Trey of Swords (Witch World (Estcarp Series)) (18 page)

There was something in her words which did find a part of me receptive. Just as I had doubted myself when the Lady Chriswitha had talked with me, so did that doubt grow now in me. I wanted—I wanted to learn what I might do were I to use my talent to the full! I wanted—Power!

Still—another part of me arose to do battle now. Power—it could twist and mar, it could defeat its user, too. It—

The foremost of the spiders hung now above Tsali. I saw the bright eyes in his Lizard skull had moved from me to that dangling creature, marking too her sisters unreeling their threads to descend.

Laidan had come to stand with me within the star. Now she raised a small black wand she had brought from beneath her mist draperies. She pointed it from one candle to the next, and each started aflame with an oily, scarlet light. While she chanted as she moved.

Within me a sickness arose, so I crouched a little, my hands pressed against my middle. Whatever there was of my species which could be aroused by her sorcery was in such revolt that it tore at my body. And my own resolve strengthened.

Even as Laidan summoned that which she-would force to obey her, so did I fix my will upon the spiders from above. I still did not know what I might do with them as weapons, but they were all I had. And I had learned enough from the Lady Dahaun to know that in such sorceries the balance was very delicate and easily disturbed. Laidan had enclosed both the circle and the star in which we stood with her precautions, but she had not thought of what might lie overhead.

The candles gave forth what was to me a disgusting smell. However, I saw Laidan breathing deeply between the words she still mouthed as if, from their scent, she garnered some needful food or energy. Then—

In the circle the air moved. But into that maelstrom there dropped the first spider from aloft. There was a swirling—I saw Laidan start, her chant faltered. A second spider, a third, disappeared into that misty column. Laidan started back—her hand raised to her mouth, for the first time shaken by what she witnessed—or felt—

I might not be as receptive as the sorceress, but I was aware of a vast troubling. Something which had been summoned—it had recoiled; it was angry. And—it was gone!

Laidan gave a cry, her hands arose to her ears as if to shut out some intolerable sound. Though I was aware of nothing, except that withdrawal. Then she, too, vanished—winked out instantly.

The flames of the candles were extinguished, leaving the room in near darkness. I was—free—

In a moment I crossed the star, grabbed from the table a stout-bladed knife and went to Tsali, slashing at his bonds. There was no longer any mental barrier between us. But something else weighed on the spirit in this chamber of the place Laidan had named Zephar.

Tsali stood, his clawed hand closed tightly about my wrist.

“Come—!” He scuttled for the stair, drawing me after him.

There followed a blurring of the walls, of all the things in that room, as if stout stone were melting, flowing away into nothingness. I thought I felt the steps of that stairway crumble and tremble under my weight. And I guess whatever illusion Laidan had set there was now disappearing, and that we might even be either trapped between times or perhaps buried under blocks of stone which the ages between would tumble from their settings.

At last, panting, we stood in the open, with around us only moss-grown and broken stones, a corner of what might once have been an outer wall. Tsali did not relax the hold he had kept on my wrist. His head darted from side to side with a speed my own species could never have equaled as he stood tensely, in such a position of instant alert that I knew that we were far from safe.

“Laidan?” I aimed a single thought at his mind.

“Is not gone—yet—” he confirmed my own fear. “She fled into her own corner of nothingness lest that which she had summoned turn upon her. But there she nurses her hate—which will grow the greater when she learns what has happened elsewhere. And because she has linked with you—then you can furnish her a door through time once more.”

“What has happened elsewhere?” I seized upon that part of his warning.

“He whom she would have awakened is at last truly dead. The youth you call Yonan and Uruk of the Ax have wrought their own kind of magic. But in so much will Laidan’s hate now be the greater. Though I think she dare not try anything as yet. That recoil of spell drove her too far from us. Only not yet are we finished with her.”

He led the way, still keeping hold on me, out of that shell of ancient ruin. Now autumn-withered grass brushed thigh-high about me, near waist-high for him.

“What—why did the spiders—” I began. For though those spinners had done my will and had apparently broken Laidan’s sorcery, I did not understand how such a thing could be.

“The balance of all spells,” Tsali returned, still more than half of his attention given to what lay about us, even though the last of the tumbled blocks now lay behind, “rests very delicately. What Laidan summoned demanded a blood price—and what she had ready for it.” He thought-sent matter-of-factly, as if
he
had not been that same price. “But when other life came into it, then it was confused, angry—believing that Laidan had sought to engage its aid with so poor an offering. Those which are truly of the Shadow trust no one. Some spells they are forced to obey, but if any bargain is not kept scrupulously, then they are freed from their obedience. Three spiders did not equal one Tsali—” There was wry humor in that which brought a smile to my own lips in spite of that lowering feeling of being naked of defense in a threatening world which had and did burden me as we went.

“Where are we?” I asked. Was this my own time? And could we win back to the Valley?

“To each question,” my companion picked up those thoughts very quickly, “I cannot give full answer. But we must go with all caution. Laidan will have a chance to replenish her powers. When she finds that Targi is no more”—his scaled head shook from side to side—”then she will not be appeased except by a full letting of blood. Since she perhaps cannot get at those who killed that which was Targi, she shall be the more bitter against us—”

“Yonan—Uruk?” I made a new question of their names.

Tsali’s answer came as if now more important matters were in his mind.

“Their road is their road—they have done well. It is up to us to keep faith with the Valley. We cannot return while Laidan—” his thought seemed to flicker there as if he wanted to veil it from me. But, bitterly, I knew what he would have added and so did so myself:

“While Laidan can lay her spell on me.” I made no question of that, for I knew that it was the truth and one which I must face with all my strength of body and spirit.

5

We wandered on. Tsali amended his pace somewhat after we had won farther from the ruins. The land was drably brown. Autumn in its last stages had set its imprint here and had emptied the country of all growth, even as frost had drawn subsistence from the grass and weeds, now so dried and sere they rattled faintly in the wind.

There showed the remnants of a road, mainly a block here and there, overcast with drifted soil, or canted upward by the roots of a leafless tree. I stared around, trying to locate some landmark that I could fix on. Though I knew now I could not venture back once more into the Valley—not until I was entirely free of Laidan’s influence.

Now I knew hunger and thirst, and I wondered where Tsali would lead us. But I did not ask. Rather I walked as one in a dream, following his urging. Yet inside I sought for what might lie there as a part of my Talent. Against Laidan I had no defense—or so I believed. How long before she dared venture out of hiding, strive to make me again her tool?

Tool?

Somehow my apprehensive thought fastened on that word. Man wrought in two ways, by the vision of his mind (which is not sorcery in itself) and with his hands—or those extensions of his hands which in the dim beginning some thinkers had devised to answer problems they strove to solve.

There were the tools of a landsman—the plow to turn the earth for the receiving of seed, the rake and hoe, the hammer, the saw; others I could not even name. There were, in addition, the tools which I had known—pots one could sling over a fire to withstand heat and cook the food within, the spindle for the making of thread, the needle, the loom—the spoon, if you will, and a short knife, and—

Also, there were other tools—those of war. There was the dart gun—my fingers moved without conscious orders as if to close about one of those weapons, seek its firing button. There were the swords, and lances; men turned more to them in these days when we could no longer fashion the darts. There were shields for defense. And in the Valley, each of the Green People carried at belt one of the force whips which were the children of lightning, tamed and domesticated to their service.

All these were tools—even the mind. But my defeat lay in that I had not been properly taught what might be done with the tool I was born with.

Tsali angled off from the ancient remains of that road, pulling me eastward. I stumbled along at his bidding because I had no other plan to follow.

The day was as ash-gray as the life-sapped grass through which we trode a path. But there were no clouds I could see. Now I caught the sound of running water, and my tongue moved in a mouth which seemed filled with dust. Down an incline which grew even steeper, Tsali pulled me. Only now I was eager in my going for I saw the water, running around rocks and over a stony bed.

I knelt at the stream bank to wash my hands in the flow, which was chill, then made a hollow cup of closely held palms and fingers to raise to my lips. Tsali had gone a little away and crouched to lap with a long tongue. When I had drunk my fill I looked about me with a more conscious gaze. Drink I had had, but (here was also the need for food.

Tsali made a sudden lunge with both forelimbs, and arose, water dripping from his scaled skin, a fish wriggling between his claws. He waited until it stilled and flipped it to the ground behind him, then squatted on the bank, his eyes once more intent upon the stream.

Though I had long set my own path of life, that I would not kill a living thing for eating, still now I knew that logic must determine my survival and if Tsali’s catch meant life and strength, that I must accept.

But I could not bring myself to touch the dead fish. I could only watch as the Lizard man snaked a second out of its world. He hunted among the drift which bordered the stream, to return with a sharply pointed stick which he used to gut his catch and a stone with which he skinned the bodies.

There was no fire—Tsali would prefer his raw anyway, I knew. I eyed the portion he had set before me with repugnance. But I must live and this was the only food available. I made myself worry loose bits of firm flesh, choke them down. This was no worse than many ordeals a warrior must face. While against Laidan and her world, I had no choice but to go to war.

From overhead came a scream, startling me so I near spit out the last mouthful I had forced between my lips. I looked up to see a bird, its bill opened to voice another such squawk, impudently planing earthward as if to snatch the food from our hands.

In plumage it was almost as dull-gray as the sky. But around its eyes there were circlings of light, blazing red—which gave a momentary impression that it looked upon us through dots of fire. Its like I had not seen before. And, though I immediately alerted my bruised and battered other sense. I found nothing in mind touch save what it appeared to be—a bird of prey, yes, but one which followed its own fierce nature and no order of the Shadow.

Its cries brought another of its kind. However, as they fed upon the offal Tsali had thrown to one side, I experienced once more that far-off stir of what could not be memory (for I would swear I had never seen these birds before), yet—

The flash of their drab feathered wings, the burning scarlet of the mask about their eyes, grew more and more important to me. I found myself on my feet, my hands forming fists pressed tight against my breasts.

“Ninutra—!” I cried that aloud, my voice at that moment rising even above the incessant crying of the birds.

Ninutru? A person—a place—? Under that need to know, I reluctantly opened my mind and sought, deeper, deeper—recklessly. For such delving I had done before only under the control of the Lady Dahaun. And in such a place and time as now I stood, the peril must be very great. But that I brushed aside. I must know!

Ninutra—there was a hazy image forming. I shut my eyes to the sky, the birds, to the world I knew, turned my sight inward. Ninutra—come! I gave order to that fragment of thought—or memory—what was Ninutra?

There was a feeling of giddiness. The mental image sharpened, I felt breathless, filled with an expectancy in which excitement outweighed, at this moment, both fear and prudence.

A figure—about which held a nebula of flame color to match the patches about the eyes of the birds. If I could only brush away that curtain of brilliant radiance—see the clearer!

Ninutra—a
Power
—not a place. Of the Shadow? What had I then evoked?

No, that built-in warning which Dahaun’s teachings had strengthened, did not come to life. Only neither did I feel the confidence I believed would flow about me if I summoned that which was turned to the Light. Could there then be a third force in this rent and warring land, one which stood apart from both the Dark and the Light—followed some path incomprehensible to both?

I fought to clear my mental sight of that image—or Power. But the light clothed it too well. However, slowly there came from it, as water circles outward when one throws a stone into a pool, a feeling of energy which was warm, growing hotter—hotter—

Maybe I cried out. I know that I shrank within me, strove now to will away that image, but I could not. Heat licked at me, but with it no feeling of anger. I sensed that what Ninutra might be was curious, that it stirred out of some deep contemplation of its own because my feeble summons had disturbed it. Was this one of the adepts?