by Andre Norton
“To Ishbi—for all I care!”
Someone drew a deep breath. Then, “You’ll do the tel’ of where you planted her to the master, then?” the high voice asked.
“Well, sure as the sun is in the sky, no one is gonna come snoopin’ there,” the other declared. “It’ll only take a couple o’ men to hold the pass, and no one in his right mind has gone into that maze since the clock of Kronengred was set—a goodly sum of seasons ago.”
Once more Mahart was picked up. Ishbi—she tried to pull on memory and found it heightened her headache, so set herself to endure.
Having passed Halwice’s inspection Willadene was about to take up the bag the Herbmistress had indicated when she remembered her amulet and that other which she had bound with it—the leaves from the far past. Those were still with her, as they always were, but she had no time to ask Halwice concerning the find in the book, for the woman shut the door of the wardrobe to reveal the room.
On the floor by the dais of the bed lay the mound of covers which had been roughly pitched away to uncover the hole in its surface. Nicolas was lying belly down on what was left of that surface, holding out over that ominous black break a lantern. Though dawn was beginning to creep into the room they still needed such light as they could gather.
Both Vazul and the Prince had also joined him after a fashion, the Chancellor still anchored with a tight hold on one bedpost but leaning forward at a perilous angle and the Prince on the other side of the bed, kneeling on the edge of the dais and striving to see into this secret way.
“ ’Tis fresh cut,” Nicolas announced. “Perhaps they broke through just before they seized her. And there is no such way on the plans, Chancellor.”
“That is needless to say,” commented the Chancellor with a snap. ‘‘Well, mistress, will this maid of yours serve our purpose? Let her close, Nicolas.”
He obediently squirmed to one side, and Willadene very gingerly joined him. Evil—she must pierce through that overpowering evil to reach the far-more-difficult-to-pick-up scent.
“What does she?” Lorien demanded as Willadene stretched her head and shoulders over the hole. The lantern showed broken beams of wood and glimpses of what might be stone walls.
“She seeks,” Halwice returned calmly. “For she has been favored by the Star with the strongest talent I have ever touched. Each of us carries from birth our own particular scent which has naught to do with our physical body or its condition, or what covers it. Those who have the Great Talent can trace any they know, even as the great hounds can follow tirelessly a forest track.”
Willadene fought to shut their voices out of her ears, their words out of her head, to catch only scent. That first layer, evil—below it traces of the heavy spiciness which Mahart had chosen to cover the fern fragrance, then—as one might sight a single thread in a piece of woven stuff—she caught and held that which was Mahart alone. Yes, she had passed this way.
That was only the beginning. Nicolas, swinging the lantern about his neck with a cord, leaned farther over to test the first of the battered beams. And Willadene followed his descent, not happily but because she must, being who and what she was.
The lantern displayed another hole beneath the beams which had been half broken away, and Nicolas was already swinging his light into that. The air was choking with dust when they moved, but Willadene dared not cover her nose lest she lose that precious thread they must follow.
“Ah—” The light was stationary now, but hands reached up and caught her about her waist, swinging her down. “So that was the trick of it.” Nicolas sounded almost as if he were admiring the labors of those who had burrowed here. “But they must have had a guide—” And now his voice turned somber.
Once more he picked up the lantern and swung it around to give them better sight of where they were. They stood, as far as Willadene could see, in another of those stonewalled passages, but around them was a mound of broken rabble and above they could still see the light from the room. It was plain that this was no normal opening to the inner ways but one which had been roughly broken through.
“But no one heard—” She spoke her amazement aloud. Nicolas had picked up a piece of rubble, but as quickly as he had touched it he threw it from him with an exclamation of pain. She could see no mark of blood on his fingers. She could—
Fern fragrance—but with it something else—something she had never known before. She caught at Nicolas’s hand to hold it closer to the lantern light. Across the tips of two fingers there were patches of red.
From those she looked with fear at the jumbled and broken bits of ancient wood about their feet. He moved quickly away from that rubble, jerking her along with him.
“What—” She was beginning, and tried to pull away from his hold, but he kept it tight.
With her other hand she worried at the herb bag and somehow got out the small jar she sought. “This thing is—it eats, I think,” she explained, and he was willing to stand still while she smeared across those blotches the cream from the jar. “There was a ship’s captain a year ago who came to Halwice. He had but three fingers on one hand. It came of a seaweed washed aboard in a storm which ate—ate at the ship itself. When they would have thrown it over those who touched it barehanded also were maimed. I do not think your slinkers dug here—the sounds would surely have been heard. But had they some mixture which would eat at wood and stone—”
She had never heard of such, but there were always new things to be encountered. He gave a swift nod. In this dim light and in his black clothing he could hardly be seen, yet she was very much aware of him.
“That is why the bedclothes hung over! But why would something which feeds so not have taken that also?”
“You may guess as well as I can as to that,” she re- turned, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Now—” She had taken several more steps away from the rubble into the darkness and raised her head, calling upon her talent.
“This way.” The evil clung in that path also as did the spicy undercurrent. But she was careful not to be diverted by either—she sought and found Mahart’s own trace.
Nicolas matched her stride. He had the lantern, but some trick of adjusting its panels brought the light to a very thin beam. This he kept swinging slightly back and forth so that it would reveal the largest area that could be. But all they could see were the stone walls much like those of the other passages Willadene had traveled, not in secret.
She half expected Nicolas to question her, certainly about their way, but apparently he was willing to accept, at least for now, her decision. It was not until they reached a sharp turn in the way and scaling off there a second passage, that Nicolas went into action. He stooped to study the thick dust. It was well muddled here as if there had been a scuffle of some sort.
“There—?” He pointed to the side way.
Willadene stood, closed her eyes, tried to center all her energy on her sense of smell. The evil stench had thickened and it was near desperately hard for her to pierce that for her beckoning thread.
“No.”
His black clothing was now so well coated with dust that she could see him better. He had taken two side steps into the way he indicated and was flashing the lantern downward. Even from where she still stood she could see the disturbance of dust. There had certainly been recent passage along that way. But—
“No.” Resolutely she started forward on her own along the main passage. This slanted downward, and there was a damp which collected in the air. Willadene judged that he did not agree with her, but after a moment or so he followed.
There were no stairs here but a distinct downward slope. Then the light from the lantern caught on a light patch on the wall. Nicolas swung the thin beam around and what she saw brought a gasp out of Willadene.
The stone of the wall had been hollowed here into a niche, one barely large enough to house what stood in it behind a netting of rusting metal bars. Those bones were so thin and delicate, the whole skeleton so short, tha
t Willadene could only believe this ancient horror had had a child for its prey.
“Athgard!” Nicolas’s hand, protruding from the dusty black of his sleeve, looked as pale as the bones before them. “So this was his ending—”
Athgard? And who was or had been Athgard? Willadene swallowed and swallowed again, trying hard to see only bones against an ancient wall and not the fleeting vision in her mind of what had once housed those bones.
“Five hundred seasons—maybe more—” Nicolas’s finger was pointing now to the skull which, loosed from the spine, had fallen forward to rest against the metal of its imprisonment.
There was another look to that bone—a circlet of time-darkened metal. What had once been set to the fore of it had been pried away, leaving only twisted prongs they could barely see in this frail light.
“Athgard, son of Wisgard.” Nicolas’s palm straightened up in a kind of salute to the long dead. “So this is where the House of Gard came to in the end. But"—it would seem now that he was addressing the bones themselves—"rest in peace, knowing that those of Ishbi were brought down in their time—and bloodily—to the last remaining member of their house. Get we safely through this venture, and freedom will come also to the last of Gard and a place beneath the Star will be opened.”
“Ishbi—” All Willadene knew of the past was what she had picked up from hints found among Halwice’s meager library and that had been mainly only herbal lore.
“Ishbi!” There was a vicious twist to Nicolas’s mouth.
“ ’Twas all because of the King’s daughter—Nona. She drew men to be taken by her enchantments, one after another, all the lordlings and their households. There were others that she summoned and the Star was forgot, another power arose—one drinking blood.
“The last Duke of Gard was poisoned at his own table, his heir was gone—Nona’s Hag mistress ruled. But never are the scales weighing good and evil so badly balanced that they do not even out once again. It was from the same north that Vulsaden rode and with him those who had hatred for Nona’s beliefs bred into their bones.
“And in time she fell, for those of the Star called also upon greater powers. There came out of the skies an answer which rocked all the land. Vulsaden pulled together the survivors, and all who had been liege to Nona were hunted down to the death—though their Hag mistress was never found. So the House of Den ruled for two generations, and then the last Duke was sonless and his sister married into the House of Brie from which came a new line to the throne.”
Swiftly Willadene made the sign of the Star before the pitiful thing they had found. “Yet still we struggle—” she said.
“Just so. And in that we have a part. Do you swear, mistress, that this way is ours?”
She forced herself to turn away from the imprisoned bones, to forget what imagination made only too vivid for her.
“Yes—this is the way.”
It seemed to her, however, that the stench of evil which had struck at her so earlier had somehow slackened. Either that or she was getting used to the pollution. But she was certain that she still held to the thread which had led her this far, concentrating on it with all her power.
There were no more evil surprises along their way, though the narrow corridor they walked continued to slope downward. Now the dust was not so overpowering, for there was moisture in the air, yet it was still thick enough underfoot to muffle their going.
Stench of another sort wafted to them once or twice as they passed slits set where the walls met the roofing over them.
“We are under the city,” Nicolas half whispered. “This way leads along the great sewer. Hold this—” He pushed the lantern toward her and she grasped it firmly. His hands were busy at his belt and then she saw that he had taken out of some hiding place among his clothing what looked not unlike a riding whip. With that in one hand and his bared knife in the other he started forward again.
“Slime eaters,” he said briefly, “though they mainly keep to the waterways.”
Moments later he pointed out disturbances in the damp dust which were undoubtedly tracks of some creature. But those were also overlaid with the marks of boots, proving her assertion that they did follow a recent trail.
There were runnels of water down the walls, seeping out of those high-placed openings, and the smell was near overpowering. There came a shrill squealing and Nicolas, with his shoulder, pushed her back against the opposite wall.
“Mistress,” he said and his voice was the steady one of an armsman going into a familiar battle, “have you anything in that charmed bag of yours which can be a defense—a quick one—there is’’—and he spoke now with a grim note of humor—"no pepper mill here.”
She counted over hurriedly in her mind all Halwice had furnished. There was one thing which at the time she had hardly believed necessary but now it might just work. Setting the lantern on the floor between her feet, she searched I until she found the proper pocket. Also the thin, greasy glove which was wrapped with it.
“It—they must be near. And do not let it touch you.”
The squealing had grown louder; now she caught movement in one of those wall slits. Holding her improvised weapon carefully in her gloved right hand she swung up the lantern with the left, and now she could truly see the head of the thing working its way through the slit.
For one second she thought of Ssssaaa, for this creature seemed to have the same long and limber body and short legs. But it lacked the luxurious fur of the Chancellor’s pet, and the scent she picked up from it was that of filth and decay—its fur ragged in patches with sores showing greenish on the bared skin.
It fell with a plop to the pavement some distance away from them. Nicolas waited for an attack. His lash rose, whistled through the stale air, and wrapped its fore length around the beast, jerking its writhing body toward him where he stood with ready steel. Only Willadene moved first. She had taken a pinch of the powder she handled with such care and raising her hand to the level of her lips she gave a puff of all the breath she could summon.
Motes which seemed to spark as if they were born in a fire filled the air. She had aimed as well as she could and luckily Nicolas was still some distance from his intended prey.
The motes sifted down upon that scabby hide. A hideous scream seemed to fill the passage at a near ear-torturing level. Nicolas gave his lash a shake and the twisting, writhing thing, now looking like a coil of dull fire, struck the wall and rebounded a step or two but lay unmoving.
Only there was already another head showing aloft. It did not move swiftly as had its fellow, rather crouched, viewing—its long neck well stretched—that crisping body just below.
Its squeal became a screech but it ventured no farther. Nicolas spoke to the girl. “Can I draw this cord through what you hold?”
“Yes, but take care.” She had already opened the shutter of the lantern to give them more light to counter any attack, and now into the wider beam she held her gloved hand.
Nicolas peered closely at the powder resting on her flattened palm, and then swiftly and with the ease of one knowing well his tool, he pulled the lash through that small lump.
Just as when the motes had taken spark life in the air when Willadene had blown them free so now did the length of his lash glisten with pinpoints of fire.
With one lithe bound he crossed the passage and aimed that lash upward. It did not catch quite as true as had his first use of it, but it did flick deeply into the waving head above, and again that piercing scream sounded in their ears.
The creature did not fall on their side of the wall; it had been far enough back in the slit to retreat the other way. There were two more of those terrible screams while Nicolas stood on guard below. But no other head appeared.
After a long moment he looked to Willadene, holding the lash some distance from his body. Though most of the motes had disappeared there was still a tiny flash here and there.
“I do not think they will move on us again,” he said. “The
one which fell back may well have carried the contagion to its fellows. How do I free my lash?”
Carefully the girl restored to her bag the pouch and what remained in it. Then she held out her gloved hand.
“Draw through this, slowly.”
When he had obeyed her order the lash was clear of any sign of spark—though there was a scatter of such on her glove. She hated to lose that protection but this was not time or place to go through the long procedure of cleaning it into safe use again. So she drew it off gingerly and dropped it on the muddy way, grinding it deeply into that thick surface with her boot.
“It is still our way?” Nicolas questioned a few moments later when they came to two dark arches on the opposite side from that wall which gave upon the sewer.
Willadene had stopped short. There had come out of the further of those two doors that exultation of odor which had struck her back in Mahart’s chamber. There was certainly the unmistakably clean and enticing smell of fern—but with it the warning stench. She drew a deep breath, then fumbled for her amulet and sniffed it deeply in hopes of clearing her head. The thread which was Mahart—no, it did not lead this way. But there was something which did make some use of that passage—something which was wholly evil!
Once more she raised her head high as if she could so outreach that stench. Mahart—she must be right! Evil held here but that which signaled the High Lady was still straight ahead.
How long they had been in this warren of passages and darkness she had no way of telling. She saw Nicolas take a small disk from his belt pouch and hold it close to the lantern whose beam they had again reduced to a slit.
“We are very near to the walls—the walls of the city itself,” he reported quietly.
There was no slope downward this time; rather they came to a flight of stairs leading up and they climbed cautiously, listening for any sound.
Their ascent ended on a small landing and they faced a door. It was latched on this side, but could it also be on the opposite?