The Warding of Witch World

by Andre Norton

  Keris moved. He reached for no weapon. Instead his voice arose until it seemed echoed back from the very sky over their heads.

  “We are of this earth. What is wrought here was born of that earth.”

  He held out both hands, palms flat, and on those appeared balls of violet flame which flared as high as if they fed greedily upon the flesh which supported them.

  “Arscro!” His ringing call made of that ancient name a battle cry. “Because there is always the balance—let now that balance right itself.”

  Then those behind him cowered away in spite of themselves, for he was summoning—summoning by names the most Ancient of Ones. And with each name the violet fire blasted higher.

  The carrier had trundled through the wreckage at the gate and now stopped. But no one emerged from it. Nor did any other threatening blunt nose of metal show in its wake.

  “Rammona, Lethe, Neave, Gunnora—Mothers of earth, Creators of all living things.” His voice was as high and as steady as when he had begun, but it seemed to Destree that that wavering of body was growing stronger.

  “This is no door for us. By the mercy you hold in Power—make it naught!”

  That last cry seemed to ring in the air. The fire he held in his hands flamed away from his body, struck full upon the pillars and all which was between them.

  Now the pillars in turn became torches and the violet deepened to the purple Mouse at least recognized as the epitome of Power—perhaps its like never unleashed before.

  High blazed that fire and there was no heat from it. However, that blood stench was gone. The pillars were dwindling, leaving not even ash behind.

  With their passing went the remains of Gruck’s barrier and the carrier which had been frozen there in passage. The other machines which had preceded it had smashed into the rubble of ruins, the windowless towers.

  There was a great gust of wind. They had to hold to each other not to be taken off their feet. Then—the plain was bare and under them even that seamless pavement was beginning to crack and erode.

  Keris’s hands no longer held the fire; they hung limply at his side. Gruck moved with that agile speed he could show when he must, and caught the Escorian as he stumbled.

  That curious wavering outline of his body ceased. He was solidly himself again. Or . . . was he? Healer’s instinct brought Destree running. Gruck had caught up the young man’s body as if it were not of any weight and carried it back to one of the stands of meadow grass, settling there as if in a nest waiting for Destree’s aid.

  He was not dead, that much her quick check of pulse assured her. But that pulse was slow and uncertain. It was evident that Hilarion was gone and they could only hope that the price of power would not be nothingness.

  Gruck put his hands on either side of Keris’s head and his own eyes closed. Destree sensed he was seeking life, striving to find where it now lay and bring it forth.

  However, it was as if Keris slept—no, not exactly slept, but that what made him what he was had withdrawn . . . past return? She refused to accept that.

  Mouse knelt at his other side. Tears ran down her thin cheeks as she said: “Sister, long ago those of my kind severed their Power from that which the adepts knew and used. I—I can do nothing.” And she was openly sobbing now while her jewel hung dull and lifeless.

  Destree remembered those names Hilarion had called upon: Neave, who held always the way of truth; Lethe, who guarded the gate of birth life; Gunnora—her own dear Lady. She need not call upon Them by voice, They knew what lay in her heart.

  Fearing nothing any longer—for those who had manned the carriers were dead and their blood gate was no more—the travelers trailed back out of the lower city, Keris in Gruck’s hold.

  What had happened here had wrung the strength from all of them. Even the Keplians walked, their heads hanging as if they had run a full day’s journey. Destree, Mouse, and the rest left with Keris, moving camp, having little wish to hide among the dank-walled ruins any longer.

  Liara crouched at Keris’s feet. “I heard Lord Romar say that his body may live—but his spirit is gone.”

  She twisted her hands together. “All people have their heroes. My House of Krevanel have added to the roll in Alizon. But to risk the spirit . . . I do not understand—there is so much I do not understand. I only know I must learn!”

  Mouse smiled sadly. “We learn all our lives long. If we do not, then we are not what we were born to be. Keris believed that he was less because he had no talent. Yet a talented one could not have embodied Hilarion. Sister,” she said to Destree, “what hope is there?”

  “I do not know, for never have I seen this before—though I have heard of it. We can only hope that he will awake.”

  Yet, though they took turns at his side, he did not. At dusk Mouse drew well apart, so that the effects of the adept’s Power discharge would not weaken her call, and reached Gull with her message.

  “This Tregarth?” Gull asked last of all.

  “We do not know—he seems asleep.”

  Gull made no comment. The old distrust of male talent still might hold with some of the sisters. But surely the time for such aversion was gone. They had moved mountains to save their country, but here a man might have done even more.

  Dawn was paling the sky. Destree set aside the small spouted cup from which she had dribbled her most potent restorant into Keris’s mouth just moments earlier. The potion would keep the body living, but it could not recall the spirit which had left it. The dawn wind brought the scent of the not-so-distant sea.

  She had heard the message from Lormt: they were to return; their quest was finished. Already the found gates were being closed and warded. Their own had been the worst because of the blood price.

  She was aware of movement near her. Jasta came up to stand beside the unconscious man.

  *There is still a spark.*

  Destree turned upon the Renthan swiftly. “How can such be reached?”

  *Who gives life, Voice? Who would save a valiant one who gave to her earth?*

  “Then”—her hand was already on her healer’s pack—“I shall seek.”

  This would be a different kind of seeking than when she had found Nolar, for it was not a seeking in place or time, but beyond them both. She spoke to Mouse, and to Eleeri, but she was surprised when the mare Theela joined them, and then Gruck without a word.

  There was a potion to be drunk, then she stretched beside Keris’s motionless body. Into her began to flow what they could give her—strength.

  There was darkness and she knew that she followed someone who had earlier fled this way. Waves of fear beat at her, as might the dashing waves of the sea. She held tightly to the picture of Keris—not as she had seen him last stretched seemingly lifeless on the ground, but in his full vigor of body and mind.

  Down that black road she sped, feeling that in her which was eating at her strength. Then she saw that wisp of a grayish thing which clung desperately to an imprisoning wall.

  Only a wisp of a thing—no, that she did not believe. Destree set herself to infusing into it to that other—that one in her memory. There—and there—and there! She called for strength—it came—held—while she built that body, made it whole and no wisp of shadow.

  “Keris!” she summoned.

  Then she opened her eyes upon the sun and those about her, so united in a friendship bond that it could never be broken. Now she turned her head.

  His eyelids arose slowly. There was wonder in his face. Not the face of an idiot—by the grace of the Lady, this was again a man.

  “Keris!” Her voice was loud in her joy.

  He smiled. “You need not deafen a man, Lady—I am right here.”

  Interlude: Lormt

  T he first of the early fall rains had swept through during the night, again making the crumbled section of the vast pile dangerous with falling bits of masonry. Since the Turning had brought down one tower and a portion of two of the connecting walls, the sages had done their be
st to ensure no more great collapse (there were enough holding spells cast there, stated Owen, to smother a tempest), yet there continued to be a certain amount of deterioration. Even so, the mainly elderly sages and those they managed to lure into helping them were still entirely intent on locating all they could find in the sealed archives which the first damage had revealed.

  But now those more in touch with the world at large had other and momentarily more important matters to deal with. The great hall was still their meeting place and the hide map of their world was still fastened to the long refectory table. There were new markings in a goodly number on the eastern continent pictured there, but very few on the western.

  This morning, however, it was not the map which engrossed the company gathered there. They had pushed benches, chairs, and a couple of stools into an irregular circle.

  The man, leaning back as if bone-weary, spoke first as the lamps began to gutter out.

  “It is done.”

  A sound which merged into a vast sigh answered him from the others. Tension drained from other bodies, leaving them feeling nearly as weary as the speaker.

  But there remained a question which held them tightly bound still in that company.

  “Keris?”

  Dahaun’s hand was clasped so tightly in Kyllan’s that it would seem their flesh was melded together forever, even as it was in that distant body of their son.

  Hilarion had raised both hands to cover his face, and his answer sounded muffled. “I do not know.”

  There was the scratching of chalk against slate as the old woman in the wheeled chair wrote a terse message and pushed it to her neighbor, the witch Gull.

  Gull fingered her jewel, gave a sidelong glance to her companion Willow. Then she spoke, her monotonous voice sounding harsh as the chalk she answered: “They will be fighting with all the talent they can summon; we dare not break into their struggle now. If he can be saved, those with whom he has companied will save him.”

  “Small comfort you give us, Gull,” Jaelithe Tregarth returned. “But the gate is gone, Hilarion.”

  He nodded, his head still in his hands. Kaththea had arisen and come to stand behind him, her hands massaging the flesh of his upper shoulders and the nape of his neck.

  Gull spoke. “So. And you can chain the other also? Or must you travel yourself to each, since we have more time?”

  It seemed to most of them there that she had abandoned the problem of Keris—almost as if some of the coldheartedness of the earlier generation of her kind had frosted her emotions.

  Now the adept raised his head and faced her squarely. “Those we have found to be quiescent we can close from afar. That which your sisters hold in the spell of Mouse’s laying . . .” There was a crooked little smile on his lips now. “There it must be your Power to lead mine to the goal.”

  Nolar twisted her fingers, stained a little from the potion she had been laboring on when summoned here. The old and deeply embedded distrust of the witches for men of Power—surely it would not hold now! That a witch and an adept would share their very different but formidable learning would be as overturning in its way than the removal of the mountains.

  “The All Mother has agreed to any service needed.” Gull’s thin lips screwed together as if she found that statement bitter. “Willow will wait for any signal from Mouse. Cricket, Moth, and Ash hold the capping now. You must deal through them.”

  “Best now, then.” Hilarion pulled himself up from his chair, levering himself with his arms. Kaththea was at his side and Nolar’s healer’s instinct brought her to them both.

  Lady Mereth made no attempt to use her writing slate, but her hand caught at Dahaun’s and she looked straightly up into that ever-changing face of the Lady of Green Shadows.

  There was a strange calmness to Dahaun’s features and she spoke something which might be a message for them all:

  “He is not beyond the Final Gate, for if that were true, we who gave him life would know. Thus there is hope.”

  She stooped and kissed Mereth’s cheek and went out with Kyllan.

  So the party broke apart, some going back to the map. It was Duratan who rapped his fist on the border of the painted hide. “Arvon.”

  With that one word he expressed the second problem which had drawn them together. Hilarion, for all his effort, had been unable to once more contact Alon. He reported at last that it was not their focus which was at fault, but rather that some unknown Power formed a barrier, and for all of them that was hard to accept. Koris had sent a fleet of three of the swiftest Sulcar ships bound to the Dales, but this was the period of storms and what was ordinarily a three-week voyage might become twice that with ships beaten off the regular courses by the winds and waves.

  “If there is news—Simon waits, and we shall know.” Jaelithe had no doubt that the tie between she and her lord was such that the leagues between them now would be nothing.

  “Terlach . . .” Duratan said absently as if voicing a thought aloud.

  “Your Falconer comrade.” Jaelithe sounded eager. “He has established an Eyrie in the Dales, hasn’t he?”

  “They use no Power . . .” Duratan began, and then turned suddenly to sit on a bench. From within his jerkin he brought a small pouch and shook out on the bench beside him a palmful of stones. The colors were alive even in this dim light.

  Closing his eyes, he held his hand, palm flat, a little above them for a long moment. The stones shifted, colors separated and recombined. Jaelithe could make nothing of what he was doing, but she knew well that the Marshal of Lormt could easily have scraps of old knowledge unknown to others, ones which only answered to him.

  Now she could see that the stones in their movements had fashioned the form of an arrowhead, a black stone backed by two gray, and then three blood-red forming the tip, the rest trailing behind.

  Duratan’s features became a grim mask. “Evil—and note it points west. Whatever fares in Arvon is of the Dark!”

  Once more he gathered up the stones, shook them well, and threw, then shadowed them with his hand. Jaelithe could see that the color formation was slightly altered. The tip of the arrow was now a gray stone and three more of a bronze cast separated it from the black and dark.

  “So far all is well with Terlach and Seakeep, but they are not removed from the fringe of the Dark. Lady”—he turned to Jaelithe—“what of Garth Howell? Are they as powerful as the witches?”

  She searched her memory, trying to recall scraps of her early knowledge when she, too, had worn the gray robe and the jewel.

  “As the witches held the power in Estcarp, so we knew that there was our balance in Arvon. But between us there was no communication after the Great War. They had adepts among them and they gave more Power to men. Also they were said to experiment in knowledge which was dangerous to others. They maintain their own guards—something on the order of the Sarn Riders—but no one has said they are wholly given to the Dark. For generations now they have been content to stay within their own boundaries and have little to do with any outside those in liege to them. Like the sages here at Lormt they have given the impression that the search of learning is paramount to them.”

  “But they are not truly of the Light?”

  “Shadowed, we called them. It may be that the burst of wild Power has changed the balance. If so, how can we measure or even guess what they may do? Those of the Gryphon stand against them. And our foreseers promise much from them. But already they may be embattled. It would do us no good to try to raise an army against those armed with Power. We can only go on with our searching here and discover all we can of what was once used effectively.”

  He gathered the stones and repouched them. “It seems that nothing these days is designed to bring us comfort.”

  “When Power is loosed, Duratan, that is sure.”

  They separated from the gathering for what seemed to many of them the longest day they could remember. All of them threw themselves into tasks which they hoped were of importa
nce.

  But when the great gong sounded, they instantly dropped what they were doing and reassembled. Dahaun greeted them. Her hair was a flaming glory about her; all the color which had been leached out of her was back. She stood by Gull and even the witch looked less forbidding than usual.

  “Keris—Keris is ours again!” Dahaun trilled like one of the birds of her beloved valley. “The gate is truly destroyed and our son is himself!” Kyllan took a couple of strides to draw her into a tight embrace. For the others it was as if the very walls of Lormt had disappeared and they stood in the open sunlight of a peaceful land.

  Nor was it much later before Jaelithe also had a report. Captain Hilbec had reached Es City with knowledge concerning Arvon: that the Dales were suddenly seeming invaded by some evil which soured their lords’ minds so that there was open warfare between several. There were rumors of dire trouble in the Waste, and all connection with Arvon no longer existed.

  Hilarion broke into an oath at that. He had once more brought his communication device to a side table in the conference room and now he scowled at it. They knew that earlier in the day his Power, joined by the restraining hold of the witches, had destroyed the evil toadlike trap the southern searchers had found. But if they could not reach Arvon, how could he share his discovery, which might be of major importance to Alon?

  “So this is it,” Kyllan said. “We may have cleansed our own portion of the world, but if the other half is engulfed . . .”

  He need not finish that sentence. They could do so for themselves very well indeed.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Arvon, Gryphon Country, Northwest

  H e must hold to the barriers—thicken them as he could—let those about him feel only fear, pain, exhaustion. That he had been taken riding in Kioga gear and on one of their far-ranging scout horses gave him a small advantage. But those ringing him now must not know him for what he was—Firdun of the Gryphon House.