Web of the Witch World

11 KOLDER KIND

SIMON LAY very still, sweating now. For this was no half-trance of his own willing. He was motionless in bonds he could not see, his body held by another’s will. Then she stood there, clear to the sight, at the foot of the bed, watching him in the level measurement which held no hint of whether she was friend or foe, or merely neutral in this war.

“They have come,” she said, “to answer the call of their woman they have come.”

“Kolder!” Simon found that he could use his tongue and lips if not the rest of his body.

“The dead ones who serve such,” the Torwoman qualified. “Listen, man who obeys Estcarp, we have no quarrel with the witches. Between them and us there is neither friendship nor enmity. We were here when the Old Race came and built Es and their other dark towers. We have been rooted here for long and long, a handful of people who can remember when man was not the ruler of earthside, not even ones who lived widely. We are of those Volt gathered and set apart to learn his wisdom.

“And we want no dealings with those outside Tormarsh. You have come to trouble us with your wars which are no concern of ours. The swifter you are gone from us, the better served we shall be.”

“But if you do not favor the witches, then why do you favor Kolder? Kolder hungers for rule over all men—and that includes the race of Tor.” Simon retorted.

“We do not favor Kolder, we only ask that we be left to our own mysteries without troubling from beyond the marsh rim. The witches have not threatened us. This you call Kolder has shown us what will happen if we do not yield you to them now. And so it is decided that you go—”

“But Estcarp would defend you against Kolder—” Simon began until she smiled a small, cold smile.

“Will they, with aught save good wishes, Warder of the Border? There is no war between us, but they fear the marsh as a place of ancient mysteries and strange ways. Would they fight to save it? I think not. Also they have no men to throw into such a battle now.”

“Why?” She seemed so certain that Simon was startled into a rough demand.

“Alizon has risen. Estcarp needs must throw all her armies northward to hold the marches there. No, we make the best bargain for us.”

“And so I am to be delivered to the Kolder.” Simon strove to keep his voice even and emotionless. “And what of Loyse? Do you give her also into the hands of the worst enemy this world has ever known?”

“The worst?” the Torwoman echoed. “Ah, we have seen many nations rise and fall, and in each generation there is a powerful enemy to be faced, either with victory or defeat. As for the girl—she is part of the bargain.”

“She is also Koris’, and I think you will discover that that has a meaning when it comes to extracting a price for such bargaining. I have seen the price he took from Verlaine and from Kars. Volt’s gift drank deep in both those holds. Your marshland will not turn him back when it comes to his hunting.”

“The bargain is made,” her tone was more remote than ever. Then her hands came up in a swift gesture and her fingers moved. Not to shape Jaelithe’s symbol of power, but still in an airborne sketch which had meaning.

“So you deem this Koris will come hunting for vengeance here?” she asked. “This pale-faced girl means so much to him?”

“She does, and those who have harmed her have need to fear.”

“Ah, but now he must ride to hold back Alizon. It will be many days before he shall have time to think of aught else. Or perhaps he will find an end to all questions and desires among the border hillocks.”

“And I say to you, lady, that Volt’s gift shall yet swing in Tormarsh if you do as you have said.”

“If I do, March Lord? I have naught to say in the yea and nay of such bargainings.”

“No?” Simon put all the skepticism he could muster into that. “And I say that you are not the least of those among the Tor born.”

She did not answer for a long moment, her gaze steady upon him.

“Perhaps once I was not. Now I do not raise my voice in any council. I wish you no ill, Warder of Estcarp. And I think that you mean no ill to me—or any of us. But when need drives, we obey. This much I shall do for you, since the maid is favored by he who was once lord of Gorm. I shall send a message forth to Es that those there may know where you have gone and why. If then they can move to aid you, perhaps it will not go so ill. More than that I am sworn not to do.”

“The Kolder come for us here—how?” Simon demanded.

“They come—or at least their servants come—up the inner river in one of their ships.”

“But there is no river linking Tormarsh with the sea!”

“No outer one,” she agreed. “The marsh drains under ground. They have found that way to us, they have already visited us by it before.”

By submarine down an underground river, Simon faced that. Even if the promised message reached Es in time to send a small force to the rescue, they could not ferret out the enemies’ pathway, or help the prisoners borne so along it. The Guard of Estcarp would not be the answer.

“If you would truly favor us to the point of sending any message,” Simon told her, “then send it not to Es but to the Lady Jaelithe.”

“If she is your wife, then she is no witch, nor can she do aught to aid you.” The Torwoman stared at him again with curiosity which Simon thought dangerous.

“Nevertheless, if you favor us in so much—then send.”

“I have said that I will send, if you wish it. To the Lady Jaelithe it shall be. Now, they come to take you hence, March Lord. If you survive this captivity, remember that Tormarsh is old, there is that within it which has stood long without being stamped into the bog with those who know its ways. Do not think that what is here can be easily swept aside.”

“Say that rather to Volt’s gift and he who bears it, lady. From Kolder’s fingers few escape. But Koris lives, and rides, and hates—”

“Let him ride and hate and show Volt’s gift to Alizon. There is the need for action there. Odd, March Warder, there is that in you which does not align itself with your words. You speak as one who resigns himself to fate, yet I do not believe that is so. Now—” Once again she sketched a sign in the air. “The gate is open and it is time you go.”

What happened then was beyond any description Simon was ever able to give. He only knew that one moment he was in the doorless cell, and the next, still helpless in whatever hold they had upon him, he was in the open on the bank of a dark lake where the water was thick and murky, with a threatening look to it.

There was the murmur of voices about and behind him, the Torfolk were gathered there, men and women. And a little apart the smaller group of which Simon was an unwilling part.

Aldis, a look of confidence and expectancy on her face, Loyse, standing so stiffly that Simon guessed she was held in the same immobile spell as himself, and two of the Tormen. There was also a fifth from beyond the marsh boundaries.

No Kolder—at least not the Kolder such as he had seen in Gorm. Of middle size, face round and dark of skin, a kind of tan-yellow unlike any Simon had seen in this world, though they had found representatives of unknown races among the dead slaves in Gorm. He wore a tight-fitting one-piece garment of gray, like the Kolder dress, but his head was bare of any cap though he had a silvery disk resting under the fringe of his thin, reddish hair at the temple.

And the stranger was weaponless. However on the breast of his suit there was one of those intertwined knots fashioned of green metal, such as had been on Fulk’s swordbelt and Aldis carried.

The murmur from the Tormen grew louder, so that individual beepings carried to Simon. For the first time he wondered, with a small surge of hope, if the bargain the woman had told him about had been so widely accepted as she would have him believe. Could an appeal from him now split the ranks, give the prisoners a chance? But, even as Simon thought that, one of the marsh natives, standing with Aldis, raised his arm in a lashing motion. There was a ring of bells, the first really melodious sound Simon had heard in this half-drowned country. As the chain bearing those fell again to the Torman’s side there was quiet, instant and absolute.

Quiet enough so that the disturbance in the murky water of the lake broke in an audible bubble on the surface. Then the water poured away as out of the depths arose the mud-streaked surface of a Kolder underwater vessel. There were scars and scrapes along its sides as if it had found whatever passage ran this way a difficult one. It moved without sound closer to shore.

An opening in the rounded upper surface flipped to shore to form a platform bridge uniting land and ship.

Aldis, her eager expression now an open smile, started along that pathway. Then Loyse, as if Aldis pulled her by cords, followed, walking stiffly, her whole body expressing her fear and repulsion. Simon’s turn—his muscles, his bones, his flesh, were no longer his own. Only his mind imprisoned in that helpless body struggled for freedom, with defeat for the end.

He walked to that opening in the Kolder ship. Then, still by another’s will, his hands and feet found holds on a ladder, and he descended into the space below. But not to freedom. Loyse moved ahead and he after, into a small cabin bare of any furnishings. They stood, he slightly behind the girl, and heard the door clang shut. Then and then only, did the compulsion cease to hold him.

Loyse, with a little moan, slumped and Simon caught her. He lowered her gently to the metal flooring but still held her as their bodies tingled with the vibration reaching them through the structure of the ship. Whatever power moved the submarine was now in force; the voyage had begun.

“Simon,” Loyse’s head turned so that he felt her breath come in gasps, not far from sobs, against his cheek. “Where are they taking us?”

This was a time when only the truth would serve. “To where we have wished to be—though not under these circumstances—I think, the Kolder base.”

“But—” her voice quavered to a pause. When she spoke again it was with a measure of self-control, “that—that lies overseas.”

“And we travel under water.” Simon leaned back against the wall. As far as he could see the cabin was bare and they had no weapons. Not only that, but there was that control over them the Kolder appeared able to use at will, leaving all hopes of rebellion doomed. But, perhaps there was one way . . .

“They will never know where we are. Koris cannot—” Loyse was traveling her own path of thought.

“At present Koris is occupied, they have seen to that also.” Simon told her of the invasion from Alizon. “They plan to bay Estcarp around with snarling dogs, letting her wear down her forces with such blows, none of which will yet be fatal, but which will exhaust her manpower and her resources—”

“Letting others do their fighting,” Loyse broke in hotly, “ever the Kolder way.”

“But one which can win for them as time passes,” Simon commented. “They have some plan for us also.”

“What?”

“By right of marriage you are now Duchess of Karsten, and so a piece worth controlling in this devious game they play. I am Border Warder. They can use me as hostage or—” He hated to put into words the other reason which might make him valuable to the enemy, the much more logical one.

“Or they can strive to make you one of them and so a traitor to serve their ends among the ranks of Estcarp!” Loyse stated it for him. “But there is one thing we may do so that we cannot be used so. We can die.” Her eyes were very somber.

“If the need comes,” Simon replied crisply. He was thinking: the site of the Kolder base—that was what they had long wanted to know. Not to snap off the monster’s hands and arms, but destroy the head. Only, the world was wide and Estcarp had no clues as to the direction in which such a base lay. The Kolder use of underwater ships meant that they could not successfully be tracked by the Sulcarmen who counted the ocean their true home.

But suppose that Kolder could be tracked? The Sulcarmen were not truly land fighters. Certainly their raiders would be now harrying the coast of Alizon with the hit and run tactics they had developed to a high art, but that employment would not require the majority of their fleet. And if that fleet were free to track a Kolder ship, find their base—their fighting crews would harass the enemy on their home ground until Estcarp could throw the might of striking power against that hold.

“You have a plan?” The fear which had shadowed Loyse’s features was fading as she watched Simon.

“Not quite a plan,” he said. “Just a small hope. But—”

It was that “but” which was all important now. The Kolder ship would have to be traced. Could that be done by contact such as he and Jaelithe had had in the Tormarsh village? Would the blight of those barriers the Kolder had always been able to use to cloak themselves against the magic of Estcarp sunder them utterly? So many “ifs” and “buts” and only his scrap of hope to answer all of them.

“Listen—” More to clear his own thinking than because he expected any active assistance from Loyse, Simon outlined what that hope might be. She gripped his arm fiercely.

“Try it! Try to reach Jaelithe now! Before they take us so far away that even thought can not span that journey. Try it now!”

In that she could be right. Simon closed his eyes, put his head back against the wall and once more bent his whole desire and will-to-touch on Jaelithe. He had no guide in this seeking, no idea of how it might be done, he had only the will which he used with every scrap of energy he could summon.

“I hear—”

Simon’s heart beat with a heavier thump at that reply.

“We go . . . on Kolder ship . . . perhaps to their base. Can you follow?”

There was no immediate answer, but neither was that snap of breaking contact which he had known twice before. Then came her reply.

“I do not know, but if it is possible, it shall be done!”

Again silence, but abiding with Simon the sense of union. His concentration was broken, not by his will, nor Jaelithe’s, but by a sudden lurch of the ship, sending his body skidding along the cabin wall, Loyse on top of him. The vibration through those walls was stepped up until the vessel quivered.

“What is it?” Loyse’s voice was thin and ragged once again.

The flooring was aslant so that the sub could not be on an even keel. And the vibration had become an actual shaking of its fabric and frame as if it were engaged in some struggle. Simon remembered the scars and mud smudges he had seen on its sides. An underground passage by river might not be too accommodating. They could have nosed into a bank, caught there. He said so.

Loyse’s hands twisted together. “Can they get us loose?”

Simon saw the wide blankness of her eyes, caught the claustrophobic panic rising in her.

“I would say that whoever captains this vessel would know how to deal with such problems; this is not the first time—by Tormarsh accounts—that they have made the run.” But there was always a first time for disaster. Simon had never believed that he would reach the point of joining the Kolder in any wish, but now he did as he tensed at every movement of the ship. They must be backing water to pull loose. The cabin rocked about the two prisoners, spilling them back and forth across its slick floor.

The rocking stopped and then the ship gave a great jerk. Once more the vibration sank to an even purr, they must be free and on course once again.

“I wonder how far we are from the sea?” Simon had thought about that, too. He did not know where Jaelithe was, how long it would take her to contact any Sulcar ship and send it skulking after them. But Jaelithe would be on that ship—she would have to sail thus in order to hold the tie with him! And they could not assemble a fleet so quickly. Suppose that single Sulcar vessel lurking behind should be sighted, or otherwise detected by the Kolder? An engagement would be no contest at all, the Sulcar ship, and its crew, would be helpless before the weapons of the Kolder. It was rank folly for him to encourage Jaelithe to follow. He must not try to reach her again—let her believe that he could not—

Jaelithe—Kolder. They balanced in his mind. How could he have been so insane as to draw her into such a plan?

“Because it is not rank folly, Simon! We do not yet know the limits of this we hold, what we dare summon by it—”

This time he had not tried to reach her, yet she had read all his forebodings as if he had hurled them at her.

“Remember, I follow! Find this noisome nest—and there shall be a clearing of it!”

Confidence. She was riding high on a wave of confidence. But Simon could not match that, he could only see every pointed reef ahead and no discernible course among them.