The Warding of Witch World

by Andre Norton

  She was not the only one who had gone to earth there. Keris could see, only partly behind her as if a body rested behind the discarded pack, the limbs of another, slighter form.

  Strangest of all was her second companion. The creature towered well above the natural height of any man the Escorian had ever seen and it was completely covered with frizzled fur. Yet it stood on hind legs and wore about its middle a wide belt, glistening in the light, from which hung a number of artifacts.

  “By the Power of the Maid, by the Power of the Woman, by the dire Power of the Hag . . .” the words beat into his brain and it seemed to him that that pressure which held him captive shifted a little. “By the Power of earth from which we come, to which we return in our allotted time, by the Power of the sky where rides Our Lady’s Own Token, by the air we breathe, by the fire which serves us—by this very land—show yourself for what you be, shadow of shadows, Dark out of Dark!”

  The hairy creature had freed a rod from its belt and held it as a man might hold a familiar weapon.

  “Show yourself!” Her words rang again as a battle cry.

  That which had held Keris eased. He saw a curl of movement just beyond the edge of the blue radiance. And he wanted nothing more than to drop his head upon his arm, not to see—that!

  What human could shape words to describe such a thing? Bile rose in his throat to choke him and he swallowed convulsively.

  “Face now Her wrath—for you are unclean, not of the Light. Face Her . . . Sardox!”

  The shadowy coils wavered. He could feel the menace in them still.

  There shall come a reckoning, earth slut. No voice—only a thought. And now this much Sardox lays upon you and those beings you think to shield—for certain laws hold both Dark and Light. You have challenged me, setting yourself up as a champion of that feeble Lady of yours. Therefore from this hour forth you shall travel as MY will takes you, that we shall meet again!

  The woman laughed. “Brave words, Sardox. You have striven to break my ties with the Lady for three days—and even that you cannot do, for this earth answers not to you. Only my Lady can name me champion—and I am but one of the least of her servants. Still this night you have not taken me or those with me. Get you to your lord and answer to him for your defeat!”

  • • •

  “Keris! Keris!”

  His body was whirling through a vast space—there was nothing to which he could cling; rather, he was a plaything of such winds as his world did not know.

  “Keris!”

  He could not even move his jaws, his tongue, his thought to answer.

  “Keris!”

  First it was like a stab of pain, and then it was an end to all fear, freeing him from the place of winds. He became aware he was panting, as worn as if he had raced heedlessly up some mountain slope. Then he opened his eyes and saw first that comforting beam of light and then Mouse’s small anxious face behind it. He was no longer wrapped in his bedroll but was lying with his head on the Lady Eleeri’s knee, and she was wiping his face with a dampened cloth which smelled wonderfully of herbs so that for a moment he could believe himself back in the Green Valley.

  Dawn light gave those gathered about him substance and he could read the concern on all their faces.

  “I—” his voice sounded like the croak of some swamp-born thing. “It—it must have been a dream!”

  Mouse was shaking her head slowly. “It was a sending, a true sending. Though why it came to you—” There was a shadow of surprise on her face now.

  He could only remember for an instant his old pain. “True. I have no talent, halfling though I am.”

  “We are what the Great Ones make of us,” she returned. “But speak now of this sending—for it was meant for us and we must know.”

  Then Keris launched into a description of his vision, dream, sending, or whatever it might have been, and found that it was easy to remember the smallest details as he continued.

  As he described the woman he had seen standing battle-ready against that which flowed in the Dark, Mouse nodded.

  “So,” she said now, and her jewel glinted the brighter for a second, “now the Oldest Ones stir. Gunnora.” She bowed her head as if she were paying homage to some great one of her own craft. “From the world itself comes Her Power—when we evoked the changing of the mountains, so did we deal with Her. Our roads led to the same goal but have ever been apart. Say once more these words Her Voice spoke.”

  Keris discovered that he could recall them now as easily as if he read them from a written page held before his eyes.

  *Sardox!* It was the mind-voice of Jasta which cut through the end of that retelling. They all looked to the Renthan.

  Jasta tossed his horned head high. *Each people,* he said, *have their memories. We remember Sardox, for it was he who wrought until he brought forth the Sarn Riders, and worse. It was thought that he was snuffed out in the Great Battle. And now it seems he looks south.*

  Keris was aware of a shifting among those who ringed him in. Trusted and tried as they were—yet no man of his time could imagine facing the wrath of those who had moved before the ancient First Breaking of the World.

  “So”—the Lady Eleeri drew her herb-scented swab across his forehead for the last time—“we ride. And in the way Sebra has scouted.”

  Vutch took his place with the pack ponies, though Keris had hoped that it was not apparent he found so difficult the everyday actions necessary for breaking camp. That he could hold to his seat on Jasta without faltering gave him something of encouragement and he was eager to leave what had become to him an ill-omened place. But Mouse’s mare matched pace with Jasta, and for that he was not so happy.

  That he had been struck down by the Power of a known source lay deep in his mind, and he feared that memory now. Never would he forget that force which had pressed him, into the ground, held him captive while it reached for its more potent foe.

  He tried to fix his mind more on that huge, hairy creature which companied with the priestess. It was totally unlike any he had ever seen in Escore, which was alive with oddities, for it was there that the most unscrupulous of the adepts had wrought that greatest evil of all, dabbling in the very stuff of life to form new species for their profit or pleasure. He knew well the earth-dwelling Fos, the water-needing Krogan, the Flannen. Jasta, good friend and comrade, was also of such begetting.

  And there were the Gray Ones, the rasti, the Sarn, and now this last invisible thing which had brought to such a high pitch all the fear his own body could generate.

  Perhaps the witch could read his mind, for it was as if she had followed his thoughts.

  “This hairy one”—she might have now been speaking aloud her own thoughts—“its like is listed nowhere. Yet it is of the Light or it could not have so stood within the circle of Gunnora’s service. It may add much to our own knowledge when we meet with these other travelers.” She spoke confidently, as if she expected to come across them at the next curve of the passage.

  They had not gone far down it, both falcons aloft, Shama himself playing advance scout, when the Lady Eleeri’s Theela stopped short, whether at her own wish or her rider’s, Keris could not tell. However, the Lady was leaning forward on the Keplian’s back staring at the rise of the canyon wall.

  The sun did not strike directly into this cut and, as Sebra had observed, it gradually sloped upward, leaving the running stream an arm’s length below. Yet the daylight was clear enough to show that that greenish surface was not featureless stone.

  Instead shadows flitted back and forth across it, though there was nothing to throw such patterns. Some were but abstract markings and others quite clearly were those of vegetation, with flying things winging from one curved branch to the next.

  To Keris’s amazement, Mouse laughed. “A plaything, long since forgotten. Look you to those ledges across the stream. Are they not seats for those who would watch?”

  “But for what purpose?” burst out the young man. The more he
watched, the more aware he was that there was nothing offensive or evil—no peering forth of demon faces, no outward clutch of taloned paw.

  “A play of learning, perhaps. Others may have had their Lormt. These do not threaten and for us they have little meaning, but they have meant much for others once on a time.”

  What they meant now was an irritation, for one looking up at the play of shadows could pause, form a barrier for the next in line. Jasta and Theela both swore that to them the wall was clear, so that shifting maze was only visible to the human members of their party.

  Still, in spite of all his efforts at ignoring the show to which there seemed no end, Keris found his eyes continually drawn back to the figures cavorting there. He was beginning to recognize some forms of birds, also what seemed to be flying lizards with wings which appeared nearly transparent within their ribbing. Then there was a large squatting plant which all the airborne flutterers seemed to widely avoid. And—

  The screech of a falcon broke the fascination of his last stare as Swifttalon came to Vorick, settling on the saddle horn perch of the Falconer who was well in the lead.

  The rider turned his head to relay the news his bird had brought. “There is an end to the canyon ahead but also a way out.”

  And what a way it was, they discovered as they squeezed by a massive rock which had three-quarters closed the passage and came up to face what could only be a staircase. Gathering at its foot, they surveyed this new impediment. Humans might make that climb—even the Keplians and Jasta and the well-trained Torgians—but could they ever force the pack train upward? And what lay at its top?

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Mountain Ways South of Var

  G ruck seemed to have a natural sense of seeking out the best of trails. Though he had shouldered a pack which was growing steadily smaller, he also carried the girl. Destree, following in his footsteps, wondered at his continuing strength. Since they had turned abruptly south after that momentous meeting with Power such as she had no real words to describe, the Voice tried hard not to depend too heavily on her companion, to carry an extra share of this trek.

  There was no map, no wavereader such as the Sulcar ships had to keep them on course—only this pressure to go forward. But of one thing Destree was sure—it was not fully by the order of that thing they had fronted; the Lady had also a hand in this.

  Liara was their present problem. Since they had brought her out of the hands of that leader of the Gray Ones, she had been one empty of mind, one whose person lay deep chained within her body. Destree had clothed her as best she could from her own extra gear, but there were no boots to cover those very slender white feet. Nor, when she was urged to stand, could they lead her more than a step or two over such harsh footing.

  She would eat, if Destree would put food in her hand and then bring that hand up to her mouth; she would drink when the water of mountain springs was held to her lips. But her eyes were blank and she appeared to see no more than if she had been struck blind. In fact Destree had begun to wonder if that was really the case.

  She had known her at once for what she was—an Alizondern. Though what a woman of that race was doing here—unless she had been dragged for countless leagues by captors—she could not begin to guess. Her thin features appeared sharp, akin to those of the monster hounds which had been the scourge of the Dales as Destree had heard during her days as a sailor on Sulcar ships. Unable to free her hair from the tangles wrought by the thick brush through which they often had to move Destree had shorn off the nearly waist-long locks and the girl had not seemed to notice, certainly made no complaint.

  Destree no longer tried to keep any track of the days. Incidents which happened lingered in her mind. Certainly she would never forget the night of the Shadow Being, or the time Gruck had used another of his belt equipment to bring down a leaper, the largest Destree had ever noted.

  She had given thanks to the Lady and paid respect to the bones of the creature, which she had carefully returned to the soil, glad for the sustaining meat. Mostly they had existed on a strange diet which Gruck seemed to favor—leaves of some plants, and even insects which she no longer had to struggle with herself to eat.

  Once as they worked their way farther up into the higher reaches of the mountains, they had suddenly rounded a crag to confront a snow leopard, its muzzle dyed with the blood of a mountain pronghorn it had brought down.

  The giant had halted and then gently laid the girl at his feet. He reached for no weapon, holding out his paw-hand as might a man giving the peace sign to a newly met fellow traveler.

  The leopard had snarled. Destree had seen its body tense. Then from Gruck’s deep throat there had come a sound not unlike the purr of a well-fed cat. The leopard’s head turned a fraction on its shoulders as if striving to catch every nuance of that sound. Destree saw its body relax.

  Gruck stooped to pick up the girl again and then turned a little to the west, so that they passed well away from the leopard’s feast.

  Such are like the warrior cats of Alatar, his thought touched her. Mighty in battle. They hunt cleanly and do not mangle their kill. Nor do they slay save when they must fill their bellies or defend themselves.

  Destree longed to ask him more about his own world. That he apparently followed the ways of the Lady, living close to the earth and its creatures, she already knew. Yet something kept her from questioning. Had she been snatched—say, from the herb garden of the shrine—and plunged into a totally different world, would she want it recalled to her memory?

  However, their meeting with the snow leopard had an effect they had not foreseen. For the first time the girl he carried did not lie limp in his big arms. She was staring straight up into his face.

  There was first such a flash of terror-fed horror that Destree sprang close to the giant’s side, fearing the girl might try to fight her way free. And since they stood on a stone-studded slope that might end in disaster.

  The Alizondern cried out in a language Destree did not know, but she picked up easily the fear which nearly maddened the girl. Gruck had moved quickly to put her down, where she went to her hands and knees while he strode back, away, leaving Destree to face her.

  The girl flung up her head and that sound coming from her now was not words, rather the howl of an animal driven nearly out of its mind by terror. Destree moved.

  Though the girl fought and clawed at her, she got one hand at the thin nape of the other’s neck while, not trying to avoid the raking fingernails which tore a path down her cheek, she pressed against the other’s forehead, pushing aside the sweat-plastered hair so that her amulet might rest directly against the girl’s clammy flesh.

  Destree had used this before, twice, when she had had to deal with hysterical patients, and she knew what it would do. At the same time Chief, who had kept himself apart from the girl ever since they had rescued her, came trotting between the stones and sat with his wide yellow stare.

  The wildness in the eyes of Liara’s face began to fade. Just as the hands, which had torn at Destree and left bloody evidence of their force, straightened and fell to the girl’s lap.

  Now Destree dared to draw her into an embrace, striving to put into that act all the warmth with which the Lady had gifted her, all the reassurance—all the security. So they crouched together. Now the girl was crying, great tearing sobs which shook her whole nearly wasted body. One of her hands raised, did not quite touch the bloody seam a nail had left on Destree’s cheek.

  “It is nothing,” Destree soothed. “You have been in the hold of the Darkness—now you have broken through. Gruck”—she turned her head a fraction and he moved a little forward—“is our guardsman, warrior, friend. He is of those the Lady holds in Her hand, and none She holds so will bring you harm. I am Destree”—she could not quite keep the small note of happy pride out of her voice—“whom the Lady called to be Her Voice.”

  The girl drew the shuddering breath of one who has sobbed herself close to exhaustion. Now her arms went ou
t in a hold to equal Destree’s earlier one and she looked straight at the giant, then to the cat.

  “Me.” She used the trade tongue of the northern lands. “I was once Hearthmistress and First Whelp guardian to the house of Krevanel. What I am now . . .” her hold on Destree tightened, “I do not know. But—” there was a flare of fear again in her green eyes. “Lady—I must give you warning—I fear there is in me, perhaps in all of us who nurture the hounds—that which draws the Gray Ones.”

  Destree smiled. “Child, be sure that the Lady would not welcome you if that were so. But how came you south so far from Alizon? Is there then war again in the north?”

  “Not war . . .” Then, as if she must tell this healer—for healer she truly was—all she could, she poured out what lay behind her, ending with her capture by the Gray Ones.

  Though Destree’s hold on her was still comforting, yet Liara sensed that this was indeed such a story as the other must arm herself to accept.

  “So—that storm was only the beginning,” Destree said, as if she thought aloud. “And we are promised dire trouble in the south—yet that is where the Lady points our steps.”

  “Let me go.” Liara could say that and yet she could not loose her hold on the older woman. “The Gray Ones—”

  Slowly Gruck had approached them again and now he squatted on his heels. Chief leaned against a heavy, hairy thigh while the giant smoothed the cat’s fur until he purred.

  Destree’s thought sought the hand of the giant’s. “How much did you understand?”

  Gates, he returned in thought, and also made a harshly guttural sound in his throat. So was I caught—so may others be entrapped. If these Power workers would seek out gates for their complete closing, then service is like to that given to the Alatar—to be offered gladly by all who follow the Light. Also, we are being drawn south—perhaps through the will of this Sardox, perhaps in service of your Lady. I think that it might be well to seek out these others, perhaps bring them warning, if they do not already know of what may be sniffing along their trail.