by Andre Norton
“Now—we have talked for long and you must be well wearied, Shadow Summoned. It is time for you to rest.” As shadows deepened without she ushered Kadiya into yet another chamber. This was narrow, but with a window open to that fragrant breeze. In it, a bed which was fashioned of one puff of quilted material upon another, rather like the mats of the Oddlings.
With the sword still at hand Kadiya stretched upon that softness which yielded to and caressed her body. She gave a last murmur of thanks to her hostess and her eyes closed.
16
Red—a red as of fresh shed blood, like a hideous rain after some sky battle. Within the red moved things which that scarlet cloaked, just as there came sounds which were too faint to the ear to be heard as words, yet were of import.
The bloody curtain billowed unceasingly as if within it a force troubled air and life. Then Kadiya could see, no longer blinded by that spread of flame.
She gazed into a well of darkness where vast shadows hung heavy on three sides about a great chair. In that seeming throne was a limp figure, back bent, head on chest as if he lacked strength to lift it, hands outstretched upon the arms of the seat. There was no covering on his wasted body, save patches of yellow encrustation like wounds unhealed, the flesh gone rotten underneath.
Kadiya knew this to be the one they had trailed by the plague sign. Now so gaunt was his body the girl thought he might be dead.
The throne in which he lolled began to flush from black, as does a firebrand awaken once more to flame. Stronger and stronger grew that gleam, but the light did not vanquish the surrounding shadows; rather they drew in closer. On the burning chair the body writhed and twisted, the head came up and back. Eyes which did not hold any trace of sight were open, a mouth from which the lips looked to be eaten away grimaced. The creature might be shouting aloud in torment—but there was no other sound to break that which rose and fell as an undistinguishable chant.
The fire touch appeared to eat into the body. Now the yellow encrustations turned dark, were erased, perhaps burned away. The skeleton frame filled out, covering fully the bones which had been clearly etched under the skin only moments earlier. As the jaw relaxed the mouth closed firmly. Once more it was apparent the eyes could see.
Here sat now, straightening his back, holding hands before his face, as if to view their renewed life, one of the Vanished Ones. There was in him that same awe-inspiring Power which Kadiya had met in the two who ruled here beyond the wall.
But this was another place, well removed from the temple of the flower and the room in which she had fallen asleep. Although she sensed she slept, Kadiya was sure that what she watched was true.
A length of shadow dropped down upon the man on the burning throne. He caught at it, pulled it against him. Then he wore a corselet of scales like unto those the Oddlings fashioned, save this one was of glistening black which, with every movement of his body, showed a running of scarlet which was like the play of flames.
Once more he stretched forth a hand to the shadow, fingers crooked, and a portion of that dusky cloak loosed. Now in his grasp was a rod perhaps a third of a spear’s length. Atop it formed a ball which lengthened and modeled itself into the likeness of a skull, such a one as mimicked in miniature that of the Skritek.
The eye holes of the skull glared as red as the chair when the man raised it high, his face a mask of victorious exultation. He arose, and the throne on which he had suffered that change began to dull, taking on the gray of spent ashes.
Now he held the rod in both hands. His head bent and he blew into the open jaws of the skull. With a quick turn of wrist he whirled it about. From the jaws into which he had breathed there shot a beam of yellow-green—that same color which had marked the plague.
Straight at Kadiya it shot. Had he sensed her there? However, the blow, if that it was meant to be, did not strike.
There was a flash of fire again and then dark. She felt the caress of a breeze as she opened her eyes. This was the room wherein she had fallen asleep. Beyond the window a quiet glaze of dusk laid over the world. Kadiya pulled herself up to see what might lay farther beyond. There was a section of garden serene in the twilight and suddenly she felt as if she must be free of walls, out into that place of quiet and beauty.
Quiet and beauty, far removed from that place of dark and flame wherein one had been granted new life and given a foul weapon to ensure power.
For she was sure that this had been a true dream as the Hassitti knew like unto the scrying of Salin. She had actually seen something which had happened afar.
So needful was it to seek cleanliness, freshness, and the peace beyond, Kadiya actually dropped from the window, instead of seeking a way out by door. Under her bare feet was the softness of thick turf; around her a wall of tall, flowering bushes, bending a little in an early night wind. She stood, taking deep breaths of that scented air.
That she must share what she had seen with those who now sheltered her Kadiya knew, yet she shrank from its telling. It seemed as if the very fact that she had been a witness in some way sullied her—that none could pass through that blood-flame, look upon the Power which wrought so mightily in that throne, without bearing some small stain.
Kadiya took a step forward. Even remembering made her seem to smell again the vile stench of the plague. She leaned forward to brush her face against one of the large blooms, drinking in its perfume. One of the fire spark insects she had seen in the garden of Yatlan halted for a second, perched on her hand, fluttering its gem bright wings.
“Yes,” she spoke aloud to the night and the insect, “yes, this is …” She sought for a word which would encompass all she felt at that moment.
“Is what, King’s Daughter?”
The voice startled Kadiya. Her hand went to the hilt of the sword she had belted on before she left the sleeping chamber. He had come from around a tall bush and stood watching her with, she believed, something of a challenge in his eyes.
“Lamaril!”
Soft footed he crossed the space between them. Before she might guess his intent, his hand was beneath her chin, raising her head a fraction so that he might look straight into her eyes.
“You continue to name me, King’s Daughter. Would you then bind me in some fashion? What do you know of the uses of Power?”
“Very little.” With a twist she freed herself from that hold, her inner peace now fled. “I have no reason to bind you, warrior.”
“Tell me of this likeness of me which you have seen.”
She repeated in a few words how she and Jagun had come upon the mud buried mounds along the forgotten road and how the last one, freed of its rank covering, had been the statue pointing the way to Yatlan.
“Jagun knew old tales,” she ended. “It was he who said that you were a mighty hero of a last battle.”
For the first time she saw him smile, just such a shadowy lifting of lips as Lalan had shown when Kadiya had told her of the Hassitti.
“It is given few to know that they are so honored,” he commented. “Though old tales are often changed beyond belief. So—the outguard still stands their ground even if they have been layered in mud. Now that gives one to think. Erous, Nuers, Isyat, Fahiel and I—the last of them.”
“There are others—in the city, on the steps which lead to the great garden,” Kadiya said. “Women and men—are they guards also?”
His smile was gone, but he nodded.
“Yes.” He spoke softly and his gaze shifted as if he saw beyond her now. “There were many of us—and then few, few who won to the Gate. The land itself arose at the last and spewed us all forth, both Dark and Light together. King’s Daughter—”
Kadiya interrupted him. “My name is Kadiya. If there is any Power lying in names, then I give mine in full exchange.”
Again that small half smile on his lips. “Kadiya.” He repeated her name as if he tasted it. “That name is strange, but you bear it proudly, Lady of Power. Tell me now, what of the old land? It must be far changed.”
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sp; “First tell me,” she countered. “Where is there a chair of fire in which a dying man may seat himself to be restored?”
Smile was completely gone; golden eyes narrowed. “What know you of Varm?”
“Nothing save I have heard his name mentioned here. But I have dreamed, and I believe, dreamed truly, even as one looks into a scrying bowl.” She told him of what she had seen of that place of fire and shadow.
“So!” There was an odd note in his voice, as of weariness. “It rises again. Perhaps it is endless, this struggle. But Uono and Lica must know of this and speedily. Come!” His hand closed about her upper arm and he drew her along with him to a garden path and down that to the front door of the building which she had so unceremoniously left.
This time his fingers on the plate beside that portal drummed heavily and the sound which followed was deeper and more imperative, a demand for attention.
She had not tried to free herself from his hold for she sensed that this was indeed a matter of great import and she felt at that moment his presence was somehow akin to Jagun’s, that he would stand behind her.
Once more she came into the presence of the two who had made her free of their hospitality. Swiftly Kadiya repeated the story of her dream, seeing man and woman exchanging glances as she spoke.
When she was finished, the man said with some of the same weariness she had detected in Lamaril:
“Once more—is there never to be an ending?”
“Can there be?” questioned the woman. “For each thing there is an opposite and the balance holds. Where there is light, dark abides, perhaps so the light can be better known. However, Varm’s Power is awake and I think our battlefield lies waiting again. Save that the Gate is locked.”
“That Gate opens for no one!” the man declared, but Lamaril interrupted:
“There are the Guardians.”
“That is a task—” But the woman was not answering the Captain. Instead she was looking full at Kadiya, measuring with a stern weighing, so that the girl tensed as one facing an attack.
“It could be done.” The man was musing, and he too eyed the girl.
Her initial awe of them had faded somewhat. Kadiya wanted to understand.
“Was I led here for some task, Noble Ones? And do you now hesitate to tell me what that can be? The mires I have chosen with my free will. Those are now riven with plague and perhaps other dangers. As long as this is mine”—she touched the sword—“and not drawn back to that which sent it, then I must follow the path it points.”
Still they were watching her with that measurement in their gaze.
“You are of a people we do not know,” the woman said slowly. “Yet it would seem that you have made the old land somewhat yours. If Binah dealt with you, then she found you worthy. Tell us more, King’s Daughter, of your race and of the old land. For this is a matter which cannot be decided without thought.”
The history of Kadiya’s people had been impressed upon her in spite of her childhood resistance to spending time over the ancient rolls instead of wandering with Jagun. Kadiya strove now to put into order all she remembered of that teaching. Of how her people had come overseas and made the swamplands theirs, protected by the mountain barriers which kept them safe for so long, those barricades balanced on the south by the dense forests of Tassaleyo.
She told of the draining of the polders in the north and of the tilling of the water-freed land there, of their dealings with the Oddlings, of the fair for traders at Trevista, and how her people respected the swamp dwellers and between them there were often ties of friendship.
“We are not a great people,” she said, though she returned their gaze as might an equal, “but we did well by the land. We served where we might, held fast against the Dark. The Nyssomu welcome us, the Uisgu see in us no danger. We do not intrude upon their lands except for trade, and they are welcome on ours. Only the Skritek we fight—but then all who live in the mire hold weapons ready against those.”
Kadiya tried to paint word pictures of her father’s court at the Citadel, spoke of the Archimage Binah’s coming at the birth of the three sisters to bestow on them the amulets of Power.
Then came flooding the memories of blood, of cruel death, of horror, as she retold the invasion from Labornok, the cruelty of Voltrik and his cold master-servant Orogastus. There was her own quest, and that of Haramis and Anigel, which ended in a clash of great Powers, nearly tearing apart all they had known.
She talked for a long time, seated in that room. Twice Lamaril had moved from behind her, in his hand a cup from which she gratefully drank to relieve her parched throat.
Outside the windows, night deepened. With the coming of the gloom, there had spread radiance from certain points high on the walls so that she could see well the faces of those to whom she told her story.
“Of my return to your Yatlan, what happened there”—she touched the sword, an ever present weight at the shabby belt about her waist—“I have already spoken. But what I have said of the mires—that is what passes there now.”
“Yatlan,” the woman named Lica repeated, and there was a soft note in her voice. “Yatlan, where we left our farewell gifts in the everflowing waters.” She raised one hand, half extended it toward Kadiya. “You who have come, how is Yatlan now?”
“A city forgotten, but not despoiled.” Kadiya remembered the treasure of the fountain. “Your gifts lie undisturbed, Noble One. It has its indwellers; they name themselves Hassitti and they have labored to hoard safely all which was left behind. There is the garden.…” Now Kadiya raised the sword and held it fully into view.
“This was born of that garden. Binah, the Archimage, laid it upon me and my two sisters to be the saviors of Ruwenda. She gave me a root which guided me to Yatlan and there I planted it in the garden. Out of it grew what you see—the third part of a most powerful talisman to save our country. Nothing else did I take from there.” She thought fleetingly of the necklet from the fountain.
The woman stirred. “So much—so strange—this might be a tale of another land than that we once knew.”
“It is the truth!” Kadiya held the cup away from her lips after another swallow. It might be water she drank so, but it carried a faint taste she could not identify—tart yet comforting to a dry throat.
“We do not deny that, King’s Daughter. It is your truth, which is the truth of now. But part of it relates another darker and more threatening truth.
“We were—are—a people who seek always to learn.” The woman spoke slowly. “Secrets were wrested from the earth, from the fount of life itself. We could command rock, sea, land. We grew—perhaps we grew too mindful of the Powers we sought with such greediness.
“We meddled. Out of the life we knew we brought new beings: those you call Oddlings, and the Hassitti. We changed plant growth either to yield food stuff or to please the eyes. For a long time we kept ourselves occupied with such meddling and modelings.
“However, Power draws Power. Those who wield it are never satisfied—ever grasping for more. There were some among us who no longer worked with that which was of nature, but rather sought to create anew from other sources.
“Power rose against Power. Others awoke in time to see where these researches and acts led. There was a war—” She paused, and lines appeared about her mouth as if she chewed upon some bitter thing.
“We learned the Dark side of Power then. The land was riven apart, the waters released to strike and overwhelm. We were no longer the same country, for the mires had their birth in those days. Those most greedy for the Dark loosed experiments of their own: the Skritek, even plants which killed and feasted on their kills.
“Cities were overwhelmed and fell and still we fought, force against force, breaking new secrets loose from the earth under us and the sky above. In the end Death strode always with us. Some of the Dark who had loosed the worst of the Black Knowledge could not be slain. There remained a handful of them.
“Fleeing a last confrontati
on, they sought a refuge in the mountains. There they had prepared a place of last resource, for they had a mighty foreseer, one Varm.” She nearly hissed that name. “But it did him and them little good, for our curse was laid. If they came forth from their hidey-hole all the ills of the world would strike them into rottenness.
“Into this hiding place they went, save for Varm and two of his acolytes. The others laid themselves in what were tombs, to sleep until the day that Varm with his foresight had assured them would come when they would rule again.
“Our striking force had been hot on their trail but when they reached that mountain hideaway Varm and his two were gone. However, they sealed that place of sleeping death with strong magic which by all their calculations would abide forever.
“Varm had his own place.” The woman paused. “To one who does not know our learning this is hard to explain. You came through a barrier—a barrier which was of time and space. This place is not in your world and we who chose to come here cannot return. Varm also found such a refuge, drawing on his own Powers to reach it. But because he was of Dark instead of Light, he came not here.
“What we must now believe is that one of those death sleepers was freed from imprisonment, and that he sought Varm to gain from him that which would bring forth his kin once more.”
Lamaril was at Kadiya’s side. He touched her shoulder gently.
“Kadiya, tell now again your dream.”
“I do not believe it was a dream,” she said slowly. “I have not the farsight though I have scryed. But this, I swear once more, is what I saw in my sleep.” And she repeated it all, trying not to forget a single detail, of that chair of fire and he who had occupied it.
Before any of her listeners could speak, Kadiya had a question for which she almost fiercely demanded an answer:
“You have said that you cannot return to the mires. Can this follower of Varm do so? Can Varm himself? We are still striving to heal the wounds of war. Must we face and fight an even greater enemy?” Not one question but many and she felt the old cold deep within her as she impatiently waited for an answer.