by Andre Norton
It was in the shape of a thorn but as long as Kelsie's forearm and she gathered that it could have impaled her had it struck. In some manner it had been so shot by the dead-looking tree.
Creep indeed they did and she wrinkled her nose at the sour smell of the muck of long dead leaves which floored their path. Twice more they passed arrow trees until at last they came into the open once again, a glade such as the one in which Yonan had used his sword key. When they were in the midst of that he allowed them to stop and they ate the meat and drank from the gourds, but sparingly for they had not seen any source of water that day.
Kelsie was growing sleepy and longed to simply stretch out on the ground here and sleep away her weariness. Only Yonan made no sign of remaining where they were and her pride and stubborn desire to match him would not let her suggest a longer resting time.
Though she consulted the jewel now and then and was assured that they were following wherever that would lead them, she wanted more and more to drop it to this ground, let it be hidden by the tall grass, and return— Where?
In the day here Ben Blair seemed very far away in her mind, her whole life up to her coming through what Simon Tregarth had called a gate was more of a dream than her nightmare just past. She began to consider Yonan. He certainly was under no compulsion to travel so. Yet it was his knowledge which had saved them over and over again. He was not of the Valley by birth. That she knew. And he was even unlike most of the human kind who had gathered there. His hair was lighter and the eyes in his weather-browned face a startling blue. Who was Yonan? For the first time her mind wandered more from their present plight to ask a question. Dahaun apparently held him in repute having sent him after them for a guardian—or a guide. She had seen one of the other Tregarths—Kyllan—but there was nothing which appeared to make Yonan one of their out-breed stock. He usually companied with the huge axe weaponed warrior Urik. And there was that strange exchange which she had heard to suggest that he believed in reincarnation and had once been Tolar who had played some desperate game in this same land centuries ago.
“How far into this land have you been?” she suddenly asked.
He had paused to adjust the cord of his improvised shoulder bag and he did not look up as he answered:
“This land is new to me. Nor is it marked on any of the charts in the Valley.”
“Yet you come with me—”
“I go with you,” he returned, “since that is the duty laid upon me. When the witches out of Estcarp made contact with the Valley they bargained for guides. Nor did they understand that the influence of the Light flickers in many places and that there are powers upon powers which they have never heard of even within the records of Lormt.”
Lormt! The place out of her half dream. Now she wanted straight answers. “What is Lormt?”
“A place in which ancient knowledge is stored. It was when Kemoc Tregarth went to Lormt that he learned of Escore—or at least that there was a country here to the east which had been forbidden to the Old Race who fled the adepts’ war.”
Now he arose and stood looking down at her. “What says your jewel? Which way?”
From her he had glanced at the wood about them. She had no desire to enter that darksome place of peril again but neither was there any sense in their remaining here in the open. So she dangled the gem hurriedly. It pointed again—more directly to the north Kelsie thought, though she was no forester or land dweller to guess aright at that signal.
The reed and illbane covering of their boots had shredded under travel and broken away so only bits of these remained. Also there were none of the herbs here and they could not renew that defense. Once more they entered the wood on the other side of the glade. There were no longer any faint traces of a trail and she noted that Yonan's pace had slowed. Now again he halted entirely, his head up as he sniffed the breeze, even as some animal advancing cautiously into unknown territory might test for some faint presence which was perilous to his kind.
There were still the arrow trees and the farkill so their advance was not straight because of these but took on a zigzag pattern. It was on one of their crawls to escape the arrow thorns that Kelsie set hand on what she thought was a round stone. Only to have it turn under her weight and grin evilly up at her—a skull! And, though there were differences in the wide ridges of bone above the eyes and the broadness of the whole, it approached that of a human. She uttered a little cry of disgust which brought Yonan's head around. But she had already noted two more of the grayish knobs a little before them and more—It was a pavement of skulls they had chanced upon!
Yonan shook his head when she asked what manner of creature had died here—here—and here—and there ahead—to form such a hideous track. But he kept to it even though she near refused to follow him. Then they came to the first of the monoliths.
The same grayish gleam of skull, of arrow tree, it stood out here in a half envelope of brush like a crooked giant finger pointing skyward—if there was indeed still an open sky above the ceiling of tangled tree branches.
The thing was taller than Yonan as he stood before it, and more bulky, but, though it was greened here and there with moss, it was easy to see that it had been purposely wrought into the form of a crouching image leaning forward a little—one massive arm raised and a great clawed hand or paw about to reach for some easily captured prey.
Kelsie sucked in her breath. She had seen many outré forms of life since she had so unwillingly begun this journey, but this was wholly malignant. The shoulders were bowed until it would appear that the creature it portrayed was humped. On those shoulders with a hardly visible neck perched a huge head, the bald cranium rising to a cone point. But it was the eyes which were the worst feature of that misshapen thing. They were as deep set as if they lay in pits. Yet they were not stone—or even inset gems—
She looked into them and gasped. Just like the hound that had appeared at the gate, these holes were filled with a yellowish flame. Stone and carven the monstrous thing might be. But—the eyes were alive! Was there some presence embedded in the stone—a prisoner without hope of freedom?
Without conscious thought she raised the Witch Jewel, not watching it as she did because she was entrapped by the fire in those stone-rimmed pits.
“No!” Yonan was upon her, his hand out to beat down the jewel. “No!”
She twisted in his hold, her fear grown a hundredfold. Only he had her arm so tightly pinned to her side that she could not break free to use what she had come to consider her only weapon.
“It is a watcher, let it not watch to any purpose,” he added. Then thrust her away from him, so that meeting eye to eye with the thing was broken and she was free of what she now judged was indeed one of the more subtle dangers of this place.
Still holding onto her arm as if he feared she had not taken his warning to heart, Yonan pulled her along with him, their boots with the remnants of the illbane fastenings upon them slipping and sliding on the trail of skulls.
“It watched—was alive!”
“Not it but what watched through it,” he countered. “If you had used the jewel you might have banished that watcher but you would have raised an alarm which—”
He stopped nearly in mid-word. There was another creature beside this noxious trail. It bore resemblance to the first but it was not graven stone—no, this was carved of wood. Some giant of a tree had been so used that the remnant of bark, now overgrown with leprous fungi, formed a skin, watched. There were the same pits of eyes—the same—after one fleeting glance she prevented her own sight with difficulty from meeting the eyes in the wood. They were also alive.
She pulled herself free of Yonan's grip and sped as well as she could down the skull road to avoid another meeting with that which so spied upon them. Now, as she went, she looked quickly from side to side to make sure there were no more of the watchers looming up before them.
No air stirred here under the trees, and there was a rising odor from the muck in which the skulls h
ad been set which was putrid and sickening. There was a warmth here, too—not that protective one she knew when the jewel came to greater life, but rather a stifling sticky heat which eroded one's spirit as well as dragged at one's body.
However, the road led straight and she saw the ancient remains of trees which had been cut from their roots to clear a way for it. Here and there saplings had dared to reach up again, pushing aside the skulls which lay to grin at them. But they came across no more of the statues.
Not until they pushed through a last fence of brush and came to open country. The skull road had not stopped at their emergence into the open, though the bones here appeared to be more firmly planted.
“A road of the conquered,” Yonan spoke for the first time since he had warned her in the wood. “It is very old that belief. To plant the heads of your enemies so that you tread ever upon them makes complete your victory.” But Kelsie hardly heard him, she was looking ahead at the massive—thing—which had been erected there.
If she had believed the two she had seen in the wood were great and careful pieces of work, what could she call this?
For the road of skulls ran directly to a ponderous, outstretched belly of the thing squatting there—an artifact as large or nearly so as the ruin in which they had found themselves earlier. Both the hands were outspread and planted on the ground like giant pillars and those supported the huge form which was leaning forward as if to study whatever advanced toward it.
Twelve
There was a dark hole where the curve of its pendulous belly touched the ground. So regularly shaped it was that it could be a door— A door into what? Kelsie dared a quick glance up into the eye pits. But there was no hellish fire burning there, they were only dark caverns.
A harsh noise brought a small cry from her. Surely the thing before her was not alive, had not delivered such a hail. No, that had come from the winged things circling about its head. They were brilliantly scarlet even in this early eventide except for their bills and their feet—which were the black of the orifice opening at the end of the skull road.
They were stringing out, away from that perfect circle they had made about the head of the squatting thing, coming toward them. Yonan gave a cry in turn, one which perhaps was meant to hearten himself as well as any who heard. He hurled about his head the weighted cord he had used for hunting. But it was nothing for the pot that he would bring down now. The cord flew out, so quickly she hardly saw it go and wrapped itself about the long neck of one of the flyers, bearing the thing to the ground where it flopped and fought.
Yonan was ready for it with sword and a single sweep of blade whipped off the darting head. But he had to whirl then to beat off another flyer which swooped, dagger bill ready, to attack. Then that one, too, was left to flop on the ground headless but somehow still living.
Kelsie shouted and tossed up the jewel as a third sped down the sky aiming straight for her. She had little hope of beating it off—the thing was fully half her size, its wing spread was beyond her reckoning.
The jewel flickered with life and the bird sheered off. Kelsie's eyes following its flight fearfully saw something else. From the broad nose which covered near a third of the face of the demonic monster there puffed two small clouds of reddish smoke, thin and without any flame to feed them but they spread forward in the air, not diffusing as she thought that they would, rather to form a distinct cloud or blot. It was already under the film of twilight but that smoke—or breath—was still distinguishable.
The birds had attacked Yonan again, seeming to look upon him as the enemy they could bring down the easiest. He called to Kelsie, panting a little as he countered with sword against bill to keep his feet and break the attack.
“Do not let them circle! Break up that—!”
She swung the jewel, with no hope of contacting any of the flyers but noting that they fled the sparks which flew in the air from her only weapon. Then she was back to back with Yonan.
“Back to the woods?” she got out that question.
“Not with night coming,” he told her. And she could understand the wisdom of that. They might escape the birds when they gained the shadows of the trees but they also would be girt about by a place of the Dark. At least in the open they could see their attackers.
Three of the birds had fallen to Yonan's sword but still the others attempted to build up a circle in the air above the two of them. And it was Yonan's constant thrusts which kept them from forming it completely.
Why they just did not fly higher and out of his reach Kelsie could not understand. But whatever plan governed them meant that they must travel close to the ground and fairly close to the two they would take.
She drew a deep breath and coughed, her throat rasped, her eyes burning. That breath from the monster was settling on them. She swung the chain of the jewel vigorously. That might keep off the birds but it had no effect upon the puff of crimson air. She coughed again, near strangled by the breath which she had been forced to inhale. There was a wretched burning, in her nose, her throat. Her eyes were beginning to water so she could hardly see. But still she strove to keep her feet and ward off this new peril—only it did not answer the jewel. Had she come to depend too much on that because so far it had not failed her? To everything there was a limit and here they two might have reached that.
For Yonan was also coughing hard. He stepped back and his shoulders were now against Kelsie's so she could feel the racking shudders which shook him. The birds cried out again even as they had done at their first coming—harsh squawks but ones which held a measure of triumph in them.
She felt Yonan slump and turned just in time to swing the jewel out to stop a vicious bill which was aimed for him as he crumpled to the ground. There was blood on that part of his face she could see below his helm and the helm itself had been knocked askew. The bird which had launched a fight attack on him was on the ground, its long legs holding well above it but its head drawn back for a finishing stab at the feebly moving man who was trying to regain his feet.
“No—circle—” he gasped.
But it was too late. Kelsie was coughing with such pain and depth that she felt her very lungs would be brought up by her choking. She could only hunch over Yonan holding above the two of them the Witch Jewel. And that one of the fearsome flock who had been about to impale her companion drew back and sidestepped from the run which would have carried it to that action.
Moisture from her tortured nose dripped down on Yonan and she saw it form beads of blood on his mail. Her throat was rasped so raw that nothing mattered now save that she could find some refuge from this poisoned cloud.
Through her tearing eyes she could see an open space where the dancing red motes of the cloud made up the haze about them. On her knees, the gem in one hand, her other laced in Yonan's belt she strove to reach that promise of freedom.
She did not understand that she was being herded, not then. But she had a full moment of truth before the end came. The cloud lifted—she saw before her the black gap of an opening and only there was the promise of breath which had become a matter of life itself. One last effort— One effort and a momentary awakening to the danger— She had reached the ominous door in the monster's great belly and it was toward that she had crawled, dragging Yonan with her.
Kelsie strove to turn and the red haze settled. Coughing and tasting her own blood she fell forward into complete darkness in which she was lost.
Darkness again met her when she roused. For a moment she could not remember—and then the terror which had woven around her when she realized where they had been herded struck full force. She was not in that place of darkness where she had once been tossed, afraid and alone. No, she was truly awake and in a place of dark which was of this world. Her hands questing out on either side of her bruised and aching body were exploring over stone, rough and damp. Her fingers flinched away from a patch of slime.
She swallowed and her throat was sore burned by that last blast of the ruddy smoke
. But this dark was so intense she was cold with another fear—that she was blind. She raised a hand feebly, for all her strength seemed drained and gone, rubbed across her closed eyes, opening them once more when she had done—upon thick dark.
Thick—for it seemed to have a quality of its own—smothering, holding her. Somehow she braced her hands on the floor and levered herself partway up, now depending upon her ears. There were no sounds—was hearing smothered and gone like her sight?
“Yonan!” There came no answer to her shout. Where-ever she was trapped, she was alone.
Now she felt for that which had lain on her breast—upon which she had come to depend. Her fingers closed upon a cold stone; it could be any pebble she might have taken up. The life and warmth she had sensed in it from the very first were gone. It was dead—
Dead? Perhaps this was death and she had come from life into an eternal dark.
It was only when that last fear began to crowd all control from her mind that Kelsie first became aware of something which was not sound but rather a vibration, growing ever stronger and sinking into her own body. It followed a regular series of beats yet there was no extra rhythm in it as had been in the bowl drums of the Thas. This was more like the measured thud of a heart—a heart so powerful that it could echo outside the body which held it.
The black gate in the belly of the monster—had she entered a thing with a life of its own? Her thoughts squirmed away from that—even in this country of strangeness and hallucinations such a thing could not be true.
She sat fully up in the dark and with her hands explored her whole body. The last remnants of the illbane wrappings were gone from her feet, but at her belt, snug in its own sheath was the long-bladed knife which was a part of all the clothing of a Valley dweller. She edged that out of its covering now, afraid of dropping it in this thick dark and losing her only weapon since it seemed that the power of the stone had deserted her.