by Andre Norton
It was a little time before I noticed that where the sword rested a path opened through the stuff. Once aware of that I applied the blade with cutting strokes, carving a slit through it.
At long last there was a rock ledge facing me and I pulled out on stable land, though the mess sucked avidly at my body as if it would not let me go. I had to turn and cut with what strength I could still muster to free myself.
Then I lay full length on that rock, breathing in great gasps, even though the major part of each breath I drew was the foul gas from the bubbles. Up . . . an inner warning pricked at me . . . up and away.
Once more I was reduced to crawling, leaving smears from my caked body on the rock. Up . . . still that inner urge was a lash, growing in intensity.
I heard a sound from the morass behind, louder than the bursting of those bubbles, more akin to the sucking which had come from my own struggles. My paws gripped again and pulled feebly, bringing up the weight of my heavy body. The sword I held between my fangs, cutting my lips when I moved them incautiously, but in such safety as I could devise.
The sucking sound was closer, but I could not yet turn my head. Fear lent the last impetus to reach the top of the rise, to drag myself along the lip. Then, somehow, I hunched to my knees, swung my body around.
They were coming through the muck with a speed I could not equal. There were two of them and—
Spent with my efforts to reach this point I could not get to my feet unaided. But I wriggled to one of the stones and with its help was somehow erect again, my back against it, facing those things.
They were gray and warty of skin; they had heavy arms and thick shoulders, toad faces (though the mouths were fanged). Ridges of ragged flesh arose across their skulls from one great ear to the other. These were kinsmen of the body I inhabited!
Their gashes of mouths opened as they yammered in no understandable speech. Each carried in his hand an ax, as mighty of blade as that of Volt which I had seen often in Koris’ keeping, but far shorter of haft. It was plain they were hunting me.
There was no running from this, nor would I, I believe, even if I could force my weary body to the effort. The axes resembled those used by Sulcar borderers, which could be used either as a hand weapon, or to be thrown from a distance, with fatal results if the axman was expert. Whether these toadmen were, I did not know. But in such cases it is always best to give high credit to your foe’s fighting prowess rather than underrate him.
I had the sword and for that to be effective I must wait until they were closer. If they were going to throw those axes, I did not believe it was possible for them to do so while they pushed through the mud. If I retreated no farther from the rim, I could dispute their landing, giving me one small advantage.
But I was so slow of body, so worn from my push through that fetid hole, that I could not move fast. I might not even leave the support of the rock against which I had set my back. When I brought up my sword in a swing meant to suggest defense, my arm answered my will so reluctantly that I felt this was indeed a fight already decided in favor of the enemy.
“Sytry!” I tried to raise the hilt to the level of my lips, the point thrusting at whatever sky this space owned. “Steel, I hold by that Name, battle I do, in that Name. Whatever favor cometh from powers I know not, yet are of the White and not the Shadow, let it rest upon me now! For I have that to do which has not been done, and there is yet a road before me—” A jumble of thoughts, ill chosen, but in that moment the most I could muster to express a plea of which I was not sure anyone, or anything, would heed.
If I could have taken only two steps forward, thrust while they were still scrambling up out of the mud, then I would have had a small advantage. But I knew that effort was not in me. Take those two steps and I would not meet them on my feet, but groveling before them, my neck bent and ready for the fall of their axes.
They must have believed me easy prey, or else they were so slow of wit that they knew only one method of attack and that a forward run, weapons aloft, yammering out what might have been war cries. I tried to swing the sword as I would have done had I had my normal body.
Its hilt loosened in my hold, spun out of my grasp, and hurled on through the air. Once more it no longer appeared a sword, but rather a flash of golden light. So swift was its passage that my eyes could not follow it, to see what it wrought in my defense. What I afterwards witnessed were wounds gaping beneath the lower jaws of the toadmen, pumping forth purplish liquid; saw them stumble and sprawl forward, sliding across the stone, their axes, falling from paws suddenly lax, striking ringingly, while I cowered back against my support, gaping foolishly.
There was another ring, louder than the axes had made, almost bell-like in tone. The sword lay there, no longer a flashing fury of destruction. I pushed away from my support, tottered to it. But the effort of stooping to pick it up made me topple and fall in turn. For a moment or two I lay there, the steel of the blade under my body. From its touch against my noisome skin spread, first a kind of warmth and then, following that, a renewal of strength. So heartened I braced myself up on my forepaws.
Where the bodies of the toadmen had lain puffed a shimmering fog of blackish motes, as soot might rise from the disturbance of a place where many fires had burned and then been quenched. And, as soot, the particles settled again to the surface of the rock, ringing—
Not the toad bodies I had seen fall to the strokes of the sword, but two lighter frames, so close to skeletons that one could see the bones plainly through the too tightly stretched skin. These, in spite of the extreme emaciation, were those of normal human kind!
The strength which had come out of the blade was in me, so I got to my feet, shuffled through the black dust to the nearest of those skeleton-men. His features were very sharp in his skull face. Looking upon him I thought that once he must have been of the Old Race or kindred blood. Death had broken some ensorcelment and returned him to his true self. Death? I glanced down at my own paws, the warty skin on my arms. Was death the only way of return?
The skeleton was changing again, falling into dust, as had the weeping, female thing on the other side of the gem wall. The other followed it into nothingness.
I turned my back on them as quickly as I could, faced in the other direction, to see as I expected that I would, the rise of a tower upon a mound, waiting for me even as its twin had before.
This one loomed very black and harsh, with more of a distinct outline and clarity of bulk than anything else I had seen in this eerie other world. The mound on which it was based was also dark.
Once more I walked the road into which my paw feet sank, and which was a river, but not of water. When I came to the foot of the mound there was no need to work any spell to open a door, for there it gaped, very black, already waiting. I thought “Kaththea!” to see it wing in before me, quickly vanishing in the gloom.
With the sword hilt grasped in both paws, I lumbered unsteadily on, past the portal of the mound, to enter this Dark Tower. Would it also have a staircase and doorways into more distorted worlds?
The black-dark which had seemed so thick when looking in from outside was here enlightened by a glimmer of yellowish-gray. I realized that was shed by my own body. By it I caught glimpses of floor and walls, all of huge blocks of black stone, close set. Again the walls ran without doors, to bring me into a circular room from which a stair climbed. But this was not shrouded in any spell, nor were there any other doors about that room.
My paw feet were not made for use on stairways. Once more I had to grip the sword between my teeth, go on all fours, aware that any side slip would send me crashing down upon the hard pavement below. So I went very slowly.
Then my head emerged into a lighter place, no hint of which had reached below that opening. It was as if I came into a place of ghosts. But they were not of things which had once lived and breathed. The thin, cloudy, half pictures I saw were of furnishings. There were chairs, a table which supported many jars, flasks, and tubing
I did not understand. Against the walls were chests and cabinets with closed doors. All as insubstantial as river mist, yet plain to trace against the stone.
I put one paw to the edge of the table. It touched no surface, but passed easily through in a sweep which met no resistance.
There was another stairway leading aloft. This was not in the center of the room, but curled up against the wall. However it was stone and solid, not like the ghost furnishings. I shuffled to it. Since the incline here was not so steep, I managed to take it step by step, still standing, slipping my body painfully along the wall as far from the unguarded outer edge as I could get.
No sound; the tower was wrapped in silence. I tried not to make any noise, but in that I was not too successful. Even my heavy breathing stirred the air loudly enough, I feared, to alert any who walked sentry here.
There was another room above, and once more the dim, misty furnishings ringed me around. Here was a table with two chairs drawn up to it, and it was set as if for a meal. Mist goblets and plates at each place.
I swallowed. Since I had left Orsya—centuries ago—I had not eaten. Until I saw that table I had not thought of food. But now, in an instant, hunger was a pain in me. Where would I find food? What food did this toad body need for nourishment? Unwillingly I remembered those skeleton bodies. Had they gone famishing until their deaths?
There was some pretension in the furnishing of this chamber. Cobweb tapestry cloaked the walls. So thin was it, I could not detect any pattern. There were chests with the suggestion of carving on their fronts, the kind of work one might see in a manor house.
Once more another flight of stairs urged me up and on. Laboriously I climbed. Here the way was shut against me at the top by a trapdoor. I steadied my back as best I could against the wall, put the sword between my teeth, and pushed up against it with all the strength I could summon.
It yielded, rising, to fall back against the floor above with a crash which was doubly startling in the silence. I followed as quickly as I could, sure that must rouse any who sheltered here.
“Welcome—bold hero!”
I strained my head up and back on those crooked shoulders, trying to see.
Dinzil—yes, Dinzil!
But not in any disfiguring toad man disguise. He was as tall, as strong, as fair of face, as when I saw him last in the Valley. But added to that a vitality, as if in him some fire burned high, not consuming the flesh which held it, but giving an energy and force such as human kind did not know. To look upon him dazzled my eyes, and the tears dripped fast down my distorted jaws, but still I held that gaze. For hate can be a force to strengthen one, and I knew that all the hate that I had tasted before in my life was nothing to the emotion now in me.
He stood with his hands on his hips, and he was laughing—silently, his amusement a lash of contempt and scorn.
“Kemoc of Tregarth, one of the Three—I bid you welcome. Though it would seem that you have lost something, and gained something—not for the rest of your spirit, nor to delight the eyes of those—if there now are any—who look upon you with kindliness. Would you see what those would see? Behold!”
He clicked his lips and straightway there appeared before me a burnished surface on which was painfully clear what must be my reflection. But the shock was perhaps not what he had expected, since I had already known of my changed body. Perhaps my composure startled Dinzil a little, if he were still able to be touched by human emotions.
“They say,” he smiled again, “there are places where what a man sees is not his outer form, but the inner; the thing he himself has fashioned through the years by his ill desires, his hidden lusts, the evil he has thought on doing but not had the courage to act upon. Do you recognize your inner self now—when it is turned to outer—Kemoc Tregarth, renegade from overmountain?”
I was past such needling.
Kaththea! I thought that not at him, but as I had before, sending it seeking. Here, what showed as that thought was no longer a bright green flying thing, but rather a bird sore hurt, fluttering, trying to reach a goal, but hindered from it.
I saw Dinzil turn his head, follow it. There was startlement in his eyes for an instant. He swept up his hand in a forbidding gesture and the thought-bird vanished. Now he looked to me again and he was no longer amused.
“It seems that I have underrated you, my misshapen hero. I will admit, I wondered how you could come this road without misstepping somewhere along the way. So you still have the power to find Kaththea, have you?” He appeared to think for a moment and then brought his hands together in a sharp clap, laughing once more.
“Very well. I have weaknesses; one of them is for heroes. Such constancy and devotion must be rewarded. Also, it will be amusing to see if your tie is strong enough to really show you Kaththea.”
He said a word, raised both hands over his head and plunged them down. There was a whirling about me, with nothing to cling to—
We stood in the round chamber. On the floor lay the trapdoor I had pushed back. It was as it had been, save that all which had been ghostly was now solid. The tapestries on the wall were woven in time faded colors, but jewels and metallic threads gave them sparkling life. The chairs, a chest or two, were heavily carved and plainly old. Dinzil still fronted me and now he made mock reverence.
“Welcome, welcome. I would give you the guesting cup, my poor hero, but I fear what you would quaff from it in this place would be the death of you. And that is not my wish—not yet. But we tarry too long. You have not come aguesting—have you?—but to see another.”
He turned his head a little from me and I followed his glance. There was a small table and on either side of it stood a sconce as tall as a man, in which candies burned, with a mirror between. Before that mirror, as if someone sat there, a comb with a jeweled back moved slowly up and down, in the motions of one smoothing long, loose locks of hair. But that was all, just the moving comb.
I shuffled toward the mirror and table. My thought went out in a sharp call:
“Kaththea!”
Did she in truth sit there, unseen by me? Or was that moving comb but a trick Dinzil used for my torment?
In the glass I saw something. But it was my toad self pictured there, no reflection of the beauty which was my sister’s.
The comb fell to the floor. There came out of nothingness such a scream of terror as I have never heard. Dinzil threw out his arms, folded them about something invisible to me.
Yet all of this could be his trickery and no truth.
“Kaththea!” Once more I called, mind to mind.
“Evil!” That was no answer, but a feeling of loathing strong as any physical blow, and following it, words, some of which I knew. She was using a spell. Dinzil did not trick me; no one but Kaththea could do this.
“Evil indeed, my love.” Dinzil spoke as one soothing a child. “This thing would have you believe it is Kemoc come seeking you. Hush; waste not your wisdom which cannot harm a thing of this place.”
“Kaththea!” To the mind call I added two words. If she was not entirely lost to all she had been, then those would assure her that nothing of the Shadow stood here, but one of the light.
“Evil!” Again that blast against me. Stronger this time. But not buttressed with any word of power. “Send it hence, Dinzil!” that voice which was my sister’s cried out of empty air. “Send it hence! To look upon it chills my heart!”
“So be it, my love!” He loosed his hold on that invisible body and then raised his hands once more and spoke a word. We whirled, to come again into the room furnished in mist.
“She has chosen, has she not, my hero? Let me show you something.”
Once more he brought out of nothingness that mirror. But this time it did not reflect me, or the room. There was a thing—female—akin to the monstrous weeper. That is, part of it was. But on the twisted shoulders of that foul body sat my sister’s head; over those shoulders and sagging breasts flowed her hair. Her hands were not paws but white and huma
n.
“This is Kaththea as she now is.”
My hate for him was a poison rising in my throat. He must have known, for his hand moved and I was planted to the floor as if roots sealed my paws to the stone.
“You see in me one who can vanquish the dangers of this place. I am Dinzil; I remain Dinzil. Slowly Kaththea is learning. When she is wholly as I am, then will she be wholly Kaththea here as well as in your own world—outwardly. She learns well and fast. All women shrink from the monstrous. I let her see a little of her present self—not telling her, of course, that she was the one upon whose form she looked, but letting her think that that is what might happen unless she speedily puts to use the safeguards I could teach her. Since then she has been most biddable. No, you are more than I thought you, Kemoc Tregarth. I had believed that most of the power was your sister’s. However, one must not lightly toss aside any potential weapon without considering carefully the possibilities for future use. So—we shall put you in safe keeping until I can make a decision.”
Once more his signs and the warping. Then I was in a stone-walled cell, where only the yellowish aura given off by my body provided the light. The walls about me looked solid, with no break in them. I crouched down in the middle of that small, cold space and tried to think.
Hero—Dinzil had been derisive when he named me that, and rightly so. I had done naught to defend myself, to reach Kaththea, save what my enemy had forced upon me. The battle had been no battle at all, but a pitifully inept encounter which had gone exactly as Dinzil wished.
But to con the unhappy past was no good stepping-stone to any future. That Dinzil had powers I had known since I had begun this so far ineffective quest. On my side were only the facts that I had won to the Tower, which he had not expected, that I still had the sword. Ha—I held the sword across my knees. Had Dinzil let me keep that weapon because he scorned the use of steel, or had he seen it at all?