The Warding of Witch World

42 Into the Halls of Ice, North

Trusla was caught in that dream which she would never forget. She swayed and turned, only the bulk of her heavy trail clothing disguising her graceful surrender to what lay in her mind. Twice she halted and once more shook sand into her hand and sent it flying. But she did not open her eyes—for she was not there. No, she danced in the moonlight beside a pool, weaving her steps to match those of the being who had summoned her and now sustained her past any fear or misgiving.

The others watched her in awe, though Simond had dropped his hold on the rope by which they were towing Odanki back to security and would have tried to follow her had not the shaman stepped in between.

“Young lord, to each her own magic. She dances now with a Power which is hers alone, and no harm to her comes of obeying such a command.”

“Possessed?” he flared, and glanced beyond Trusla to Audha. The girl still crouched in the door of that unbelievable castle, her hands held, very apparently against her will, about Frost’s jewel.

“Not so! She has opened a door to that which was given her as a birth gift—to be held against just such a time as this.” Inquit’s cape fluttered a little, though no wind had touched it. The edge of it arose before him and he had a sudden idea that, fragile as that feathered weaving looked, it might be a formidable barrier.

Right—now left—and two steps right again. She touched no slippery ice spread as she went. For the last time Trusla paused to toss out once again what the jar contained. That carrier seemed much lighter.

She opened her eyes. There were the three steps leading up to that gaping door. But there was light above the entrance. She felt a touch of warmth—no more than a spring breeze might carry—as she looked up at that carven head which spanned the top of the portal.

Though the face remained a mask, the eyes were fully open. They held the blue-green of far seas—and intelligence—as well as anger and perhaps some dismay. Audha moaned and Trusla took the last three steps which brought her under the head and to the side of the Sulcar girl.

As Trusla looked down at Audha, she saw no longer that mask-like serenity but rather a twisted grimace of pain, and with that the awakening. Perhaps that which waited had released her hold on her prisoner.

Placing the sand jar back in the inner sling of her fur overgarment, Trusla went to her knees, for only so could she face Audha squarely. She held out her hands and said simply: “Give it to me!”

The painful grimace on the Sulcar girl’s face contracted even more. She was swinging her cupped hands back and forth, striving to push them apart and release the jewel.

Trusla straightened a little. Her fingers still felt slightly gritty from the sand. That and the Power it held for her had defeated one Power; could it another?

Reaching forward, she cupped her sandy fingers around Audha’s, jerking, shaking hands. “Loose!” she commanded. But she knew that truly it was not to the girl she spoke now but to the Power behind her. “By the will of Xactol of the sand—be this lock broken!”

Audha’s hands went rigid in her grasp and the girl screamed, a thin plaint, like that of a child in deep despair.

But loosen her grasp did, though the fingers remained crooked as if they still would hold fast what she had taken.

The jewel felt cold with the sting of ice-borne mountain water. It seemed to twist of itself as if to be free of Trusla’s grasp, but she did not give way. So—

So—it would seem that perhaps Trusla had won, only to lose. There arose a harsh, grinding sound. The surface on which they now both crouched shifted under them. Trusla ducked as a large fragment fell from above.

There were cracks opening in those solid walls. The colors which ran across them flamed even more fiercely. She saw two of the carven heads crash and splinter into bits. The castle was shattering around them.

A pointed shaft, looking as viciously perilous as a spear, skimmed by Audha so close that it slit the edge of her outer fur tunic.

Trusla looked for the pattern of sand on the ice. Save for a red stain here and there, it was gone. Yet they would be safer out on that slippery surface than here. She folded the jewel into what she hoped would be safety. Then, catching the much larger Sulcar girl by the shoulders, she gave her the most vigorous pull she could, stumbling herself as she went backward, but getting them both into a sprawl in the open.

The continued destruction of the castle made her push and pull Audha—who seemed utterly helpless—as far as she could from the rain of splinters coming from those walls. The slickness of the ice lake was an aid now instead of a hindrance and they whirled together out of reach just as one of the towers which was part of the entrance came crashing where they had been only moments earlier.

Then they were not alone. Simond had her—though he did not urge her to her feet, but rather wrapped her hands around the rope which girdled him, and they both skidded away from the rain of sharp-edged ice fragments.

However, even as the castle ceased to be, so now the slick ice vanished and they were crawling over the rough surface of the mountain ways again.

There was a final ponderous sound from behind and then Trusla found herself, her grip on Simond iron-hard, and beside her Frost. The thought uppermost in her now was what had sent her into the maelstrom of falling ice. She loosed one hand from her anchorage with Simond and fumbled in her tunic—to bring out the jewel.

It was dull and gray again. The lights which had played about it were gone. She wanted to be rid of it as soon as possible and when Frost took it, she sighed and relaxed against Simond’s broad shoulder at her back.

“To each her own talent,” said the witch. There seemed to be moisture in her eyes and certainly at that moment she looked more like one who lived apart from Powers than at any time Trusla had seen her. “Yours has served us well, little sister.”

“Audha.” Trusla could see the shaman a little distance away kneeling beside the limp figure of the Sulcar. “She—

That comforting shadow of humanness was gone from Frost’s face and Trusla shivered. What would be the wrath of a witch whose very source of power had been stolen?

“Audha is… gone,” Frost answered. “What moved her like a leashed hound withdrew when you took the gem. That one wanted it and yet feared to bring the unknown within her own stronghold. She has no use for a tool which has failed her. And it is the Sulcars who drew her worst hatred.”

“Dead…” Trusla turned her head, unable for that moment to look upon the other girl. Ill fortune had been with her, and always at the bidding of this thing they still faced.

“Perhaps it would be better so. Not dead, but spirit-drained. Our sister of the Latts is a dreamer. Perhaps a dream—when there is time—can reach into the depths and call forth again that which is Audha. Now she is a child—or less than a child.”

“The castle?” Trusla did not want to think more of Audha. To be a body without an innermost dwelling was to attract the worst of the Dark, though she knew that both Frost and Inquit would do what they could to protect Audha from that last outrage.

“Is gone. Look,” Simond said in her ear. He shifted around, drawing her with him so they stared across that expanse which had been glass smooth. It was broken and creviced now, fragments of ice forming barriers. Where those towers had stood, the colors racing over them, there stood now rock, black crags. Yet just at the point where that open gate had beckoned them in, there was a deep and dark hole, some passage or cave cut out of that rocky core.

“Glamorie?” She would not have been surprised if Frost had answered her yes. Trusla knew well that a master or mistress of the Power could create a whole city by choice, though such creations never lasted for any length of time.

“In its way. Except…” Frost was twisting the links of her broken chain apart, striving to rejoin them to hold the jewel once more. There was a raw red line on the small portion of her neck Trusla could see within the thick fur framing her face and edging her hood. “Except,” she repeated, having completed her task to her satisfaction, “that which held the castle still sits in waiting there.”

Captain Stymir came up behind them. “No place to strive to twist someone out as one pries a mussel from its shell, unless we know more.”

“No,” Frost agreed. “We do not enter that web. But I think that she who shelters there now has something to consider.”

“To fight on enemy territory when one knows nothing of the odds,” Simond commented, “has never availed any attacker much in the end.”

“To fight…” Now it was the shaman who joined them. Audha lay on a padding of cloaks. Curled very close beside her, Kankil stroked the girl’s blank face gently with one hand. “To fight is not always the answer.”

“You have shown that one how foolish it is to stand against your Power.” Odanki limped up. He was gazing proudly at the shaman. “Set the dream demons on her—they will twist her!” His hands moved as if he held a length of hide between them and were indeed twisting it.

“None of us knows the extent of the other’s Powers,” Frost returned. “Also, there is this. By the virtue of the talent I cannot truly read this one is of the Dark as we know it. Perhaps it is entrapped.”

“Entrapped?” the captain nearly exploded.

“Captain,” Frost asked, “what is that dim legend that your people entered into this world through a gate? What do we now hunt but that same gate? Perhaps something else has also been caught so—an alien to this world, a world which she has found barren and forbidding. Your people were free when your ships plowed into our sea—as dangerous as that is in this north. For someone who had no ship—no—”

“The ship in the plaque!” Stymir interrupted, and jerked that out of hiding. When he held it out into the wan light of day, they could see the change.

The black blot in the center was indeed in outline something akin to a ship, but far different than those the Sulcars sailed. It was long and narrow, and, where a midmast should be, there was a single tall and wide wedge, too solid-looking to be classed a sail. There was only one figure on the deck and that, as far as they could see, was a lump which had some of the attributes of the thing they had seen frozen in the ice.

“That thing—that thing could do this?” The captain’s arm swung out in the direction of the shattered castle.

“No—it was a servant of some kind,” Frost said slowly, “and that ship was close on the Sulcars as they fled. They gained freedom—perhaps this ship did not.”

“If we only knew more…” Trusla did not mean that as a complaint.

“But we do not!” the captain returned savagely, swinging the plaque wide in his hand as if he would hurl it from him.

“It is as one weaves a feather robe,” Inquit commented. “One studies the pattern and one places a quill there and quill here to make the proper pattern. But she who abides within there”—the shaman nodded toward the cave entrance—“is the only one who perhaps knows that pattern. And if our efforts continue to counter her, what may she send against us? She has tried us three times—three failures—and such as she does not take kindly to that.”

“Therefore”—Frost’s hand was again upon her jewel—“we seek her out. And we may still have a guide.” Abruptly she left their company and went to where Audha lay, Kankil still curled beside her, crooning in her ear softly and patting her cheek.

Trusla would have thought the girl asleep or unconscious, but her eyes were open, staring up into the sky where already the night was clouding in.

Frost knelt and touched the Sulcar girl with the same gentleness that Kankil used. She sat so, linked by her fingers on the other’s forehead, pushing back the heavily furred edge of Audha’s hood. Her own face smoothed, her eyes closed. She was seeking, the Estcarpian girl was sure, for some spark of life or thought upon which she could seize as a bond to draw the other back to them.

“We wait, we eat,” Inquit announced. “We ready ourselves. For it is not to stand upon ice and await the will of another that we have come here.”

Eat they did, very sparingly of their provisions. Trusla sucked a long splinter of ice Simond handed her, gaining from its melting the water her body must have. Yet as they made what preparations they could, all their eyes kept returning to that waiting cavern which grew ever darker.

It was Kankil who managed to get some food into Audha, pressing tiny bits of journey cake into the girl’s mouth and then smoothing her throat as if to urge her to swallow.

“She is not mindless.” Frost held her share of cake in one hand while the other hovered over her jewel. “It is as if she has fled into a very deep part within her, and there locked in that which she has always been. When we move—she will come. The little one”—she indicated Kankil—“will be her guide.”

Frost and Inquit stepped out with a confidence Trusla was certainly far from feeling. However, she matched strides with Simond and that was easeful in itself. Behind them Audha moved, her right hand tightly held by Kankil, whose chirping rose and fell as if she were singing some ritual to keep her charge on her feet.

Then came the Sulcars and Odanki, all ready with weapons, even though it was in their minds that battle steel had no power here.

The dark of the cave mouth closed about them. But if their enemy meant to keep them so blinded, that ploy failed from the first, for Frost’s jewel gave forth a thin gray light.

That did not reach far, but it was enough to show sure footage ahead. However, they were not far into the opening before they were fronted by something new. Even as the towers and walls of the ice palace had failed to hold, now they could see the broken remains of another barrier, the sharp points left in what might be a frame, warning them away.

It gave steel its chance, for the men came to the fore to break and beat to shards all which threatened them. Now Audha first showed signs of true life.

“She—the shadow one—this was her abiding place.” The words came loudly and the Sulcar girl balked when Kankil attempted to urge her on. At last it was the shaman who took strong hold of Audha’s upper arm, drawing her along with due care to keep away from the splinters.

That they were indeed in a place which was of a different nature they realized as they gathered in a group on the other side of that broken barrier. For the cold which had struck at them so long was gone.

It was not only warmer, but there was a strong scent.

“The sea!” Captain Stymir exclaimed.

Perhaps, but something more also, Trusla was sure. The ocean scent was cut by a whiff now and then of a spicy odor—certainly not unpleasant. Frost’s limited jewel light showed them something else as well—squarely across their path, yet leaving them room on either side for their passage, was a length of dull-colored metal. When the light of the jewel touched it, there developed flickers of colored light, wan and hardly visible, just enough to show that the object was oval, pointed at each end, yet wide in the middle section and deep.

As Frost held their improvised lamp closer, they could see that the interior was oddly shaped, as if a body had been half sunk in some protective lining. The outline remaining was the source of that spicy fragrance. A bed of some sort, Trusla believed, and a far more comfortable one than she herself had known for many days.

“She is gone!” That cry came from Audha. Pulling hard against the grip the shaman kept on her, she reached the side of that resting place and flailed out with both hands into the empty space as if her touch would supply what her sight did not.

The passage plainly led beyond that bed, if bed it was, and when they had drawn Audha away from it, they ventured on. The smell of the sea lingered with them and the warmth continued. They threw back their furred hoods, loosened the throat ties of their coats.

“There is a slope. We are going down!” Odanki suddenly exclaimed.

It was true. But the descent was a gradual one. Around them the way remained dark and smooth. Their footing appeared to be rock; they could be traversing now the heart of some mountain.

The interruption to their journey struck without any warning. There was a growling as if rock scraped rock heavily, then that gradual slope became a slide as slick as if it had been greased. They lost their footing; body thudded against body as they tried vainly to somehow control that furious descent.

Trusla heard the exclamations of the men, and rising above them, she heard chanting: two bespelling runes though not quite fusing, showing that both the shaman and the witch were calling upon Power.

This time, however, that which they needed did not answer. Instead, in what was a tangle of bodies and wildly flailing limbs, they left the hold of the tube and came out into light which held not only the colors but the heat of flames.

Here was another cavern or space—so wide that one could not see the far end of it. Only a short distance from them was a pit. It gave off the same stench as the mud pool. And across its molten surface (for it seemed to be not true mud but rather a flowing of fire) were fountains of flame and sparks arose. The heat hit at them with almost the same intensity as torches held close to their bodies, and Trusla was sure that the fur of her clothing was singed by it.

Mostly on hands and knees, they crawled back as far as they could get from that flame pool. There was no possible chance of their retracing their wild journey through the tube. If they were to find a way out, they must venture either right or left as close to the wall as they could.

But before they came to any decision, one of the flame fountains very close to the edge of that pool leaped higher, grew thicker, firmer, as they watched wide-eyed.

This was no flame pillar, for rather a woman stood there, her white body untouched by any sign of burn. Even her hair, which did not lie upon her shoulders but waved about her as if wind-driven, was not singed.

She was humanoid—but she was not human. Simond, who knew the strange breeds which flourished in Escore, was sure of that. And Trusla, seeing the flash of those sea-green eyes, knew that it had been a representation of this face which had been over the door of that vanished castle.

Reaching out, the woman caught a tendril of flame. It hardened in her hold into a shaft not unlike a spear. Deliberately she drew back her arm and threw the fiery point striking straight for Captain Stymir.

“Sulcar.” Her voice was a hiss and her mouth seemed to twist into a grimace of pure hatred.

On the breast of the captain’s fur tunic a patch of hair seared and smoked.

But at the same time there was another weapon in the air. Inquit might have been expecting just such an attack. One of her feathers penetrated the outer flame fence of that pool. It struck down and there was a puff of heavy smoke, and the fire died around the woman.

“Yaaahhh!” Sheer fury was the base of that cry as the other flung her arms high. Fire burst into being in the air itself, to swirl toward them like rain wind-driven.

“By the Will which is ever—the Power which dies not, the Light which never yields to Dark…” Almost as loud as the fire woman’s screams of rage arose that chant, sounding somehow cool, calm, and confident. Frost faced the other squarely, and now she took one deliberate step and then another toward her.

What Power the witch was able to call upon, Trusla could never afterward guess, but that rain of fire winked out and the flames from which it had bubbled sank back.

“Hate—why do you carry this burden of hate?” Still as calm and clear as the words of the ritual came Frost’s voice now.

The woman stood very still amid the lowered flames, her eyes fixed solely on the witch. “To all is allowed blood price—is that not also a belief of this barren land of yours?” she sneered.

“Greater yet is one who asks no price. Long ago was the act for which you seek vengeance—exile from your world—

“My world,” the other cut in. “Not so—maybe now the death mounds for my kind. We hunted only for a refuge. And those”—she flung out a pointing hand toward the Sulcars—“would see us dead—because we differed from them. Our poor beasts they killed as monsters—our talents made us demons. Some of us died in their fires. But we were strong, and when we learned the secrets of their world, we turned the very earth they would hold against them. Yes, we drove them from land to land, island to island, for we had secrets their pitiful excuses for Power holders could not understand.

“We drove them! I, Urseta Vat Yan, led the fleet which hunted them down. But they had among them someone different, someone who had come through space, or time, or followed some path we did not know. And that one opened the way for them, so they escaped. But for me and mine—the gate locked itself upon us and there was no key for its opening.”

“Hate can be a powerful lock on any gate,” Frost said, still calm against the heat of the others tongue. “Hate, cherished and red, brings madness. I call upon you now, Urseta Vat Yan—you are a sister in Power. Use that Power as it should be used—unlock the gate within you.”

The woman’s face was still a scowl of anger. It seemed to those watching that rage itself now fueled the flames among which she stood. Then, without any answer, she vanished and straightaway the fire in the pit failed. So darkness drew in from all sides.