by Andre Norton
“Briant is no ruffler of the barracks, Koris. But he has been prisoned here long enough. And don’t under-rate his sword arm; I’ll warrant he can and will amaze you — in several ways!”
Koris laughed. “That I do not doubt at all, lady, seeing that it is you who says it.” He reached for the ax by his chair.
“You’d best leave that pretty toy here,” she warned. “It, at least, will be remarked.” She laid her hand on the shaft.
It was as if her fingers were frozen there. And for the first time since their arrival Simon saw her shaken out of her calm.
“What do you carry, Koris?” her voice was a little shrill.
“Do you not know, lady? It came to me with the good will of one who made it sing. And I guard it with my life.”
She snatched back her hand as if that touch had seared flesh and bone.
“Willingly it came?”
Koris fired to that doubt. “About such a matter I would speak only the truth. To me it came and only me will it serve.”
“Then more than ever do I say take it not into the streets of Kars.” That was half order, haif plea.
“Show me then a safe place in which to set it,” he countered, with openly displayed unwillingness.
She thought a moment, her finger rubbing at her lower lip.”So be it. But later you must give me the full tale, Captain. Bring it hither and I shall show you the safest place in this house.”
Simon and Briant trailed after them into another room where the walls were hung with strips of a tapestry so ancient that only the vaguest hints of the original designs could be surmised. One of these she bypassed to come to a length of carved wall panel on which fabulous beasts leered and snarled in high relief. She pulled at this, to display a cupboard and Koris set the ax far to its back.
Just as Simon had been aware of the past centuries within Estcarp city, solid waves of time beating against a man with all the pressure of ages, as he had also known awe for the non-human in the Hole where Volt had held silent court for dust and shadows, so here there was also a kind of radiation from the walls, a tangible something in the air which made his skin creep.
Yet Koris was brisk about the business of storing his treasure and the witch shut the cupboard as might a housewife upon a broom. Briant had lingered in the doorway, his usual impassive self. Why did Simon feel this way? And he was so plagued by that that he stayed when the others left, making himself walk slowly to the center of the chamber.
There were only two pieces of furniture. One a highbacked chair of black wood which might have come from an audience hall. Facing it was a stool of the same somber coloring. And on the floor between the two an odd collection of articles Simon studied as if trying to find in them the solution to his riddle.
First there was a small clay brazier in which might burn a palm load of coals, no more. It stood on a length of board, polished smooth. And with it was an earthen bowl containing some gray-white meal, that was flanked by a squat bottle. Two seats and that strange collection of objects — yet there was something else here also.
He did not hear the witch’s return and was startled out of his thoughts when she spoke.
“What are you, Simon?”
His eyes met hers.”You know. I told you the truth at Estcarp. And you must have your own ways of testing for falsehood.”
“We have, and you spoke the truth. Yet I must ask you again, Simon — what are you? On the sea road you felt out that ambush before the Power warned me. Yet you are a man!” For the first time her self-possession was shaken. “You know what is done here — you feel it!”
“No. I only know that there is something here that I can not see — yet it exists.” He gave her the truth once again.
“That is it!” She beat her fists together. “You should not feel such things, and yet you do! I play a part here. I do not always use the Power, that is, greater power than my own experience in reading men and women, in guessing shrewdly what lies within their hearts or are their desires. Three quarters of my gift is illusion; you have seen that at work. I summon no demons, toll nothing here from another world by my spells, which are said mainly to work upon the minds of those who watch for wonders. Yet there is the Power and sometimes it comes to my call. Then I can work what are indeed wonders. I can smell out disaster, though I may not always know what form it will take. So much can I do — and that much is real! I swear to it by my life!”
“That I believe,” Simon returned. “For in my world, too, there were things which could not be explained with any sober logic.”
“And you had your women to do such things?”
“No, it came to either sex there. I have had men under my command who had foreknowledge of disaster, of death, their own or others’. Also I have known houses, old places, in which something lurked which was not good to think about, something which could not be seen or felt any more than we can now see or feel what is with us here.”
She watched him now with undisguised wonder. Then her hand moved in the air, sketching between them some sign. And that blazed for an instant in fire hanging in space.
“You saw that?” Was that an accusation or triumphant recognition? He did not have time to discover which, for, sounding through the house was the note of a gong.
“Aldis! And she will have guards with her!” The witch crossed the room to rip open that panel where Koris had stored the ax. “In with you,” she ordered. “They will search the house as they always do, and it would be better if they do not know of your presence.”
She allowed him no time for protest, and Simon found himself cramped into space much too small. Then the panel was slammed shut. Only it was more spyhole than cupboard, he discovered. There were openings among the carvings, which gave him air to breath and sight of the room.
It had all been done so swiftly that he had been swept along. Now he revolted and his hands went to that panel, determined to be out. Only to discover, too late, that there was no latch on his side and that he had been neatly put into safe keeping, along with Volt’s ax, until the witch chose to have him out again.
His irritation rising, Simon pressed his forehead against the carven screen to gain as full sight as he could of the room. And he kept very still as the woman from Estcarp reentered, to be pushed aside by two soldiers who strode briskly about, flipping aside strips of tapestry.
The witch was laughing as she watched them. Then she spoke over her shoulder to one still lingering on the other side of the threshold:
“It seems that one’s word is not accepted in Kars. Yet when has this house and those under its roof even been associated with ill dealings? Your hounds may find some dust, a spider web, or two — I confess that I am not a notable housewife, but naught else, lady. And they waste our time with their searching.”
There was a faint jeer in that, enough to flick one on the raw. Simon appreciated her skill with words. She spoke as an adult humoring children, a little impatient to be about more important business. And subtly she invited that unseen other to join her in adulthood.
“Halsfric! Donnar!”
The men snapped to attention.
“Prowl through the rest of this burrow if you will, but leave us in private!”
They stood aside nimbly at the door as another woman came in. The witch closed the portal behind them before she turned to the newcomer, who dropped her hooded cloak to let it lie in a saffron pool on the floor.
“Welcome, Lady Aldis.”
“Time is wasting, woman, as you pointed out.” The words were harsh, but the voice in which they were spoken surrounded that bruskness with layers of velvet. Such a voice could well twist a man to her will through hearing it alone.
And the Duke’s mistress had the form, not of the tavern wench to which the witch had compared her, over-ripe and full-curved, but of a young girl not fully awakened to her own potentialities, with small high breasts modestly covered, yet perfectly revealed by the fabric of her robe. A woman of contradictions — wanton and cool at
one and the same time. Simon, studying her, could well understand how she had managed to hold sway over a proved lecher as long and successfully as she had.
“You told Firtha—” again that sharp note swathed in velvet.
“I told your Firtha just what I could do and what was necessary for the doing,” the witch was as brisk as her client. “Does the bargain suit you?”
“It will suit me when it is proved successful and not before. Give me that which makes me secure in Kars and then claim your pay.”
“You have a strange way of bargaining, lady. The advantages are all yours.”
Aldis smiled. “Ah, but if you have the power you claim. Wise Woman, then you can blast as well as aid and I shall be easy meat for you. Tell me what I must do and be quick; I can trust those two outside only because I hold both their lives with my tongue. But there are other eyes and tongues in this city!”
“Give me your hand.” The woman from Estcarp picked up the tiny bowl of meal. As Aldis extended her beringed hand, the other stabbed it with a needle drawn from her clothing, letting a drop or two of blood fall into the bowl. She added more moisture from the bottle, mixing it into a batter. And coaxed the charcoal in the tiny stove to a blaze.
“Sit down.” She pointed to the stool. When the other was seated, she slapped the board across her knees, putting the stove upon it.
“Think on the one you want, keep him only in your mind, lady.”
The batter of that cake was spread out above that handful of fire and the woman from Estcarp began to sing. Strangely enough that something which had so alerted Simon moments earlier, which had thickened and curdled about them in that second when she had traced the fiery sign in the air, was now ebbing from the room.
But in its way her singing wove a spell of its own, changing thought images, evoking another kind of response. Simon, realizing it for what it was, for what it could do, after an incredulous second or two, bit hard upon his lower lip. This — coming from the woman he thought he was beginning to know. Fit magic for Aldis and her like; for the cool cleanliness of Estcarp, no! And it was beginning to work upon him also. Simon screwed his fingers into his ears to close out that sultry heat which seeped from words in the air to the racing blood in his own body.
He took away that defense only when he saw the witch’s lips ceased to move. Aldis’ face was a delicate pink, her parted lips moist, her eyes fixed before her unseeingly, until the witch lifted from her knees the board and brazier. The woman from Estcarp took up the cake, crumbled it into a square of white cloth and held it out to her client.
“A pinch of this added to his food or drink.” The life had gone from the witch’s voice; she spoke as one drugged with fatigue.
Aldis whipped the package from her, thrust it into the breast of her gown. “Be sure I shall use it rightly!” She caught up her cloak, already on her way to the door. “I shall let you know how I fare.”
“I shall know, lady, I shall know.”
Aldis was gone and the witch stood, one hand on the back of the chair as if she needed its support. Her expression was one of weary distaste with a faint trace of shame, as if she had used ill means to gain a good end.
V
THREE TIMES HORNED
Koris’ hands moved in steady rhythm, polishing the ax blade with slow strokes of a silken cloth. He had reclaimed his treasure the minute he returned, and now, perched on a window ledge, with it resting upon his knees, he talked.
“… he burst in as if the Kolder were breathing upon his back and blurted it out to the sergeant who spewed up half the wine I had paid for and was like to choke loose his guts, while this fellow pawed at him and yammered about it. I’d stake a week’s looting of Kars that there is a kernel of truth in it somewhere, though the story’s a muddle.”
Simon was watching the other two in that room. He did not expect the witch to reveal either surprise or the fact that she might already have heard such a tale. However, the youngster she had produced out of nowhere might be less well schooled, and his attitude proved Simon right. Briant was too well controlled. One better trained in the game of concealment would have displayed surprise.
“I take it,” Simon cut through the Captain’s report, “that such a story is not a muddle to you, lady.” The wariness which had become a part of his relationship with her since that scene with Aldis hours earlier was the shield he raised against her. She might sense its presence, but she made no effort to break through it.
“Hunold is truly dead,” her words were flat. “And he died in Verlaine. Also is the Lady Loyse gone from the earth. That much did your man have true, Captain,” she spoke to Koris rather than to Simon. “That both these happenings were the result of an Estcarp raid is, of course, nonsense.”
“That I knew, lady. It is not our manner of fighting. But is this story a cover for something else? We have asked no questions of you, but did the remainder of the Guards come ashore on the Verlaine reefs?”
She shook her head. “To the extent of my knowledge, Captain, you and those who were saved with you are the only survivors out of Sulcarkeep.”
“Yet a report such as this will spread and be an excuse for an attack on Estcarp.” Koris was frowning now. “Hunold stood high in Yvian’s favor. I do not think the Duke will take his death calmly, especially if some mystery surrounds it.”
“Fulk!” The name exploded out of Briant as if it were a dart shot from his side arm. “This is Fulk’s way out!” His pale face had expression enough now. “But he would have to deal with Siric and Lord Duarte, too! I think that Fulk has been very busy. That shieldman had so many details of a raid that he must have been acquainted with a direct report.”
“A messenger from the sea just landed. I heard him babble that much,” Koris supplied.
“From the sea!” The witch was on her feet, her scarlet and gold draperies stirring about her. “Fulk of Verlaine cannot be termed in any way a simpleton, but there is a swiftness of move here, a taking advantage of every chance happening which smacks of something more than just Fulk’s desire to protect himself against Yvian’s vengeance!”
There was a stormy darkness in her eyes as she regarded all three of them coldly. She might almost have been numbering them among hostile elements.
“This I do not like. Oh, some tale from Verlaine might have been expected; Fulk needed a story to throw into Yvian’s teeth lest the stones of his towers be rained down about his own ears. And he is perfectly capable of spitting both Siric and Durate to give added credence and cover his tracks. But the moves come too swiftly, too well fitting into a pattern! I would have sworn—”
She strode up and down the chamber, her scarlet skirts swirling about her. “We are mistresses of illusion, but I will take oath before the Power of Estcarp that that storm was no illusion! Unless the Kolder have mastered the forces of nature—” Now she stood very still, and her hands flew to her mouth as if to trap words already spoken. “If the Kolder have mastered—” her voice came as a whisper. “I cannot believe that we have been moved hither and yon at their bidding! That I dare not believe! Yet—” She whirled about and came directly to Simon.
“Briant I know, and what he does and why, all that I know. And Koris I know, and what drives him and why. But you — man out of the mists of Tor, I do not know. If you are more than you seem, then perhaps we have brought our own doom upon us.”
Koris stopped polishing the ax blade. The cloth fell to the floor as his hands closed about the haft.”He was accepted by the Guardian,” he said neutrally, but his attention centered upon Simon with the impersonal appraisal of a duelist moving forward to meet a challenge.
“Yes!” The woman from Estcarp agreed to that. “And it is impossible that what Kolder holds to its core cannot be uncovered by our methods. They could cloak it, but the very blankness of that cloak would make it suspect! There is one test yet.” She plucked at the throat fastening of her robe and drew forth the dull jewel she had worn out of Estcarp. For a long moment she held it
in her hands, gazing down into its heart, and then she slipped the chain from about her neck and held it out to Simon. “Take it!” she ordered.
Koris cried out and scrambled off the ledge. But Simon took it into his hand. At first touch the thing was as smooth and cold as any polished gem, then it began to warm, adding to that heat with every second. Yet the heat did not burn, it had no effect upon his flesh. Only the stone itself came to life; trails of opalescent fire crawled across its surface.
“I knew!” Her husky half-whisper filled the room. “No, not Kolder! Not Kolder; Kolder could not hold without harm, fire the Power and take no hurt! Welcome, brother in power!” Again she sketched a symbol in the air which glowed as brightly as the gem before it faded. Then she took the stone from his hold and restored it to its hiding place beneath her robe.
“He is a man. Shape changing could not work so, nor is it possible to befool us in the barracks where he has lived,” Koris spoke first. “And how does a man hold the Power?”
“He is a man out of our time and space. What chances in other worlds we cannot say. Now I will swear that he is not Kolder. So perhaps he is that which Kolder must face in the final battle. But now we must…”
Their preoccupation was sharply broken by the burr of a signal in the wall. Alert, Simon and Koris looked to the witch. Briant drew his gun. “The wall gate,” he said.
“Yet it is the right signal, though the wrong time. Answer it, but be prepared.”
He was already half out of the room. Koris and Simon sped after him to the garden door. As they reached outside, free from the deadening thickness of the walls of that unusual house, they heard a clamor from the town. Simon was plagued by a wisp of memory. There was a note in that far-off shouting which he had surely heard before. Koris looked startled.
“That is a mob! The snarl of a hunting mob.”
And Simon, remembering a red horror out of his own past, nodded briskly. He poised the dart gun to welcome whoever stood without the wall gate.