by Andre Norton
A dart flickered out of the air and its point sank deeply into one of those red eyes. One of the Uisgu behind Kadiya had found a target.
The creature did not react. Yet the girl was certain that the Oddling had shot one of the poisoned darts. Perhaps this thing was such poison in itself that venom could not enter what ran in its veins for blood.
It lunged. At the same time there came a new sound in that now foul smelling chamber—a call:
“By the Blossom—stand!”
A puff of golden dust burst from behind her. When it reached the gleam of the amulet, it put forth colored sparks as if it were fashioned from shards of crystal. A glittering shroud drifted over the awakened sleeper. The green of the web light waxed until the head and shoulders of the creature were curtained. Kadiya could no longer see the mad red sparks of its eyes.
Its hands smeared down the sides of the other coffer only a palm’s width away from where she had leaned. Kadiya was pulled back against the support of a tall, strong body. The relief of her escape was so great that the whole of that dusky chamber whirled. Nausea gripped her and she fought it, so caught in that struggle to control her body that she was hardly aware of being lifted, carried out of the putrid air of that place into the open.
She blinked up at a cloudless sky, felt the warmth of the sun. Dared then to turn her head to see who had carried her. He lowered her onto the stone of the ledge now criss-crossed with black traces of angry fire.
“Lamaril!” But he had fallen when the weapon of his people had failed.…
“Varm’s man?” She turned her head slightly to look.
On the stone was a wider stain—evil, black, like a shadow in the form of a man crouched in upon himself, suffering from some great wound.
Lamaril leaned back against the stone cliff. The door to the sleepers’ chamber was now an open mouth.
Kadiya raised a shaking hand to her face. She could taste the sweet stickiness of blood. Her fingers slipped across the smarting wounds the exploding crystals had made.
“It is over then?” She was so worn now that it was difficult to shape either words or thoughts.
“Varm has no longer any doorways into this land. The old terrors are laid, Kadiya. The strings which tied the past to the present are broken at last—which is as it should be. We were remiss in not making an end in the old days. But it was not in us to slay out of hand those who were our captives. Better though we had taken blood guilt on us then. Almost he won. Had it not been for you and those of our creation we would have failed. To us that is a thing we must always remember. We are not almighty, victors though we were in the elder days. We are but men and women with other talents, but we can taste of death and know disaster.”
“The mire lands are safe.” She did not make a question of that, rather held to it as a fact, something which would perhaps be a comfort in days to come. Why she would need a comfort Kadiya was not sure now—she was too tired, too overdriven.
She looked down at the sword. There was blood on her hands where she had gripped it so tightly that even its dulled edge had been able to cut her flesh. The eyes were tightly closed. That glitter which had edged the lids was gone. She could sense a difference through her whole body. The Power which had come to her summons was exhausted to the full at last—there was no life left.
Her hand went to the amulet. Under a touch which left smears of blood on the breast of her mail the amber was cooled. Lifeless, too? Perhaps.
She had not Haramis’s will for Power. What had been lent to her she had used as best she could; now it was gone. Kadiya stared dully ahead, past that smear on the rock which marked the end of Varm’s liegeman. She shivered. The winds which had begun to sweep the ledge were mountain cold.
“Where now?” she was asking that of herself more than of him.
“We go to Yatlan.” There was a chill, a kind of withdrawal, in that mind touch.
Kadiya remembered what a return to Yatlan would mean. Those she had summoned out of time would return into timelessness.
“King’s Daughter!”
Kadiya’s head jerked. Jagun was coming toward her. One of his arms was in a sling across his chest. He limped, one of the Uisgu steadying him.
“Jagun!” Then a moment later she added, “Smail?”
The eyes of the hunter blinked. “The healer cares for him. Three of the Skritek he bore down before the fourth tried to break him against the rocks. The Drowners fled when the death cry of Varm’s minion sounded. However, few escaped dart and spear as they went.”
“It is well.” Against all the will Kadiya could summon her body was relaxing in a manner she could not understand. Her eyelids seemed weighted. She could no longer fight this weariness; it was as heavy as one of the rocks which had rained down into the crevice of the nest.
Darkness lapped about Kadiya with the soft comfort of sleep robes. Sighing she surrendered to it, seeking the forgetfulness of healing.
How long she lay so cocooned the girl did not know, but at length there pressed upon her a summons she could not elude.
“Kadiya—” Her name from a far distance, demanding.
She strove to shut ears and mind against it.
“Sister!”
That was too sharp, too close to be denied.
Where they stood in meeting Kadiya could not tell; perhaps this place had no existence as she knew reality. Haramis was but a face looming out of veiling shadows.
“What has troubled the land?” That demand was peremptory. “It has been shrouded from my seeing these many days. What has come upon Ruwenda?”
“An evil out of time,” Kadiya’s answer came draggingly; the overpowering weariness still held her fast. Yet somehow she held on to her sister’s face and knew that Haramis listened.
The plague, the discovery of that other place where the Vanished Ones had gone, their return—the trek into the mountains to the battle—all which had happened in these past days.
“Lamaril tells me,” Kadiya ended, “the land is now cleansed. He and his will return to that place beyond time.”
Haramis’s mouth twisted. “Guardian I was said to be—yet in this I had no hand.”
Kadiya could almost taste the bitterness she sensed in her sister. More than Haramis’s pride had been bruised; that which she honestly felt for her land suffered.
“I do not know why this was given into my hands,” Kadiya said wearily. “I do not hold any great Power.” She remembered the burnt-out appearance of the sword, the vanishing of the fire in her amulet. “Now—I believe I hold none at all. Perhaps it was that I could reach the Great Ones the easier. Haramis, I am done with Power—and it is done with me.”
“Be sure, sister,” Haramis returned, “that I shall find a means whereby such will not happen again. Binah knew so much. I have had so little time”—she paused—“and part of my learning was tainted. Orogastus was of the Dark and strove to draw me with him.”
“But you did not yield,” Kadiya reminded her. “And you are great of purpose, sister. Lamaril and his people will go—but there will be remnants of learning in Yatlan. I may not be able to comprehend it, but I shall guard it until you wish—without Power if that must be.”
Haramis regarded her steadily for a long moment. “Little sister, you are far greater than you guess. And,” now her eyes had the look of one who foresees, “you shall be more. Until we meet again, dear one.”
Once more the soft dark, the oneness with nothingness which was a rest for mind and spirit.
When Kadiya roused again it was not into any place beyond the boundaries of the real world. She looked up to traceries of greenery against a clear sky, smelled the scent of fast growing things which follow the monsoon. She was lying wrapped in reed cloaks within one of the light craft. Before her, an Uisgu tended the guide reins of a rimorik and they were speeding along.
“Noble Lady—”
Kadiya edged her head around to face the speaker. She still felt as drained as if she had awakened on a bed wher
e she had fought a dire illness. Salin was there, with Tostlet.
“Where are we?”
“You have been long asleep, Noble Lady. The Great One said that you must be carefully tended, that we must do all we could, for you gave too much of your strength to the Power. Now we are riverbound to Yatlan.”
She tried to think. Already riverbound … there was a long trail behind them then.
Salin spoke again, softly. “The Sindona of the outer guard—they who follow Lamaril—have gone as it was set upon them to return to their own place. Those from Yatlan travel with us. Not all survived the struggle, King’s Daughter. There were five who passed into the Last Flame. For the Dark One was mighty. Had he awakened the sleepers and brought them forth, none of us would be alive.”
Lamaril had not died; Kadiya dimly remembered him on that ledge. But gone … Kadiya knew a strange hunger, not of one who craved food, but rather as if she sought a missing part of her inner self.
There had never been one who had filled such an emptiness: she discovered that now. Her mother, her father, they had had their place in her life, and she had known grief tinged with rage at their stark deaths. Haramis: she and her elder sister had had little in common except their blood; she could not enter into what fueled Haramis’s life. Anigel: she felt again the faint contempt which had been born of her sister’s union with the son of their enemy. As Queen, Anigel was already buried in a life which Kadiya would find as confining as a prison. But Anigel had been born to wear the crown. Jagun? She could not think of days without him—but he was an Oddling, of another race with thoughts and beliefs of his own into which she could not enter. Salin? The girl looked now directly at the wisewoman. Salin was also a friend, and one she hoped she would never lose.
But …
Kadiya settled her head back in the blanket nest. She—would—not—think—She could not think! To him she would be as an Oddling—as the Hassitti—a strange creature with no touch of common life. He was already gone, back to leave his likeness to stand guard on the way to Yatlan. Already he must have vanished beyond time.
She fought her battle lying there—fought and knew she could not win. Wounds healed, but there were scars always left behind. When she had been with him she had never truly realized this change in herself. It was only when he had faltered under the attack of the Dark One, when she believed him gone, that the truth had come upon her, to be strengthened and rooted deep now as she lay in this craft upon the river.
Well, she was no weakling; Kadiya believed she had proved that. One can live even with painful memories. Time passed—and she was caught again in the flow of time.
The other Guardians—those of the stairway—were gathered on two other Uisgu craft which swept along before the one which carried Kadiya. They made no attempt to speak to her when they camped, keeping to themselves. She wondered if they were not already half withdrawn back into their timeless paradise. Nor did she seek out their company, for even eyeing them made her aware of the ever thickening barrier between them and the people of the swamp.
Strength returned. Kadiya ate what the healer urged upon her, listened to the Uisgu reports of how their clans were now hunting stray Skritek back to their own noisome territory. Perhaps the Drowners had suffered such a defeat that they need not be a danger for some time to come. But that did not mean that scouts and patrols would not prowl along the borders to check on them. That they would always be a peril, Kadiya accepted.
When their party had to leave the boats she was well able to march cross country. To her inward relief they did not take the road of the Guardians. She never wanted to look again upon Lamaril’s likeness frozen forever into mud-daubed stone.
As they entered Yatlan itself the Vanished Ones lengthened stride to a pace which left the rest of them well behind. They passed along the edge of the pool quickly, but Kadiya trod determinedly at their heels. Though she no longer had any touch with them, she felt that she must see the end of the magic she had been given to work.
They shed their armor on the steps, leaving it in a tangle as if they had kicked it aside, unwilling to ever see it again. One of the helms rolled and fell to the lowest step near Kadiya’s feet. The Vanished Ones fitted themselves into the same stance from which the trillium pollen had awakened them.
Then—the life was gone out of them, snuffed as if a lamp had been blown out. They stood, even as they had for centuries, though they were nothing but the likeness of those she had seen alive only moments earlier.
Hassitti scurried about her, swarming in upon the discarded armor, then trotting off again, carrying bits of it as insects might dismember a dead thing, stripping it to the bones.
Kadiya came forward slowly. On each step she turned left and then right to face the Guardians. She tried to remember names, but some she had never really heard, those which had kept themselves more aloof from the Oddlings.
The blank eyes made her shiver, yet she forced herself to look at each. Yes, they were gone—all of them—and she was very sure that they would never return. The world ravaged by their mighty war so long ago was rebuilding itself in another pattern, one which would mean nothing to them. She remembered that rich and peaceful land beyond the wall. Ruwenda had been like that once, but there was no returning, any more than she could again fit herself into the person of a daughter in her father’s vanished court.
What she was now, she must discover. Kadiya thought that that was going to be a long and painful task. She had almost arrogantly claimed the mires for her own—and thus she took on responsibility. Foresee—Salin had that Power, a little. Kadiya shook her head. No, where there was no immediate danger she would not ask foresight from the wisewoman. Let each day bring what it had to offer and she would meet it as best she could.
She slipped the sword from its sheath. There was no life in it. The orbs were as sealed shut as if they had never been open. This part of her life was indeed finished. The amulet hung like a pretty bauble on her breast. She could see the black trillium within but it had no spark of life-fire.
Kadiya took off her own helm, left it on the steps. The mail still clothed her, but the Hassitti would have other clothing more in keeping for one who was no longer a warrior.
She crossed between the columns and came step by step down to the garden. It was beginning dusk—the spark insects were starting to weave their patterns about the flowers whose heady scent thickened the shadows.
With the sword in both hands Kadiya once more came to that patch of barren soil. She raised the blade high enough to give force and drove it down. The fact that it lacked a point did not deter its entrance, the ground seemed eager to accept it.
She sat back on her heels waiting. There was a glow, faint at first, deepening, concealing blade and hilt.
A flower was being born—such a flower as she had seen in another place, another time. No black trillium this, but one of gold, completely encasing the sword. It moved as if some breeze touched it lightly, and pollen shook free in a rainbow shower.
Kadiya gasped in awe. And then she stiffened, for there fell a weight on each of her shoulders. Hands—
She turned slowly and looked up. He was kneeling, too, but his greater height made him loom over her.
“Lamaril!” Her lips, suddenly dry, shaped his name even if she did not utter it aloud.
His masking helmet was gone and she could see the whole of his face, all so plain. Her breath caught almost painfully.
“But—you are gone!” Kadiya protested.
He shook his head. “There are always choices given us. I made mine very willingly. No stream of time shall lie between us, heart planted one. See”—he had drawn her into his arms and now he turned her gently to look upon the golden trillium, so firmly rooted—“this is the answer—for us both. Yatlan is dead, the world it ruled is gone—but many seasons of what is new lie before us. There is much to be learned, much to be done—together.”
A breeze gathered up the gem pollen of the trillium and carried it towar
d them. Kadiya sighed. The enfolding of those arms about her was better than any foresight. No—was a foresight!
About the Author
For well over a half century, Andre Norton was one of the most popular science fiction and fantasy authors in the world. With series such as Time Traders, Solar Queen, Forerunner, Beast Master, Crosstime, and Janus, as well as many standalone novels, her tales of adventure have drawn countless readers to science fiction. Her fantasy novels, including the bestselling Witch World series, her Magic series, and many other unrelated novels, have been popular with readers for decades. Lauded as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America, she is the recipient of a Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention. An Ohio native, Norton lived for many years in Winter Park, Florida, and died in March 2005 at her home in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1993 by Andre Norton
Cover design by Angela Goddard
ISBN: 978-1-4976-8475-1
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
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