Warlock of the Witch World

XVI

“IF YOU BE KEMOC”—there was rising tension in her thought—“then this is no land for you! Get you forth before ill comes. You do not know what happens to those who do not have the proper safeguards. I have seen—monstrous things!”

She had seen what Dinzil had taken good care to show her.

“Dinzil!” Her thoughts rang even louder. “Dinzil will protect you; use the counterspells—”

So was she caught in his net that she turned instantly to him when there was need for aid.

“I have come for you, Kaththea.” I told her the simple truth. If she had not gone too far down that road on which he had set her feet, then I might reach her, even as the memories I had spun had drawn her.

“But why?” There was a simplicity in that question which was not of the sister I had known. She had never been one to lean upon another, but held to her own mind. This was a different Kaththea.

I tried to make my thoughts simple, to keep her holding that slender tie between us: “Did you believe that we would let you go, uncaring what chanced with you?”

“But you knew!” her retort was swift. “You knew that I had gone to a place of power, to learn that which would make us all safe against the Shadow. And I am learning, Kemoc, much more than the Wise Women ever dreamed of. They are really small-minded, timid. They but peer through doors which they dare not enter. I marvel that we are in any awe of them.”

“There is knowledge and knowledge. You yourself said that once upon a time, Kaththea. Some can pass through man and come into flower—some men cannot hold, unless they change.”

“Men, yes!” she caught me up. “But I am of the Witches of Estcarp, who are adepts. What man cannot hope to do, we can! And when I have garnered what I came here to find, then I shall return and you will rejoice at what I bring with me.”

Loskeetha’s third picture. Suddenly that was vivid in my mind and I saw it as sharply as it had appeared in the sand bowl. There rode the hosts of the Shadow and among them Kaththea, hurling her bolts of force against us, her kin.

“No!” Kaththea’s cry of denial was sharp. “That is a weaving of evil, not a true foretelling. You have been deceived; you believe that I—one of the Three—could do so? Dinzil has said—”

She hesitated and I prompted her. “Dinzel has said—what?”

But she did not answer at once, and when she did there was in her reply a coolness, such as had been in her in the Valley.

“You wish me to have no true friends, but to keep me to yourself. Kyllan, he is larger of heart; he knows we shall still be united, even though we walk apart. But you will not admit it; you would prison me in bonds of your choosing.”

“This Dinzil has said, and you believe?” He had been wily, but what else might I have expected? This was an argument my own actions to free her would bolster past my being able to refute.

“You do not like Dinzil. He has other unfriends. He did not need to tell me this; I had already seen it in you, in others of the Valley. Yet now he strives to gather such power as will deliver all of them. Do they believe they can turn sword steel and a few mutterings of lesser learning against the Great Ones whom rebellion in Escore now rouse? It takes forces beyond most men’s knowledge to face those.”

“Dinzil can summon such forces, control them?”

“With my aid, yes!” There was an arrogance, a pride in that which might have had roots in the confidence of the Kaththea I had known, but which had grown to turn her into a stranger.

“Go back, Kemoc. I know you love me, though that love is a thing of fetters for me. Because you came in love, I wish you well. Dinzil will see that you return to the world suited to you. Tell them there that we come with such powers behind us that the Shadow, seeing what marches with us, shall be routed before the first blow is struck.”

I shut my mind to her words, to this Kaththea who was the monster Dinzil had shown me. Deliberately and with all the energy I could summon, I thought again of the Kaththea I had known and loved, who had been a part of me—

“Kemoc!” The arrogance had gone out of that cry; it was one of pain. “Kemoc, what would you do? Stop, stop! You lay your fetters on me again and it takes strength, such strength to break them. That strength I must save for the tasks set me here.”

I thought. Kaththea who was young of heart, clean of heart, happy, danced in a green meadow and charmed birds out of the sky to come to her singing . . . Kaththea, laughing, put up her hand to break off a dripping icicle from the eave edge and suck it, while before her the land was frost and snow, yet gem-beautiful under a winter sun. She took the icicle from her lips to trill a call, to be answered by the snow hawk . . . Kaththea diving cleanly into the river flood to swim with us, but forgetting all contests when she found a watercub tangled in a reed bed, freeing the captive tenderly . . . Kaththea in the firelight, sitting between us, listening to Anghart’s tales . . .

“Stop!” Weaker that plea. I pushed it from me, concentrated on the pictures, on my touch upon the two talismen I trusted in this place which Dinzil believed he ruled.

Kaththea running lightly between us to the harvest field where we worked under the sun with all the manor folk to bind the grain. Kaththea chosen to take the Feast bowl to greet passing strangers that day, to gather the Earth-tithe after the old custom, bringing it back jingling and ringing, laughing at her success because a whole troop of Borderers had passed and each had tossed a coin into it.

But never Kaththea in use of her power—never that! For to be Kaththea of the power was to open the door to this Kaththea of the here and now, whom I did not know, whom I feared.

“Kemoc—Kemoc, where are you?”

For a second or two I thought that was the cry of the Kaththea of my memories; for it was young, and strangely uncertain, almost lost.

I opened my eyes and looked about me. Where was I? In some place Dinzil deemed safe keeping. But now my confidence rose. I might have little on which to base that confidence. But when a man reaches a point which seems to have no future at all, then he can make a firm stand. In such stands are weak causes sometimes won, simply because there is nothing left to fear.

“Kemoc, please—where are you?”

“With you, soon,” I made answer. I did not know if I spoke the truth.

I struggled to my feet, held the sword. “Kaththea!” Once more I sent the winged thought. It flew to the wall immediately before me, was gone. I walked to the wall.

Stone, solid under my touch. But still my confidence held. I set the sword point to the stone, and once more made my reckless magic. For I combined the word “Sytry” which was the sword key with the phrases out of Lormt.

The hilt in my paw burned. But in spite of the pain I held it steady. The point chewed at a line between two of those blocks. Began to chew, that is, but as I continued to recite those names the stone itself yielded to my weapon, which cut as it had cleared my path through the mud pit. I came out of the prison where Dinzil had put me, and once more I stood in the underground chamber from which raised the stair into the Dark Tower.

Once more I climbed, coming into the first chamber. But now the furnishings were more substantial, less ghosts of themselves. When I put out a paw to touch one I almost dropped the sword. Had I put forth a paw—or a man’s hand? Now I could see fingers! Then once more they were hidden in monster flesh—to appear again—back and forth.

I was shaken. The creature Dinzil had shown me and said was Kaththea on this plane—woman’s head and hands combined with loathsome body. She had used her hands, her head, to work forces here. He had said—when she was all human seeming again—then she would be completely sealed to his purposes. Now—I brought forth my other hand to look upon it. Yes, there, too, was a flow from hand to paw. Still the paw had greater substance; the hand was but a ghost.

Using magic here, had that linked me to the world of the Shadow, brought about that change? Yet there was nothing else I could have done. I crept up the next flight of stairs to the dining room. Again firmer lines, colors I could now see. Kaththea, would she still be invisible to me, and I the monster who roused only fear in her?

The last stair. At its top the door was this time open to me. If Dinzil once more waited he would have the advantage, but that was a risk I must escape. I raised the sword before me. Never in this other world had the runes blazed to warn me, but now so great was my dependence upon it that I had as much confidence in it as a commander in the field has upon long tried and tested scouts.

At least I had not been blasted as I moved. Laboriously I gained the top of the stairs. There was the mirrored table. Almost I expected to see the comb in action. But to my first inspection the room was empty of any life save my own.

“Kaththea!” I summoned sharply. My winged word sped for the darksome other side of that chamber where tapestry hung. Then out of the gloom shuffled the thing Dinzil had shown me—save that now the hands hung white and distinct from the swollen wrists, and the head was more misty, looming behind it an ovoid such as matched the weeper of the plain.

Her gait was as shuffling as my own, and there was a frozen horror on her face—as one who faces a nightmare come to stalking life.

“No!” Her protest was shrill, near to a shriek.

Even if I would now lose her, I could take but one step. “As this place shows me—I am Kemoc!”

“But Dinzil said—You are not evil; you cannot be so loathsome. I know you—your thoughts, what lies within you—“

I remembered Dinzil’s spiteful suggestion that this plane turned a man inside out, showing his spirit. But that I did not accept. If he had said the same words to her, I must break that belief and speedily, lest we both be lost.

“Think for yourself. Do not take Dinzil’s thoughts for your own!”

Had I gone too far, so that, under his spell, she would turn again to believe I spoke out of jealousy?

Then I put out one of those paws which tried to be hands now and again. I saw her gaze fasten on it, her eyes widen. So much had I made her attend to me. I raised the paw, tried to touch her. She shivered away, yet I persevered and caught firm hold on her, pulling her around to stand before that mirror. Whether she could see what I did, I did not know, but I kept my other hand upon the sword and willed that she do so.

“Not so! Not so!” She jerked loose, cowered away so she did not see the mirror. “Lost—I am lost—” She turned that head, which was now a featureless lump, now her own, to look at me. “You—your meddling has done this, as Dinzil warned. I am lost!” She wrung her hands, and never in all my years had I seen my sister so distraught and broken. “Dinzil!” She looked about and with a passion of pleading in her thought-voice: “Dinzil—save me! Forgive me—save me!”

Inside I felt the pain of seeing her so broken. The Kaththea of the past might have suffered deeply, but she would have fought to the end, asking aid only as might one shield mate from another.

“Kaththea—” I tried to put my paw on her again, but she backed farther and farther from me, her eyes wild, her hands warding me off. “Kaththea, think!” Could I reach her anymore? Though I was loath to give that which abode here any deeper rooting in me, yet that I must do, or perhaps lose her utterly.

I held the sword by the blade so that the hilt was between us. Then I said a word. Fire shimmered once more, to burn me, but still I held fast to that column of golden flame.

“Kaththea, are you one who harbors evil within you? Those of the Wise Ones often examine their spirits, look well upon their motives, know the pitfalls and traps which await all those who put out their hands to the powers. Long you dwelt with them, and your unwillingness to join with them came from no evil, but because you had stronger ties elsewhere. Since you left Estcarp and came into Escore, what ill have you done by design—or thought on doing?”

Was she even listening to me? she held her hands before her face, but did not try to touch it, as if she feared that the flesh there would not be human.

“You are not evil, Kaththea; that I will not believe! If you are not, then how can it be that you see your inner self? This is only an illusion; we are among those to whom illusion is a common tool. You are only monster on this plane, as I am monster.”

“But Dinzil—” she thought.

“To Dinzil this is his place; he has made himself one with it. He has said so, just as he also told me that when you were one with it, not part monster, then you would be locked to him and his cause. Is that what you wish, Kaththea?”

She was shivering, great shudders shaking her squat, unlovely body. More and more her face faded and I saw the eyepits, the ovoid head of the weeper.

“I am monster—lost in a monster—”

“You dwell within a covering forced upon you in this place. For many powers fair is foul, as well as foul is fair.”

I thought she was listening now. She asked slowly: “What do you want of me? Why do you come to pull at me with memories?”

“Come with me!”

“Where?”

Where, indeed? I might recross that plain, pass through the remains of the gem barrier, back beyond the weeper’s place. But then where? Could I find an exit, leading from the Tower, anchored in Escore? I was not sure, and she knew my uncertainty and fastened upon it.

“Come with you, say you! When I ask where, you have no answer for me. What would you have us do, wander in this place, brother? It holds dangers the like of which you cannot imagine. Do not doubt Dinzil will come hunting.”

“Where is he now?”

“Where is he now?” she mimicked me shrilly. “Do you fear that he will come into the here and now to face you?” Then suddenly her eyes changed and the old current flowed between us.

“Kemoc?”

“Yes?”

“Kemoc, what has happened to us, to me?” She spoke simply as might a child bewildered by all she now saw and felt.

“We are in a place which is not ours, Kaththea, and it seeks to mold us into its own forms and ways. There is a way back—do you know it?”

Her blob head on which the traces of her normal face had almost disappeared, turned slowly as if she now gazed about her with new eyes, to which this was much of a puzzle.

“I came here—”

“How?” I believed I dared not press here too hard, yet if she did know of Dinzil’s door between the worlds, and it was not the same one through which I had entered, there was a chance for our escape.

“I think—” That hand which was still human raised uncertainly toward her head. Clumsily she turned to face the tapestry covered wall. “This way—”

She shuffled, her hands out before her. Then she picked up one edge of the tapestry, pulled it out. There, set in the wall, glowing an angry purple-red, was a symbol. I did not know it but its far-off descendant I had once seen, and I knew it for a symbol of such a power as I would not dare to summon.

I felt my sister’s thoughts writhe to shape a word, before I could protest. The symbol in the stone coiled as if a loathsome reptile had been loosed. Round and round it ran, and I would not look upon it, for there was a sickness in me that Kaththea knew that word. Then the stone vanished and only those glowing lines ran, and ran, spilling down into a pool of sullen, molten color on the floor, and that began to trickle away.

I stumbled forward, pulling at Kaththea to save her from the touch of that pool. Ahead was nothingness as there had been in that other tower through which I had plunged into this place.

“The door is open,” Kaththea’s thought was once more chill and assured. “For the sake of what lay between us in the past, take your freedom and go, Kemoc!”

The arm which still bore Orsya’s bespelled scarf was about her shoulders before she could dodge me. With the sword in my other hand I plunged on, using the weight of my body to bear her with me. I think she was too surprised to resist. It might not be Dinzil’s door, but in that moment I saw it as the only hope for both of us.

Falling—falling—I had kept no grasp on Kaththea after we went over the drop. That she had come with me was the thought I carried along into nothingness.

Once more I awoke to pain and a dulling of mind. But in awhile I noted that no color flashes leapt here, rather there was dimness and chill walls about me. I thought that Dinzil, by some trick, had me again in prison. The sword—where was the sword?

I raised my head where I lay prone on hard stone and looked about. Then I saw a glimmer beyond my paw—Paw? So I was not free from that other place. A vast misery of disappointment fell on me as a crushing weight.

But—my head strained higher—the paw was at the end of an arm, a human arm! On that the faint tracing of a scar I knew well; I could remember the fight in which I took it.

Now I levered myself up to look down at the rest of my body. It was no longer that of a toadman; remnants of human clothing covered me from the waist down. But the paws—I hardly dared to touch my face with those misshapen things, as if some of their foulness might rub off. But I must know if I still wore a toad head on my shoulders.

Beyond me, in the gloom of that place, something else moved. On my hands and knees, dragging the sword with me, I went to see what.

A human body wearing the riding dress of the Valley people, a woman’s body. At the end of her slender arms were red paws even more formless than mine. Above her shoulders was an ovoid, hairless featureless, save for two eye-pits. At my coming the head swung and those pits looked at me as if organs of sight hid somewhere in their depths.

“Kaththea!” I stretched forth my paws to her, but she once more avoided me. Only raised her own paws to set beside mine, as if to emphasize their monster form. Then she cowered away and brought up her arms to hide her head.

What moved me then I do not know, but I plucked at the scarf about my arm, no longer a band of light, but once more silken fabric. I now held it out to Kaththea.

The pit eyes peered at it over the top of one of her shielding arms. Then her paw came forth and snatched it from me, winding it around and around her head, leaving but a small slit open for sight.

Meanwhile I looked around. We were either back in the Tower rooted in Escore, or its double. We sat on the floor near the staircase as steep as a ladder. The doorways through which one could pass into those other worlds were closed, but the sooner we were away the better. I turned to my sister.

“Come—”

“Where?” her thought demanded. “Where can I find a place to hide what I now am?”

Fear touched me that perhaps her terror was rooted in truth, that we had brought back from the place Dinzil knew permanent disfigurement, since we had wrought there with powers of the light, but which, perhaps, had been distorted by the Shadow.

“Come—”

Somehow I got her to her feet, and we went down that breakneck stair and stood in the corridor of the mound. Once more the runes ran red on the sword, and those I watched. But still I set paw to Kaththea and drew her with me. She went silently beside me, moving as one stricken so she cared not where she went, nor to what future.

We came out into a gray day with sullen rain falling heavily. I wondered at how I was to find our way back to where I had left Orsya. But this rutted road we could follow in part.

Kaththea’s mind was closed to me, though I tried to get her interested in our escape. She walked dumbly, behind a barrier I could not pierce. I kept my eye upon the sword, though after we emerged from the mound, the runes cooled, nor did they fire again as we passed through the dell and climbed the rise on the other side.

From here I surveyed the ground, marking landmarks I had set in mind when I came this way. Surely it had been over there that I had slain that monstrous thing which was one of the guardians of the Dark Tower.

The hunger of which I had been aware in that other world was now pain and I brought out from my belt pouch the roots Orsya had supplied. I offered one to Kaththea.

“It is good—untainted—” I told her as I put another to my lips.

She struck it out of my grasp, so it rolled out of sight into a crevice between two rocks. Still her mind was closed to me. My hatred of Dinzil was such that had he stood before me I would have tried to rend him with teeth and nails, as might a woodland beast.

Kaththea began to waver back and forth, stumbling now and then, so I steadied her. Suddenly she twisted and shoved me from her, so I fell. Before I gained my feet she was staggering back toward the Tower.

I caught up with her, and, apparently, that last rebellion had drained her energy. She did not try to throw off the hold I kept on her, though I was alert to any move she made.

We went downslope and the footing was rough. But we might have walked through a deserted world. The sword runes did not light, and we saw no living thing. I thought I knew the brush ahead, though it was not mist-wreathed today. At last we came to the stream and the reef of rock where I had last seen Orsya. Somehow, I do not know why, I had expected to sight her there still, waiting, just as I had seen her last. When she was not I knew a surge of disappointment.

“Did you think you could depend upon the water wench, my foolish brother?” That hard, unknown Kaththea’s thoughts cut into my brain. “But it is as well for her.”

“What do you mean?”

Laughter now, inside my head—such laughter as I had never thought to hear except from one as far along the path elsewhere as Dinzil.

“Because, Kemoc, my dear brother, I might ask a boon of you and, I think, I could make you grant me that boon, and thereafter it would not be well with your water wench.”

“What do you mean?” I demanded again since she had left down the barrier. Only that dreadful laughter rang in my head. I guessed I had lost Kaththea for now, even though she walked unwillingly beside me.

Our road out was the stream and beyond the river. So plain was that I did not need Orsya’s guidance. Yet I still worried about her—hoping that she had prudently withdrawn to safety, and not that she had been captured by some roving danger of this land.

We came to the deserted house of the aspt and under my urging Kaththea crawled into the chamber ahead of me. She settled herself against the far wall, as far from me as was possible in such confined quarters.

“Kaththea, in the Valley they know much, more than we. They will know what to do!”

“But, Kemoc, my brother, I know what to do! I need only your water wench for the doing. If not her, there will be another. But she is an excellent choice, being what and who she is. Bring her to me, or me to her, and we shall make such magic as shall astonish you—Kemoc who thinks he knows something of mysteries and only cons tatters discarded by those far greater than he.”

I almost lost my patience. “Such as Dinzil, I suppose.”

She was silent for a long moment. Then once more that laughter rang in my mind. “Dinzil—ah, there is one who climbs clouds to tread the sky. He wants so very, very much, does Dinzil. But whether he will have even a handful from the full measure he thinks upon, that is another question, and Dinzil must come to face it. I think I hated you, Kemoc, for what you wrought when you brought me forth. But now, thinking on it the more, I see you have served me even better than I could have ordered for myself. There I was subject to Dinzil—you were so right to fear that for me. Dear brother, for your services there shall be a reward.” The head so closely shrouded in the green scarf nodded.

I was chilled within, wondering what manner of thing had come to dwell within Kaththea, and whether it could ever be expelled. I thought of those two fates Loskeetha had foreseen, though neither had come to pass. In them Kaththea was one with the enemy. Now perhaps I could accept that she would be far better dead.

Only all men cling to hope and if I could get her back to the Valley surely there would be those who could deal with her, taking away not only the monster face, but the monster inner dweller also.

“Sleep, Kemoc; I swear to you that I shall be here when you wake. I want nothing more now than to go where you go.”

She spoke the truth, I knew. But now it was not what I wanted to hear. Whether she slept, I do not know. But she lay quiet, her bandaged head upon her arm. At length I could watch no longer, for weariness overcame me.