by Andre Norton
The sounds of the battle were still loud. She realized that the birds had merely shifted the focus of their attack and now those fierce shrieks were challenged by a different means of defense. A drum was sounding, but this was not the raucous rhythm of the warning Bog- drums. Ashen clasped her hands to her ears.
The sound struck into her as it must be assaulting the birds, touching some sensitive place. And on her breast, her amulet, though not a guide, showed a spark of awakening color.
No normal beat was this, and while it had been low and only half audible in beginning, it now seemed to fill the entire Bog-world. There was a last burst of screeching from the huge birds and then it seemed that all sound died away. At last Ashen could venture to take her hands from her ears. The drum was still sounding but softly, and not as body- shaking as it had been. The screeching had ended as if the birds had been wiped from the sky into nothingness.
Greatly daring, Ashen crept outside the aperture and a little way up the cliff-face. She still could not see the battle site above, but now, except for the continued beat of that rhythm, there was no other sound. The beat began to grow fainter, and she felt a release of the strange uneasiness it had awakened in her. Something shimmered in the air just ahead of her, but when she tried to see what it was, the shimmer vanished.
She lay down where she was, listening intently. There were no more bird cries; the drone of the drum had faded. At last she felt it safe to make her move. She crept to the top of the cliff. The men, the birds—and the dram—were all vanished.
Good. Ashen dragged her pack to where she crouched. She took out a length of vine rope, closed the pack, and attached the line to it. Carefully she worked it over the edge and let it fall into the open, keeping a good grip on the rope until it paid itself out. Below, she saw the pack turning slowly, close to the rise of rubble skirting the base of the cliff. Guiding the burden closer to the barrier, she loosed it, and it landed easily. Then she began to climb down after it.
Still she listened warily but heard no bird call as she set foot on the
Bog-land. The thud of the drum had become only a faint murmur in the distance.
Ashen re-coiled her rope and stowed it away. She shouldered her pack and as she did so, took her bearings in relation to where the man had fallen, near where the river ran loud, rushing into the sea.
There was nothing to do for the Outlander. Surely he was dead. She had sealed the amulet to the land entrance of Zazar's island. To return as speedily as possible was surely all one could do—
As she moved, she thought of the place, sighted from above, where the growth hid the body of the invader.
Undoubtedly he was dead.
Prudently, she decided to retrace her earlier trail. Still, when she chose her way, she headed in a different direction. Twice she had to delve deeper into the
Bog-ways to locate a path. Now and again she glanced toward the cliff- tops, but as far as she could see, there was neither bird nor Outlander to mark her.
Unexpectedly, she found one of the things the man had dropped. It was metal, long and deadly, and she recognized a kind of knife, superior to any she had ever before seen. Though unschooled in the use of such a weapon, she fastened it to her pack, where it would be out of the way, and took it with her.
Then she reached the place where the man had fallen.
His arm, thrast from the edge of the torn and tangled reed ferns, still lay as unmoving as when she had first sighted it. It would not take long for the scavengers of the Bog to light upon the body. Teeth and claws would strip away flesh, then crash the bones. Eventually, there would be no trace.
Ashen swallowed. No kin of hers lay here. Should it matter what became of an unknown intruder? Even his own kin had not been able to aid him.
Unbidden, a thought came to her mind: What if she had gone immediately to aid
Kazi? Would the woman still be alive? Slowly she approached the place where the man lay. What if he were not dead, only injured? Ashen's hand went to the hilt of her belt knife. To lie helpless when the eaters came—
She pushed aside the battered reeds and now she could see him plainly. The other bright thing must have been the protective covering he had worn on his head. It was gone, and a sticky patch of blood had matted hair that was almost as bright as those round pieces of polished metal Zazar kept carefully among her personal possessions and that Ashen knew were an important part of life in the Outlands.
The locks so exposed were not as red as a flame nor as yellow as marshroot, but held something of each color.
Something awakened her healer's notice. Ashen squatted down on her heels and shifted her pack from her shoulders. She leaned forward and gently touched the man's hand. It was not cold as she had expected, but warm. Could it be that he still lived? He had certainly fallen far enough to have been fatally wounded, but the soft, ferny growth must have cradled him from greater injury.
Now her touch moved swiftly, her fingers finding their way above the collaring edge of his flexible metal shirt to locate the pulse of life. It was steady.
Perhaps fortune had favored him after all and his hurts might be tended. Suppose he could be taken care of until his companions returned? But as he lay now he was helpless Bog-bait and she could not defend him.
Nevertheless, Ashen went to work as if this were some Bog-man whose clan had called for her aid. She worked swiftly but steadily with what aids she carried, making sure the proper step had been taken before she went to the next.
One of the bones in his forearm was broken and she could not free it from the metal garment he wore. But she could bind it so that any move he might make would bring no further harm.
Now that she had rolled him on his back, she could see his face clearly. She worked with a pad of moss sodden with one of Zazar's potions to cleanse and examine the head wound. When she touched it, he moaned faintly but did not open his eyes.
Indeed he was different from the murderous Outlander she had trailed here. This one was younger than the other, she decided. She found it pleasing to look upon the face she had wiped free of blood. Of what clan was he— or, being an
Outlander, of what Family? She finished bandaging his head, tore up a mass of leaves and pillowed him on it. Could she now get some restorative into him? She was growing increasingly uneasy. To linger here with the scent of blood ever present was risky. What—
His eyes opened and he stared up at her. It was as if he could not see her, but searched beyond for some face or familiar surroundings. He spoke, his voice quavering a little, though his words had no meaning for her. This must be speech common to his kind. She started to put her hand on him, but did not complete the gesture. They were strangers to each other. How could she offer him any soothing heal- touch?
He was still staring about him. He looked past and through Ashen as if she were invisible, but his voice had steadied and taken on a demanding note. If he questioned now, he received no answer.
Ashen searched in her pack again and took out a small clay bottle, well wrapped in shielding moss. Taking the stopper from it, she determinedly raised his head and put the bottle to his lips. He swallowed without protest. This time when he looked up, he appeared to see Ashen. There was a slight frown on his face, as if she were very strange to him.
"You are hurt." She spoke slowly, giving room between each word for him to comprehend, if he was able. "Lie still. Rest."
His frown grew deeper. He tried to move his head and then groaned and closed his eyes again, not to reopen them. She sat still. It would seem that she must see him to some place of safety—but where did such exist, and how could she get him there?
Nineteen
In the still, deep hours of the night, Snolli sent for Ka-sai. He came quickly to the Chieftain's bidding, knowing that something dire must be eating at Snolli for him not to wait until morning.
"I am here,'" he said as he entered.
Snolli sat close to the fire. He glanced up at the Spirit Drummer's words. His face
was drawn and haggard, and he looked like someone who has witnessed that which no man should ever see. "1 want you to perform a drum spell to find
Obern," he said. "I will not rest until his body has been found and buried decently. His spirit will haunt me forever if he is eaten by fell creatures in the Bale-Bog."
Kasai nodded. "The matter has been weighing on me as well, Chieftain," he said.
"I have been disturbed enough that I could not give my full attention to the treaty from the Rendelian Prince. And yet there is something we do not know about Obern's disappearance—"
"We know that he was attacked and fell, and that despite our searching, we could not find him. What more do we need to know? It is time to use the Spirit Drum."
The drummer took his instrument, never far from his hand, and began to whisper his fingers across the surface. He searched, he probed, he sent out tendrils of thought—
—and found Obern.
"He is alive, Chieftain," the small man told Snolli. "He is not unharmed, to be sure, but he lives."
The leader of the Sea-Rovers merely nodded, but Kasai knew he was keeping his face impassive only by great effort. "What else?"
"I will try to See for you, Chieftain, though these are perilous waters to navigate. He is under the protection of some mysterious power, something I have never before encountered."
"Because I am your Chieftain, and for whatever love you bear me, See what you can, Spirit Drummer. I must know."
Obediently, Kasai began moving his fingers across the surface of his drum again.
The whisper of sound drew him inexorably into a spell not entirely of his own making, a place where time and the constraints of the world meant little.
Tonelessly, he began to sing in droning counterpoint to the drum. "He lies now in a woodsy bed, and a woman comes. Someone protects him—"
"The woman?" Snolli clapped his hand over his mouth, knowing that he must not interrupt the Spirit Drummer when he was in such a state.
But Kasai was deep enough into the dream that he was not disturbed. "Protects, protects, I know not who or where. Soon he will lie in a house not a house, in a city not a city, in a land not a land. Someone seeks him. A man of light, followed by men of darkness."
"But he is safe?"
"Safe enough. For now. But what is to come—The man of light is not his friend."
Ashen had to face the possibility that the man she was tending just might be the one who had murdered Kazi. There were certain differences—the flexible metal garment, for example. This man wore no covering over it, though that might not mean anything. Curious, she examined the metal shirt. It was not a tunic, for it crossed in front and was held in place by a wide leather belt. Its flexibility came from the myriad small rings woven in and around and over themselves. It was armor, not the shell-strengthened leg shields she was familiar with, but armor nonetheless. The shirt, Ashen understood at once, would provide good protection even from knives and spears. Or even from the kind of long metal weapon she had rescued from the underbrush.
The man moaned. He was waking up again. This spot, at the base of the cliffs, was no place to linger. Perhaps with her help, he could walk. With luck, they could get back to Ashen's refuge in the building on the isle. There, they would be safe.
She was very glad that she had set her guide for the island. Perhaps her way back would be easier.
"Come, stranger, we must go where I can tend you better," she said to the man.
He looked up at her uncomprehendingly, but she did not believe that he did not understand her words. Rather, his eyes were more those of a child. It must be the head wound; it had knocked all the sense out of him, at least for the time.
"You will be yourself again soon, but you must come with me." So saying, she took the man's hand and helped him to his feet. He obeyed without protest and she was relieved that in his present childlike state, he would follow her.
But when she attempted to locate an easier path back to the isle, she met with disappointment. Everywhere but along the route she had come she encountered impassable tangles of vegetation, dank pools, and the kind of footing that would drag both down to be seen never again. Sighing, she turned back and began retracing her steps. How she would manage when she returned to the pool with the stepping- stones across it, she did not know.
With her aid, the man gained the relatively high ground from which she had spotted the fissure in the rock beside the swallow-hole where the barrier river emptied.
'That way," she told him, pointing.
He nodded; this was a good sign, the first indication that he might recover. He must be strong as well as—she had to admit it to herself—handsome. He was the most handsome man she had ever seen. But then, she told herself, he was also the only Outlander man she had ever seen clearly. She found herself hoping that he was not the one who had murdered Kazi. She didn't know what she would do if she learned that it was he who had done such a foul deed.
They walked on, with the barrier river to their right. Ashen consulted her guide now and then for the signal to turn back toward the Bale- Bog, toward the island.
Then a movement caught her eye. Immediately she crouched behind an outcrop of the reedy fern that grew so plentiful in the Bog, and pulled her companion down with her. She put her finger to her lips, signaling him to be silent, and he obeyed.
Someone was wading across what must be a shallow place in the river's bed.
Cautiously, Ashen raised her head until she could part the ferns and see without much danger of being detected.
She almost cried out. This was the one whom she had seen before. No mistaking the bright metal garment, the colorful cloth covering, the light surrounding him, the mist about his head. Several men, similarly clad, followed him.
A chill went over Ashen, coupled with immense relief. The man she was succoring, then, was not the one who had killed Kazi. She turned and, impulsively, squeezed his hand. He looked at her with wide, uncomprehending eyes, but returned the pressure.
Ashen's relief turned to near panic. Why was this man, this killer, coming back into the Bale-Bog? What could his errand be this time? And what if he picked up her trail? She watched until he and his followers disappeared into the undergrowth. If luck was with her, he would take a direction different from the one in which she wanted to go. And if he did venture in that direction, his path dictated by the land itself even as hers was, the interlopers might make enough noise that she could trail them and yet be safe. After all, staying behind them was the best way to keep the Outlander and his followers from creeping up on her and the injured man, whom she was more than ever determined to nurse back to health.
Queen Ysa had lain abed for a week, too ill to rise. Master Lorgan, the chief physician, had tried several remedies, to no avail. Finally, she sent him away, stating that time alone would cure her..
Now she wearily dragged herself from her bed and, to lighten her spirits as much as possible, dressed in her favorite gown—deep green taffeta, with a creamy-white un-derdress heavy with lace and embroidery. A glance into her mirror told her that despite her fatigue, her appearance had not suffered greatly from the activities of that dreadful night. But her hunger—though she had eaten enormous amounts of food all through the time of her illness, she was still ravenous! Anxiously, she examined her image once more, this time for signs of impending obesity. She found none; indeed, she might even be a little thinner than before she had wrought—whatever it was that had put her into contact with the Bog-witch Zazar and the bastard child of her hated rival. She could not bring herself to say the girl's name, not even to herself.
She gave orders for her breakfast to be brought to her.
When the tray arrived, she ate everything on it, even the last drops of the cream for her porridge, laced with honey and spices, and wiped the bowl with a fragment of bread.
She knew she must go to check on the King. Who knew how much his condition might have deteriorated while she lay ill? She did not look forward
to the meeting. If it still had not been morning, she might have fortified herself with wine beforehand.
For the first time, Queen Ysa had a glimmer of understanding of both her husband and her son, but this insight brought only contempt in its wake.
Let them indulge weaknesses, she thought scornfully. She, Ysa, Queen of Rendel,
First Priestess of Santize, was stronger than either or both of them. No mere accident, no backlash of magic, would be enough to halt her. Not for long, anyway.
She checked to see that her toilette was complete, and her appearance enough to still any wagging tongues who would have it that she was sickly and incompetent, her Regency, therefore, likely to be set aside in Florian's favor. One more touch. Perfume. Her hand lingered over her favorite spicy scent, and then she changed her mind. She selected one that Boroth had given her long ago, its aroma reminiscent of aldyce flowers. She had never cared for it, but he always liked it. Perhaps if she wore it again, his mood would be lighter than it had been the last time she had seen him. Then she swept out the door of her chambers toward