by Andre Norton
“Look at her, man! Look at her very well!”
He could not free himself, and look he did. Slowly he stopped struggling, and I hoped my fight won. Kaththea, smiling, undisturbed, now and again uttering his name as if she had only that one word to speak.
“What—what is she?”
I loosed him when he asked that. He knew now, was ready to accept the truth. But what was the truth? At our discovery she had not vanished away as had the warriors. I touched her arm—that was flesh beneath my fingers, warm, apparently living. So real a hallucination was beyond any I had seen before.
“I do not know what she is—save she is not who we seek here.”
“If we had taken her and gone—” Kemoc paused.
“Yes. That would have served their purposes very well. But if this is counterfeit; where is the real?”
It was as if Kemoc had been shocked into inspired thinking by the closeness of his error.
“This—this one came from there.” He pointed to the doorway. “Thus in the opposite direction lies, I think, what we seek.”
He sounded too sure, yet I had no better reason or direction in which to look.
“Kemoc—” Her hands were out again. She was watching him and edging to the wall, subtly urging him to that way of escape.
He shivered, drew away. “Kyllan, hurry—we have to hurry!”
Turning his back on her, my brother ran towards the building, and I followed, fearing that any moment a cry of alarm would be voiced behind us, that the surrogate for our sister would utter a warning.
There was another door, and Kemoc, a little before me, put his hand to it. I expected bolts or bars and wondered how we could deal with such. But the panel swung inward readily enough and Kemoc peered into the dark.
“Hold to my belt,” he ordered. And there was such certainty in his voice that I obeyed. So linked, we moved into a dark which was complete.
Yet Kemoc walked with quick sure steps, as if he could see every foot of the way. My shoulder brushed against the side of another doorway. Kemoc turned to the left. I felt about with my other hand, touched a surface not too far away, and ran fingertips along it as we moved. A hallway, I thought.
Then Kemoc halted, turned sharply to the right, and there was the sound of another door opening. Sudden light, gray and dim, but light. We stood on the threshold of a small, cell-like room, I looking over Kemoc’s shoulder. On the edge of a narrow bed she sat, waiting for us.
There was none of the serene, smiling, untroubled beauty that the girl in the garden had worn.
Experience showed on this girl’s face also, but with it anxiety, strain, a wearing down of the body by the spirit. Beauty, too, but a beauty which was worn unconsciously and not as a weapon. Her lips parted, formed two names silently. Then Kaththea was on her feet, running to us, a hand for each.
“Haste, oh, haste!” Her voice was the thinnest of whispers. “We have so little time!”
This time there was no need for warning. I had Kaththea in my arms, no simulacrum of my sister. Then she crowded past us and took the lead back through the dark, drawing us with her at a run. We burst into the free night of the garden. I half expected Kaththea to meet her double, but there was no one there.
Back over the wall and into the wood we went, her frantic haste now spurring us. She held the long skirts of her robe high, dragging them with sharp jerks from the bushes where they appeared to catch and hold unnaturally. We strove not to use care now, only speed. And we were all gasping as we came out of the hollow to where our Torgians waited.
Just as we reached the saddles a deep boom welled from the building in the cup. It held a little of the earth-thunder we had heard during the mountain moving. Our horses screamed shrilly, as if they feared another such upheaval of their normal world. As we started off at a wild gallop I listened for any other sounds—shouts of some pursuit, another thunder roar. But there was nothing.
Not in the least reassured, I called to Kaththea:
“What will they send after us?”
Her hair whipped back, her face a white oval, she turned to answer me. “Not—warriors—” she gasped. “They have other servants—but tonight—they are limited.”
Even Torgians could not stand the pace we had set in fleeing the valley of the Place. I was aware that the horses were disturbed, and that this uneasiness was fast approaching panic. Yet the reason for that was not plain since we should be out of the influence of the Place by now. With all the talent I had I strove to quiet their minds, to bring them again to sane balance.
“Rein in!” I ordered. “They will run themselves blind—rein in!”
I had no fears for Kemoc’s horsemanship. But of Kaththea’s I was not so sure. While the Witches did not ignore the body in their training and exploration of the mind, I did not know how cloistered my sister had been during these past years, how able to control her mount.
The Torgians fought for the bits, strove to continue their headlong run, but between our strength on the reins, and my own efforts, they began to yield and we were slowing our pace when there was an ear-splitting squawl from before us. The cry of a snow cat, once heard, is never to be mistaken. They are the undisputed kings of the high valleys and the peaks. Though what one could be doing this far from its native hunting grounds I did not understand. Unless the orders which had brought us from the border lands had been accompanied by some unknown commands which had moved the animals also, spreading them into territory they had not known before.
My mount reared and screamed, lashing out with front hooves as if the cat had materialized beneath its nose. And Kemoc fought a like battle. But the Torgian my sister rode swung about and bolted the way we had come, at the same breakneck pace which had started us off on this wild ride. I spurred after her, striving to reach the mind of her mount, with no effect, since it was now filled with witless terror. All I could read there was that it imagined the snow cat behind it preparing for a fatal leap to bring it down.
My horse fought me, but I drove savagely into its brain and did what I had never presumed to do before—I took over, pressing my wishes so deeply that nothing was left of its own identity for the present. We caught up with Kaththea and I stretched my control to the other horse—not with such success, since I also had to hold my own, but enough to eject from its brain the fear of imminent cat attack.
We turned to see Kemoc pounding up through the moonlight. I spoke between set teeth:
“We may not be able to keep the horses!”
“Was that an attack?” Kemoc demanded.
“I think so. Let us ride while we can.”
Ride we did through the waning hours of the night, Kemoc in the lead over the trail he had long ago marked. I brought up the rear, trying to keep ever alert to any new onslaught against our mounts or us. I ached with the weariness of the double strain, I who had believed myself fine trained to the peak of endurance, such as only the fighting men of these later days of Estcarp were called upon to face. Kaththea rode in silence, yet she was ever a source of sustenance to us both.
V
THERE WAS LIGHT ahead—could that mark dawn? But dawn was not red and yellow, did not flicker and reach—
Fire! A line of fire across our path. Kemoc drew rein and Kaththea pulled level with him, and a moment later I brought up beside them. That ominous line ahead stretched across our way as far as the eye could see. Under us the horses were restive again, snorting, flinging up their heads. To force them into that would not be possible.
Kaththea’s head turned slowly from left to right, her eyes surveying the fire as if seeking some gate. Then she made a small sound, close to laughter.
“Do they deem me so poor a thing?” she demanded, not of us, but of the night shadows before her. “I cannot believe that—or this.”
“Illusion?” asked Kemoc.
If it were an illusion it was a very realistic one. I could smell the smoke, hear the crackle of flames. But my sister nodded. Now she looked to me.
“You have a fire striker—make me a torch.”
I dared not dismount, lest my Torgian break and run. It was hard to hold him to a stand, but I urged him to the left and leaned in the saddle to jerk at a spindly bush, which luckily yielded to my pull. Thrusting this into Kemoc’s hold, I fumbled one-handedly at my belt pouch, dragging forth the snapper to give a fire-starting spark.
The vegetation did not want to catch, but persistence won and finally a line of flame smoldered sullenly. Kaththea took the bunch of burning twigs and whirled it through the air until the fire was well alight. Then she put her horse forward. Again it was my will which sent the animals in. Kaththea’s strange weapon was flung out and away, falling well ahead of us, to catch, so that a second fire spread from it.
They were burning towards each other, as if some magnetism existed pulling them into union. But as the first line reached the one my sister had kindled—it was gone! There remained only the now smoldering swath from the torch lighting. Kaththea laughed again, and this time there was real amusement in the sound.
“Play of children!” she called. “Can you not bring better to front us, ones of great wisdom?”
Kemoc gave a quick exclamation and rode to her, his crooked hand out.
“Do not provoke!” he ordered. “We have been very lucky.”
As she looked to him, and beyond to me, her eyes were shining. She had an otherness in her face which put a curtain between us.
“You do not understand,” she replied almost coldly. “It is best that we face—now—the worst they can summon up against us, rather than later when their power has strengthened and we are wearied. Thus it is well to challenge them, and not wait to do battle when they wish!”
Her words made sense to me. But I think that Kemoc still thought this unnecessary recklessness. And for that reason, I, too, began to wonder. For it could well be that our sister, out of her prison, might find freedom so fine a draft that she was not steady in her thinking.
She turned her head a small space farther, giving me her full attention.
“No, Kyllan, I am not drunk with freedom as a six-months Sulcar sailor greets wine the first hour off ship’s decking! Though I could well be. Give me this much credit: I know well those I have lived among. We could not have done this thing tonight had they not lost much of their strength through the sending to the mountains. I would meet their worst before they recover—lest they crush us later. So—”
She began to chant, dropping the reins to free her hands for the making of gestures. And oddly enough the Torgian stood rock still under her as if no longer a creature of flesh and bone. The words were very old. Now and again I caught one which had some meaning, a far-off ancestor of one in daily use, but the majority of them were as a tongue foreign to me.
Her words might be foreign but the sense behind them had meaning. I have waited out the suspense of ambush, the lurking fore-terror of a stealthy advance into enemy-held territory, wherein each rock can give hiding place to death. I knew of old that prickle along the spine, that chill of nerve. Where I had met that with action, now I had to sit, waiting only for the doing—of what, I did not know. And I found this much harder than any such wait before.
Kaththea was challenging the Power itself, summoning up some counter-force of her own to draw it like a magnet, as her real fire had drawn that of illusion. But could she triumph now? All my respect and awe of the Witches’ abilities argued that she could not. I waited, tense, for the very world to erupt around us.
But what came in answer to my sister’s chant was no ground-twisting blow, no hallucination or illusion. It had no visible presence, no outward manifestation. It was—anger. Black, terrible anger—an emotion which was in itself a weapon to batter the mind, crush all identity beneath its icy weight.
Kyllan—Kemoc!
Sluggishly I answered that call to contact. We were not one, but three that had become one. Clumsily perhaps, not too smooth-fitting in our union, yet we were one—to stand against how many? But with that uniting came also Kaththea’s assurance. We did not need to attack; our only purpose was defense. If we could hold, and hold, and continue to hold, we had a chance of winning. It was like one of the wrestling bouts in the camps wherein a man sets the whole of his strength against that of another.
I lost all knowledge of myself, Kyllan Tregarth, Captain of Scouts, seated ahorse in the night in a fire scorched clearing. I was no one—only something. Then, through that which was iron endurance, came a message:
Relax.
Without question I obeyed. The answering pressure came down—flat, hard, crushing—
Unite—hold!
We almost failed. But as a wrestler could use an unorthodox move to unsteady his opponent, so had my sister chosen the time and the maneuver. We threw the enemy off balance, even as she had hoped. The crushing descent met once more a sturdy resistance. Its steady push broke a little, wavered. Then came battering blows, one after another, but even I could sense that each one was slower, less strong. At last they came no more.
We glanced from one to the other, again ourselves, three in three bodies, not one in a place where bodies were naught.
Kemoc spoke first: “For a space—”
Kaththea nodded. “For a space—and how long I do not know. But perhaps we have won enough time.”
True morning was graying the sky as we rode. But the Torgians were no longer fresh, and we dared not push the pace. We ate in the saddle, the journey bread of the army. And we did not talk much, saving all energy for what might lie ahead.
There were the eastern mountains making a great ridge against the sky, dark and threatening.
And I knew that, miles distant though they were, these were the final wall between Estcarp and the unknown. What lay behind them? From all that Kemoc had learned in Lormt, there had once been some danger past all our present reckoning. Was he right—had the toll of years lessened that danger? Or were we riding from a peril we did know into danger we did not, and which would be even greater?
The day wore on. We kept to the cover of wasteland when we could. In our favor was the fact that here the farms were very few and far apart. Most of the ground was abandoned to second growth woodlands. Fewer and fewer were the signs that man had ever planted his rule here.
Still the mountains loomed. Even though we plodded ever towards foothills we seemed to approach no closer. They might have been fixed on some huge platform which moved at a speed equal to ours always ahead. I waited throughout that whole day for another contest of wills, or some sign the hunt was up behind us. For I did not really believe that the Power was so exhausted they could not bring us up short and hold us captive while they sent their ministers to take us bodily prisoner.
Yet we rode untroubled. We halted to rest the horses, to take short naps with one always on watch, and we rode again. And we saw nothing save now and then a curious animal peering through some screen of bush. It was wrong, all wrong; every scout instinct belabored me with that. We would have trouble, we must have trouble—
“There may be this,” Kemoc cut into my thoughts, “they do not realize that we are not blocked against the east, so they believe that we ride now into a trap without an exit—save back into their hands.”
That made sense. Yet I dared not wholly accept it. And, as we camped that night, without fire, on the bank of a rock strewn, mountain born stream, I still kept watch with the feeling that I would be easier in my mind if an attack did come.
“To think so, Kyllan”—that was Kaththea, gazing up at me from where she knelt at the streamside washing her face—“is to open you to attack. A man’s uncertainty is a lever they may use to overset him.”
“We cannot go without taking precautions,” I countered.
“Yes. And thus always they will have a small door open. But it is a door which we may not close—you are most right, brother. Tell me, where do you look for any true hiding place?”
With that she surprised me. What had she thought—that we had
taken her from the Place only to ride blindly about the countryside with no foreplan?
Kaththea laughed. “No, Kyllan, I do not think so meanly of your intelligence. That you have a plan, I knew from the moment you called to me from outside the walls of the Place. I know it has something to do with these mountains we seek so wearily. But now is the time to tell the what and the why.”
“Kemoc has planned it, let him—”
She shook drops of water from her hands and wiped them on sun dried grass from the stream bank. “Then Kemoc must tell me the whole.”
As we sat together, chewing on the sustaining but insipid food, he laid before her the whole story of what he had discovered at Lormt. She listened without question until had done, and then she nodded.
“I can give you this further proof of your mystery, brother. For the past hour, before we reached this spot, I was riding blind—”
“What do you mean?”
She met my eyes gravely. “Just what I said, Kyllan. I rode through a mist. Oh, it was broken now and then—I could make out a tree, a bush, rocks. But for the most part it was a fog.”
“But you said nothing!”
“No, because watching the two of you, I knew it must be some form of illusion which did not trouble you.” She wrapped the part of cake she still held in its protecting napkin and restored it to saddle bag. “And it was also not born of anything they had unleashed against us. You say we do not have this block about the east because we are of mixed heritage. That is good sense. But it would also seem that my witch training mayhap has produced a measure of it to confuse me. Perhaps had I taken the oath and become wholly one of them I could not pierce it at all.”
“What if it gets worse for you?” I blurted out my growing concern.
“Then you shall lead me,” she returned tranquilly. “If it is some long ago induced blank-out, I do not believe it will last—except over the barrier itself, through the mountains. But now I also agree with you, Kemoc. They will relax their hunt, for they will confidently believe that we shall be turned back. They do not realize that at least two of us can go clearsighted into their nothingness!”