Sorceress Of The Witch World

VII

I had no wish to travel eastward, farther and yet farther away from that portion of Escore which meant the most to me. Even should I now manage to break the rune bonds and be able to escape, leagues of unknown country would lie between me and the Valley, a country full of traps—many sly and clever traps. But Utta’s magic left me no choice and when the Vupsalls marched so did I. My only resource was to memorize our path. That I might break the rune spell and be free I did not doubt; it was only when I did not know.

We—or I—had forgotten the bite which winter held while we camped in the place of hot springs. Going out from there was stepping from early summer into midwinter.

Utta’s sled and dogs had gone with her into the burial pit, but Ifeng, according to custom, furnished me with a new sled and two well-trained hounds, and sent me Ausu’s maid to help in packing. As yet I had no servant from the tribe, nor had I asked for one, since I wanted no spying eyes when I strove to remaster my former skills. However I could see now that Visma and Atorthi between them had saved much labor during our travels. And since work with tents was new to me, I would have to ask for such an addition to my tenthold.

There were castes among the tribe, small as it was, and they had been set long ago. Some tentholds were always free from demands from Ifeng or the other leaders; others obeyed naturally. And I learned that the latter, as Visma, had been war captives, or the descendants of such.

I watched those particular families with new attentions as we moved out, striving to see one of the younger women among them whom I might bring into my own tent. And my choice was undecided between two. One was a widow who lived with her son and his tenthold. She had a dull, time-and circumstance-beaten face, and moved among the family almost as did the Kolder slaves of my mother’s long ago tales. I did not think that curiosity was still alive in her or that she would be a spy menace, but perhaps would learn loyalty to me if taken from the tent where she was a cowed drudge.

The other was a young girl who seemed biddable enough. She had a clubbed foot which did not appear to interfere with her work, but put her outside the hope of marriage unless she went as a second or third wife, more servant than mate. But perhaps she was too alert of mind to serve my purpose.

I had already learned to guide the dogs with the called commands to which they were trained from puppyhood. And, once all was laden on the sled, I took my place in line, just behind the sleds of Ifeng’s household.

The men ranged out, flanking us through this stream country, busy at keeping the heavily loaded sleds going, lending their own strength, pushing and pulling. But we were not long in that place of sand, stones and warmth, moving upslope into the snow and ice of the outer world.

When our runners struck the easier going of the snow, our escort fanned out and away on either side of the main body of travelers, setting a protective screen between us and attack.

Once more we moved through a deserted country in which I saw no signs of old occupancy such as one marked easily in the western part of Escore. I wondered anew at this. For the country, even hidden under the burden of winter storms, gave the appearance of being one able to support garths and farms, to nourish a goodly population. Yet there were no marks of ancient fields, no ruins to say that the Old Ones had ever had their manors and lands here.

It was on the second day of travel that we came to the river. An icy crust lay along each bank, extending out over the stream save for a wide dark band marking the center. There I saw the first signs that this had not been a totally forsaken wilderness. A bridge spanned that way, its pillared supports still standing except at midpoint of the stream.

Guarding either end of that broken span was a set of twin towers, looped for defense, large enough perhaps to provide garrison housing. One was intact; the other three had suffered and were crumbling, their upper stories roofless and only partially walled now.

But midpoint between these two guarding our side of the river was a stone arch which was so deeply carved that its pattern could still be read. And the symbol it bore was one I had seen before—on Utta’s rune rolls—a sword and rod crossed.

On the other side of the bridge a smoothness in the sweep of snow suggested that a pavement or roadway extended on. But it was certainly not the choice of the tribe to make use of its convenience. Though I did not detect any taint of the Shadow about the ruins, we made a wide arc out and away, avoiding any close contact with those crumbling walls.

Perhaps the Vupsalls had long ago learned that such could be traps for the unwary and avoided all remnants of the past on principle. But I kept my eyes on the bridge and that suggestion of road, and wondered where it led, or had once led, and the meaning of those symbols above the gate. To my seeress’ knowledge they had no rune significance, but must once have been a heraldic device for some nation or family.

The use of such identifying markings had long since vanished from Estcarp. But some of the Old Race who had managed to escape the Kolder-inspired massacres in Karsten and had fled for refuge over the border still used them.

We did not cross the river and on this side appeared no vestige of roadway. We paralleled the stream, once more heading due east, whereas we had angled northward out of the warm valley. I thought that this river must feed into the eastern sea my new companions sought.

I finally made my choice of tent aid and asked Ifeng at our second night’s halt if I might have the aid of the widow Bahayi, which request he speedily granted. I believe the first wife of Bahayi’s son was none too pleased, for Bahayi, in spite of her dull-witted appearance, was a worker of excellence. When she took charge of my tent all went with some of the old ease that had surrounded us when Utta’s women had organized our travels. Nor did she show in the least any interest in my magical researches, rolling herself in her coverings to snore away the night. And I learned to ignore her as I sought a key to my prison.

With a growing intensity of need I made that search.

There was almost a foreshadowing of danger to come. Each time that warning hung over me I would consult the answer board and always that reassured me. However, again I made the grave mistake of asking for myself alone—a mistake I have since paid for with much regret.

Our course along the river did bring us to the sea; under the wintery sky that was a bleak and bitter place where winds searched out with fingers of ice any opening in one’s cloak or tunic. Yet this seemed to be the place the tribe sought and under the winds they walked as people who had been in exile but are now returned to their own place.

It was along that shore that the ruins I had missed inland were to be seen. The major pile lay on a point which thrust like the narrow blade of a sword into the sullen and metal gray sea. What it had been—a single castle or fortification, a small walled town, a keep such as the Sulcar sea rovers had once built on Estcarp’s coast—I could not tell from a distance.

And distance was what the Vupsalls kept between themselves and it. Their camp lay about midpoint of the bay into which the river emptied, and that pile of rocks was on the north cape protecting the inner curve, leagues away, so that sometimes it was veiled from us by mists.

For the first time the Vupsalls made use of the remains of other structures. These were waist-high walls of well-set masonry. We may have been camping in the last vestiges of a town where men of the Old Race had once met shipping from overseas.

Our tents were incorporated with those walls for hybrid dwellings which gave us better shelter and such warmth as I, for one, welcomed. I noted that the tribe must have known this spot well and used it many times before, since each team and sled made its way to a certain walled foundation as if coming home. Bahayi, not waiting any direction from me, sent our own hounds to one of the foundations a little apart, the last intact one to the north of those chosen for dwellings. Perhaps this one was Utta’s when she had been here. I accepted Bahayi’s selection, for it served my purpose well, being away from the rest.

I helped her rather ineptly to use the tent walls plus those of a good-sized roofless room. Then she made an improvised broom of a branch, sweeping out sand and other debris, leaving us underfoot a smooth flooring of squared blocks. She brought in armloads of branches with small aromatic green leaves. Some of these she built into beds along the wall, others she shredded into bits and strewed on the floor, so that the scent of their crushing arose pleasantly to mask the odor the stone cell had had at our coming.

At one end was a fireplace which we put to good use. And when we were settled in I found this to be more comfortable than any abode I had been in since leaving the Valley. I sat warming my hands at the fire while Bahayi prepared our supper. I wondered what manner of man had built this house whose shell now sheltered us, and how long it had been since the builders had left the village to sand, wind, rain, snow and the seasonal visits of the nomads.

There had never been any way of reckoning the ages since Escore fell into chaos and the remnant of the Old Race had fled west to Estcarp, sealing the mountains behind them. Once I had, with the aid of my brothers, given birth to a familiar and had sent it forth questing into the past that we might learn what had happened to turn a fair land into a lacework of pitfalls set by the Shadow. We had seen through the eyes of that child of my spirit the history of what had passed, how a pleasant and seemly life had been broken and ravaged through man’s greediness and reckless seeking for forbidden knowledge. The toll of years, of centuries, had not been counted in our seeing, and age beyond telling must now lie between our fire this night and the first ever lit on that same hearth place.

“This is an old place, Bahayi,” I said as she knelt beside me putting forth into the heat of the flames one of those long-handled cooking pots which served at camp fires. “Have you come here many times?”

She turned her head slowly; her forehead was a little wrinkled as if she were trying to think, or count—though the counting system of her people was a most primitive one.

“When I was a child . . . I remember,” she said in her low voice, which came with a hesitation as if she spoke so seldom she had to stop and search for each word. “And my mother—she remembered, too. It is a long time we have come here. But it is a good place—there is much meat.” She pointed southward with her chin. “And in the sea, fish which are sweet and fat. Also there is fruit which can be dried and that we pick in the time of the first cold. It is much good, this place, when there are no raiders.”

“There is a place of many stones there—” I pointed north. “Have you been there?”

She drew in her breath with an audible sucking sound, and her attention was suddenly all for the pan she held. But in spite of her manifest uneasiness I pursued the matter, for there was something about that wind and water assaulted cape which stayed in my mind.

“What is that place, Bahayi?”

Her right shoulder raised a little, she averted her head even more, as one who fears a blow.

“Bahayi!” I did not know why I insisted upon an answer; I only know that somehow I must have it.

“It is . . . a strange place—” Her hesitation was so marked I did not know whether it was born of fear, or if her dull mind could not find words to describe what lay there. “Utta—once she went there—when I was a small child. She came back saying it was a place of Power, not for any who were not of the Wise Ones.”

“A place of Power,” I repeated thoughtfully. But of which Power? Just as there were pools of evil left by the passing or abiding of the Shadow in some places of this ill-treated land, so there were bastions from which one such as I could drawn sustenance and aid. And if the ruin on the far headland was like one of those refuges of blue stones, could a visit there be a strengthening of what I had regained?

Only it stood so far from us that I thought the rune spell would not permit me a visit. I had experimented from time to time, trying to discover how far I could travel from the tribe, and the distance was small indeed.

Suppose I could persuade some of them to accompany me, at least to the boundaries of the place, if they held the interior in too great awe or fear to go all the way? Would that lengthen my invisible leash to the point that I could go exploring?

But if it were a dwelling place of the Shadow, then the last thing I must do would be venture there in my present poorly defended state. If only Utta had left some record of her days with the tribe. By all reckoning she had been with them for generations. Perhaps if she had begun any such account the dust of many years had long since buried it.

Living among a people who recorded only by some event, she had doubtlessly lost her own measurement of time. I thought of those two enigmatic scrolls in Utta’s chest. Perhaps they had come from this cape citadel. And if that pile was the one shown in my dream . . .

There were two scrolls—I had used only one when I saw the adept and his open gateway. Suppose the other held some secret to give me what I now wanted, my freedom? With that thought I experienced a vast surge of impatience to get at such an experiment, to try to dream again and wrest from such dreaming the learning I needed.

I had to call upon hard-learned discipline before Bahayi. For though I was almost certain she was what she appeared to be, incurious and slow of wit, such dreaming could carry one out of one’s body for a space. And so defenseless I wanted no witnesses.

Thus I called upon the same device I had used with Ifeng and brought out Utta’s herb to turn our water-wine into a pleasant drink. Bahayi was so surprised that I offered her such a luxury that I reproached myself for not having done so before. And I set in my mind that I must do something for her. What better time than now?

Thus when she slept I wove a dream spell for her—one which would give her the pleasure she would enjoy the most, leaving it to her own mind and memory to set up the fantasy once I had turned the key to unlock the door for it. Then I set a lock spell on our door and stripped myself. I held the second scroll against the warmth of my breast, bent forward to lay my forehead to its upper end, opening my mind to what might enter.

Again there was a flow into my mind, so much of it incomprehensible, too obtuse for my unlocking; had I the time to puzzle it out, though, I might have gained very much. But I was in the position of one placed at a table on which there lay a vast heaping of gems, under orders to sort out those of one kind in a short time, so my fingers must quest for all the emeralds, pushing aside rubies, sapphires and pearls, beautiful and rare as those might be, and as much as I coveted them.

My “emeralds” I did pick here, there, and again here.

Those bits and scraps were more to me as I awoke than any real gem. I returned the scroll to its container and looked to Bahayi. She lay upon her back, and on her face was the curve of a smile such as I had never seen before on that dull face.

As I drew my cloak about my shivering body and reached out to lay more wood on the fire, I thought again of what I might do for my tent fellow. A small spell might give her for the rest of her life this ability to enter happy dreams each night. To one who wanted more of life than sleep and dreaming it would be a curse rather than a gift. But I thought that for Bahayi it would be a boon. So I brought out what would best reinforce my thought commands and I wrought that spell before I turned to what else I must do that night.

For my “emeralds” had proved treasure indeed. As I had known from the first Utta’s magic was more nature-allied than the learning of Estcarp. And her rune ties were a matter of blood. But blood can cancel blood under certain circumstances. Though it would be painful and perhaps dangerous for me, I was willing to try that road.

I unfolded the mat with the runes, passing my hand across the dull surface so they blazed. Then I took one of the long tribal knives. Its point I put to a vein upon my arm and I cut so that the blood flowed red and strong. From Utta’s hoard I had that rod I had discovered on my first delving. This I dipped into the blood and with care and my own red life, I repainted each rune, its blaze being smothered and darkened by what I had laid upon it. Often I had to stop to press the knife deeper, increase the flow by so much.

When I had done I bound a healing paste of herbs about my wound as quickly as I might, so that I could be about the rest of the spell. I did not know just which of the forces Utta might have called upon in the setting of those bounds, but I had for rebuttal those the Wise Women had known. And now I named them one by one as I watched the blood congeal, the runes hidden by those splotches. When I believed it was ready, I wadded it into a mass and thrust it into the fire.

This was my moment of testing. Had I not wrought aright my life might answer for such destruction. In any event it would not be easy.

Nor was it, for as the flames licked and ate at the mat, so did my body writhe and I bit my lips against the screams of agony searing me. Blood trickled down my chin as well as my arm as my teeth met through my own flesh. But I endured without an outcry which might have awoken Bahayi. I endured and watched the mat until it was utterly consumed. Then I crawled to Utta’s chest and brought out a small pot of thick grease which I smeared, with trembling fingers and many catches of breath, at the hurt, up and down my body, which was reddened and sore as if I and not the mat had lain unprotected in the heart of the coals.

So was the spell broken, yet the breaking left me in so sad a state that it would not be that day which was now dawning, nor even the one to follow, which could see me on my way. Also there were other precautions I must take, for any hound in the camp put to my trail could nose out my way and run me down were I to be found missing.

Bahayi roused with the daylight, but she was as one who moved in the afterglow of a dream, going about her duties with her usual competence but taking very little note of me save when it was necessary to bring food. And we were further aided in our solitude by a blizzard which made such a cloud about our ruins that those of each tenthold kept to themselves and there was no coming nor going.

By late afternoon my hurts were healed to the point I could move about, if stiffly and with some pain. And I set about my own preparations for flight. The thought of the cape ruins held steady in my mind. Utta had visited there and had said it was a place of Power, warning off the tribe. But she had not said of evil Power. And if I took refuge in such a place I might escape pursuit.

Were I to vanish there they might well take it to be an act of magic and be too frightened to come seeking me with hound and tracker. I could shelter therein and wait for better weather to start west again.

It seemed to me as I sorted through all of Utta’s belongings, packet by packet, box by box, jar by jar, that all was very much for the best and that I was coming out of this venture very well. While I had certainly not regained all I had lost through my companionship with Dinzil, still I knew enough now not to be a menace to those I loved. And I might return safely to the Valley.

I made up a small pack of healing herbs and those I needed for such spells as I could use for defense during a journey. And, after Bahayi went to sleep again, I put aside a store of food choosing those things which would last longest and give the greatest strength and energy in the least bulk.

If I went openly, with the knowledge of the clan, to visit the ruins, I could have a sled for the first lap of my journey. However, after that it might well be a matter of carrying only what I could pack on my back. All the more reason to be sure I was fully cured of my ill taken in destroying the rune mat.

The storm came from the north and it held steady for two days and the night between. The howl of the wind overhead was sometimes strangely like voices calling aloud and Bahayi and I looked uneasily at each other, drawing closer together before the fire, which I fed with some of the herbs as well as from our fast dwindling pile of wood.

But at dusk on the second day the wind died and soon after there came a scratching at our door flap. Ifeng stamped in at my call, shaking snow from his heavy furs. He had brought with him a pile of driftwood gathered from along the shore and dumped it by our hearth place, together with a silver scaled fish Bahayi welcomed with a grunt of pleasure.

Having so delivered supplies he looked to me. “Seeress,” he began, and then hesitated, as if not knowing quite how to put his request into words. “Seeress, look into the days to come for us. Such storms sometimes drive the raiders to shore—”

So I brought out my board and he squatted on his heels to watch. I questioned him as to the form of ship to be feared and his halting description gave me a mental picture not unlike those of the Sulcar ships of my childhood. I wondered if those other sea rovers were not of the same breed.

Holding that picture in mind I closed my eyes and read with my fingers. Down the red line they slid rapidly, and down the gold. But on the third ominous black column they caught fast, as if the tips were clotted with pitch. I looked—they were fastened so close to the top I cried out in alarm.

“Danger—great danger—and soon!” I gave warning.

He was gone, leaving the door flap open behind him. I threw aside the answer board to follow, to see him in the dusk of early twilight floundering along the drifts between the ruined walls. Now and again he stopped at some downed flap to yell a warning, so he left all stirring behind him.

Too late! He wavered suddenly, as if he had trod on a treacherous bit of icy footing, falling back against a wall. He had drawn his sword but he never had a chance to use it. I saw in the half gloom the hand ax which had struck him between neck and shoulder, biting out his life. A thrown ax—another Sulcar trick.

Before he had more than fallen to the ground there was a flitting of gathering shadows racing between the low crumbling walls; I heard screaming from the other side of the settlement, where the raiders must have already forced their way into some of the shelters.

I turned on Bahayi, catching up the pack I had prepared.

“Come! The raiders—”

But she stood staring at me in her most stupid way, and I had to throw her cloak about her, pull her to the door, push her ahead of me. The sled dogs had been loosed from their common kennel in the center of the settlement and were at grim work, buying time for their masters. I pulled and dragged at Bahayi, trying to urge her along with me northward.

For some moments she came. And then suddenly, with a sharp cry, as if she were awakening from a dream, she struck out at me, freeing herself. Before I could catch her again she was out of reach, on her way back to the very heart of the melee.

I looked back. Had I been such a one as Utta, with natural forces at my command, I might have been able to aid the tribesmen. Now I was the least in any defense they might summon.

So I turned resolutely north, struggling from one patch of cover to the next, leaving the fighting behind me, just as snow began to fall again.