, had gone out of the Torgian. He was perhaps ready to accept a change in traveling companions, and certainly he would be a welcome addition—a horse of his stamina and speed might well mean, in Karsten, the difference between success and failure.
Of course, the Falconer could bespeak an equal claim on that mount, but Tirtha believed she might buy him off by an offer of extra gold. Perhaps she might even add her mare whose worth was high in the border country. Now she turned her back on the grazing trio and stood, hands on her hips, looking up at the symbol on the cliff.
What it had been intended to guard was a mystery to both intrigue and disturb her. If it had been hidden until the quakes had revealed it so, then what lay or had lain under the land hereabouts? There were certainly no holds this deep in the highlands—only the Eyrie which the Falconers had built and which had been destroyed. Nor was this Falcon “witchery.”
Never more than at this moment, she longed for the talent. One who possessed farsight—or even the smaller gift of water-seeking with a peeled wand—might have unlocked a little of the ancient puzzle. In spite of her winter at Lormt, Tirtha had been too lacking in early training to absorb more than the knowledge of what might exist—with no chance of making the smallest usage of what someone else could have put to the test.
What did she possess, in truth? Only her dream and the conviction that it drew her, that there lay before her something that must be done—the reason for her existence. It was that which had carried her through these years, worked upon her body and spirit as a smith works upon the metal he handles to fashion a cunning tool, a stout weapon. A tool, a weapon—to be used by whom and for what? She had asked herself that also, knowing that there would be no answer out of the heavens to make all plain.
There was the Power, and it did lie in all things that had life. However, it was comprised of many different energies, some of which served those trained in use, some of which could harm—and another, a larger part, that was beyond even the greatest adept to understand or know. Out of Power came birth and life—to it, after death, returned that which was the spark of all inner essence. Once there had been ritual and ceremony where kin gathered to warm their hearts at a summoned manifestation.
That was long ago. Tirtha could only stand and stare at lines upon a rock wall and wonder who had wrought them so carefully. Had the Power drawn her here? The Falconer had chosen the trail leading to this valley, but she was certain he had not known that it lay under such protection; if so he might well have sought another road. For his kind were not, they had often declared, to be caught in any spell laid by the Old Race.
Again, almost shyly since she was alone and had no need to impress anyone with the fact that she faced something of her own people, Tirtha raised a hand to sketch in the air the sign of peace and acceptance. Then she turned back to sit by the fire, feeding it stick by stick, listening to the sound of the running stream.
She realized that, save for the carrion flies, there had b
een no stirring of life in this valley. Though the Falconer had caught water hens, she had heard no calling of such fowl or sighted spoor of any beast. Yet in this wilderness of stone, the water, the meadow should surely have attracted some wilderness life. It was too quiet here. The girl moved restlessly, arose again, once more pacing into the meadow where the ponies seemed undisturbed. She listened for the wing-sound of any night bird. During all her roaming she had slept out many times, and she knew only too well the cries of the great hunting owls which were common in the lower border lands.
A quiet night . . .
There was a thin sliver of new moon showing, as well as stars. Moon Magic also—she had a fraction of it herself. It was special to the Wise Woman—if not to the Witches—woman's magic. . . .
Magic—it was all magic! Tirtha's fingers balled into a fist that she pounded against the earth as she hunkered down again. She deliberately fastened her mind upon what she must do once they were cross-mountain, even though all would depend upon what they found there. Would she be wise to try to keep the Falconer past the time they had bargained, even if she must, in turn, then share something of her secret? There were no decisions she could make now—only try to think a little ahead so that she knew what decisions might await her.
The silence, the sight of that symbol, made her restless, ill at ease. She tested with seek-thought for any slinker, any life form that might dare the valley in spite of the guardianship. She caught the life essence, which came from the sleeping man; and farther away, that of the three mounts; also some smaller sparks—without anything about them of Dark threat—which she guessed might be wild life. Then . . .
Pain and despair—horror—need . . .
Tirtha was on her feet, running her sword out.
She came to the cairn, stood staring wide-eyed at the mounded turf, the stones they had chosen and fitted above them.
Need—need! Such a wave of it struck at her that she was unaware of falling to her knees beside the mound, watching it in pure horror, which gripped and froze her whole body with waves of unknown force.
Need!
No! Death was a final gate through which all life essence passed. There was no imprisoning of self in rotting flesh that had been discarded. They had buried a dead man. He could not summon—demand—assault her with this desperate cry for help! She dropped the sword, put her hands to her head when the demand she could neither explain nor deny struck at her, set her swaying back and forth as if blows were being rained upon her.
The sword had clattered across the stones. Its Hawk-signed pommel touched the white stone she had added for the very old ritual of her people. Hawk!
Kin-blood—kin-blood to take up a burden, accept the need!
Kin-blood? There was none. She denied that fiercely. Dimly, out of the stories she had heard in childhood, Tirtha knew what sought to ensnare her now. There was the kin oath-laying, which could pass from dead to living and which could not be denied. But that was a true kin thing, accepted by the chosen as a duty coming before all else in life! She was not blood-tied to this stranger. What lingered here could not set its mark on her!
“Peace . . .” She got out that word with great effort, as if she must speak past a constriction in her throat. “Peace to you, stranger. I am not kin-blood. Go you on into the Power's way. We choose not our endings; we choose only the manner with which we meet such. Your task may have ended, but it was the body that failed you, not. . . .”
Tirtha gasped. The sword and the stone—above them where they touched forming something that might well have issued from her abiding and commanding dream—save she was not asleep. There, in a faintly blue mist, was the casket even as she had seen it carried into hiding by that hold lady whose face she had never viewed. There was what she must seek and find—and it grew sharper, more distinct.
Need . . .
Fainter now, as if the last vestiges of whatever had summoned her were fast fading, as if the call she heard came only from a distance, growing ever more immeasurable.
And that need—it was hers also! Stranger—no! In some way past her understanding, this one had been kin-born. However, the dead did not have to bend her to his fading will—that geas was already a part of her.
“Hawkholme—!” Tirtha said. “I go there, yes. And what lies within that”—the casket was merely a wisp of vapor again—“is to come forth. I knew you not, kin-blood. But your need is already mine.”
The haze vanished—also that other—that remnant of will which had outlasted death itself. She was bound, but no more tightly than she had been before she entered this valley. Save that it seemed, in that moment, that when she took up the sword again from where it had fallen, there passed into the hand gripping it a new kind of energy, a strength she had not hitherto known.
Tirtha was still trembling, fighting down the raw fear that had touched her, as she returned to their camp. The night had swung by. She roused her companion, wrapped herself in her own cloak. Almost, she was afraid to surrender to sleep. Would the dream enfold her now, or would something else—a last lingering trace of that demand—strike at her? She closed her eyes with determination and willed herself to rest.
No dream came this night, nor did she confront, as she had more than half feared, that other presence. Instead, her sleep must have been very deep and heavy, for when she was awakened in the morning, she felt a reluctance to move, as if weakened.
They discovered the Torgian now biddable enough, standing quietly so that he might be saddled with the riding gear from which the Falconer had scrubbed the blood stains. But neither of them wished to mount in the place of his dead master; rather they put him on a leading rein and kept to their own sure-footed ponies.
Tirtha hunched her shoulders a little as she passed both mound and symbol, glancing at neither. In the brightness of this new day she could almost believe that illusion had enfolded her last night, and she kept her hand well away from sword hilt as she rode. Let the dead lie in peace—and might she ride so. She owned no debt to anyone—carried nothing but the purpose that had brought her here.
There was a thin trace on the far side of the meadow, a shadow trail such as only the very sure-footed mountain ponies could follow, and one they must have taken unencumbered. Both riders dismounted to lead their beasts, the Falconer hooking the Torgian's halter rope to the empty perch on his own saddle pad, thus securing the horse in line.
The climb was one to be taken slowly and with care. When they at length reached a split in the valley wall, Tirtha stared eagerly ahead, hoping that they were not to be faced by another such ordeal. She was heartened to see that the trail beyond widened and when it did descend, the angle was far less sharp. Also there was greenery to be sighted in pockets ahead, as if they had now passed through the sharp rock desert which had been the outer forbidding part of the mountain ways.
Shortly before midday she brought down a pronghorn—a young buck—and they stopped to skin and butcher the kill. When they broke their fast at nooning, it was with good meat, fire-roasted. Nor was there any lack of life to be seen hereabouts. The fresh slot tracks of other pronghorns, the calls of birds, even a lazy scattering of well-fed quare wings out of a patch of fresh standing law-leaves—the crops of the birds so stuffed that they seemed too weighted to take to the air—all testified to that.
This was good hunting land, and Tirtha wondered if it might be well to try smoking some of the meat, halting for a day or so to add to their supplies. Oddly enough, along this particular trail, where she would have thought it more natural to find snow still lingering, spring growth was more advanced than in the lower valleys from which they had come. There were flowers in pockets of earth, wild fruit trees in bloom, so that the perfume blended on the air, bringing back memories of those farm garths where she had labored.
They were two days crossing this gentle land, and there was no trace in it of any evil. Sometimes Tirtha felt a freedom of spirit, in short flashes, as if nothing pushed at her. To live here in peace and q
uiet, depending upon the bounty of the earth alone, troubled by no dreams, no need—she wondered dimly now and then what such a life might mean.
If her companion had such thoughts, he never voiced them, any more than she revealed hers. They traveled mainly in silence, and she believed that he was intent upon accomplishing their journey as swiftly and with as little danger as possible. They still kept night watches in turn, and he rode ever, she noted, with the attention of a scout invading unknown territory.
Strangely enough, she no longer dreamed. That visit in her dreams to the ghostly hold had been for so long a part of her nights that Tirtha felt disturbed when it was not repeated. Several times she had drawn out during their camping that “map,” as the Falconer would call it, studying the symbols set on it to no better purpose than she had done the first time she had looked upon it. Was it a map at all? There were patterns for calling of Power; hastily she pushed that dangerous idea out of her mind.
On the afternoon of the fourth day after they had ridden out of the protected valley, the vegetation grew sparser, their path once more led into a barren country as it climbed. Just before nightfall they sighted a fall of stone. The Falconer halted, staring ahead—not as one who faced some to-be-expected barrier, but rather in bemusement, which showed openly on his usually expressionless face, for that day he had ridden bareheaded—a strange choice for one who had always kept to his mask.
Tirtha could see no reason for this sudden halt, but here the path was so narrow that she could not push ahead, but must wait on him to move. When he did not, she broke what had nearly been a full day of silence.
“There is no way beyond?”
For a long moment she believed that he was so lost in what thoughts filled his mind that he had not even heard her. Then, haltingly, his claw swung out, gestured at the river of broken stone.