by Andre Norton
This was no friend certainly. Still the leader’s hand fell familiarly on his shoulder and drew him forward.
“Heir to Qunion, Dreamer,” the first man introduced his fellow.
The others, who plainly were trained and tested armsmen, splashed ashore but gathered a little away from the four on the bank as if they hesitated to intrude.
Dreen inclined her head. For a long moment the younger man stared stolidly back at her as if this meeting was none of his wishing. Then abruptly he ducked his head in a short gesture which had none of the grace of his companion’s greeting.
“This is Alnosha.” Dreen turned her head a fraction in summons and the girl reluctantly drew closer. There was that in the attitude of the second man which made her as wary as if he were wearing the black and red of those who had played hunter in her world.
“Alnosha,” the elder of the two repeated and gave her a smile and bow. Again the other moved slowly as if loath to follow the formalities of an older and more gracious life.
“They enter the Ryft, they hunt,” Dreen said. “That, which was the thinnest of shadows, moves again.”
“We have seen. But those we spied upon would not have had time to reach your sighting,” he answered her.
“Then they had forerunners, Lord Jarth. I cannot foresee because I dare not dream. It appears to me that we cannot choose our time now, we must move in answer to that which is thrust upon us. But we cannot remain any longer, and our own quest waits.”
“We can give you cover on your way, Dreamer,” Jarth replied quickly. “Are you thinking of trying the westward ways?”
She smiled a little. “It would appear now also that we have no other choice, Lord Jarth.” But her eyes went beyond him to the other waiting there.
“You have hate in you.” She made that both a statement and a question.
The younger man’s mouth twisted as if on words which were sour. “I like nothing of priests—and gods—” he spat out and Jarth rounded on him with a frown, but before he could speak Dreen made an answer.
“That is a matter for you alone,” she said. “If you think me akin to the Voice, why”—she shrugged—“you are mistaken. But I do not force that belief upon you. We serve no Temple, listen to no Voice…” Her hands came up before her breast, wrist to wrist the palms slanted back, the fingers separated as if hers were the broken Hands of Lyr.
Nosh saw two of the armsmen duck their heads, and heard a faint mumble as if words once often repeated had found voice again.
Dreen had spoken calmly, almost as if she rebuked a small child who did not understand. Nosh saw the younger lord flush but his hot eyes did not leave Dreen’s serene, age-worn face.
“The Temple took my House,” he said in a rough rush of words. “They destroyed that warrior, my father, and brought him to the slave noose—for they so poisoned his mind that he came to their bidding as does a pack varge when one jerks the reins. I do not know how they work their dark will—but that they can turn a strong man into a slave with words alone—that I have seen done.”
“They did not take you also,” Dreen said. Her hands had dropped once more to her sides.
“No—nor shall they! I am Kryn and while I remain Kryn and no slave, the heart of Qunion is not lost.”
“You have nothing to fear of shadowy whispers from my Lady,” Dreen returned. “That which besets you is also enemy to her.”
Lord Jarth moved, putting himself a little between Kryn and the woman. “This is no time for argument concerning powers, Dreamer. You have asked our aid, there has always been light between us, so thus we serve as we can. Let us return to our own place.”
“Well enough.” Dreen bent and picked up her pack but Lord Jarth straightway took it and thrust his own shoulder through the carry loop. Nosh had reached for her burden also only to find that Kryn was following the lead of his companion and taking it up.
Dreen kilted up her robe skirts to face the river, Jarth putting out a hand to steady her as she went. But Nosh avoided aid—if Kryn had thought to offer any—and splashed into the chill water, cold enough to send a chill up her body.
They became a line of travelers, each following in the footsteps of the one before—two of the armsmen scouting ahead, then Kryn at the fore, Nosh quick after him having no mind to be separated from what poor belongings she had managed to assemble. Jarth was behind and close to him Dreen, then the others bringing up as a rear guard.
It was plain they were following a game trail, there were the printing of laster hooves in the earth, but the size of those beasts had opened a fairly wide passage for men.
Now began a rise in the ground and there they filtered into brush, losing sight of each other. Nosh moved up to tread nearly on Kryn’s heels, disliking the thought of being perhaps left behind in this place. He never looked around and she thought perhaps he was not even aware of her. Then she tripped over a protruding root and would have fallen had his hand not shot out to grasp her arm and steady her.
“You are a Dreamer too?” He addressed her then abruptly.
Nosh shook her head. “I have not the powers. Dreen says that even she dares not use them now—we are watched—she thinks.”
“By what—men, shadows—birds?” He half snapped those questions as he might loose arrows.
“Birds?” she repeated, totally at a loss. How did one watch with birds?
He might almost have read her thought, perhaps he did a little from her expression. “Rathhawks…” he continued, his voice a murmur which suited the closing of the brush around them.
“Rathhawks.” Again she merely repeated his word without any understanding.
“Yes, rathhawks above!” He made a gesture toward the sky now hidden by the heavy growth around them.
When she did not answer at once he muttered impatiently. Then in a sharp voice continued:
“There was a rathhawk scouting—perhaps scouting for the very men who were hunting you out of the Ryft. It sighted me…. But if it was to report, it did not.” He gave a little sound which had nothing of laughter in it. In a few sentences he drew a stark picture for her of hunted turned hunter and what had come of that.
“This thing that it wore.” Her mind fastened upon that—perhaps because it sounded to her like one of those stones from which she could read. Maybe if she had it here between her two hands, she could have discovered the nature of the rathhawk and who seemed to control its flight.
“What was it like?”
Kryn’s long-legged stride shortened and she was carried on to become level with him as he turned to face her.
“What do you know of stone power?” he demanded, and there was that hostility back in his eyes as he stared sharply at her.
“Only,” she kept to caution, “what there is to be read in the old books. Dreen had such—we could not bring them with us—so they are hidden now.” Was he one who could see only good in the destruction of old learning? He might be at odds with this Ruler priest he seemed to hate, but that did not mean that he was ready to accept other forms of learning.
But the mention of books seemed to lighten his scowl rather than deepen it. “Did any such tell of a rathhawk amulet tied to some seeker?”
Nosh shook her head. They had paused for a moment in their struggle with the brush. She could hear elsewhere the sounds of the rest of their party. But she was glad of this chance to catch her breath. Kryn was man tall, though she was sure now that his years were not many more than her own, and he had made no allowances for her shorter pace in this scramble.
“It was red,”—his fingers measured off a space for her—“and this size. I did not want to touch it—who knows what power might be loosed by the unknowing. It looked like any common stone, save that it was centered with a hole through which a cord was threaded and it was dark red such as no rock I have ever seen— unless colored so for some purpose.”
“There are no birds left in the Ryft,” Nosh said slowly. “But I have heard that there are coursers like to wak
wolves which they turn upon slaves who try to flee. And those are obedient to the will of those who use them so. Dreen can summon the loop snakes, though she has never seemed to use them for any purpose. And the zarks—they are curious and they will come if one does not make a sudden movement and gives the click call.” She thought of Tarm and Wasin. “It was they who first warned me of the coming of the soldiers—Tarm must have sighted the troop from his perch on the spire. Yes, in that they served well. But it was by their will, not mine.”
Kryn shrugged and started forward. “There is no way to know that we can learn. We can only watch.”
It took them two days of traveling to reach the stronghold of the outlaws. Though, after the first morning when they hurried to put the river behind them, Jarth had held them all to a slower pace. He spoke much with Dreen, taking his place beside her at intervals, their voices only a murmur since there was no room in this rough country to journey in a group.
That the woman of the Ryft and the outlawed lord were old friends Nosh was certain. The rest of their company kept their distance from Dreen as if they held her in some awe and Kryn markedly avoided her. Though he gave a kind of grudging companionship to Nosh. By the first evening her sandals, water-soaked in the stream, scraped by stones and roots, were frayed into strips swinging loose from her feet and ankles. It was Kryn who produced from his own pack a second pair of the same double-hided boots that he and the rest wore.
These were slippery to the touch from the grease rubbed in to keep them supple, and the smell was unpleasant. They did not fit—Nosh had to ball what was left of her own footgear and pack the toes before she could lace the boots tightly. But they were kinder to her bruised feet than any covering those had known in her memory. He shrugged aside her thanks even as he heaped up fallen needles from the mountain trees to make her a bed beside Dreen’s. And he swiftly withdrew to the other side of their improvised camp.
However, when they gained that chain of caves the band called their home there was even more comfort. Nosh, used for years to short rations, eyed in wonder a whole haunch of laster turning, to loose rich drips of grease, on an improvised spit in what had been fashioned as a hearth many times the size of that which had held Dreen’s small household fires.
There were tasks Nosh noted that even such as she who had no skill in woodscraft could do—the grinding of nuts, as she had ground the reed roots, into a coarse crumble from which she could fashion cakes glued together with that same dripping grease caught in a charred length of wood and stone below. She watched one of the armsmen fletching arrows with the same delicate skill one might use in weaving and set about copying his art until Lord Jarth himself swore he could not tell her work from that of a man who had known it all his days.
Dreen had been forced to give up her long-worn robe as Nosh had had to discard her woven and pieced clothing. They took on garments of deer hide, the lacing of which again Nosh could do with the same skill she had used for the braiding of snake skins. She moved freely in the breeches and found the jerkin snugly warm in the chill evenings.
There were the growing fields to be tended. Nosh spiked up some root vegetables—for their present eating—and for storage in one of the far-in caves which held the chill of midwinter even when it was full summer without.
Secretly she marveled at this world—rugged and mountainous as it was—for its difference from the ever-grey death of the Ryft. At times she wanted to sing aloud with sheer pleasure of the color and life around her—though that she kept to herself. But she was shadowed by a new worry.
Dreen, who had always been so impervious to every ill about them, as enduring as the devastated Ryft, grew slow of step, and stooped of back. She drew Nosh often into companionship while she spoke with emphasis of herbs, of healers’ potions, even breaking at times into the cadence of the old power spells which she urged upon the girl until Nosh had them right, word for word, but was sure she would never attempt to use. Sometimes Dreen would halt in mid word and frown—rubbing two fingers across her furrowed forehead as if she were trying to remember. Her thin-lipped mouth would work as if she chewed upon the word but could not free it for speech. She would sigh and her shoulders would sag. Nosh was always quick then to lean forward and set her hand gently on that one, rubbing Dreen’s head, stroking it smoothly and saying in a half whisper:
“Do not fret yourself—everyone forgets for the moment. It will come. Remember the tale of the Dreamer with three far eyes?” And then she would launch herself into one of those accounts she had read in the books. Hoping thus to prove to Dreen that she was indeed still the eager student and that Dreen’s knowledge was what she must have.
She was well aware of the uneasiness which was growing with them all. Though they were laying in supplies for the coming winter, yet more and more scouting parties would go eastward and Nosh knew that there was now a steady stream of bodies of men headed south into the Ryft. It was, she knew well, the constant thing they were all waiting for—when that stream of forces would swing westward—for the death of the Ryft would not offer anything to those marchers and beyond lay only desert. They could not continue to head blindly south.
There came a night when Lord Jarth and his brother, plus one of the armsmen of much experience—Rolf— with Kryn lagging behind, came to that small side cave which had been made private for Dreen and Nosh.
Lord Jarth was plainly ill at ease but what showed on his brother’s face was eagerness which Rolf also displayed. Only Kryn’s scowl seemed to set him entirely against whatever his leader wanted.
From within his jerkin Lord Jarth brought out a small hide bag and stood, rolling it about in his fingers as he spoke:
“Lady, matters are moving and we do not know where, how, or why. Yesterday Groff found sign of a scouting party here in the west. We have sighted two sniffers within a score of days—and one might have been a part of such a party. We do not ask you to dream since you say that that is a danger to us all. But can you read these for us? They came as a warning from one who had some power but there are none of us who know the right code.
“Once before I showed you these and you gave me another telltale to put with them. Only that tells us no more.”
Dreen looked up at him, her face without emotion, and then she made a gesture and the four dropped cross-legged before her. Lord Jarth seemed to take that welcome as another order and he spilled out on the rock before her bundle of sleeping furs the contents of the pouch, which clicked down to the cave rock but did not roll.
Nosh edged forward until she could see them clearly from beyond Dreen’s hunched shoulder.
“As I told you, Jarth,”—there was a tired note in Dreen’s voice—“the code is not one of our devising. The Ryft had its own ways and knowledge and that held by ones beyond its borders were not like. But…” Her eyes had fallen to the one in which were answering sparks of light. “Child.” She did not turn to look at Nosh, but her voice was that which had for so many seasons summoned the girl to tasks. “Use Lyr’s gift—it may be all that we have.”
As Lord Jarth stared in astonishment, Nosh put forth a reluctant hand and picked up the closest of those stones—the one on which was incised the Temple symbol with that black slash across it.
She cupped it in one hand, closed the other above it. There was warmth which flared. Not such as came from the gems her fingers discovered, rather something harsher. Involuntarily she closed her eyes.
Still she saw! Saw a great hall crowded with people and one who stood on a dais above that throng. Under a great mitered headdress his face was pinched, fined to skin over bone. And his eyes… his eyes were those of a trapped creature who sights certain death on the way.
Nosh found the words—describing what was before her—the heat of the stone was too much; she gave a small cry of pain and dropped it. But there was another will overriding hers—Dreen’s—or something beyond even the priestess? Nosh picked up the king stone and looked from closed eyes.
Again a man with a ha
unted face, one who sat and gave orders with feverish speed to those passing before him—as haunted as had been the first.
“Priest—King…” Jarth said wonderingly as she allowed the second stone to roll out of her grasp. “Yet you say—reader of puzzles—that they are haunted men.”
“They fear greatly,” returned Nosh simply and then leaning far forward so she could reach it, she picked up a third stone. Not that of the crystal speckling but rather the one with the sullen fire in its heart.
Straightway she would have flung it from her again but she could not. There was darkness but not the darkness of night or even of a curtain—it was a-writhe as might curl a snake in death throes. Then in the heart of it came a nodule of light which seemed to grow like some noxious plant.
It was a sickly red as if blood from some deadly wound were mixed with poison which fed upon it. There was no man here—only that eye of light.
But…
It searched! Nosh screamed. One of those gathered there struck out at her cupped hands, the force of the blow sending the stone spinning out of her grasp.
Dreen’s head was up—she was staring at the wall of the cave beyond the men; Nosh nursed her hands against her breast. Tears of pain squeezed from her now open eyes. But…
It searched!
She was aware dimly that Kryn had moved—it must have been his blow which had loosened her from that bondage. For that thing would have held her until its questing fastened directly upon her—that she knew. And she cowered, folding down in near a ball.
“It seeks!” Her voice shrilled into a shriek.
She heard Dreen’s voice now, unshaken, holding firm, and from the woman’s lips came words Nosh only dimly recognized. Power against power…. She wanted to put her painful hands over her ears to shut out that rhythm.
Then…
There was a roar which drowned out Dreen’s spell. Nosh shook now, not because of terror, though that held her tight, but because the very rock about her was shaken as one might shake a robe to free it from dust.