Enchantress from the Stars

by Sylvia Engdahl

  “Would it then become powerless, if it were seen?” he asked despairingly.

  “For this venture, yes,” the Enchantress replied. “But worse than that, it would change and bring disaster upon the world. Whatsoever good might have been wrought by my coming here would turn to evil; no longer would there be any chance for the Dragon to be killed at all, by anyone! And even if it were not seen, should my identity become known, I would lose my power to help you.”

  As she spoke thus an appalling thought came to Georyn, and he cried in horror, “Can you not then save yourself, as you did from the fire?”

  “That specifically is forbidden me,” she said gently. “But we must not lose courage, Georyn. The breaking of the spell that guards the Dragon will surely require that we be tried in many ways, not all of which I am permitted to foresee, and mayhap our capture is but one of them.”

  Then did Georyn recall the other condition of which the Enchantress had told him, that in the end he must lose that which he deemed most necessary to the triumph of good in order for the Dragon’s spell to be unmade; and despair weighted his heart. For naught could be more necessary to good than the Lady’s safety, and was she not facing deadly peril? Gladly would he die to defend her, if that could be of any help; but how could he fight this strange evil enchantment that he could not even understand? Bad enough had it been that he must meet the Dragon without any real plan of attack, but if she too was now bewildered and afraid, their plight was grievous indeed. It appeared that instead of going to the Dragon as challengers, they would in truth be taken there by force, no doubt to be fed to the beast! And if that were to be the end of it, it would almost have been better to have died by fire.

  The Lady answered, as she so often did, his unexpressed thought. “Is that your fear? Oh, Georyn—I promise you that no matter what happens to us, we will not be eaten! We may, perchance, die in some other fashion; yet we are not defenseless. Remember that the Stone too has power, and it is not bound by the condition that holds the Emblem. There is more magic in the world than even I know of.”

  “The Starwatcher! Can he help us?”

  “Perhaps. If he can, he will; but he too is under restraint, for he too wears the Emblem.”

  Surprised, Georyn exclaimed, “I have never seen it!”

  “It is hidden, but he is far more the master of its powers than I.”

  Often of late, Georyn had wondered as to the nature of the connection between the Starwatcher and the Enchantress, for it was a thing never mentioned in his presence. The Starwatcher did not wear the garb of the enchanted realm, and his hair was white, whereas the Enchantress was from her appearance a young girl; but who can judge the age of a woman who possesses magical powers? These two might be more to each other than he would care to think.

  Again the Lady replied to words that had not been spoken aloud. “I see that no secrets can be kept from you! The Starwatcher is my father, Georyn. I am only a student of the art of enchantment; I must pass through much before I am fitted to wield the full powers of the Emblem.”

  She sounded very young, not at all commanding; and from that Georyn got the boldness to ask a thing that he had hitherto kept hidden in the depths of his mind. “Lady, if we succeed in this venture, is it sure that you must return to the realm whence you came? Might not your father be persuaded to—to give you in marriage to a mortal, if that mortal could prove himself worthy of such an honor?”

  She dropped her eyes, and Georyn could see even in the dim light that there were tears in them. “No,” she said sorrowfully, “that he would never do. For I am bound by a vow to serve the Emblem, and I may wed with no one but another who is so bound.”

  “I will take any vow he asks of me!” Georyn declared, hope rising within him.

  “Georyn, Georyn, the stars are not for you! The ways of enchanted folk are not your ways; you could not bear the Emblem, not if you were to slay all the dragons that exist! Valor is not enough.”

  “Yet if I learn to wield the Stone?”

  “Give it back to me now, if that is in your thought!” cried the Enchantress. “I would not have you do it through a false hope, not though we all die, not though the whole world is lost to the Dragon.”

  But Georyn said, “No, Lady, I will not presume to that which must remain beyond my reach. But if I may not wield the Stone to win you, still will I do it to save you, if that is how it must be.”

  At first, I was too stunned by the narrowness of our escape from the fire to give much thought to the difficulty of our present plight. For, by the power of his belief in the Stone, Georyn had already saved me; he really had saved me! If he had not acted as he did, I might easily be dead.

  For I had gone to the fire in my own time, of my own free will, and I’m not at all sure that I’d have had the courage for that if Georyn had not forced me to it. Not even though I knew, theoretically, that it would be a wise thing to do. To use the Shield you’ve got to have absolute trust in it; you’ve got to be sure. If you commit yourself to its protection voluntarily, well, in that moment you are sure. Whereas if you wait, if you allow yourself to become a helpless victim, then you’re all too likely to find yourself besieged by doubt at the very time doubt can be fatal.

  With me, it had been touch and go for a while; I had been really afraid, with a terror that made the sort of fright to which Father had exposed me seem very mild indeed. Georyn had known—and though he hadn’t understood enough of the truth to know how he was helping me, he had unerringly done the one thing that could jolt me out of it. And yet the Stone was proving truly perilous for him; we’d given him too much faith in it. What would surely have happened if I hadn’t been in a position to counteract his rash offer was just too awful to contemplate.

  My strength was now at a low ebb; sustained use of the Shield takes a lot out of you. Then too, I was horror-stricken not only by what lay ahead of us but by what I’d very likely done to the chances for our mission’s success. For although the Imperials probably wouldn’t kill me, they would see me at close range; they would know I was not of the same race as the Andrecians they had previously encountered. They’d have no cause, perhaps, to suspect that I was not a native, so long as I was very, very careful not to reveal any understanding of their ways. Yet if I failed to hide the Emblem …

  If I couldn’t get my hands free to drop it beneath the high neckline of the shift in which I was now clothed, the whole thing was as good as blown. The Emblem is made of a substance that is not found on Andrecia. It is not found anywhere, as a matter of fact; it can be manufactured only by a very advanced technology.

  One thing was in my favor: the loss of my own clothes. It hadn’t been easy to stand still for that; but exhausted and dazed though I was, I had known it was the only thing to do. Now, providing the Emblem wasn’t seen, there seemed very little danger of an actual disclosure resulting from my capture. The peril was in the colonists’ suspicions being aroused, so that they would not accept Georyn as a typical native. My being found in company with him could easily mean that anything he might do in the way of psychokinesis would be in vain, since our entire scheme depended on their making the assumption that all the natives were alike.

  Beside that problem, the question of my personal fate wasn’t very significant. Yet I must admit that it seemed significant, as I shivered through that miserable night of captivity. All in all, that night was even more of an education than my first night alone, let me tell you! Georyn eventually slept; but Georyn had both a clear conscience and an unshakable belief in the efficacy of magic. I had neither. I sat through until dawn, propped against the cold stone wall; scarcely moving, scarcely noticing even that I was hungry and thirsty, that the rough garment chafed my skin, that my arms ached from the tight cords. And when morning came the only thing I was sure of was that I would never, never again jump into anything without thinking through its implications.

  THE SACRIFICE

  Shortly after sunrise, Georyn and I were dragged from the hut by the v
illagers and forced to set out with them toward the invaders’ camp. Our feet were untied, since we were required to walk, but our hands remained bound behind us. While our captors did not actually inflict any harm on us, I think their restraint arose more from a desire to deliver the dragon’s victims in good condition than from any inclination toward mercy. Georyn’s face was set in a hard mask of anger at their remarks, which were loud and, presumably, crude; it’s just as well that I did not really know much of the Andrecian language. If you are going to be an agent, you must be prepared to take things as they come. Still I’ll confess to having wondered, for a while, whether the saving of Youngling worlds was not a somewhat thankless task.

  It wasn’t a pleasant journey. Food being too scarce to waste on anybody who was slated to become a meal for the dragon, we were given nothing to eat. Georyn was more or less inured to hunger, but it was a new experience for me; I felt dizzy and faint. I was also unused to going barefoot, and my feet soon blistered. To top it all off, the sun was hotter than it had been before on Andrecia. Spring was giving way to summer. The part of the forest through which our path now lay was less dense than the area nearer the river, and there was little shade.

  Georyn and I did not talk much; we were too dejected. Yet Georyn did not seem to have lost any of his faith in the Stone, and that bothered me. He would have gone to the fire unshielded—he almost had. And now he was approaching what was in his eyes an even worse danger, confident that he would be guarded against all evil. It would be nice to feel that you were protected by an enchantment that couldn’t let you down. Still, what right had I to have started such a hoax? How could we ever have thought that we could save Andrecia by such means? Perhaps I’d never really thought so; perhaps that was why I’d insisted on coming, so that I could comfort Georyn in his inevitable defeat, if he survived it. Oughtn’t I to enlighten him now, not only about the Stone, but about my actual status in the scheme of things? I was not, after all, worthy of the reverence he paid me; it had been my own stupidity that had gotten us into these straits. Now that we were in them, now that the chances of pulling off the fantastic, harebrained scheme in which we’d made Georyn an unwitting pawn were practically nil, didn’t he have a right to as much of the truth as he could absorb?

  Certainly he ought to be straightened out about the dragon! My one poor attempt to warn him that he’d have to give up what would seem like the only true victory had probably only confused him; if he remembered the “condition” at all, he was undoubtedly expecting to find a way to fulfill it and destroy the beast. Well, I wasn’t going to let this go on any longer.

  “Georyn,” I began determinedly, “there’s something I’ve got to explain—”

  But at that moment I was interrupted by a sudden, unexpected telepathic contact: the heart-warming touch of a familiar mind. Evrek! It was Evrek, somewhere nearby! Oh, Elana, what are they doing to you? How did you get into this?

  When I told him, he reacted with even greater horror than I had expected. To the Imperials? But that means … His thought cut off abruptly; he had masked it.

  Disclosure, Evrek? No! I’ll pose as a native. They’ll know I’m different, but they won’t be able to tell I’m not primitive. Will they?

  Not at first. But the risk’s worse than you’ve been told!

  Will they kill me, then?

  There was a long pause. Then he answered, No, I don’t think they’ll kill you. There’s another thing they may try. Look, you mustn’t panic; I’ll rescue you somehow! But there are too many men guarding you now.

  I know. Oh, Evrek … I poured out the whole turmoil of my mind, even including my decision to tell Georyn the truth.

  Elana, you can’t! he protested. You’ll ruin everything!

  If I don’t, Georyn may try some other crazy stunt—throw himself in front of the “dragon” or something—and die for it! The plan will never work now!

  There’s still some hope! If he has as much faith as you say …

  Faith in what? In a stone? Or in me, in my magic powers?

  In what you represent, if you hold to it. Surely it’s worth the risk!

  You say that because you don’t care what becomes of him. I do care, and I know he can’t count on mere faith to pull him through.

  How can you expect him to, if you’ve lost yours?

  I don’t expect it; that’s just why I’m going to level with him.

  Have you forgotten that you’re sworn?

  Of course not! If I honestly believed there was any real chance left, I wouldn’t interfere with it. Was I rationalizing, I wonder? Suddenly I remembered my most pressing problem. Evrek? What shall I do about the Emblem?

  Get rid of it! Take it off!

  My hands are bound.

  With your mind, then.

  I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that. To lift the chain over my head by psychokinesis was tricky, but surely possible; I guess I’d been blocked by the idea that I could never just toss the Emblem away somewhere. Yet the Imperials must not see it, and now Evrek could pick it up later. Why hadn’t I given it back to him before this? I had no right to it anymore, not to his! You don’t wear a man’s pendant—or his pin, or his ring, or anything else of his—unless he has your whole heart.

  But I could not, of course, do the thing under the eyes of Georyn and all the men. There would have to be a diversion. Georyn would have to provide it; there was no other way. You know where I am, Evrek? You’ll find it?

  I’ll find it. And I’ll get help to you later. Don’t worry, darling!

  Tears sprang to my eyes. Darling? Not anymore, really. Poor Evrek, how unfair to him, how useless. Yet I just couldn’t help the way I felt. What must he think of my having rushed off with Georyn this way? I wondered suddenly whether Father could have told him the truth. Surely not. Evrek was good at hiding his feelings, but hardly that good; his recent stiffness, I thought, arose simply from the fact that he’d been ordered not to let his concern for me interfere with the job we both must do. Besides, though Father almost certainly knew, he had not tried to come between me and Georyn, and had in fact been making a seemingly deliberate effort to keep Evrek away from us.

  The heat of the afternoon now seemed worse than ever, but the sun was no longer shining and in the distance thunder rumbled. Apparently we were in for a storm. “Georyn,” I said quietly, “I’ve got to get the men to stop watching me for a moment. Can you attract their attention somehow?”

  “Yes, if you want me to,” he replied. Georyn always came through gallantly; in this case, he responded with a foredoomed escape attempt. It accomplished its purpose; I managed to get the Emblem off and into a clump of ferns beside the path. But the cost was high, for in the scuffle Georyn was knocked senseless. I rushed to him, sick with fear, but I was shoved roughly aside. At that moment the first flash of lightning illumined the woods around us.

  A couple of men picked up the now unconscious Georyn, and we went on. Miserably I stumbled along, setting my teeth against the pain of my badly blistered feet. I’m not any better off than a Youngling when it comes to handling pain, not yet having been taught the more esoteric psychic defenses. I wondered despairingly how much farther we had to go. And then I knew—for, between the rolls of thunder, I heard a more ominous sound: the unmistakable noise of heavy construction machinery, not too far off.

  My captors halted abruptly, their faces livid with terror. One of them, however, ventured cautiously into the dense thicket ahead. In a few moments he reappeared, beckoning, and the others pushed me forward. A suitable spot for the sacrifice had evidently been found.

  They gripped my arms, and I took deep, steady breaths, trying to slow the racing of my heart. It wouldn’t do any good, I knew, to struggle; I had best behave as regally as was possible under the circumstances. I didn’t feel regal. What, I thought frantically, could there possibly be about the Imperials that was “worse than I had been told”? What had Evrek meant, there’s another thing they may try?

  Near the cen
ter of the small open space into which we emerged was a tall, rough-barked tree. To this—despite the lightning that was now coming alarmingly close—I was securely bound. The men weren’t gentle; the ropes bit into my legs and shoulders until I drew in my breath sharply at the pain. My hands were still tied behind me in an awkward, cramped position. Georyn, who had not regained consciousness, was dumped unceremoniously at my feet.

  No rain had yet fallen, though the sky kept getting blacker. The heat was really oppressive, perhaps that was why my skin was wet and the sweat was trickling down my face. The villagers stayed just out of sight, watching me; they undoubtedly expected the dragon to claim me at any moment. They were, I was sure, quite interested in my reaction to the monster’s roars, which now rivaled the thunder in volume. We were very close to the colonists’ clearing, and I knew that guards would be patroling its borders.

  I must be calm, I told myself, and take what comes. Yet suppose Georyn was seriously hurt? Suppose he died, with me tied there, helpless? Of course, they might kill us both when they found us.

  Another blue flash lit up the trees, a flash that reflected on the glaringly alien material of pressure suits and helmets. Imperials … four of them!

  Our Andrecian captors fled; they had delivered us to the dragon’s globe-headed servants, and as for the spectacle of our demise, well, was not discretion the better part of valor? Two of the invaders lifted Georyn while the other two approached me, their weapons raised. It was the utter, hopeless end. I did not have time to be afraid, I simply turned my whole thought to the sad necessity for not using my Shield.

  I succeeded. My first reaction was astonishment at being alive to know that I had succeeded; then I realized that the weapons were not lethal ones, but merely stunners. Father had prepared Georyn for the experience of being stunned; he had not prepared me. And it is frightening! It’s not painful, though you somehow feel as if there’s pain out there, just beyond the edge, waiting to pounce. What’s bad, though, is the helplessness, the feeling of having no control over your body whatsoever. That can be just awful if you fight it. And not fighting it is easier said than done! It goes against all your natural impulses, and you have to learn to suppress them.