The Warding of Witch World

26 The Web Lands, The Waste, West

Wanton changling! The pard snarled and slewed around in the dust, earth. Behind him he heard a hiss become a growl.

Female foolishness, that voice inside his head continued. Will this poor world never be free of female foolishness?

Completely bemused, the pard looked to his black counterpart. It would seem these snappish words were not being aimed in his direction. Her ears were flattened to her skull and her fangs shone against her black fur.

Try some foolishness yourself, oldster—time your blood ran a little faster. Just because you have turned your back on certain matters that does not mean that they have ceased to exist. Each of us have our rights—

Not, her send was interrupted sharply, when the desires of one challenges the purposes of all. Try this again and you will be the worse for it.

Kethan blinked and blinked again. He lay on his back looking up at paling stars. And he was man, not pard. But some of that aroused in him made him restless and he sat up. A dream, of course, but such a one as seemed as real as a true sending. And that voice… Ibycus! Surely it had been Ibycus who had broken into that most interesting meeting.

He looked around. The mage was apparently asleep a distance away, his cloak pulled over him against the fall of dew. Then he himself was aware that Uta’s warm body was no longer fit to his side. The cat was still missing. Night hunting—as he himself had gone many times for the sheer joy of running free under the moon.

Uta—the black cat—and she who had met him by the cat-crowned pillars? No, that other had been a match for his pard size—a dream weaving in all surety.

However, he was too fully awake now to try to sleep again. Kethan sat up, his knees against his chest, his arms about them. How much of any were was beast, how much man? He was only one-third were by blood, his father a halfling, his mother a Wise-woman from overseas. He had been raised as a man and would never perhaps have learned his heritage had not Ibycus, in his guise of trader, brought the pard belt to his supposed father’s castle.

Without the belt he could not make the change as perhaps a true-bred were could do. And he could remember his first fears when the changes had come without his control, before he had learned to master his talent. Now he was well practiced in slipping in and out of the beast’s role, and he took pride in what his animal senses could uncover while hidden to the denser humankind.

He avoided the other sleepers and went to the spring, where he shed shirt and jerkin and doused head and shoulders into water which was cold enough to bring a gasp out of him. Squinting up at the graying sky, he decided that they were in for a fair day—and perhaps a hot one. Best make sure all their water bottles were well filled.

As he stood up and stretched, he faced west. There appeared to be no break in this scrub-filled land. And he thought that the trail of those from Garth Howell ought to be easy to pick up—at least for a pard.

The rest of the camp were astir by the time he returned. Sleeping mats and blankets were rolled and there was already food laid out. Lately Kethan had taken to leaving his share, being well able as a hunter pard to supply his own needs on the march.

Uta had returned and seemed to be of the same mind. Her night’s hunting must have been good, for she turned aside from what Aylinn offered her and went to sit by Trussant, plainly ready to once more be carried at her ease.

Before Kethan was ready for his own change, Elysha suddenly appeared beside him. Those strange, compelling violet eyes of hers caught and held him. She had the faintest quirk of a smile about her lips.

“Good trailing. However”—now the smile had vanished—“there are dreams and dreams. Make very sure, young were one, that you discover which is which. And take nothing which is different to be what it seems until it is proven so. ”

Then she was gone again before he could answer. Dreams? Had that venture in the night been a dream of Elysha’s spinning? He remembered Firdun’s story of her cloud castle, which had seemed as real as the ground beneath it. For one who dealt deeply in glamorie, a dream-sending should be an easy task.

However, this was day not night and the trail awaited him. He made the change and took the lead with a long graceful bound.

Firdun elected to ride point today, taking the northern swing while Guret matched him to the south. Watching Kethan’s departure, he felt a twinge of envy. How did it feel to run free in a body so unlike the one one was born into? Yet in camp Kethan seemed a quiet young man, like the son of any mantle lord. Firdun had heard tales of the ferocity of the weres in battle, but to hear and see were two different things. Kethan as a man, for all his fine armor—which rode mostly in a bundle on that strange mount of his—appeared a most amiable and peaceful sort.

The were’s foster sister… Firdun always felt a little awkward in her presence, especially since he had watched her draw Hardin back from the Dark hold. His own sister was all vivid color, her dark hair usually threaded with golden chains, her skirt and breeches of gold or rich rust brown—like unto the legendary scales of the Gryphon. Her eyes were golden also, and she was such as enlivened any company she joined. But Aylinn was like her beloved moon, and as far from any man’s touch. Firdun tried not to watch her so much when they were in company, for fear that others would note his regard.

Her talents ranged to a very high level and, though he had been brought in to company with Ibycus in reducing the things from that foul well, he felt like a untutored boy beside a mage mistress when they were together.

How much Power had the Great Ones seen fit to grant him? Alon had tested him several times and often surprised them both with the results of such measurement. He could not shape-change, but he could produce a certain amount of glamorie, though certainly nothing to rival that Elysha was able to summon. He could ward, and he could break wards. He had no healing ability, but that was mainly a talent which was female, not male.

On the other hand, he could hold his own against any arms master he had met at a mantle hold. Jervon and his father had seen to that. In open battle where powers were not evoked, he could give good account of himself, he was sure.

Yet at the Eyrie he was the one without because he could not meld. Perhaps, once this journey was behind them, he might go seeking a place of his own. The Sulcar captains were always ready to sign a good fighting man for their voyages. The Falconers served them so for years—and they traveled into places as unknown to the world at large as this Waste was unknown to men from the east.

He jerked his thoughts around to the business at hand, an intent study of the land through which he rode. There had been no sign of Kethan since he had taken off as they left; however, any alarm he would send could be picked up by most of them.

This was dreary countryside, though according to the old tales it had once been well settled, by a people who had knowledge long since forgotten. He knew that the furtive traders from the Dales who dared to venture here brought back many strange and even beautiful artifacts. But they were jealous of their hunting grounds. So far this party’s contact with the past had been that place of the pyramids, the long-pillared pool, and the well enclosure. Surely there was more to be found.

At nooning the group drew together and shared rations and a very scant amount of water, most of which they gave to their beasts. The countryside was becoming more and more desert. Where they had been greeted on their first venturing into this country by the plains of cracked yellow clay, and then passed into the place of red earth and veined foliage, now the ground showed wavelike stretches of a gray-blue coarse sand.

There were fewer and fewer plants to be seen, and the gnarled trees were missing. However, from portions of the sand there protruded tall poles which did not appear to be a natural growth. They were the same hue as the shade and about the size of four boar spears bound together.

There was no tumbled masonry about to suggest ruins as there had been at the well. Guret and Firdun studied several of the poles near their temporary resting place and found them a puzzle. Though they were slightly rough in texture to the touch, they did not seem to be rock, and inquiring touches left the fingers tingling for a moment or two.

Ibycus tested them with his ring. There was a responsive color but very pale, and it matched the hue of the sand in which the poles were planted. They were not set up in any pattern, but scattered here and there, with a good distance between each of the poles.

The travelers tried when they started out again to angle well away from those standards, being cautious enough to avoid anything for which there was no practical explanation. Mind-send from Kethan assured them that they were still on the trail of the Garth Howell party.

Ibycus’s head suddenly jerked skyward. The sun had been cloaked in part by a haze and now his ring color was deepening toward a murky red-blue.

“Watch aloft!” he shouted. “Get the horses moving—ride!”

As if his words were a spell, the haze thickened in places. And from it balls broke loose, while the sand in which the poles were footed began to run like water. Not only were the travelers being threatened from above, but below also. The Kioga, Hardin, and Firdun were trying to press the loose horses to a faster pace and yet keep them away from that rippling. Aylinn had bow in hand and arrows ready.

A round object thrust upward out of the disturbed sand and instantly she let fly at it. Her arrow struck true and rebounded, the thing paying no attention to the attack.

Something which resembled the forepart of a giant worm was pulling into the light and it was not alone. The rippling sand parted to let through others like it, while down from the sky dropped what might have been fishers’ nets, each weighted with a black ball-shaped body. The nets caught on the poles, swung wide, back and forth.

One of the extra horses screamed horribly and reared. A web traveler clung to its neck to thrust fangs deep into its throat, and the worms nearest to the attack writhed toward the doomed animal at a surprising speed. The Kioga were urging on the animals, but Firdun turned and rode for the horse already kicking on the ground and thrust with his sword. There was a spurting of greenish ichor mixed with blood and the thing shivered like a punctured bag.

“Away—they are poisonous!” Ibycus shouted.

Firdun’s mount leaped over the nearest worm and he drew back to help form a rearguard with the mage, Hardin (now equipped with a Kioga bow), and Aylinn. Ibycus threw out his arm to wave them all on. One of the web creatures struck at him, but Elysha’s forearm swept up and there was a violet flash from her bracelet.

The web thing burst, spattering the ground with matter which steamed like acid. There was another horse down, and a Kioga trying to ride close enough for a shot at the attacker was nearly thrown as his horse reared to avoid one of the worms.

With their riding webs fast to the poles, the spider things could swing hard enough to whirl themselves a great distance. Their ground-bound allies whipped about, one sweeping a Kioga’s mount from its feet. Luckily the rider sprawled out and away from his downed horse while the attacker fed upon the screaming animal. He charged toward the thing on foot in spite of Ibycus’s shouts to keep his distance.

This time Firdun spurred between, knocking the Kioga back and slashing at the worm at mid-body. He barely avoided the whipping tail of the thing and then was nearly knocked from his saddle by one of the spiders. However, the frenzied fighting of his horse to be free and away prevented the creature from a true strike and a backswing of sword sent it spinning to smash against one of the poles from which dropped an empty web.

Luckily that line of poles did not extend forever. And it looked as if both the swinging spider things and the worms were unable to leave their close vicinity. The Kioga were again striving to bring the pack train and the spare mounts into line when there sounded a distant roaring.

Wind swept at them with a buffeting force, freeing some of the webs. Whether or not the creatures could actually control the flight of their carrying strands, those now in flight could not tell, but at least ten were riding the gusts of wind toward them.

It was several moments before Firdun grasped the fact that they were being herded. Their attempts to outride and outrun those wind riders sent them following a southern direction. Guret, Lero, and Hardin began to prove the Kioga expertise, and that of a Mantle hunter, with their bows.

But these were not easy targets. They appeared to ride currents of air which rose or dropped without any pattern. Those steady streams of air also gathered up puffs of grit from the gravel waves, sending it to sting flesh, threaten the eyes of the would-be fighters.

The travelers were away from the poles now and at least the worms appeared to have made no attempt to follow them. A lucky shot burst another of the web riders, and Obred uttered a war cry. Still the wind blew steadily and the web riders showed no signs of giving up pursuit.

Then lightning struck straight across the path of those web-borne horrors. Struck once, and again. Several webs were rent and the creatures in them burst and gone. It was then that Firdun’s horse stumbled and he was thrown, crashing down on his shoulder so that his sword fell from a numbed hand. A web had touched ground not too far away. Its occupant, apparently uninjured, leaped for the man. His horse had recovered to plunge on. Firdun had stooped to try to recover his sword when sanity returned. Ward… what would ward such a creature as this?

He had never been forced to face the summoning of formulas so fast, but somehow his half-dazed mind was able to sort out words and he shouted them.

The lightning whips still struck back and forth through the spinning webs but did not approach him and he had a feeling that they in themselves might be as deadly to his kind as the creatures they sought to destroy.

That thing which had started its leap at him crashed in midair against what he had so quickly summoned—a shield. Still clinging to that materialization, it thudded to the ground, the shield flattened over it. Firdun shook his head slowly. Why had he not drawn on this talent when the web riders first appeared? He had been as open to attack as a Dalesman of no talent.

Now he flung up his right hand, still numb from his fall, and forced his fingers into patterns which should be as familiar and easy to him as drawing breath into his lungs. Only he struggled as might an apprentice of the least talent. It was as if he himself were somehow in ward, kept from exercising his powers except when he drew upon the very limits of his energy.

The lightning flashes were coming farther apart and weakening. At the very moment he became aware of that, Firdun was forced to his knees. A mighty hand might have reached out of the sky to flatten him for the puny powerless thing he was. Something was draining, gnawing at his memory. He could not recall the proper gestures, the words, as much of him as his own name.

Then followed fear, not that which was the natural result of their battle, but rather a fear which was an emptiness—in him! Warrior and warder as he was, Firdun uttered a cry, his whole body shuddering. He could not move any more than if he really were encased in one of the wind-driven nets.

To be so shaken by raw fear was worse than taking a wound in the flesh, for this reached far deeper, left him a quivering nothing. Nothing—no! He was Firdun of the Gryphon. He clung to the thought-picture of that Gryphon.

Landsil, one of the Great Old Ones, who had stood twice against the utmost power of the Dark and won. Landsil! Instead of the jumble of Power words he had tried to keep in sequence, Fir-dun now centered on that one name, held to it as the only security in his present world.

The hand which pressed—there was no hand! He heard now the beat of mighty wings. And the gale those raised banished that which had entrapped him. From Landsil’s gift had come his talent, and once more the Gryphon returned to his breed that gift.

Firdun pulled to his feet. The web riders had not been swept from the sky even by those lightning bolts which had now vanished. But they were wavering, and that push of wind which had sent them in pursuit was dying—it was dead.

Drifting webs settled on the scrub land. Firdun held up his head. Just as Ibycus had drawn from him more than he thought he had had at the well, so now he brought up his full strength. The air between him and those webs glimmered oddly. He could sense more than feel the freezing cold which was gathering. There was surely a sheen of frost already on the withering grass.

No movement, no wind, no bodies emerging from the webs. The webs themselves were turning into crystals, glistening in a sun which now cut through the haze overhead. Firdun picked up his sword, rammed the blade twice in the soil to clean it of the noisome ichor of the slain, and sheathed it. Turning, he looked for the others.

Aylinn was kneeling on the ground beside a figure in purple clothing. Elysha—struck down by poisons? He was sure that the webs had not carried past where he had taken his involuntary stand. Ibycus knelt at her other side. The Kioga were urging the animals together in some semblance of order, but Hardin stood a little apart, eyeing Firdun as he came, as one might look upon an adept. One hand was covering his mouth.

As Firdun advanced, the young lord was shaken out of his trance.

“Jakata,” he said. “He used his Power—and it did not hold.” His hand arose in a warriors salute. “Lord, they spoke of the Gryphon breed at Garth Howell and Jakata laughed. I think he does otherwise at this hour.”

“The Lady.” Firdun only nodded at the boy’s speech and went on to where those other three were gathered.

He had never seen such an expression on Ibycus’s face before. And beneath the one he could not read he sensed the other’s rage.

“Heart-held”—that was Elysha, her voice thin but her words precise and confident—“this was another testing—be not so disturbed that it came. That one we follow will use every fraction of the Dark which lies in this dreary land to try us.” She raised her hands a little and Firdun saw that the gems in her bracelets no longer held their rich gleam. He was sure then he knew from whence had come those lightning flashes.

Now Ibycus stood up. “Fool, I am a fool. He must know this land far more than any have believed possible—and he makes it serve him.”

“But”—Elysha laughed and raised herself with Aylinn’s help—“he does not know the mettle of those who move against him. Landsil’s get, I salute you,” she said to Firdun.

“Hardly an adept,” Firdun returned, “or perhaps even a ’prentice of promise. But there was no warning from Kethan.”

Aylinn looked up, her face very sober. “He is alive and free. Were that not so, I would know it. Perhaps his way, though still westward, did not follow this same route.”

The pard was crouched in the best spot of cover he could sight in this country, which had changed again from the dry plains they had known. He had caught and eaten a fat waddling bird in the last of the long grasses and had feasted well. Now he was tonguing his paws but still keeping a watchful eye on what lay below this perch of his.

His trailing sense had not been taxed this day. It had been easy to pick up the scent. Earlier he had found only a deserted campsite. But the traces he nosed out angled now a little more to the north, and the land was beginning to rise. Not only were there hills here to break the monotony of the plain, but they were fast growing taller and there was a smudge on the horizon which promised greater heights.

However, below was what was of more interest now. For they had camped early and there had been quite an amount of stirring about even after they had halted. They had put up wards and he had no thought of testing those. His pard range of sight was enough to let him spy out what mischief they might be preparing without getting close enough to trigger such unseen defenses.

The major portion of the party had withdrawn to the farther end of the valley before him and were there setting up some shelters and had started a fire. But the one he knew to be Jakata, together with the two underlings, wearing sage’s drab robes, were busily at work in another direction. The two sages had chopped down several small shrubs and dug out the remainder of their roots, pulled the coarse grass up by the roots, working with the haste of those who dared not even think of disobeying any order. Their leader had seated himself on a rock to one side and sat staring into space as if he were inducing a trance.

That they intended calling upon some Power, Kethan was well aware even before the sages began to draw lines on the bare earth with branches they had stripped and sharpened. They were busied for some time before their leader took part in the action.

Rising from his seat, he picked up a mage staff of some dark wood, rune-carven and crowned with a monstrous head. The others were setting out what looked to Kethan at this distance to be short, thick clubs, planting them end up here and there among their carefully formed designs.

Having finished, they hurried out of the maze of lines, and Kethan was certain that they would just as soon be elsewhere during the rest of the proceedings.

Jakata raised his staff and pointed it at one of those clubs, which immediately produced flame as might a candle. He methodically continued until he stood in a circle of fire.

Kethan growled deep in his throat. The stench of evil was growing stronger by the moment. He was well aware that Jakata knew exactly what he was doing, for the pressure of Power was rising. Kethan debated a withdrawal, but when the Power did not increase past a certain point he was sure his presence would not be revealed.

Jakata snapped his fingers and the two others moved reluctantly toward him. They did not come alone. From behind a rock they dragged a smaller figure, hands bound together, squealing and sobbing as they forced it forward.

To Kethan the captive was a new form of life. No bigger than a half-grown child, it was very slender of body, and, that being bare, he could see that the skin was very dark brown. What hair it had was clustered in tightly tied lumps on its head and it was plainly female and, in spite of its small size, mature.

The pard’s lips drew back in a silent snarl. That Jakata intended to use this small female for some bloody summoning he was certain, and his whole nature, both man and beast, revolted against being a silent and not interfering witness of such an act.

The sages thrust their captive down on her knees before Jakata. One of them whipped out a thick cord which he looped around the prisoner, each of the guards thus holding an end taut to keep her firmly in place.

Kethan stirred; his muscles ached for him to leap down and deal with Jakata. But he well knew that this Dark lord must be close to an adept in Power and no prey for a were.

Now the man in Kethan began to take control. His talent was based on his own body, but he had a second heritage. Gillan of the Green Tower had borne him, and even the weres had come to know that she was beyond their Powers when they had tried to break the bond between her and her were mate.

Gillan’s gifts were like her foster daughter’s. She served the Lady as a healer, but she had other talents she could call upon. The Power building here was growing like the roaring of a furnace.

Jakata might feel that he held it well in leash, but if the Dark beckoned, so would the Light follow.

Kethan had no moonflowers beneath his paws; such magic was for women. But this was a woman captive and perhaps so some plea might well be made for her. He had never even thought of trying this before.

Yes! The mind-send was sharp and he knew it. He turned his head quickly, but there was no sign of that sleek, black-furred form. But she was with him now—in his mind.

Yes! Her encouragement came again and Kethan gave a leap of mind, not body, into paths he had never trod before.