by Andre Norton
“He marks his hunting territory,” Nicolas explained. “There may be a younger one of his species hereabouts. If such chances on the tree and cannot easily reach those claw signs he will prudently withdraw.”
Ssssaaa stirred where she curled about Willadene’s throat. She thought at first that the creature had been disturbed by the smell of the bear, but instead that needle nose nipped up the edge of the amulet package which now rode on the outside of her jerkin.
Aware that Ssssaaa had her own way of communication the girl lifted the bag to her nose. Through the rank animal odor which still lingered she suddenly caught the stab of another scent. It lasted only for a second or two but it was enough to bring her head around at a sharper angle. Then it was gone, but that had been like a cry for help—she reported her belief. For a moment she thought that Nicolas was not going to put any credence in that—his eyes were sword bright again. Then, briefly, he nodded and changed course, even hurried their pace a little.
The forest around them thinned and now rocks arose. Beside one which towered above him even though he was mounted, her companion reined in. She was startled from her examination of that spur, for its color was unlike anything she had seen elsewhere—dull green, not, however, from overgrowing moss but in itself—and across its surface, drawn as straightly as if one had pulled a line taut was a band of darker green.
“Ishbi lies ahead—the accursed.”
She still held tightly to the amulet, but now she closed her eyes and used her talent. Layer by layer, she sifted scents, putting aside those which were born of the world about her—the animals, Nicolas, what she held in the amulet. It was a hard stretch, a struggle, as if she sought out through the dark in all directions, grasping, grasping at filaments so fine they slipped through her frantic hold. Out and out, down and down—
Suddenly she stiffened. There was an answer born of darkness and fear. The scent of spilled blood! Mahart? Had that sudden thrust of her scent meant that she had been bodily threatened? No—somehow she was sure it was not the High Lady. But it was blood and pain rooted together and not too far away.
Willadene’s eyes snapped open.
“There is someone hurt!” Inept as she was at any skill on horseback she caught the lead rope Nicolas held only loosely now and somehow headed her mount at an angle which led behind that upthrust spur of rock.
Luckily the horse picked its own cautious way. She felt the warmth of fur against her hand and saw that Ssssaaa had sped down her arm and was now flattened against the neck of her mount. Perhaps—no, she was sure—the creature was in control of the beast. But almost as soon as she had made that discovery they came to an abrupt stop.
The ground broke away only a few paces ahead, the way she had taken ending in a ragged cleft in which the rocks seemed as tumbled together as if they had been hurled by some great force. And she heard a moan.
Swift as she was to quit her saddle she was still awkward enough that Nicolas was before her, working his way to the very edge of that cleft. A moment later Willadene had loosed the bag of her healing simples and joined him.
Though the spur of rock threw much of what lay below into shadow, the girl caught a glance of what seemed to be an arm, the hand scrabbling on one of the tumbled stones as if in effort to draw its owner up.
Nicolas was gone swiftly, even as she knelt as close as she could to the edge to see how the injured one could possibly be reached. The walls, for the most part, were indeed cracked and riven; an agile man might very possibly descend at one place only a little farther along. Whether she could attempt it, hampered by skirts—even those divided for riding—she was far from sure. Then Nicolas was back, a black blot against the spur, around his arm a coil of rope.
With the girl following his instructions they worked as swiftly as they might. She was vaguely aware during their tugging and knotting that Ssssaaa had deserted her, and she caught a single glimpse of a sleekly furred form on her way down the drop as easily as if she trod a straight, smooth road.
Nicolas knotted a sling in the end of the rope, testing it with all his strength many times over. The other end he fastened to the saddle horn of her horse, as he allowed the sling to dangle down the fall, ending by putting in her hand the lead rope.
“When I say ‘pull,’ lead away,” he commanded. Then with almost as much ease at finding helping holds as Ssssaaa had shown he was over the lip of the rock and was gone.
She saw him land some paces away from the now inert and almost hidden body and disappear into the rubble which half concealed it from above. Quickly he appeared again, half bent over, boosting up into full sight a body weighted with mail and a short surcoat devoid of any badge. The head moved feebly, its mail coif still in place but the helm gone, and smears of blood across a white face masked it.
Nicolas steadied the body against the propping rock, then the murmur of his voice reached her. Their find must be conscious enough to understand some order, for she saw two hands in mailed mitts come out on the rock, enough to hold the man while Nicolas busied himself collecting the rope. He dropped the loop around the injured man, lifting one of his hands and then the other to pass them through the loop so that now the rope belted him just above me waist.
Nicolas’s head went back as he looked up to her. “Pull—” he ordered, and the word echoed in that narrow place, “slowly.”
She had already drawn the horse around, facing away from the cliff, and now she led it forward. There was a moment before the rope snapped taut. Then she slowed but still urged the beast outward and away from the spur which guarded that trap. She could see the movements of the line—at times it appeared even to slacken and then grow tight again, as if he who was being so raised could at intervals aid himself by some hand- or foothold. Yet the time before Nicolas and then that bloodied head emerged into her sight seemed very long.
The rescued man was plainly of the Prince’s forces, yet he did not wear the clothing of a scout intended to fade into the foliage but rather half armor, and there was an empty sword sheath at his belt.
However, he seemed to be able to keep his feet, although Nicolas put an arm about his broad shoulders as he stumbled out.
“Here!” It was Willadene’s turn to give orders, and she pointed to an open space where he might stretch out so that she could see the extent of his injuries. That he had not broken a limb from such a fall was a miracle.
Her healer’s bag to hand, she poured a portion of water from the bottle Nicolas held and proceeded to wash the drying blood from the face turned up to hers. Nicolas had loosened the coif and she found a bump just above the hairline and a cut almost as if the edge of the helm had slashed there.
“Who—” His eyes opened as she dribbled into the cut some of Halwice’s remedy against infection. Then his gaze narrowed. “The herb girl—”
“True, Highness,” she answered with an outward show of composure. “No.” She planted a hand firmly on his chest to keep him flat when he would have pulled himself up. “Let me finish.”
Stripped of all his court trappings he seemed a younger man, yet still one very sure of his own abilities. But how had the Prince come alone into this wilderness? She certainly had not expected to find him here without any escort.
Nicolas had withdrawn a little, was rolling up the rope to be once more stowed away. Then he seemed surprised at something he saw and went out of her sight for a moment while Prince Lorien frowned up at her.
“They said you could trace her—the High Lady—as might a hound—” he said slowly. “Is that why you are here—she is somewhere near?” And there was a shadow not quite of fear, at least for himself, on his face but rather a rising flush of anger.
“Near, but how—and where—that must be learned.”
There was a hiss and out of nowhere Ssssaaa jumped on her shoulder, nuzzling her cheek until she turned her head while the Prince watched narrow-eyed. “Beyond—” Was it her talent or something else which supplied that? She could not have taken oath on either
.
Nicolas came back into sight holding—well away from his body, she noted—a sword. The brightly honed steel was darkened, smoky in color in an odd fashion, as if something not unlike a rope had been wound around it. At the sight of it the Prince sat up abruptly.
“Get rid of it, man. It is poisoned by the accursed!”
Nicolas tossed the sword from him and, when it rang against one of the rocks, it broke into shards along those smoky lines and lay like a battlefield weapon abandoned years ago.
The Prince pushed Willadene aside when she tried to prevent his getting to his feet. He was looking beyond both of them, his attention up slope where she could distinguish a wall-like formation of the stone and in it a break.
“Back.” The Prince swung on the other two. “You do not know what guards here—”
“But you have met it—or him,” Nicolas said calmly. “Share then what you know.”
Though the Prince never took his eyes from that break in the wall, he began to talk in short sentences which had the harsh notes of battle orders. He told of finding Timous and of the broken trail the scout had left as if he had been hunted by something monstrous, of the armored figure who was faceless and carried no weapons until he had plucked out of the very air that green ribbon—
When he spoke of that Willadene gasped, and somehow she found that her hand had gone out to clutch at Nicolas as she remembered only too well that meeting with evil in the Black Tower when the Bat had lain helpless and she had done only what she could. Even now the nausea of that battle arose in her throat as she fought down the desire to vomit.
The Prince had paused at the sight of their two faces and now he asked, “This weapon is known to you?”
Willadene felt that she could not even lose enough control to nod in answer, but Nicolas was ready with his version of that meeting.
“But that was in Kronengred—in the castle. And you say it was destroyed,” he said. “How then came it here?”
“A month ago, Highness, when I brought you the news which led to your settlement with the Wolf, I found one of our border guards, a man so placed that he would have easily seen who came and went from that hole. He was dead and around his throat there was a ring of burnt flesh which had near cut his head from his body. Then I knew of no weapon which could cause such a wound—but I think that which crept upon us in the Black Tower, which hunted your scout to his death and tried to slay you, was alive. Do not poisonous snakes give birth to more than one of their kind?”
“And if we dare that gate again—” the Prince said slowly. “You have seen what it did to a sword forged by our greatest of smiths—and flesh is much less than steel.”
Nicolas had a strange little smile. “If this was Ishbi in its time, then there was more than one entrance. I have been thinking—the rangers and scouts of the border pass down much which has long been forgotten elsewhere. Mistress"—he spoke now to Willadene—"there is the map.”
Her hands were at an instant over the amulet in protection. “It is a fancy—” Yet even as she touched that packet she knew that it was true. She had always secretly believed it might lead to Heart-Hold. But Heart-Hold was of another time long past—
“A map?” The Prince was looking now to her. “A map showing what, Bat?”
“Perhaps another entrance to where we would go. For Ssssaaa had a hand in its finding and her will lies always with that of her master who wishes nothing more than that Kronen have peace.”
Slowly Willadene displayed the leaves, standing back a little while Nicolas and the Prince spread them with care on a flat ledge of rock.
Suddenly the Prince cried out, “But that line—it is surely the Vars near its source. Last season I traveled with the border scouts of the kingdom to check our old maps, finding many of them inaccurate. But that is the Vars—to it I will swear by the Star.”
“You have men on the way,” Nicolas said. “We can lead a detachment thus—”
And what, Willadene thought, if they found other guardians with outré weapons to forestall them? In her heart she knew that for her there was only one entrance to Ishbi as it lay up slope from her now. But she said nothing, withdrawing within her mind to form her own plans. Mahart was ahead, and not too far. She had dealt once with the green serpents, she could do so again. A flask of the same liquid rode even now in her bag. Yes, she had her own plans as far as she could shape them.
23
They had retreated from the near vicinity to those rocky spires and established a temporary camp. Willadene made a show of checking the contents of her healer’s bag, though she did not need to touch any, for all were already well set in her mind. She had done her best for the Prince, whose mail hood, loosely laced, lay back on his shoulders while a neat bandage covered the forepart of his head.
She brought out trail provisions and insisted that they eat, even though she had to fight continually against that tug within her to be done with all this and about what had drawn her here. Ssssaaa had curled herself in a dark pool on the top of a stone nearby, but the girl noted that those eyes were ever on the alert in the direction of the break in the wall. Somehow she felt entirely secure for the moment with such a guard.
The Prince and Nicolas almost seemed to forget she was there, so interested they were in the leaf maps. While Lorien had been able to locate one point of reference, so Nicolas found two more, discovered during his own scouting for outlaws.
If many of those had escaped the clean-out of their den, then they must have fled southward, for the three by the rocks seemed now to be in a deserted world. Nor had there been any sign of that armored figure the Prince had faced.
As they finished the limited store of their rations which Willadene had portioned out she saw the Prince go to stand, looking down at the shatters of his sword blade. He looked up at her as she returned the package of food to the saddlebags.
“Mistress, I know that you who deal in herb lore know many things which are strange to the rest of us. Have you any thought as to what that serpent thing might be?”
“Highness, I am but apprentice to herb lore, not born into the knowledge by blood as many are. This I know—that it is utterly evil and it answers to another’s mind.”
“The High Lady Saylana?”
She would have assented to that but something made her hesitate. Somehow in her mind Saylana stood for the Dark, yes, but there was—what—another?
“Highness, I cannot say. But surely she meddles in this, and I would swear it was her plotting that was the seed from which this grows.”
“I have watched you—you look there!” He looked up at the distant doorway in the wall.
Suddenly Willadene was impatient. “Highness, I was set upon a trail—and willingly, for what I had seen and learned of the High Lady Mahart makes me desire to help her. I believe she is in great danger.”
“As a hostage?”
Willadene shook her head. “It is of another kind and one I do not understand. I only know—she is encompassed by evil.”
“We shall have her forth—” She thought he sounded far too confident, when suddenly there was the chirping call from the Bat and a party of the Prince’s men was upon them. Willadene pulled back, on impulse taking her bag with her, while Lorien went to meet the newcomers.
“Ssssaaa.” The black-furred one landed on her shoulder. And that was like a cry for help. From the amulet arose once more that single scent which was Mahart’s alone—like an appeal.
There was the guardian of the gate. One of the evil weapons might well have been vanquished—he could have another. So—she would be prepared. Her own answer rode within the top loop of her jerkin lacing. She had worked on it quietly and apart while leaving them to their play with the map. A strip torn from her undergarments had been woven as tightly as she had been able to handle it about the end of a broken branch. This she had soaked until at least half of that potent liquid she carried had been absorbed into the cloth.
There was a great deal of talk below.
Two scouts had been dispatched to round up more of the Prince’s men, while he and Nicolas studied the leaves. From time to time one of the waiting men was summoned to view their find in turn.
Willadene lifted her pack to her shoulder and settled it with the familiar shrug. Ssssaaa did not try for a ride but was winding sinuously among the stones ahead, and Willadene depended upon her for warning.
At least she was not riding, she thought with a small sigh of relief. Rather, she picked her way among the stones, at the best pace she dared take, up and up. The wall arose to her right—she could see clearly the dark mouth of the opening ahead and she watched it carefully for any movement.
There came a sudden shout from down below, and she did not even glance back but plunged forward, drawn by that ever-increasing need which lay ahead. Nothing moved, there was no armored guard, it was as if the gateway had been left deliberately open.
Perhaps it had, but there was no gainsaying now that compulsion which forced her ahead through its shadow, Ssssaaa weaving a way before her. And, once she was within that opening, there was only utter silence. The shouting was cut off as if some barrier behind her had been slammed shut.
Willadene grasped her stick with its well-soaked rag. There was pavement of sorts under her, and stones rising on each side with only one way left—straight ahead.
Nicolas flung himself forward. He was fleet of foot—that was part of his training. Then his straining body struck against a solid surface with force enough to hurl him back at the men at his heels and bring them all down.