Three Against the Witch World

XII

THERE WAS A thing loping awkwardly in a parallel course towards us. Sometimes it ran limpingly on three legs, a forelimb held upcurved; again, stumbling and bent over, on two. Dahaun checked her mount and waited for the creature to approach. It lifted a narrow head, showed fangs in a snarl. There were patches of foam at the corners of its black lips, matting the brindle fur on its neck and shoulders, while the forelimb it upheld ended in a red blob of mangled flesh.

It growled, walked stiff-legged, striving to pass Dahaun at a distance. As I rode to join her, my hair stirred a little at skull base. For this was not animal, but something which was an unholy mingling of species—wolf and man.

“By the pact.” Its words were a coughing growl and it made a half gesture with its wounded paw-hand.

“By the pact,” Dahaun acknowledged. “Strange, Fikkold, for you to seek what lies here. Have matters gone so badly that the dark must seek the light for succor?”

The creature snarled again, its eyes gleaming, yellow-red pits of that evil against which all clean human flesh and spirit revolts.

“There will come a time—” it spat.

“Yes, there will come a time, Fikkold, when we shall test Powers, not in small strikes against each other, but in open battle. But it would appear that you have already done battle, and not to benefit for you.”

Those yellow-red eyes shifted away from Dahaun, as if they could not bear to look too long at the golden glory she had become. Now they fastened on me. The twisted snarl was more acute. Fikkold hunched his shoulders as if he wished to spring to bring me down. My hand sought the blade I did not wear.

Dahaun spoke sharply. “You have claimed the right, Fikkold; do you now step beyond that right?”

The wolf-man relaxed. A red tongue licked between those fanged jaws.

“So you make one with these, Morquant?” he asked in return. “That will be pleasant hearing for the Gray Ones, and That Which Is Apart. No, I do not step beyond the right, but perchance you have crossed another barrier. And if you make common cause with these, ride swift, Green Lady, for they need all the aid possible.”

With a last snarl in my direction, Fikkold went on, staggering, weaving toward the mud pools, his blood-streaming paw pressed tight to his furred breast.

But what he had hinted at, that Kaththea and Kemoc might be in active danger, sent me pounding along his back trail.

“No!” Dahaun pulled up beside me. “No! Never ride so along a were-trail. To follow it straightly leaves your own track open for them. Cross it, thus . . .”

She cantered in a criss-cross pattern, back and forth across the blood-spotted track the wounded Fikkold had left. And, though I grudged the time such a complicated maneuver cost us, I did likewise.

“Did he speak the truth?” I asked as I drew level with her again.

“Yes, for in this case the truth would please Fikkold.” She frowned. “And if they felt strong enough to meet in an open fight with Power such as your sister can shape and mould, then the balance is surely upset and things move here which have not stirred in years upon long years! It is time we knew what or who is aligned . . .”

She set her hand to her mouth again as she had when she had summoned the horned ones to our service. But no audible sound issued between her fingers. In my head was that sound, shrill, painful. Both our mounts flung high their heads and gave voice to coughing grunts.

I was not too surprised at the shimmer of a Flannan in its bird shape appearing before us. It flapped about Dahaun as she rode. A moment later she looked to me, her face troubled.

“Fikkold spoke the truth, but it is a worse truth than I thought, Kyllan. Those of your blood have been trapped in one of the Silent Places and the thrice circle laid upon them, such as no witch, lest she be more powerful than your sister, may break. Thus can they be held until the death of their bodies—and even beyond—”

I had faced death for myself, and had come to accept the fact that perhaps I had taken the last sword blow. But for Kaththea and Kemoc I would not accept this—not while I still breathed, walked, had hands to hold weapons or to use bare. Of this I did not speak, but the resolution filled me in a hot surge of rage and determination. And more strongly was I pledged to this because of my folly and desertion by the river.

“I knew you would feel so,” she said. “But more than strength of body, will of mind, desire of heart, will you need for this. Where are your weapons?”

“I shall find such!” I told her between set teeth.

“There is one.” Dahaun pointed to the rod which hung as a sword from my borrowed belt. “Whether it will answer you. I know not. It was forged for another hand and mind. Try it. It is a force whip—use it as you would a lash.”

I remembered the crackling fire with which the unknown rider had beaten off the rasti and I jerked the rod from its sling, to use it as she suggested, as if a thong depended from its tip.

There was a flash of fire crackling against the ground to sear and blacken. I shouted in triumph. Dahaun smiled at me across that burned strip.

“It would seem that we are not so different after all, Kyllan of the House of Tregarth, out of Estcarp. So you do not ride barehanded, nor, perhaps, will you fight alone. For that, we must see. But to summon aid will take time, and that runs fast for those you would succor. Also, it will need persuasion such as you can not provide. Thus we part here warrior. Follow the blood trail, to do what you must do. I go to other labors.”

She was at a gallop before I could speak, her horned one keeping a speed I do not believe even the stallion could have equaled. Before me lay the back trail of the werewolf for my guide.

I followed Dahaun’s instructions and continued to crisscross those tracks, but at a steady, ground-eating pace. We descended from that high ground into which the stallion had carried me, away from the healthy country. I did not sight that bleached wood, nor the city, unless a distant gray shadow to my left was a glimpse of that, but there were other places Shabra avoided, sometimes leaving the trail to detour about them—a setting of rocks, an off color splotch of vegetation and the like. I trusted to my mount’s decision in such matters, for it was plain this part of the country was a stronghold of those forces against which my kind were eternally arrayed.

Shabra slowed pace. I marveled at how far Fikkold had come with his spouting wound. A flock of black winged things arose from a tangle of brush and twisted trees, circled above us, crying raucously.

“Whip!”

Out of nowhere came that warning. Then I saw Shabra turn his head, and knew that the alarm came from the one who carried me. I gave a sharp jerk to the weapon, A light flash snapped out. One of the black things screeched, somersaulted in the air and fell. The rest broke, flew for a distance, and then reformed with the cunning of an advance guard, to try once more to complete their circle. Three times they attempted that, and each time the lash drove them off, broke their pattern. From the last attack they flew before us, as if determining somewhere on ahead to lay an ambush.

We were still going down slope. Here the grass in the open spaces was coarser and darker than that of the upper country. And in places it was broken and stamped flat as if a host had gone this way. My scout training asserted control. To ride face on into impossible odds was no way to provide help for those I sought. Tentatively I thought this at Shabra.

They know you come. You cannot hide from those who hold this land.

The answer came clearly and promptly. I was ready to accept any help from my mount which he had ready to offer.

His pace had dropped to a walk. He held his head high, his wide nostrils drawing in and expelling the air in audible sniffs, as if by this sense he could detect what lay ahead. Abandoning the blood trail which had guided us to this point, he swung to the right on a course which angled sharply from the one we had followed.

Along the pillar way. Peace holds there in part.

Shabra’s explanation meant nothing to me, but that he was willing to risk this route did. I could not scent anything in the air, though I strove to. But there was something else—a weight upon the spirit, a darkening of the mind, which grew as we advanced, until it was a burden on me.

We came out on the rim of another slope and below lay open country with, not too far away, the line of the river. In that plains land was a circle of menhirs, not concentric rings as had been the stone web, but a single line of rough pillars, two of which had fallen and lay pointing outward. They encircled or guarded a platform of stone of a slate-blue color. And on that platform were the two I sought. While outside the ring of menhirs, a motley pack of creatures crawled, prowled, sniffed. Black blots of rasti slithered in and out, visible where the grass was well trampled. Several werewolves paced, sometimes on four feet, other times erect. The black birds wheeled and dipped. An armorplated thing raised a ghastly head and clawed forefeet now and then. And white blobs of mist gathered, drifted, thickened and thinned. But all these moved outside the ring of stones, and they avoided the two which had fallen outward, leaving a goodly space free about those as they continued their siege.

From the circle led two paths of pillars, one from the direction of the river, one marching up the hill to my right. Of these, many had fallen, some were broken, even blackened, as if they had been lightning struck.

Shabra trotted to the line near us. Again he began an in and out advance. Those broken and blackened stones he leaped or passed with speed; by the others he modified his pace. But back and forth, in and out, he worked down to the besieged circle.

Kyllan! Greeting, recognition from the two I sought.

Then: Take care! To your left—

There was an upheaval among the watchers, and one of the armored monsters came at a clumsy run. It opened its mouth to puff foul and stinking breath at us. I swished the whip and the lightning curled about the scaled barrel just behind the head. But that did not slow the thing. Next I laid the lash of energy across its head and eyes. It gave an explosive grunt and plowed ahead.

Hold! Not Kemoc nor Kaththea, but Shabra, warning.

Under me the horned one bunched muscle, leaped, plowed to a halt by a standing stone. The armored thing came on, to be hurled back as if it had run headfirst into a wall that even its bulk could not breach. Its coughing roar grew louder as it kept on stupidly attempting to reach us. Now some of the other attackers gathered to join it. A wolf-man, striding on two feet, yellow-red eyes cunning and intelligent, rasti a-boil, a drifting blob of mist—

Hold!

I gripped Shabra as tightly with my knees as I could, and kept a left-handed hold on the curve of his neck while I held ready the whip with my right. He made a dart past one of the shattered pillars while I lashed at the mist curling in at us. There was a burst of brilliant fire. The thing, whatever it might have been, ignited from the whip’s force. Rasti squalled as it puffed out to catch two of them in its throes.

We were in another of the pools of safety by a standing stone. The space ahead was not too wide, but midpoint there was a fallen pillar, and there gathered rasti and wolfmen. The mist drifted back from any contact with the weapon I carried.

Come—now!

That was Kaththea. She stood on the blue block, her hands to her mouth as she chanted. Though the meaning of what she sang did not reach me. I felt a response in my body, a rising surge of strength. The horned one sprang, breaking into a run. I lashed out on either side, not with any aim, but to clear our path.

I heard growling from a hairy wolf throat. One of the were-things sprang, striving to drag me from Shabra’s back. I stiff-armed it, my blow striking, by good fortune alone, beneath its jaw. But it left a dripping slash along my arm. Somehow I managed to cling to both my seat on the horned one and the whip. Then we were within the circle. And outside, the howls of that weird pack arose in a discordant chorus.

Shabra trotted to the blue stone. Kemoc half lay, half sat there, with his back supported by a shrunken pack. His helm was gone, his arm bandaged. And in his hand was the hilt of a sword, its blade broken into a narrow sliver. Kaththea still stood on the stone, her hands now at her breast. She was gaunt, as if from months of ill foraging, her beauty worn to a dying shadow, her spirit so outgoing through its sheath of flesh that I was frightened to look upon her. I slid from Shabra’s back and came to them, dropping the whip unknowingly, my hands out to give them all that I had, of my own strength, comfort—whatever they could draw from me.

Kemoc greeted me with a faint, very faint stretch of lips, the merest shadow of his one-time smile.

“Welcome back, brother. I might have known that a fight would draw you when all else failed.”

Kaththea came to the edge of the rock and half jumped, half fell into my arms. For a long moment she clung to me, no Wise Woman, no Witch, but only my sister, who had been sorely frightened and yet found the need to put aside that fear. She raised her head, her eyes closed.

“Power.” Her lips shaped the word rather than spoke it clearly aloud. “You have lain in the shadow of Power. When—where?” Eagerness overrode her fatigue.

Kemoc stirred and pulled himself up. He was studying me, intently from head to foot, his gaze lingering on my chest where the tunic gaped and the just healed scars from my hurts were still plain to read.

“It would seem that this is not your first battle, brother. But—now it would be well to tend to this—” He gestured to the gash the werewolf had opened on my arm. Kaththea pushed away from me with a little cry of concern.

I felt no pain. Perhaps whatever virtue lay in the healing mud held for a while in the bodies of those so treated. For when Kaththea examined the hurt the edges of the wound were closed and I bled no longer.

“Who has been your aid, my brother?” she asked as she worked.

“The Lady of Green Silences.”

My sister raised her head and stared at me as one who seeks for signs of jesting.

“She also calls herself Dahaun and Morquant,” I added.

“Morquant!” Kaththea seized upon the second of those names. “Of the Green Ones, the forest born! We must know more, we must!” She moved her hands as if wringing speech from silence.

“You have learned nothing?” Far ago now was that night we had wrought magic that Kaththea’s spirit messenger might cross time. “What happened? How and why have you come here?”

Kemoc answered first. “As to your first question, we have learned that trouble arises swiftly hereabouts. We left the islet because—” He hesitated, his eyes avoiding mine.

I gave him the rest: “Because you sought one whose folly had made him easy prey for the enemy? Is that not the right of it?”

And he respected me enough not to give any comforting lie.

“Yes. Kaththea—when we awoke, she knew, and through her did I also, that evil had come to you.”

Kaththea asked softly. “Had you not thrown open the gate to it when you used your gift in an ill fashion, even if the result was for our good? We knew not how you had been taken from us, only that this was so. And that we must find you.”

“But the Familiar—you needed to await its return.”

She smiled at my protest. “Not so. Where I am, there it will come—though that has not yet happened. We found your trail—or at least a trail of active evil. But where it led”—she shivered—“there we dared not follow—not without such safeguards for our inner selves that I did not have the knowledge to weave. Then those came a-hunting, and we ran before them. But this is a holy place in which that kind can not venture. So we took refuge here, only to discover that we had trapped ourselves, for they have woven their net outside and we are within two walls, one built by the enemy.”

Then she sighed and swayed so that I threw out an arm to support her. Her eyes closed and she leaned back against me as Kemoc made plain the rest of their plight.

“I do not suppose, brother, that you carry any food? It has been three days since we have eaten. There was dew on the stone this morning, enough to quench our thirst a little. But water in such small amounts does little for the filling of an empty belly!”

“I won in with this,” I touched the whip with my toe. “It can cut us a passage out—”

Kemoc shook his head. “We have not the strength nor the quickness for such a fight now. Also, they have a counterspell to strip Kaththea of all Power if she ventures forth.”

But I refused to accept that. “With Kaththea on Shabra, and you and I running—it is worth the try!” But I knew that he was right. Outside the protection of the circle stones we could not out-run and out-fight that pack, now padding, trotting, drifting about, waiting for us to try such desperate measures. In addition both Kemoc and Kaththea had said they were immured here by magic.

“Oh!” In my grasp Kaththea shuddered, shaking as she had on the night she had brought forth the Familiar. She opened her eyes and looked before her with a wide, unseeing stare.

“To the stone with her!” Kemoc cried. “It holds the most virtue in this place.”

There was a blanket on the stone, as if perhaps during the night they had rested there together. I swung her pitifully light body up to lie on that, and then scrambled to her side, pulling Kemoc after me. She still moaned a little, her hands moving restlessly back and forth, sometimes lifting up as if she sought to pluck something from the air.

The din which had followed my entrance into the circle had died away. Those creatures paraded in utter silence now, so that Kaththea’s small plaints could be heard.

One of those reaching hands caught at Kemoc’s scarred fingers, clasped and tightened. His thought sped to me and I took her other hand. We were linked now as we had been on that night.

Expectancy awoke in me. There was a glow in the air above the blue block. The glow grew brighter, formed an image, a winged wand, looking solid and distinct.

For a moment we saw it so, and then, as a dart, it dropped in a streak of white fire. Kaththea’s back arched and she gave a great cry, as her messenger returned to that which had given it birth. She was quiet but not silent—not to our minds—for as she learned so did we also, and for us rock, day and world vanished as that knowledge unfolded.