by Andre Norton
"Flyer!"
A lookout's hand swung up to point in the air. Something did swoop there, coming down toward the ship. Obern's eyes were scout-keen.
There were two flyers, one a minute speck against the night sky, a much larger one following. As he watched, the small one seemed to wink out of sight. He rubbed his eyes, certain that the larger flyer had merely swallowed the small one.
The dark thing following them was no common sea bird, nor had he ever seen its like even in foreign lands. Of all that had happened this night, it was strange and apart from anything they had known before, and a sense of dread and foreboding enveloped him.
Apparently he was not alone in this. A bow cord twanged from behind him. The arrow hit, but did not bring down the flyer. Instead, the mysterious apparition soared even as a landeer would leap a stream. Then it veered off and was gone, swallowed by the darkness. Even so, Obern felt a chill of more than the sea breeze. It was a sending, of that he was sure, but why and by whom, he could not guess.
Five
Ashen leaned closer to the carved giant lupper, her original dread of it forgotten in her interest in the inscription embedded on it. She was finding it increasingly difficult to see the incised lines on the torso. Then, with a start, the girl recognized that time had fled and night was drawing in. With the shadows would come such dangers as sent all Bog-folk into shelter. She straightened up, looked around, and then concentrated all her attention on listening. Though she had been heedless, she had also been lucky; there were no more cries or croaks, no more thuddings on the ground behind. One of three likely possibilities had occurred. Either the lupper that had been chasing her had grown weary and returned to its underwater dwelling place; or it had succumbed to the spears of the huntsmen; or it had eaten them and was now sleeping off its meal. Of these, she thought the third was the least likely.
She knew where the proper trail lay, but she was also well aware that Tusser might have recovered from his initial terror and, in his wrath, could already have set up ambushes along that thread of solid ground. She had no weapon but the curved stone knife with which she had harvested the reeds, and which had, by some accident, stayed with her in her flight.
This was not a safe area of the Bog. She knew that every moment she lingered where she was, she invited danger, if not from the deeps of the pools, then from the malice of those who had thought to take her this day.
Cautiously, Ashen got to her feet. At one time, some people—or things—had made a sanctuary here. Even as those stepping-stones had long endured just under the surface of the water, there could be another ancient path to this place.
The girl turned out again to the left and began a renewed inspection of the stone monster. This time her attention was not so much directed toward the image itself but rather toward that walling brush, thick and menacing enough to drag her trail garments into tatters. Here and there in the stunted and twisted greenery, she could see monstrous thorns as long as her finger, glistening with a threatening, yellowish sheen. Those she knew, and they were deadly to humankind.
When Ashen reached a point where the lengthening shadow of the stone figure laid darkness across her, she noted that there was a thinning of the surrounding growth. It might be a path laid to entrap, but she realized that unless she wanted to risk running into Tusser again, this path was probably her best chance for safety. Surely Tusser would steer well clear of a place such as this.
By instinct, she whirled aloft again the power-stone that had served her so well before. Though she did not utter the call that had summoned its power earlier, there came an answer. Ahead of her, a glow of verdant brilliance lit up what she saw now was definitely a path—or at least the beginning of one. Ashen straightened her shoulders and deliberately approached it.
Though she had left the vicinity of the statue, she could sense by the firmness underfoot that she was still following an outreach of the pavement, overgrown though it was with vegetation. The glowing plant-life led her onward. After a moment or so, she began to understand that she was on a narrow trail—paved, although here the stones were smaller—almost completely hidden by a slime of moss and clods of grass. The only difficulty was that it headed in the opposite direction from that she wished to take. Still, there was no side way open to her, and in the growing darkness outside, the light guided her. So she was reluctant to push through the surrounding bushes and head out blindly across the mire.
Twice Ashen glanced back and knew a cold trickle of fear, for it seemed in this greater gloom of the brush that the trail she had come along was now being swallowed up from behind her as she went.
She came out into a second space. Here there was no more sign of pavement, and the footing was soggy. Now she knew she must have help to pick her way along.
She turned toward the last bush she had passed on her way into the clearing.
Though there were more and heavier shadows here, her trained trail- sight showed her several branches that did not bear thorns, only twigs to which withered leaves still clung. Across one of those branches an insect scurried, and for the first time, Ashen knew a lift of triumph. She was as well Bog-trained as any warrior, and here she had found what was wanted—something that was not the enemy of all animal life.
Still, it paid to be prudent. Reaching out with care lest her flesh touch the leaves of other, less friendly growth, she brought her stone knife down hard on the surface of a large, sturdy branch. A second blow, as carefully aimed, broke through the portion of wood where the insects had trod, and a length of the branch fell. Ashen struck again and then jumped back swiftly, before any prickly leaves could rake her.
The outer part of the branch had broken entirely free, showing under its bark a pitted passage from which were now boiling a number of disturbed burrowing insects. Ashen shook them loose, freeing them to make their way by determined leaps to other branches. Then she groped in her belt pouch and brought out a little packet. She slung the cord of the guardian-stone about her neck, leaving her hands free to untie the grass lacing of the pouch until it lay flat on one palm. Within was perhaps a spoonful of a reddish dust. Carefully, she blew so that a puff of the dust struck and clung to the branch she had chosen.
In moments, those mites that still remained inside the branch began to fall like dark rain. Taking up the branch, holding it well away from her, she shook it vigorously until she was sure that all the pith-eaters were gone and only a walking staff remained. Then, feeling a little more secure with the weight of the branch in one hand, frail and insect- chewed though it was, Ashen turned to survey the land ahead over which those spark wisps that hunted by night had begun to hover. She must concentrate on searching out the best places to go on the ground ahead. Yet she could also hear the warnings that had been dinned into her ears since childhood. The Bog came to life at night, showing a greater and more dangerous population as darkness closed in.
To her relief, when she poked at the surface just ahead of her, she discovered that she had been fortunate. Less than a finger's length below the mire, she found a solid base. Patiently, she followed this hidden trail. Twice it made a turning and she was afraid that it had ended. However, by probing to both sides, she discovered the next step, though the direction varied according to no plan that she could ascertain.
This space of the open was too wide for her liking. The dark was not deep enough yet to form a cover against any lurker watching, and even worse, she discovered that the power-stone swinging about her throat now shone with a pale, greenish gleam. Nevertheless, she did not tuck it away inside her tunic or put it into her belt pouch again. Though it revealed her plainly to anybody who might be observing, there was something reassuring about that light.
The wall of taller growth toward which she was heading now curved to bring her out on the bank of one of the sluggish Bog streams. There again she literally stumbled upon something that proved this had once been a traveled way. She rubbed her shin and studied a stone block balanced on two fellows to form a kind
of bridge. Not only that, but there were also signs of more stones ahead, promising safe footing.
Ashen stepped up on the first of these and stood for a moment to rest. The rigid attention she had had to give to the last part of her journey had wearied her.
Suddenly remembering the hearth-guide Zazar had given her, she settled her staff in the crook of her arm so she could open her belt pouch again. From it she took out the small square of wood so well- handled through years that its surface was as sleek as a lupper's skin. She could think of no better opportunity to find out if the hearth-guide worked as promised.
"Zazar." She raised the bit of wood to her lips, though she did not allow it to touch her skin. A spicy scent wafted from it. "Zazar," she repeated, wondering if she was merely wasting time. Perhaps she was too far away for the hearth-guide to be effective.
But then the wood began to glow faintly. Across its surface there wove a line of yellow as faded as the thick grass that grew around the stones on which she stood.
Perhaps it was true, and perhaps not. Ashen had never tested the power of this guide, and she knew that she was well beyond the boundaries for her certain knowledge of the Bog. Out of the fast- deepening dusk, she heard a thick cry that might have been uttered by one of the creatures from the depths. Luckily, it did not come from the direction she would be taking.
The girl strode ahead at what speed she dared use. From the shape of the land, she knew that she was indeed now on another of the isles that dotted the area—perhaps a large one, sturdy enough for a Bog- folk settlement.
Then she smelled fire and the roasting flesh of a fal-lowbeeste. But she did not turn in that direction. No one Bog-born or bred approached the hearth of another without the proper identification whistle, and this hearth was entirely foreign to her. She had been taught not to trust the unknown.
In a moment, she knew the soundness of this teaching. There came the throb of a skin drum, the common means of far-speaking, but those fingers on the talking-drum, flitting in proper pattern, produced sounds she did not recognize.
Suddenly she knew where she was—close by the holding of one of Joal's rivals. It was less than a league from her own village. It housed neither friend nor enemy—the two settlements cooperated at need—but it might as well have been in another land. Zazar could walk the entire Bale-Bog with impunity, but without the Wysen-Wyf's company, Ashen had no reason to believe that she would be welcome.
She left what was now a plain path and traveled eastward with slightly more confidence than she had known earlier. By using the staff with every step, she was assured that she would not go dangerously astray. Yet she shivered as if the drumbeats formed an invisible cord striving to jerk her in another direction.
The guardian-stone on her breast began once more to warm. Its glow deepened, but she did not need that warning to keep her away from strangers.
Twice she crouched, her whole body shaking to the drumbeat, watching as shadows moved into moonlight, revealing armed Bog-folk. They must have sent their keenest hunters out, yet it would seem that none of their Attention shifted in her direction.
Still, Ashen drew on every bit of trail-craft she knew until she gained sight of a landmark. Only then did she dare put on speed to reach the door poles of
Zazar's sprawling hut. She stopped in her tracks as Kazi arose from a crouch.
The serving woman might have purposefully placed herself there on guard.
"Flit-flit." The stoop-shouldered woman stood as if she did not mean for Ashen to get past her.
Ashen was sure that Zazar had not yet returned. Otherwise, Kazi would not have ventured to face her in this fashion. The Wysen-wyf's continued absence made her bold.
The girl walked directly forward until the woman had to give way, dragging her crooked foot. Inside, there was the familiar warmth, the mingled smells of
Zazar's plant harvests.
"She will know what you do—"
Ashen turned her back to Kazi and put the power-stone and the wooden hearth-guide in her pouch. Then she turned to face the crone. The coals in the fire-pit did not give much light, but an oil lamp flickered on the low table by
Zazar's chosen pile of cushions. A gleam of that light caught an answering glitter from among the folds of Kazi's reed-weave shawl.
As if aware that Ashen had seen, Kazi instantly put her hand to her breast, and the small spark disappeared. Ashen knew what the other had hidden, however. She had never seen it closely, but she knew that it was an object made of metal. She also knew that Kazi kept it hidden from Zazar as well. Well, sooner or later she would solve this little mystery. When she discovered what Kazi wished kept to herself, she would have gained a fraction more of power. She knew that Kazi hated her and always had. Ashen did not doubt that the woman was a tale- bearer and had a malicious tongue. Undoubtedly she had served to keep alive the barrier between Ashen and the Bog-folk.
"She will know," Kazi repeated ominously. "Know what you do, she will."
Ashen paid no attention to Kazi's implied threat. "What happens? Are the clan guards out?"
Kazi scowled and hesitated for a moment before answering. "Outlanders—your kin—come take you. You be Bog now. When they in Bog, they kill, burn. Feed to their hounds."
Ashen grinned. "A very cheerful prospect," she returned. "So all the guards would deliver me to these invaders? I think that Zazar will have something to say about that."
Deliberately, Ashen took a bowl from the shelf, reached for a dip ladle lying across the table, and filled the bowl from the pot of soup thick with noodles that always hung over the fire.
Ysa, Queen of Rendel, First Priestess of Santize, sat wrapped in shadow now.
Night had fallen in earnest and still her little messenger had not returned. To pass the time now that her physical appearance was one that suited her, she decided to test the powers of her knowledge of the Great Houses, by the Rings that represented each.
She brought the Ring on the thumb of her right hand to her mouth and touched its golden leaf with the tip of her tongue. "Oak," she said.
Her perception altered, and it was as if an invisible part of herself swept through the castle, seeking to know the well-being of the head of the House of
Oak. Down in the maze of corridors and rooms, small towers, even to the rock depths of the dungeons, all was quiet. Boroth still slept in a swine's snorting slumber, unaware as yet that he was no longer master of the Rings.
"Yew." She touched her tongue to the Ring on the forefinger of her right hand.
It was her own House-mark, and by right of her heritage, the head of the House of Yew was Florian, the whelp she had seen as a failure from the hour of his birth. Boroth's attention, of course, had been elsewhere long before that time.
A sire with an eye for the stoutness of his line would have put an end to such a disappointment within its first hour of life. Now, with the Rings securely in her possession, Florian was even more of a tool than he had been before.
However, she must never forget that this was one which she could never be sure would not turn in her hand, just at the moment when she must strike swift and sure.
He was alone now, and sleeping. Replete. One could find it easy to think him of no account. He had a following, though. There was a cadre of fribbets that fawned upon Florian, shoved and scrambled for the right to support him. But there was none among the High Lords who had done more than express a very circumspect contempt for his person.
She hesitated for a moment before she touched the Ring encircling the thumb of her left hand. "Ash."
There would be little—which, she told herself fiercely, was as it should be.
Blown away like last year's leaves was that tenuous Family claim to the throne of Rendel, a claim reaching back for so many years it had become a legend. No, wait, there was—
Once again she touched the tiny golden ash-leaf with the tip of her tongue. A ruined city, far to the south. Had she sensed a kind of stirring in those ruins?
&n
bsp; No, there was nothing, certainly nothing. Yet… why did her head turn a fraction in that direction, toward but not facing the ever-deepening gray outside the south window? Ashen—Ash. For the third time, she sent the call, to have it return unanswered clearly. Nothing, and surely nothing. But still her frown lingered and she hurried on to taste the last Ring—Rowan, ever the weakest of the Houses, the one whose traditional ally was Ash, even as Oak and Yew were allied.
Yes, there was an answer, far away and faint. What were they now? Erft, the titular head, a man too old to mount a war-horse. He had not been seen outside the wall of his major keep for near a full year. She sought him again, specifically, and had only a weak return for her efforts. Yes, Erft was undoubtedly now as much a nothing as was his King. Yet—She tried again, for there was a hint of more. Erft had had no blood son since the fall of the
Ashenkeep… when? Seven, eight years past? She caught the whisper of a young and scarce-formed girl. Only a female…
The Queen grimaced. She had little liking for those of her own sex. There had been an incident, years ago, a chance touching from which she had withdrawn in a hurry. Power could be drawn when greater met lesser, and that touch had been a warning. Did she sense another of this ilk? Growing bolder, she summoned memory as one might run down a corridor jerking open door after door to see what might skulk within.