by Andre Norton
Further rummaging turned up a backpack stronger and larger than that Smarle had found for him, and in the wall-set bed of the great room there were still folded blankets, one undersewn with nar fur as soft and warming as the robe of any High King in winter.
There was food also—put down in crocks in the storeroom. Those must have been overlooked—perhaps the death of the garthmaster and his man had somewhat limited the looting.
The nature of that stored in the crocks Kryn knew well—lean meat smoked, sliced thin, then covered with dried fruit which was pounded well into it. Rations for those who in the winter must cover the outer range of this holding to make sure that there were no intruders, animal or man.
He discarded his stinking coat and from another blanket fashioned a rough answer to it—cutting a circle in its middle for his head and pulling it into belt after hacking off two sides for freedom for his arms.
In his crossing and recrossing of the kitchen he had kept his head away from the dead. Now that he had all which might mean the difference between survival and defeat for him there was a last respect for him to accord Harkvan and the groom.
From the big room Kryn dragged what was left of the bedding to to cover the bodies. Then he hunted up two of the lamps, splashing their contents over that mound, heaping at its sides what was left of the firewood in its pile beside the wide hearth.
It had grown dark in the room and he could barely distinguish the improvised bier by the time he had finished. He stood several steps down the ladder and then threw upon the oil-soaked cloth a small torch he had lit from the snap-spark Smarle had provided.
There was an upward whoosh of flame and Kryn jumped from the ladder. He shouldered the pack he had earlier slung down, with the weapons snug in its lashing, and was out into the night with all the speed he could summon.
Nor did he turn until he had reached the first of the smaller hillocks which dotted the pasturage. The night was alight behind him, flames showing from each of the sealed windows he could sight. He stood for a long moment to watch until he was sure that it was well alight. Let Valcur try to wring any more from that!
Burdened by the pack, Kryn trotted on into the night as the light behind him increased and threw his own shadow hurrying ahead of him.
This was familiar territory for him but only as far as the Falls of Umbra. And the terrain was such that any tracker could pick up his trail. He believed that he had no time to try tricks of concealment—not now with the garth blaze as defiance which would sting the Templers into a hunt. Valcur was no fool and he was not served by fools; they would guess the tie between the outlawed son of the disgraced House and the destruction of the farthest west holding of that House. And the Temple did not forget any more than it forgave.
So he pushed on, covering the way he knew, at the best speed he could summon as the ground ahead became more broken and arose steadily hill by hill. Toward morning he realized that he must rest; his legs shook a little when he paused to pant heavily at the crown of one such rise. Now he looked ahead and around for some shelter he dared hole up in.
There was a small ruffle of fir trees on the downside ahead and those seemed to offer the only cover he could sight. Wearily Kryn wove a way down, his wine-soaked, muddied boots stirring the thick blanket of fallen needles.
Dawn was already lightening the sky and he saw that the copse was centered by a tree taller and thicker trunked than those about it. Fastening a twist of rope to his pack, he left it on the ground, climbing until he was able to wedge himself into a limited space between trunk and branch. The raising of his pack was almost more than he could do, he was so shaken with fatigue. But there was nothing else which promised even a shred of safety if trackers were already on their way.
It took Kryn two days more to work past the Falls of Umbra into the unknown country. He had the luck to knock over one of the pacer hens, fat from the fall crop of nuts. Not daring the use of fire, he made himself choke down strips of raw flesh, fighting his queasiness with grim determination.
On the trail it was hard to keep track of time. He was no longer sure how long it had been since he had left the garth. This was country rich for the hunter and trapper. He lay in the sun on a rock and watched a herd of laster-deer, led proudly by a buck with antlers which stretched near the length of a man’s height. They moved with the confidence of those who knew no enemies. It was true that even the rock cats prudently gave way to a laster buck when it wore its full armament.
Kryn was careful to refrain from using his arrows, even when some good target presented itself. In the first place he must be ever on the move and he could not deal with a carcass of an animal too large to be eaten in more than two meals. So he kept to the smaller game, of which there was plenty.
In these last days before the coming of winter in the Heights, the animals were preparing for that season, avidly seeking to fill their bellies before hibernation as most of them—save the large browsers and predators— slept away the season of snow and ice.
He, himself, must hunt some base he could use for a permanent shelter during the cold. Thus he prowled the upper ways, sometimes using the convenience of game trails, to try and discover a cave.
The few he had found were too shallow and one had a carpeting of bones in the rear studded by the dried dung of one of the cats. He had no desire to dispute ownership of that refuge.
At length he crossed two mountain meadows and worked his way arduously over the Heights which framed them. The cliffs ahead looked promising and he could hear the sound of a fast mountain stream. Perhaps it was that which masked the attacker.
Kryn sprawled forward, gasping for air. He had been struck such a blow on his now much leaner pack as to drive the air from his lungs. Then another body crashed down on him, pinning his outflung arms tightly to the earth. He tried to heave himself up, when into his line of vision there flashed a naked blade edge to his throat.
“Move and you die.” The voice spoke with the tone of one engaging in an ordinary conversation—which somehow made the words it shaped that much more deadly. The spurt of fear was echoed by his anger against himself for being taken so easily. He had become careless in the days when roaming this territory apparently free of his kind.
Templers? Valcur must indeed have had his rage aroused to carry any pursuit this far.
“What have we here?” Another voice.
“Turn him over, Jaspron, and let us see,” ordered the first speaker.
The weight on him switched and the hands on his wrists, there must be two of them keeping that, tightened and pulled. Kryn rolled over, his pack holding him somewhat free of the ground.
There were four of them—but not uniformed Temple guards. Instead they wore leather oddly splotched with dull colors as if intended to blend with leaves and brush. Two were middle-aged and had about them an air he knew—these were or had been armsmen, trained fighters in some lord’s colors. The other two were younger and kind recognized kind—these were hall born.
“Who are you, youngling, who dares the Heights?” The elder of the two touched Kryn’s side with the toe of his thick foot covering as if to remind the captive of his status.
“What hall gives post to your banner?” Kryn found his voice.
“A spy, put knife to him,” one of the armsmen urged.
The younger of the two noble born dropped to balance on his heels as he stared intently at Kryn. Then he spoke:
“So the Crown Sinister is your banner, youngling?”
“How…” began Kryn.
“How? Two warm seasons back. Qunion guested Garn in friendship. What chances now in the lowlands?”
Garn—he did not remember this young man but then, like all unnamed warriors, Kryn had kept much to the background and his place at the feasting board had been afar from the high table.
Garn—Garn had been one of the first to feel the clawed paw of the Temple. But that was rumor only— a story of the Head dying of poison given by his cousin who wished to heir. The c
ousin had died in quick Temple justice and Garn’s claim forfeited because of the stain upon its new lord.
“Qunion is gone,” Kryn said. “They used their devil arts to make the Head swear the slave oath—”
He heard a whistling of indrawn breath from all of them.
“Valcur goes far,” the elder of the nobles said. “So Qunion…” He reached down and before Kryn could move, his wrists still prisoned by the armsmen, the stranger laid two fingers on the hilt of Bringhope. “I think Qunion still lives, even as Garn. Well met, kin by misfortune.”
And thus Kryn passed into the fellowship of the highlands.
CHAPTER 5
Nosh tensed as she watched that troop of horsemen advance into clear sight—soldiers! Her slender body quivered in a first shudder. The books—Dreen—Fire… Memories bit at her, making her hands shake, her feet stumble as she wriggled back from her spy post.
These could not follow a trail across bare stone. And they were not riding at more than an amble, as if winning through that stoppered pass had worn energy out of them. Nosh forced memory away, concentrated on the present. The books…
She reached their refuge and set to frantic labor. The books she swept from their safe alignment on the table, pulling out strips of twisted snake hide to anchor them into a heavy pile but one she could deal with. Then— supplies… She got out the woven reed bags, poured into them the ground root meal, the strips of dried fish and amphibian flesh.
There were other things—but those she could not hope to save. Perhaps if the searchers came upon a deserted house, they would not believe any chase worth their while.
Nosh made two trips back into the forest of rock spires into which Dreen had always disappeared on her mysterious journeying. The books she took first, then shouldered the bags of food. Now, she must be alert against Dreen’s return. The woman must not be allowed to walk into open danger.
She had never followed Dreen. There had been something oddly forbidding in the woman’s attitude when she had withdrawn on those trips. But Nosh knew the general direction in which the other always disappeared.
First she hunted a hiding place for all she had brought from the house. There were crevices aplenty among these rough pinnacles which seemed almost, the farther she won into their circling, to be like the trunks of ravished trees frozen forever into immobility. But she must get farther in.
A clicking caught her attention. Wasin, surely it was Wasin, had flicked into full sight. It was almost as if he were calling to her. A moment later Tarm appeared at the level of her own feet. His frill was expanded to its farthest extent and he flashed back and forth, going and returning in a blink of the eye.
How much did these understand? Their excitement was manifest. Were the zarks attempting in some way to guide her?
Nosh hurried on, her back bent a little under the weight of the books. There was a crevice ahead, larger, darker as if it ran deeper. By the gap of that Tarm was standing, still now, his head cocked to one side as if he were watching her steadily to make sure she was coming. Nosh dropped her first burden into the dark cavern mouth and hurried back for the second.
She could hear something else, echoed, perhaps even magnified, by the wilderness of spires about her. Her hand went to her mouth and helped to stifle the sound her fears raised.
Above the sounds of hooves on rock and the jangle of war gear, there was something else. She shivered even more. Chant—a One chant. She did not have to get a fair look to substantiate her guess this half troop was a-prowl, but that riding with them was one of black and red robes—the burners of books—the choosers of victims to be slain.
She gave what was almost a leap into the mouth of that dark wedge, stumbling over the book package and falling painfully, to scrape knees on the rock. It was dark—so very dark that she was sure the hidden space before her was large.
Her hand, outstretched to lever herself up as fast as she could rise, slipped on a smooth glob. Into the dark about her arose scent—the scent of fish oil. Someone who had borne either a lamp or a well-soaked torch had come this way—Dreen—it could only be Dreen!
Nosh’s eyes had adjusted somewhat to the gloom which the daylight from outside cut the deeper interior dark. She was not in a cave as she had first thought, at least not one which was small enough to end within her present range of sight. Instead the blackness reached ahead and she had the drops of the oil slippage to guide her on.
The book bag she pulled well to one side. She could not bear a double burden and their future might now depend more on food than those remnants of old knowledge.
Using her left hand against a wall Nosh could not see, the other steadying the carrying thongs of the bags slung over her shoulder, the girl ventured on. She heard no more clicking—the zarks perhaps had not followed her here.
In spite of her slow advance and her attempting to feel her way, she twice struck against a wall as the passage took another turn. Then at the third such happening she saw a thinning of the gloom before her. Dreen returning with a torch to light her way?
No, this did not have the comforting ruddiness of fire—rather it was grey even as the land lay under the weight of the outer sky. She perhaps had won through what was not a cave at all but a tunnel leading once more into the open.
At another curve of the wall Nosh uttered a small sound of astonishment. The light was brighter, clearer. She stumbled out into such a place as might have greeted a wanderer in one of the old chronicles which Dreen had taught her to read.
For a long moment she could not see the source from which that blaze about her sprang—somewhere over her head. But it was what was embedded in the walls, lying in pieces before her feet, which parlayed the brilliance of light. Crystals—clear with rainbows of light, crystals ruby-hearted with inner fires, crystals of the cool green of the fabled sea, blue, gold…
Nosh rubbed her eyes and allowed her food bag to drop. Now that she could center her sight on one portion of wall she could see that those colors were not scattered heedlessly but that they wove patterns. The girl stretched her head well back to look aloft. There the fire was ruddier. She could make out, in spite of the smart that the flashing of the crystal brought, a ball suspended there.
This gave out light—murky and smoke-tinged in itself but enough to awaken the glory of the crystals. Yet looking at that ball brought a quick shaft of fear, though not a fear out of memory, to trouble her.
The globe had no place here; that she knew from the moment she sighted it. It was alien in spite of the fact that its tainted light fed the radiance which was true and right.
Its suspending chains supported it directly over a pedestal in what appeared the center of that chamber. On the pedestal was…
Nosh somehow lost fear, was drawn closer, closer step by eager step until she could reach up and—no, she could not quite lay hand on what was planted there— some buried will was stronger than hers.
However, she could see it well, almost as if the brilliance of the flashes around her were subdued for a moment to aid her in that. It was—her own hands drew back just before her breast and came together, wrist pressed to wrist, palms slanting back as if her curved fingers now caressed and held some cup or vessel.
There were the wrists before her eyes, the palms acurve, all fashioned from rainbow-coated crystal as if some being of an alien blood had left so a sign of once-life.
But the fingers—they had been snapped away, leaving only shattered stumps. Needle-pointed slivers here and there marked the places where they had been rooted.
Her lips parted and she gave a sigh. Just as fear had struck earlier, so now did a shattering sense of loss grip her. She wavered to and fro as she fell to her knees, and the tears which she had thought long ago exhausted came once more to wet her cheeks, the hands she held to her dusty face.
There was worse than sorrow to be faced here, Nosh discovered, as she continued to kneel. There was evil— stemming not from the shattered crystal—no—it came from that ball whic
h hung aloft. Old evil, crafty evil. If she could have laid hand on a spear to give her reach room, she would have struck that thing from its support chains, dashed it to bits on the floor even as the fragments of crystal lay in mounds like miniature desert dunes.
She had no spear—but perhaps a fragment of crystal could be thrown. Nosh had developed a strong pitching arm to help her for a hunt when straightness of an aim might mean the difference between going fed or hungry for a day.
Hitching around, she scrabbled in the nearest drift of crystals, hunting one of the proper size and weight. Blood spotted her discards as her flesh was scored by sharp edges, but she was beyond pain at the moment. Only one thought filled her—to destroy that hanging above.
Her fingers closed. She nearly dropped what she held—though she had not been aware of the tingling which had followed her delving, insensible to the messages sent by her gift, this surge of power, fire-hot, could not be denied. She was holding a length of the pure rainbow-shadowed crystal, turning it around to see it the better. Its form… Nosh got hastily to her feet and once more studied the broken fingerless hands. She did indeed hold a finger! Fingers—let her find the fingers… She laid that first one with care on the pedestal and turned to search even more madly for the other shards which must lie hidden among all the glitter on the floor.
“Not here…. ”
Speech in this place was a shock. Nosh swung around, absently licking her bleeding hands. Dreen stood there. The woman moved to her side.
“That to be sought is not here, my child. Yes,”—she had followed Nosh’s gaze as it went to the fragment she had placed aloft—“one has come into your hands. Alnosha, left as a guide—a measure. Just as the others will and must do in their time and place. Lyr has chosen, your gift is Goddess-given, thus it must Goddess serve.”
“What…?” began Nosh in a shaken voice.
“You look upon the desolation of Razkan.” That last word appeared to twist upon her lips as if she spat it.