by Andre Norton
“Where . . .” She found it exhausting to bring out even the beginning of a question. Let the dead, or the almost-dead rest; she resented being bound by any will.
“East . . .” It would seem that she need not form a full thought, that Alon could pluck meaning from what was vague even to her. “There is a Dark One—he believes me in his hold. But I have seen the bird twice!”
The bird that had flown into the storm? What had the bird to do with them? Oh, just let her go! Tirtha strove to will herself back into peaceful nothingness.
“Messenger . . .They come!”
She did not care. The fleeting strength that touch had brought was not enough to hold her. She slipped once more into the dark.
Then it was dark and yet not truly dark. Rain no longer beat on her face. Somewhere, not too far away, there must be a fire, for there was a ruddy glow, though she could not turn her head to find its source. She stared unblinkingly upward at rough stone. They must have taken refuge in a cave.
This could have been one of many such camps as far as her slight hold upon the living world could tell. Tirtha lay looking up at that rock. Perhaps the dying, or the dead, dream of life, and this was such a dream. She was content that the pain was gone and that there seemed to be a barrier between her and any contact with the real world or the unreal one.
“Tirtha!” Once again she was being summoned back, she thought, sluggishly and resentfully. “You are awake—I know it!” There was some heat of anger. Alon might have been hammering at a door that had refused to open to him.
“The bird—it is out there in the night! I have heard it call twice. They are coming! This Dark One—he knows it, he will try me!”
There was nothing left in Tirtha to raise an answer. What moved Alon had no meaning for her. A shadow appeared between her and the fire as a tall shape loomed above her. The shadow leaned forward, so her moving eyes saw a helmed head, a face in partial darkness. A second shadow was now beside the first, someone dragged to her side even as that miserable prisoner had been brought to her to steal the casket—a smaller, thinner shape.
“He's scared into an idiot, Lord. Look at the face on him.”
“Yes, look at him, Gerik! This waif you would have hunted for your pleasure has more strength in the smallest finger of his hand than you can summon to swing that sword of yours! Idiot? Ah, far from that. He is hiding—hiding! But there is a trick or two that will peel him out, even as you peel a fos-crab out of its shell after a good steaming.”
Hands hard and heavy on its shoulders crushed that smaller shadow to its knees beside her.
“I thought as how he was so very precious, Lord, that none of us was to lay finger on him. Yet you want to risk him . . .”
“There always is a time, Gerik, when one plays for high stakes. I do not think that this one will be risked. He is of another heritage. Among such, like does not prey upon like. It may diminish him somewhat. However, that can be risked for what we shall gain. To transport this other carrion only slows us, and time has become our enemy. We are not the only seekers, and I will tell you, Gerik, you would find some who come searching such as you would not care to face.” Laughter, low and heavy in contempt, came out of that shadow. “Now!”
She did not know what he did to the boy he held prisoner. There came no cry out of Alon, nor was there any longer any touch from him to her. He must have retreated into his own refuge.
“Seems like he isn't too quick to answer, Lord!” Gerik said after a long moment. “We could try a trick or two . . .”
“Silence!” The word was sharp enough to stop even Gerik in his covert rebellion.
The two beside her seemed linked unmovingly. Tirtha sensed, very far, the faintest touch against her near-buried self, a lapping of power that perhaps might well have blasted one who accepted or was forced to accept it fully. The smaller shadow moved a fraction, its arms hanging limply from the shoulders and prisoned in its captor's grip raised, the hands extending toward Tirtha's body. That lapping power arose the stronger—exultation fed it.
Then there came a tearing cry, so wild and strange that it might have been a shout a man charging into battle would voice, his nature drowned in a lust for blood and death. Another shadow appeared, over the shoulder of the standing man. She saw it clearly. The bird that had been born from the body of the falcon!
The man at her side stumbled back a step. One of his hands fell away from Alon's shoulder, while the boy sagged forward as one whose full strength had drained away. Now he lay across her, his rain-wet hair drifting over the lower part of her face, as motionless as she herself. Though Tirtha did not believe that he was dead—or dead-alive as she was sentenced to remain.
The bird now perched on Alon's shoulder, twisting forward its long neck so that its eyes were very close to her own as it gazed steadily at her. No, no bird! This was again that head, that face she had seen in her pain back in Hawkholme.
Only for a moment did the bird stare into her eyes, or the face thus look upon her. Then it swung about to confront the man shadow, and from it came once more that sound which was a name, “Ninutra!”
From the man it so confronted, there sounded an answering cry. Or was it a summons for help—a backing for himself in some struggle he now feared unequal?
“Rane!”
He might have laid a goad to the bird. The thing hissed viciously. It fairly leaped from Alon's body straight for the man who had been trying to jerk the boy up again. The blow it delivered was out of range of Tirtha's sight, but she heard a cry of pain, then an oath. He was no longer between her and the fire, and she could hear other cries, not all in the same voice. It would seem that the bird was waging battle with more than one.
Alon remained where he was. She could not feel his weight upon her, his voice reached her in the faintest of whispers, which the cries and sounds from beyond covered.
“They fight. The bird has drawn blood. But the Lord summoned, and there will be more than one come to us. Also there is one who follows. Time is drawing in. Oh, Tirtha, hold—hold, for the end is far from decided.”
She guessed that he had used speech lest that which had been summoned, or the lord, having extended his own power to that summoning, might pick up their touch by mind. But she could make no answer. Nor did she desire to do so. This was no longer her battle. It was rather a trap wherein she was held, from which she longed to be free.
The clamor lessened, and then a shadow strode once more between the light of the fire and her body.
“What's to be done with the boy now, lord?”
“See he's well bound and stow him safe.” The reply was sullen. “There is too much abroad now to try again.”
Alon was lifted off her, taken from her sight, lying limp in his guard's hands. Once more Tirtha was allowed to drift into her blessed nothingness.
What came to arouse her next was pain—a memory of it, or so it would seem, not a part of her. Still she carried it with her as one carries an annoying burden one is ordered to bear. She looked out upon the world, losing her hold on nothingness with reluctance. There was sky above her again—dull and gray, but from it no rain flowed. Her head jerked to and fro so that she caught glimpses now and then of mounted men, mainly one who rode beside her, leading the pony on which she was lashed. She gathered she had been bound to that mount in a strange fashion, face up, probably because of the casket that must still be frozen into position on her breast, making this the only way she could be transported.
More than her surroundings, the girl grew aware of what was awakening inside her. Not only the pain, but also her thoughts were coming alive once more. She had not this time answered to Alon's call, rather to something else—a reaching out from . . .
Warmth—the casket! What she bore was alive? No, that could not be true. It was metal, unless it cradled more than she could have guessed—some sentient power? One could believe anything of the Great Ones and that what she bore was of their earlier possessing, Tirtha no longer doubted. There w
as feeling within that thing, which rested not far from her heart, to the covering of which her hands were still frozen. Her head bobbed again to give her a quick glance down the length of her body.
Yes! She held the casket as firmly as she had since she had taken it up from its resting place at Hawkholme. The rope, which helped to bind her to the pony, also was looped carefully about her hands as if those who transported her had doubts about her being dead and had thought that she might rouse, to throw the treasure from her, perhaps into some place from which they could not fetch it forth again.
Dead? For the first time her less sluggish thinking began to doubt this. The drug Alon had fed into her at her urging had been a huge dose of what was meant to give healing sleep. Perhaps it had paralyzed her body, taken the pain but left her living. The thought of being forever so enchained was much worse than any physical pain, striking her as hard and swiftly as a sword thrust.
The sky appeared to be lightening a little. Now with the bobbing of her head she sighted a patch of blue. Since she faced the tail of the horse, back the way they had come, she caught sight of what must be the rear guard, a single man who rode as one who was uneasy, turning watchful eyes on the back track. There was no mark of any roadway. This was all open moorland with a round mound or hill here and there. The spring growth was already high and green. She saw a hawk wheel into the upper air, a flock of smaller birds turn sharply, forming a fan pattern against the enlarging patch of blue.
As Tirtha became more and more alert mentally, breaking through layers of shadows that had wrapped her around as a moth might lie encased in its cocoon, she watched the rear guard with greater care. Twice he pulled to a halt, sat looking back over his shoulder. Yet the land behind was so open one could view it for an ever-lengthening distance. Even she—who had no control over her eyes and had to watch those portions the movements of the pony allowed her—saw nothing move there.
Again her interest awoke so that she longed to reach out. Alon? No, she dared not attempt to touch the boy; she did not know how deeply he was kept captive, not only physically, but by the talent of the Dark Lord. Surely that Lord could sense, since he must be very alert to any manifestation of the talent, any attempt on her part to contact her fellow prisoner. So feeble a gift as hers would lie as open to his reading as one of the record rolls of Lormt.
Still—were they pursued? She remembered Alon's whisper of one who followed. The raided garth where Gerik had caused red ruin—could that have set on their trail some band of a lord's following determined on vengeance? Tirtha believed not. Hawkholme lay too far inland. No one would have followed the raiders with such single-minded fury unless it was their own homestead that had been so despoiled, and Gerik had left only death behind him at the garth that had been Alon's home.
There remained Alon and that Wise Woman Yachne who had taken him into the homestead. Why had Yachne tried to protect and hide one who was manifestly not of her race or kind? Had she perhaps foreseen a future in which Alon could be forged into a tool or a weapon of her own? The Power had always been a danger to those who could summon it even slightly—in itself it was a peril. He or she who could accomplish a little began to yearn to be able to control more. If that inner desire became great enough, it corrupted. Such corruption was of the Dark.
Yes, Tirtha believed that one who valued, who craved Power above all else, might trail behind and seek, single-minded, to regain what had been lost. Even though the odds against any success were very, very high. Yachne had been said to be a Wise Woman, a healer of sorts, which meant one limited in talent. However, that did not also mean that the face she presented to the world was more than a mask. She could well have come out of Escore on some business of her own, adopting a lesser role in Karsten than she would play among those with whom she was bred. Alon had been her charge or her possession.
Tirtha had not realized how much her mind had cleared until that faint pain began to increase. Her body, which had been so dead, was coming awake. She cringed inwardly, realizing the torment that lay ahead, carried as she was, if the action of the herb began to fail. The end could be that she would face such pain as that poor remnant of a man from Hawkholme must have felt before the last act his captor had forced him to had released him forever. Tirtha knew some of the disciplines of pain-containing—had used them during her journeys to combat the ordinary small trials of any tramping of the roads, but they had never been meant to cope with such an ordeal as would be hers now. There was no one to aid her, unless she could provoke the lord of this party to finish her off as they had done the Falconer. Perhaps it would come to that, if she could persuade him that the casket would be his after such a merciful stroke.
Only, what she held could not be so easily surrendered. That knowledge was deep in her. Tirtha was still guardian, dead or alive, until released from her bond. A provoked sword thrust would not be the answer.
The rear rider had reined in his mount once more, facing the back trail. He was a brutal looking fellow, clad in rusted and badly mended mail, a pot helm a little too large. Its ill fit appeared to bother him, for he put up a hand now and then to tug it more firmly in place. All the rest of their party that she could not see plodded on, drawing her, in turn, farther and farther away from the rear guard who still sat where he was, his horse's head hanging as if it had been ridden too far and too long.
This was a quiet group. There was no conversation among them, only a snuffle of bit, the whiffling snort of mount now and then to break the silence. Pressing in on Tirtha came their combined feelings of uneasiness, fear. She remembered more clearly Gerik's protests about crossing the border. There were hills between fabled Escore and Karsten, though not the stark mountainous country that formed the Eastern barrier back in Estcarp. Even so, crossing into such debatable land was nothing to be taken lightly. Those of lowland blood, with their hatred and fear of what the Falconer termed witchery, would have little desire to push on.
The Falconer . . . Shot down . . . she had a dim memory of hearing that. He must have brought her out of the crumbling fortress-hall with Alon's help, only to meet death. What had become of his power sword? She was somehow sure that none in this company would dare to claim it. It had come to him, and there were many old tales of weapons that chose their masters—or mistresses—serving no others. Now her memory grew vivid for an instant or two, and she remembered his body arching over her and Alon, keeping from them, or ready to do so, the tumbling walls. A, blank shield served his employer to the death—that was the code. Yet it was Tirtha's thought that in the end the Falconer had not lived only by the code, that, woman though she was, he might have forgotten her sex in that moment and viewed her as a shield-mate cut down in battle. She remembered his dark, hollow-cheeked face and what lay always in the depths of his eyes—that strange yellowish fire that could be heightened by anger or perhaps by hidden thoughts she had never understood. He had found peace, which was all she could wish for him.
His falcon, which had so oddly taken on that other-seeming when death finished it—what had been its real end? And who or what was Ninutra?
Even thinking that name opened a new inner path of thought. This time Tirtha did not see a woman's face, rather she felt a warmth throughout her whole body—inward surely, not in her drugged and deadened flesh. While . . .
The air twisted, turned. Could air twist and turn? In spite of the bobbing of her head, that constant motion which was disruptive to clear sight, Tirtha detected movement overhead, and it was in the air! A gathering of fog—whence came a single patch of fog on such clear a day? Some small cloud might have been dispatched to hang directly over them, traveling steadily with them. Was she the only one who saw it? She heard nothing from those riding about her.
Fog? No, shadow! Only one should not be able to see an airborne shadow at midday! It twirled, lengthened, solidified. The same sword that had hung above the three of them back at Hawkholme was now visible, growing in both breadth and length. They traveled under it, and there was a
threat in it.
Not for her; Tirtha had already decided that. This was a manifestation of the same power that had aided them at Hawkholme. Like the gray bird, it was representative of a warning, a challenge. She half expected to hear the scream of the bird, perhaps that name uttered out of the air overhead.
What she did hear was a loud cry that must have issued from the man leading the pony to which she was bound. He had reined in and jerked the pony in turn to a halt. Her head had fallen a little to one side so that she could see his arm stretched upward as he pointed to what hung above them. There were other exclamations. Then came the voice of the one she had not yet directly seen—that Dark Lord who commanded Gerik in spite of the outlaw's will.
“It is a vision only. Are you such as to be frightened by shadows?”
“There are shadows and shadows.” Again Gerik spoke, his impudence hardly controlled. “If it is a vision, Lord, then whose? And it has an uncanny look to it. I do not think that and your cup-brother would deal well together. You have said that there will be those in Escore to hail us with ‘well done’ since we bring that dead thing over there with its hell box, and this youngling whom you drag along in spite of the death-coming look to him also. Well, are we not in Escore, or so you have told us? Where then are your friends? Does it not seem that it is those with little liking for you who have found us first? I say”—his voice came a little louder now as if he were approaching the pony upon which Tirtha was tied—“that we have fufilled our part of the bargain, Lord. This dealing with Powers—leave witchery to them who know it better than we. There are good enough pickings in the Duchy; why should we go hunting trouble?”
It would seem that the only man Tirtha held in sight agreed with that. For he who had led the pony dropped the rope and backed his mount away from the smaller beast. A moment later he was joined by another, who looked much like him and was surely close akin to the one she had seen stop behind them on the trail.