by Andre Norton
I could see no hope of success. But this was a time when one must place faith in another, and I struggled with my fear long enough to indeed loose my frantic hold and rise to my knees, then, with my father’s hand drawing me up, to my feet. I glanced around to see my mother and Hilarion also standing, Ayllia between them, stirring as if awaking.
“Jump!”
I forced my unwilling body to that effort, not daring to think of what my landing beyond might mean. But luckily I struck on the edge of a dune of ash-sand and, while I sank well into it, I was uninjured, able to struggle out, spitting the stuff from between my lips, smearing it out of my eyes and nostrils.
By the time I was free of it and able to see, I marked other dust-covered figures arising from similar mounds. And, as I stumbled toward them, I discovered we were no worse off than bruises, choked throats and grit-tormented eyes.
But the tank had now been turned wholly about, caught tight in the mid-current, and was fast disappearing from our sight, whirling on to the distant goal of the towers.
We slipped and slid back through the dunes to find and dig out the supply packs. Then Hilarion took out the wand which he had stowed in his tunic for safekeeping. Once more he held it to his forehead.
“There!” He pointed into the very heart of the dune country.
Ayllia was walking, though it was needful to hold her by the hand, and I knew my mother had taken over her mind to some extent. This was a burden on Jaelithe, so that I straightaway joined with her in that needful action.
Footing in the shifting ash-sand was very bad. Sometimes we waded in the powdery stuff almost knee-deep. And the dunes all looked so much alike that without Hilarion’s wand we might have been lost as soon as we left the side of the road, to wander heedlessly.
But all at once I saw something tall and firm loom up and I recognized it as one of the metal pillars which I had seen when we entered through the gate. With that in sight part of my fears were lost. Only, would Hilarion really know when we reached the proper spot? There had been no marking on this side that I had been able to perceive.
However, our guide appeared to have no doubts at all. He led us in a twisting hard-to-travel path, but always he came back to the way the wand pointed. At last we stood at the base of another of those pitted pillars. I could not be sure, for there was a terrible sameness to this country, but I thought that we had indeed reached the place we had first entered.
“Here.” Hilarion was certain. He faced what seemed to me, merely air full of dust (for a breeze had arisen to blow up whirls of acrid powder).
“No marker,” commented my father. But my mother, shielding her eyes with her hands half cupped about them, stared as intently ahead as the adept.
“There is something there,” she conceded, “A troubling—”
Hilarion might not have heard her. He was using the wand in quick strokes, as an artist might paint a scene with a brush, moving it up and down and around, to outline a portal.
And in its track the dust in the wind (or was it dust? I could not be sure.) left faint lines in the air following the path of the wand tip. This outlined an oblong which was center crossed by two lines each of which ran from, the two upper corners to the two lower ones. In the four spaces thus quartered off the wand tip was now setting symbols. Two of these I knew—or at least I knew ones like them, as if those I learned had somewhat changed shape in time.
The others were new however, as was the last, drawn larger to cross all the rest. When Hilarion dropped his wand we could see what he had wrought, misty and faint, yet remaining steadfast in spite of the rising wind and swirling sand.
Now he began again, retracing each and every part of that airborne drawing. This time that wispy series of lines glowed with color, green first, darkening into vivid blue—so that once again I saw the “safe” color I had known in Escore. But that color did not hold and before he had quite completed the entire pattern the first of it was fading, as a dying fire leaves gray-coated coals behind.
I saw his face and there was a grimness about it, a set to his mouth as you may see on a man facing odds which will try him to the dregs of his strength. Once more he began the tracing, with the color responding to the passing of his wand. A second time it faded into ashiness.
Then my mother moved. To me she held out one hand, to my father the other. So linked physically we linked minds also. And that energy which was born of our linking she sent to Hilarion so that he glanced at her once, startled, I think, and then raised the wand for the third time and began again that intricate tracery of line and symbol.
I could feel the pull upon my power, yet I held steady and gave of it as my mother demanded. This time I saw that there was no fading, the green-blue held, glowing the brighter. When Hilarion once more lowered his wand it was a brilliant, pulsating thing hanging in the air a foot or so above the sand. Around it the wind no longer blew, though elsewhere it spread a murky, dust-filled veil.
For a moment Hilarion surveyed his creation critically, I thought, as if he must make sure it was what he wanted, having no flaw. Then he took two steps forward, saying as he went, though he did not look back at us: “We must go—now!”
We broke linkage and my mother and I snatched up our packs, while my father gathered up Ayllia. Hilarion put wand tip to the midpoint of those crossed lines on the door, as one would set a key in a lock. And it opened—I saw him disappear through. I followed, my mother on my heels, my father behind us. Again was that terrible wrenching of space and time, and then I rolled across the hard stone of pavement and sat up, blinking with pain from a knock of my head against some immovable object.
I was resting with my back against the chair which had dominated the hall of the citadel. And the glow of the gate was the only bright thing in that room where time had gathered as a dusk.
Someone near me stirred; I turned my head a little. Hilarion stood there, his wand in his hands. But he was not looking toward the gate through which we had just come, rather from one side of the long hall to the other. I do not know what he had expected to see there, perhaps some multitude of guards or servitors, or members of his household. But what or who he missed, that emptiness had come as a shock.
His hand went to his forehead and he swayed a little. Then he began to walk away from the chair, back into the hall along the wall, walking as someone who must speedily find that which he sought or else face true fear.
As he went so I felt a lightening of my inner unease, for it was plain he had no thought of us now—he was caught in his own concerns. And what better chance would we have for a parting of the ways?
So, in spite of the wave of dizziness which made me sway and clutch at the arm of the chair, I somehow got to my feet, looking around eagerly for the rest of our party. My father was already standing, Ayllia lying before him. He stepped over her body to join hands with my mother, pulled her up to stand with his arms about her, the two of them so knit together that they might indeed be one body and spirit.
Something in the way they stood there, so enclosed for this moment in a world of their own, gave me pause. A chill wind blew for a single instant out of time, to make me shiver. I wondered what it would be like to have such a oneness with another. Kyllan—perhaps this is what he knew with Dahaun, and this was what Kemoc had found with Orsya. Had I unconsciously reached for it when I went to Dinzil, to discover in the end that what he wanted was not me, Kaththea the maid, but rather Kaththea the witch, to lend her power to his reaching ambition? And I also learned, looking upon those two and the world they held about them, that I was not enough of a witch to put the Power above all else. Yet that might well be all which lay before me in this life.
There was no time for such seeking and searching of thought and spirit. We needed to be aware of the here and now, and take precautions accordingly. I stood away from the supporting chair to waver over to my parents.
XVI
“Please—” I felt shy, an intruder, as I spoke softly, for I feared that my words might resound t
hrough that hall, perhaps awaken Hilarion from his preoccupation and bring him back too soon.
My mother turned her head to look at me. Perhaps there was that in my expression which held a warning, for I saw a new alertness in her eyes.
“You are afraid. Of what, my daughter?”
“Of Hilarion.” I gave her the truth. Now I had my father’s full attention as well. Though he still had his arm about my mother’s shoulders his other hand went to his belt as if seeking a weapon hilt.
“Listen.” I spoke in whispers, not daring to use mind touch—such might be as a gong in a place so steeped in sorcery.
“I told you part of the tale, but not all. Escore is rent, has long been rent by warring sorcery. Most of those who wrought this have either been swallowed up in the darkness they summoned, or else have gone through gates such as this into other times and places. But it was they who started this trouble in times far past, and upon them rests the blame for it. We do not know all concerning Hilarion. It is true that I do not believe him to a master of darkness, for he could not control the blue fire were he such. But there were those here who followed neither good nor ill, but had such curiosity that they worked ill merely in search of new learning. Now we battle for the life of Escore . . . and I had a hand in reviving this old war when I unknowingly worked magic to trouble an uneasy old balance. Also, I did other damage and that not too long since. I will not have a third burden to bear, that I brought back one of the adepts to meddle and perhaps wreck all that my brothers and our sworn comrades have fought to hold.
“Hilarion knows far too much to be loosed here and taken to the Valley. I must learn more of him before we swear any shield oath for his company.”
“We have a wise daughter,” commented my mother. “Now tell us, and quickly, all you did not say before.”
And that I did, leaving out nothing of my own part in Dinzil’s plans and of what came of that. When I had done my mother nodded.
“Well, can I understand why you find this Hilarion suspect. But . . .” Her face had a listening look, and I knew that she was using then a tendril of mind search to find him.
“So—” Her gaze from looking inward was turned outward and we had her attention again. “I do not think we need fear his concern with us, not for awhile. Time must be far different between this world and that other. Even more so than we had guessed. He seeks that which is so long gone even the years themselves have lost their names and places on the roll of history! Because he must believe this is so, he is now lost in his own need for understanding. Ah, it is a hard thing to see one’s world swept away and lost, even while one still treads familiar earth. I wonder whether— Do you really believe, my daughter, that Hilarion can be so great a menace to what you must cherish?”
And I, remembering Dinzil, crushed down any doubts and said yes. But it would seem that my mother was not yet fully convinced. For, at that moment, she opened a mind send between us that I might read, though maybe only in part, what she had learned from Hilarion. And the pain and desolation of that sharing was such that I flinched in body as well as mind, to cry out that I did not want to know any more.
“You see,” she said as she freed me, “he has his own thoughts to occupy him now and those are not such as we can easily disturb. If we would go—”
“Then let us do it now!” For in me arose such a desire to be out of this place which was Hilarion’s, and away from all thought of him (if I could so close my mind on part of the past), that I wanted to turn and run as if rasti or the Gray Ones hunted behind.
But though we did go it was at a more sober pace, for we still had Ayllia with us. I began to think about her and what we would do with her. If the Vupsalls were still at the village perhaps we could awaken her sleeping mind and leave her nearby, maybe working some spell which would cloud the immediate past so she would not remember our journeying, save as a quickly fading dream. But if the raid had indeed put an end to the tribe I saw nothing else but that we must take her with us to the Valley wherein Dahaun and her people would give her refuge.
My father left one of the packs of food and water where it had fallen on the floor. But the other he shouldered, letting my mother and myself lead Ayllia. So we went out into the open. Then I, too, learned the surprises time can deal: I had entered here in the coldest grasp of winter, but I came out now into the warmth and sun of spring—the month of Chrysalis, still too early for the sowing of fields, and yet a time when the new blood and first joys of spring stir in one, bringing a kind of restlessness and inner excitement. Still, to my reckoning, I had only been away days, not weeks!
The snow, which had lain in pockets in this long deserted place, was long since gone. And several times our passing startled sunning lizards and small creatures, who either froze to watch us with round and wary eyes, or disappeared in an instant.
I was a little daunted by the maze of streets and ways before us, for I could not clearly remember how we had found our path through the citadel. And after twice following a false opening which brought us up to a wall, I voiced my doubts aloud.
“No way out?” asked my father. “You came in without hindrance, did you not?”
“Yes, but I was drawn by the Power.” I tried now to remember each and every part of how Ayllia and I had come here. Looking back it seemed that our road had been very easy to find from the time we entered twixt those outer gates where the carved guardians gave tongue in the wind. This sprawl of passages and lanes I did not recall.
“Contrived?” I asked that aloud.
We had come to a halt before that last wall when an opening which seemed very promising had abruptly closed. About us were those houses with the blue stones above their doors, their windows empty and gaping, and something about them to chill the heart as winter winds chill the body.
“Hallucination?” my father wondered. “Deliberate by bespelling?”
My mother closed her eyes, and I knew she was cautiously using mind seek. Now I ventured to follow her, fearing always to touch a cord uniting us to Hilarion.
My mind perceived, when I loosed it, what the eyes did not. Simon Tregarth was right, that a film of sorcery lay over this place, erecting walls where there were none, leaving open spaces which were really filled. It was as if, upon closing our eyes, we could see another city set over the one which stood there before. The why of it I did not know, for this was no new spell set for our confounding by Hilarion; it was very old, so that it was oddly tattered and worn near to the first threads of its weaving.
“I see!” I heard my father’s sharp comment and knew that he in turn had come to use the other sight. “So . . . we go this way—” A strong hand caught mine, even as with my other I held to Ayllia, and on the other side of the Vupsall girl my mother walked. Thus linked we began to defeat the spell of the city, going with our eyes closed to the light and the day, our minds tuned to that other sense which was our talent.
So we came to a street which sloped to the thick outer wall, and that I recognized as the one up which we had come on our flight before the raiders. Twice I opened my eyes, merely to test the continuance of the confusion spell, and both times I faced, not an open street, but a wall or part of a house. I hastened to drop my lids again and depend upon the other seeing.
One without such a gift could not have won through that sorcery as we discovered when we came at last to the gate. For within an arm’s length of escape lay a body stark upon the ground, arms outflung as if to grasp for the freedom the eyes could not see. He had been a tall man and he wore body armor, over which thick braids of hair lay, while a horned helm was rolled a little beyond. We could not see his face, and for that I was glad.
“Sulcar!” My father leaned over the corpse but did not touch it.
“I do not think so, or else not of the breed we know,” Jaelithe returned. “Rather one of your sea rovers, Kaththea.”
As to that I could not swear for my glimpses of them on the night they had come to Vupsall had been most limited. But I thoug
ht her right.
“He has been dead some time.” My father stood away. “Perhaps he trailed you here Kaththea. It would seem that for him this trap worked.”
But for us it failed and we passed through the wall, between the brazen beasts who would howl in the tempests.
There we found signs that this was indeed a place others found awesome: set up was a stone slab, dragged, I thought, from the ruined village. And on it lay a tangle of things, perhaps once placed out in order and then despoiled by birds and beasts: a fur robe now stiff with driven sand and befouled by bird droppings, and plates of metal which might once have held food. Among all this was something my father reached for with a cry of excitement, a hard ax and a sword. He had never been more than an indifferent swordsman, though he had put much practice into the learning of that weapon’s usage, swords not being used in his own world. To a warrior, however, any weapon, when his hands are empty, is a find to be treasured.
“Dead man’s weapon,” he said as he belted on that blade. “You know what they say—take up a dead man’s weapons and you take on perhaps also his battle anger when you draw it.”
I remembered then how Kemoc, when he came to seek me in Dinzil’s Dark Tower, had found a sword in the deep hidden places of a long vanished race and had taken it, to serve us well. And I thought that since a man’s hand reached instinctively for steel, one had better judge it for good instead of ill.
But my mother had taken something else from that offering table and stood with it in her two hands, gazing down into it with almost a shade of awe on her face.
“These raiders plied their looting in odd places,” she said. “Of such as this I have heard, but I have not seen. Well did they treasure it enough to offer it to the demons they believed dwelt here!”
It was a cup fashioned, I think, of stone, in the form of two hands tight pressed together save for an open space at the top. But they were not altogether human hands: the fingers were very long and thin; the nails, which were made with gleaming metal, very narrow and pointed. In color it was red-brown, very smooth and polished.