The Warding of Witch World

6 Karsten Southward

Liara held her eyes stubbornly to the fore and refused to glance backward. After the exhausting struggle through the broken lands, they had gained the holding of the Lady Eleeri, a place which fairly breathed the threat of magic at one, or so Liara held to that thought.

The keep in which they had sheltered to rest and regather supplies was fully as impressive as Krevanel itself—but held none of the grayness of spirit she had so often known in her own suite of chambers there. Light seemed to cling and clothe its walls as the days remained fair and the weather favored them.

Three separate herds grazed in the wide, rich green of the valley. But none of any one herd strayed into territory which was claimed by another. The Keplians were utterly free.

Time and again the stallion Hylan would come into the courtyard and the Lady Eleeri, as if summoned, would be ready to meet him there. That they communicated by mind Liara was well aware, but such talent was not hers, nor did she seek it. It was difficult enough to hold to her belief in herself among those of her own species, for none of her traveling companions awoke in her any desire to know them better.

Having had his conference with Eleeri, the stallion would leave, not only the keep but also the valley. And each time he returned it was not alone. Once he teamed with a mare who bore a crusted slash down her shoulder and nosed ahead of her a foal who stumbled and wavered. Eleeri was already waiting—as if her speech with Hylan could traverse miles. With her was Mouse who ran lightly forward to aid the colt. Hylan’s second disappearance was longer and he came back alone. This time there was blood on his own forelegs and one could almost feel the heat of anger which steamed from him.

“Gray Ones,” Denever reported that night as they shared out supplies around the great hall table. “They are usually trailers, ready to pull down stragglers. Why do they prowl about now?”

“An excellent question,” Lord Romar returned. He had finished his food early and pushed aside his plate. Now he had spread out fanwise on the board before him half a dozen knives, plain as to hilt, but with the blue-green sheen of blade which meant quan iron—that legacy of the Old Ones which was rarer than any gem Liara had heard of.

For this keep was not only the holding of his Lady’s claiming, but also held secret stores which delighted the fighters now made free of them. There was a quan mail shirt for most of them—though Liara had refused to take that offered. She was caught in a web of magic; she had no mind to become so entangled that the person who was Liara would cease to be.

“Yes, the Gray Ones nose closely,” said Krispin, the Falconer. On his wrist perched Farwing, whom he had been feeding bits from his own place. “Also, their number grows.”

“They were the servants of the Black Tower once.” Eleeri had taken one of the knives from her mate’s collection and was running a finger up and down as if trying so to test its edge. “The tower and he who held it are gone.” There was a stillness about her face as if she were remembering only too well something which had struck close to the heart. “Who or what calls them now?”

Mouse sat still, her jewel between her hands. When she looked up, her gaze traveled from face to face about the board. They were clear enough to see in the golden light of the lamps.

“They are drawn…” she said.

“By what we plan to do?” Keris demanded, shirting in his seat. He could never doubt the statement of any witch, young or old, but they were far too apt to speak obscurely.

“Perhaps,” was the only answer Mouse offered him.

“It is well maybe that we move out soon,” Denever said. “If they seek to set a cork to bottle us up here, of what value will a full fight be? Your—your liege—Hylan”—perhaps he, too, found it difficult to accept the Keplian as a full member of their party—“can he say whence these come?”

“Always,” Lord Romar answered, “they roam. Not long since, this was their territory. Perhaps they seek to make it so again. But this time they have no Dark lord to give them aid. However, you are right. We have found two gates and mapped them—that through which my dear Lady came, and that water-washed one which Lady Mouse assures us is now and has been a long time inactive. How many lie before us—who can tell?”

Liara felt strangely fatigued, as if somehow the light of the lamps on the quan iron blades had drawn from her some of her energy. She had a full day behind her and, if they marched, a number of aching, burning strides out into the unknown tomorrow.

A hand touched her shoulder and she flinched. Why she had given such a reaction to so light a contact, she could not have told. But it had seemed for an instant that some dangerous shadow slipping by had wafted against her.

The witchling? She still gripped her jewel and Liara could see the power in it was awake or waking, for the light shone between her fingers.

“Sister in the Light.” Mouse’s voice was hardly more than a whisper, well covered by the sounds of those about them rising and discussing what must be done before they moved. “You have been sadly plundered of what was yours to have. But hold this ever in mind: That which is born to the Light cannot be taken—unless it turns willingly into the darker path. And you will not!” Mouse’s last word was as emphatic as an order. Then she was gone, leaving Liara, muddle-thoughted, behind her.

She was busied enough the next morning to keep under control questions and the general uneasiness which she was unable to throw off. Though they had now traveled with the party for a goodly length of time, the ponies were as uncontrollable as ever and she must stand by the head of each, keeping it steady, while its load was lashed in place securely enough to stand all tests of a rough trail ahead.

A third Keplian now joined them. Romar told the parry, “Hylan is our guard marshal, and this land lies under his protection. Thus he cannot be one of us as he wishes. But the mare Sebra, who is this season barren, joins us at her desire.”

They were over the border of Karsten and now they wound toward the southwest. To the east lay the end lands of Escore and there was another party searching there. The Falconers and the Borderers scouted ahead with greater care, for they had entered halfway through their second day afield a countryside which had been mauled and torn by warring. Liara had heard enough to know that after the Turning, when Duke Pagan and all his forces had been swallowed up, this countryside had been ravaged and fought over by outlaws and small lords quarreling for some advantage over their fellows.

For the first time, while she viewed the charred stone of burned out holds, saw unsown fields, with here and there the yellowed bones of a draft animal—or perhaps even a man—Liara realized this is what Alizon might come to with its eternal intrigues and assassinations, its gobbling up of lesser enemies by the greater. She had never before questioned the way of life she had been born into. It was enough to try to see ahead what she could do for her own safety and that of her line. Suddenly she wished that Kasarian rode with her on this trail. She still did not know what ploy her littermate was engaged in, but that he held some touch with Lormt, with the Lady Mereth, there was no denial. Was Kasarian also hunting a gate? The two she had seen so far—a pillar wind-bitten and moss-covered, and then a quiet pond, its waters so clear one could see no sand at the bottom, but rather a stretch of blue-gray rock—were not impressive in themselves.

The travelers were well armed and they rode taking every precaution they could against surprise. She had tried their dart guns but was far from a good shot. Swords were not part of the schooling of a Hearthmistress of Alizon—but knives, now… She hugged her right arm against her for a moment and felt the quan iron with its tepid warmth—the blade never appeared to grow as cold as true steel—against her forearm. There were two more in her belt; one rode within the collar of her jerkin between her shoulders, the other in her boot. With these there were few who could match her.

They camped that night in a shatter of ruins that had no cover nearby, so that nothing could steal upon them unawares. Mouse made her report to Gull, though no spoken word was to be heard. Then she informed the others that the sites of four gates had been located within Estcarp but none of them appeared to retain any power. It might well be that the destruction of the Magestone had indeed sealed them all. Yet who could be sure?

Liara shared the rotation of the guard, and by the stars she thought it might be near midnight when she caught that whiff of scent out of the night. Unlike the stench of that thing of the crevice, this had a familiar odor, one which something in her found exciting.

Memory clicked and she was back with Lord Volorian, trotting behind his burly body, trying to keep up as well as listen properly to the stream of knowledge he was half growling at her. Volorian’s kennels were tamed throughout Alizon. Pups whelped there brought fabulous sums—it they were sold at all. Almost she could feel now the fur on some small, plump, squirming body, hear the rough purr answering to the proper scratching behind the ears.

But—there were no hounds! Liara stiffened; her hand slipped, bringing sleeve knife into her grasp. Perhaps, she tried to assure herself, there were hounds from the destroyed manors and keeps they had seen, gone feral in a pack, interbreeding and managing to live off the land.

She listened with all her might, hearing the scrape of a thick iron-studded boot sole at the next post. Hounds did not hunt silently unless that was brutally enforced by some huntsman. But more and more she believed that somewhere, not too far away, a pack of four-footed danger drew in upon them.

Hound scent? She had as noiselessly as possible shifted her position to face in the direction in which she believed that advance lay. There was a full moon tonight and the open land about the ruin was open to see.

Hound scent? She drew that smell more deeply into her nose and then saw a quiver of shadow advance from a copse of trees well away. Those were no hounds!

Instantly she was alert. She had never seen a live Gray One—and the two bodies she had viewed had been more manlike than dog. But Liara knew what came. And even as she was about to shout an alarm, the enemy struck—with a weapon she had not been expecting—directly at her.

The warning choked off in her throat as she found herself frozen, unable to move hand or foot, and with a weight pressing against her breast as if to forbid her free breath. In the meadow before her, the moonlight seemed to thicken as if some power drew upon it to produce a form.

Liara gasped for breath and gasped again. What stood there? The form of the thing was clearly that of a female, for its silver height was unclothed, but the head—white, sharp-snouted, with red ears, not folded as usual back against the skull, but standing erect as when the hunt was launched.

It was out of a nightmare—but no nightmare she had ever heard of before—a foul mixture which had nothing to do with the will of nature.

Nausea arose within her. Yet somehow her will awoke. There had been no call, no sound which even she could hear. But that—that loathsome character strove to draw her toward it—beckoned her as if in her innermost part there was a likeness, a kinship—NO!

Liara was no longer aware of anything except that thing in the meadow, that which summoned. Around her, fouling her lungs as she breathed, was the thick smell of kennels. The thing’s blazing eyes caught hers and held; the form standing there appeared to grow, taller, more solid, more powerful.

Come—blood to blood—come, the order continued. While that treacherous part of her own unknown inner self was drawn, it was a sharp pain which broke that fast-woven spell. She felt the bite of metal in her flesh.

And straightaway, before the thing could tighten its invisible cords on her again, Liara’s own hand moved. She threw her sleeve knife.

She saw the hound-woman raise clawed paws to her throat and then stagger back, then crumple down. Liara whimpered and staggered in turn, until her shoulder thumped forcibly against what had once been the wall of a watch tower. Pain held her in its fist—even as if that knife had entered her own throat.

Through watering eyes she saw the limp white body in the grass. The brilliance of the silver which had made it so visible was fading, just as the smoothness of the flesh vanished. The thing was still female, but the hound head was gone—only a skull thatched with grizzled hair remained.

Liara was able to pull herself straighter—the pain had faded. She could hear shouting and saw a wave of more just such hairy bodies ripple forward.

Nor did the cries of alarm come from one direction only; she was dimly aware that they also sounded from behind. The camp in the ruins must be beset by more than one party.

They were attacked by such a wave of Gray Ones as none in that refuge had ever seen drawn together before. Only the moonlight was their friend; had the sky been clouded, the fierce determination of those without might well have won them a way within.

Of this Liara was barely aware. Since her knife had taken the hound-woman, her arm flopped by her side, so weighted that it might be encased in the stone of the walls. She coughed and coughed again, tasting blood which she spat away.

Keris set a second clip into his dart gun. At least this was one weapon with which he could truly claim expertise. He continually blinked his eyes, trying to ease a smarting which had struck them at the rise of that white pillar of light just before the attack broke. Liara had been fronting that pillar and he was not sure what she had done, but he guessed that she was responsible for its vanishing.

There was another figure up on the wall where Liara had earlier stood and he heard the voice of the Lady Eleeri raised in what could only be a war cry. She was using her bow with the skill he had often seen demonstrated in the arms court, and he was sure that very few of those arrows missed their marks.

Still the waves of Gray Ones came as if maddened past all thought of self-preservation. There followed the high-screamed challenge of a stallion encountering traditional foes, and from the arched entrance below broke the Keplians. One watching them now could well believe in the tales of their devil blood.

Even as a warhorse might be trained to rear and so bring down any footman menacing his rider, so did the mare Theela and the colt stamp death, rip and toss bodies aside.

Then was a breathing space when no new forces came out of the distant woodland. The Keplians made a round of the bodies, once or twice raising a razor-sharp hoof to snap out a flicker of life. However, when they approached that crumpled figure Liara had confronted, they circled it at a distance, their heads down as if they sniffed deeply at what lay there. Then Theela swerved to head for the ruins, her companions behind her.

“Liara?” Though the voice was low, it cut easily through the fog surrounding the girl which had led her to believe she was no longer any part of those who fought here.

Light, brilliant—blue—searing her eyes. She could not lift her deadened arm to shade them. The shine of the hound-head had been almost as strong.

She could not even see who stood behind that mighty lamp, but the voice she knew. The witchling.

At that moment it was as if someone had unveiled a secret for her viewing and she shrank back again against the stone. There was that in her… she held a taint which those—those things of the dark could sense, could call—

“They called.” The brilliant light still held her fast. “But did you answer?”

Life was returning to her arm, she was able to bring her hand up to her trembling lips.

“I did not then… know—”

“Do not hold yourself at fault.” Mouse’s soft voice was serene. “If you drew them, then also their purpose was betrayed when you brought down their bait. And that very bait alerted our watchers.”

“Hound…” Liara murmured through stiff lips then. “We are the Hounds of Alizon, not merely the packs we raise. And those packs have been used for Dark purposes.” She shivered. Though no female had watched an Ordered Feeding, yet the details of such were as known to all as clear as crystal in a collar.. “Your people say I am not of the Dark, but if there is in me that which can draw something searchers want…”

Her thoughts were flying very fast now, seeming like a stream of orders shouted in her ears. “If that be so… then I have no place with you.”

“If you were of the Dark, Lady Liara, then death would have been your portion as you stand here. We are all fashioned by those of our blood gone before, but it is the choices that we ourselves make which can change the weaving patterns.”

The light no longer tortured her eyes. Now the Lady Eleeri came to her, still holding her bow.

“This was an attack planned by hate but not by true knowledge. If they believed that they could win through our defenses by the tricks of a half-taught Shaman, then they are the less to be feared. Had they waited—

But Liara had already caught the logic behind that.

“Waited until we were strung out on the trail, until I was behind with the ponies. Yes, then they would have had their victory.”

“Never.” The radiance from Mouse’s jewel had faded, revealing her as she stood behind the wall of its brilliance. “For I say they believed you to be the way to us and you are not. Nor can you ever be—unless”—she spoke more slowly now—“you allow yourself to doubt, to seek shadow and turn aside from Light.”

“How can you be sure,” Liara asked, “that I will not?”

They had given her trust, these enemies of old, and she feared trust, feared it because among her own it never held. However, outwardly she accepted for the present Mouse’s assurance, though her mind was busy untangling tormenting thoughts.

She did not sleep for the rest of the night, though she lay quiet among her blankets. This quest of theirs—gates upon gates—what had it really to do with her?

That she might ever return to her own place—no. She had been forcibly barred from Krevanel by Kasarian’s action. There was no place for her at Lormt, even if she were to turn back, and if she remained among these she had come to accept she might well once more be used against them.

Hound… Whenever she closed her eyes now she could see that silver body and the hound-head. She had never heard any tales among her people of such an unnatural creature. But what if that was what Alizonderns were inside? Had they so absorbed the inner natures of their prized, four-footed companions that that was how they would appear to an eye which could truly see—a mixture of human and beast? All those days she had spent with Volorian, her pride that he shared knowledge with her… had that time strengthened that taint they did not realize they possessed?

She kept much to herself with the morning and she was busy, for the ponies were unusually unruly. Perhaps the scent of the dead bodies beyond the wall reached them. Secretly she plundered one of the packs, setting aside a packet of journey cakes. Bow and arrows were not her weapon, nor could she help herself to such without it being instantly noted. She still had three of her four throwing knives, and a short sword she had used mainly to hack paths through thorn brush when necessary.

When had she ever had anyone who really cared what became of her? In Alizon she had filled a need and done her duty well enough that those of Krevanel seemed to find her well qualified. Her help with the ponies—that would weigh a little against a second attack of the Gray Ones.

Morning mist became rain and they all turned the hoods of their cloaks up over their heads. But no one suggested that they try to wait out the storm, for Mouse had announced, before the downpour had become too heavy, that there were indications of gate Power somewhere ahead.

Trees gave way to tough grass and clumps of brush, and that in turn to a stretch of gravel in which were upstanding stones set in the general confusion of a forest grove. The ponies had to be prodded into keeping up with the party and then seemed to decide on their own that they were better served by company.

Liara dropped back, as was the usual way if one answered a call of nature and slipped around one of the tree stones, waiting until rear of the Borderers rode by.

Then, shouldering the very small pack which was all she allowed herself, she skulked from outcrop to outcrop away from the plodding parry, not knowing or caring now in what direction she headed.

Keris was surprised when one of the pack ponies crowded up beside Jasta. The small beasts usually kept their distance from the mounts of the rest of the party. He glanced back to see that the lead animal closely followed by the rest, yet there was no sign of Liara on her tough mount and she usually kept carefully close to her charges.

*She is gone.*

He started at the Renthan’s mind-message. Since the happenings of the night before, his once-vague suspicions of the Alizondern girl had reawakened. Then he had held the next post in line with hers and had seen a strange pillar of light arise facing where she stood. His forehead creased in a frown. It had been as if some fleeting breaths of time had been rift from him and he remembered nothing clearly until the light was overthrown to the ground and he was busied picking off those slavering Dark ones who attacked so oddly without any cover as if they had expected to find the defenders asleep.

He had been with Krispin and the Lord Romar when they had ridden forth, with the addition of the young Keplian stallion, to survey the bodies after the battle. And his ranging had brought him close to where that light pillar had been rooted. Something had shone in the grass and he dismounted.

There was a dead Gray One, of course, a female and larger than any he had ever sighted in all the years they had warred upon such in Escore.

Oddly enough, the bristled face turned up to the light was layered with what appeared to be white paint. And as he stooped to see the closer, he could distinguish flat pieces of stiff red stuff fastened to either side of the skull as if to mimic ears. In the creature’s throat was a knife buried near to its hilt, not quite far enough to hide its quan iron blade. And he had seen that knife hurled many times over in the arms court at Lormt, always thudding exactly in the center of the target. That was Liara’s. He tugged it loose and rammed the blade several times into the ground to clean it. Odd she did not come to claim it herself; such knives were too valuable to be left lying, even in bodies.

They had been so busied breaking camp that he had forgotten his find and it was only now, when he could not sight the Alizondern girl and Jasta said she was gone, that he remembered.

“Gone—where?” For a moment he felt a sharp flash of fear. Even though the Falconer and one of the Borderers kept guard, this place of many stones offered excellent chance for an ambush.

*To follow her own trail,* the Renthan returned.

“To betray.” Keris was not altogether sure he meant that.

*To give us freedom from what she fears the most.* Nor for all Keris’s urging would Jasta elaborate on that.