Web of the Witch World

7 THE HIGH WALLS OF YLE

SIMON SAT in the bowed window, his back to the room and those it held. But he could hear—the panther-pacing of Koris, the men reporting, receiving orders, departing again. This was the nerve center of the Estcarpian invasion force and beyond was the city they had taken in an audacious leap and so precariously held. That they continued to so hold it was rank folly, but whether Koris could be made to accept that truth Simon had some doubts. If the seneschal’s present mood continued he might try pulling apart the very stones of the buildings, searching for what he would not admit was gone.

Could he blame Koris for this present single-mindedness which was like to imperil their whole cause? Objectively, yes. A half year ago Simon would have witnessed but not understood the torment which tore the younger man now. But since then he had taken to himself his own demons. Perhaps he did not snarl and pace, pounce upon all comers with a demand for news.

However their cases differed in this much: Koris had been bereft by the enemy of what he had come to treasure most; Jaelithe had gone from Simon by her own will, gone and not returned. And by that he was forced to gauge the depth of the rift which had opened between them. Would she have been content had she not awakened to that shadow of power days ago? Or had that return in part of what she had once had brought home to her the loss as she had not realized it, even when she surrendered her jewel upon their marriage? Simon fought his own thoughts, strove to batter them away and consider the problem at hand—that Kars was theirs for a space, that Yvian lay dead, and that Loyse was gone, and no man they had captured knew the manner of her going.

Estcarp and Kars—the problem to hand—and Koris not able to think straight while in his present mood. Simon came away from the window, to step in the path of Koris’ pacing and catch the other’s arm.

“She is not here. So we look elsewhere. But we do not lose our heads.” Simon put snap in that with a purpose, trying to make his voice serve as might a slap across the face of a man caught in hysterical shock.

Koris blinked, broke Simon’s hold with a roll of shoulder. But he had stopped pacing, he was listening.

“If she had run—” he began.

“Then perhaps she would have been seen,” Simon agreed. “Think now: why would she have been taken? We come to this place and find that mischief was made among the duke’s men. And that purpose could have been the death of Yvian or—”

“Some other reason.” The voice made them both turn to face the witch who had ridden in with the Borderers. “For another reason,” she continued, almost as if she were clearing her thoughts by putting them into words.

“Do you not see, my lord captains, with Duke Yvian dead, his duchess has some claim to Karsten, especially since Loyse is of the old nobility and those clans would rally behind her. They would put her in rule so that they might use her as a shadow screen to cover their own power. This was all done by purpose, but whose purpose? Who is missing—from among the slain, from your prisoners? It would be better not to ask who is dead and why, but who is gone, and the why of that?”

Simon nodded. Good sense—bring Loyse to Kars, confirm her before the duchy as Yvian’s consort—with Yvian, perhaps, knowing only a portion of that and believing that portion to be his own plan—and then, dispose of Yvian, use Loyse as a puppet to establish another rule. But which one of the nobles had so devious a mind, such a smoothly running organization as to make it work? As far as Borderer intelligence knew and that was, or Simon had thought it was, very thorough, there was none among the five or six leading families who had either the courage or the ability to set such a complicated plot in action. Yvian would not have trusted any of the once powerful clans to the point that any of their members could have operated so freely within his citadel. And Simon said as much.

“Fulk was not wholly Fulk,” the witch replied. “There may be those here who are not wholly what they seem!”

“Kolder!” Koris pounded the fist of one hand into the open palm of the other. “Always Kolder!”

“Yes,” Simon replied wearily. “We could not believe that they would give up the struggle with the fall of Sippar, could we? Manpower—or its lack—did we not long ago think that perhaps their greatest weakness? It may be that they can no longer process their possessed armies—at least not here—that what we captured at Gorm has seriously weakened them. If that be so, they may have decided to substitute quality for quantity in their forces, taking over key men—”

“And women!” Koris interrupted him. “There is one whom we should have found here that we have not seen— Aldis!”

The witch was frowning. “Aldis answered to the sending in the Battle of Power before the assault on Gorm. It may be that thereafter she had no place in Kars.”

“There’s one way to find out!” Simon strode to where Ingvald sat at a table recording data on a small voice machine the Falconers had brought, a refinement of those carried by their hawks on aerial scouts.

“What mention has there been of the Lady Aldis?”

Ingvald half smiled. “More than a little. Three times those messages which set these wolves at each other’s throats were delivered by that lady. And she, being who she was in Yvian’s confidence, they took her words as sober truth. Whatever coil was woven here that one had a hand deep in its spinning.”

The witch had followed Simon across the chamber and now she rubbed her hands together, between their palms the smoky gem of her profession.

“I would see the private chamber of this woman,” she said abruptly.

They went in a body—the witch, Simon, Koris, and Ingvald. It was a dainty bower and a rich one, opening from the same upper hall as that room in which they had discovered the dying Yvian. At the room’s end long windows opened upon a balcony and the wind stirred the silken curtains of the bed, fluttered a lace scarf drifting from a chest. There was a musky scent which sickened Simon and he went to the open windows.

The witch, her gem still tight between her palms, walked about the room, her hands well out from her at breast level. What she was doing Simon could not guess, but that it had serious meaning he knew. Those hands passed over the bed, down its full length, swept across the two chests, the mirrored toilet table with its assortment of small boxes and vials carved from polished stones. Then, in mid-passage over that array, the clasped hands hesitated, poised hawk fashion, and came down in a swoop, though nothing lay below that Simon could see.

She turned to face the men. “There was a talisman here—a thing of power which had been used many times—but not our power. Kolder!” She spat that in disgust. “It is a thing of changing—”

“Shape-changing!” Koris cried. “Then she who seemed to be Aldis might not be her at all!”

But the witch shook her head. “Not so, lord captains! This is not the matter of shape-changing which we have long used, this is a changing within, not without. Did you not tell me that Fulk was not Fulk, and still not completely possessed? He was different in that he fled battle where once he would have led his men to the end. But he ran to protect that which was in him, choosing to fall at the last to his death rather than be taken by you while it was a part of him. So will this woman be. For it is firm in my mind that she also carries that inside her which is from Kolder.”

“Kolder,” Koris repeated between set teeth. Then his eyes went wide and he said that word with a different inflection altogether. “Kolder!”

“What—?” Simon began, but Koris was already continuing.

“Where is the last stronghold of those cursed man stealers? Yle! I tell you—this thing which was once Aldis has taken Loyse and they head for Yle!”

“That’s only guessing,” countered Simon. Though, he added silently, it was a logical guess. “And even if you are right, Yle’s a long way from here, we have good chance to intercept them.” And so an excellent reason for prying you out of Kars before disaster is upon us, again he added mentally.

“Yle?” The witch visibly considered that. Simon waited for an added comment. The witches of Estcarp were no mean strategists, if she had some contribution to make it would be to the point and worth listening to. But, save for that one word, she was silent. Only her gaze went from Koris to Simon and back as if she saw something that neither man could sense. However, she did not speak, and there was no chance of getting it from her by questioning, as Simon knew of old.

That Koris might be right they had proof before moonrise. Not wishing to linger in Kars, the raiders had withdrawn to the ships in the harbor, commandeering transports to take them west to the sea. The sullen crews worked under the guard of Estcarpian forces with a Sulcar commander in each ship.

Ingvald led the rearguard onto the last of the round-bellied merchant vessels and stood with Simon, looking back at the city where the whirlwind, partly of their making, had hit a day earlier.

“We leave a boiling pot behind us,” the Borderer commented.

“Since you are of Karsten, would it have been more to your mind to stay to tend this pot?” Simon asked.

Ingvald laughed harshly. “When Yvian’s murderers fired my garth and sent their darts into my father and brother, then did I swear that this was no land of mine! We are not of this new breed in Kars and it is better for us that we ride now with Estcarp, since we are of the Old Race. No, let this pot be tended now by who wills. I hold with the Guardians in the thought that Estcarp wants no land or rule beyond her own borders. Look you—do we strive to make Karsten ours now? Then we needs must stamp out a hundred rebel fires down the full length of the duchy. And to do that we should strip the northern keeps. For that Alizon waits—

“We have rid this city of Yvian, the strong man who crested its rule for long. Now will there be five, six of the coastwise lords tearing at each other’s flanks to take his place. And, so embroiled, they will have no mind to trouble the north for a space. Anarchy here serves our cause better than any occupation force.”

“Lord!” Simon turned as the Sulcar captain of the ship came up. “I have one here with a story. He thinks it worth selling, perhaps he is right.”

He shoved forward a man wearing the grimed and stained clothing of a common sailor, who promptly bent knee in the servility of Yvian’s enforcement.

“Well?” Simon asked.

“It is thus, lord. There was this ship. She was a coaster, but not of the usual order. Her men, they did not go ashore, though she was dock set for two days, maybe three. And they sent no cargo to the wharves, nor did they ride hold-filled when they came in. So we watched her, m’ mate and me. And we saw naught, save that she was so quiet. But when the fighting started in the city, then she came to life. The men, they take out their sculls and cast off. But so did a lot of others, so that was not so different. Only all the others they kept goin’ once they started—”

“And this ship did not?” Simon could not see the purpose, but he had confidence enough in the Sulcar captain’s recommendation to listen the tale out.

“Just to over stream—” The sailor nodded to the opposite bank of the river, keeping his eyes respectfully on the deck planking. “There they sat on their sculls while the rest of those on the run headed up river. Then there was this boat, a small skiff just drifting along—like lost from a tow. But they did some fast sculling to get it on the port side where it was hid. And it didn’t come out again. Only after that they were on the move, headin’ downstream instead of up.”

“And you thought that odd?” Simon prompted.

“Well, yes, seein’ as how your men were coming from that direction. O’ course most of them were ferried across the river by then and hittin’ the city. Maybe those others—they thought a try at gettin’ back down to the coast was better than headin’ inland on the river.”

“Picked someone up from the skiff,” Ingvald said.

“So it would seem,” Simon agreed. “But who? One of their own officers?”

“This skiff now,” the Sulcar captain took a hand in the questioning, “who did you see aboard her?”

“That’s what makes it so queer, sir. There weren’t nobody. Course we did have no seein’ glass on her, but all that showed above the gunnel was a piece of reed mat. There weren’t nobody rowing or even sittin’ up in her. Was they anybody on board, they was lyin’ flat.”

“Injured in the fighting?” Ingvald speculated.

“Or simply in hiding. So this ship then headed for the seacoast, down river?”

“Yes, lord. And that there’s queer, too—how she went, I mean. They was men standin’ to her sculls right enough—only they was like makin’ a play of it, just like the current was runnin’ so fast they didn’t need to do any more’n maybe just fend her off from some sandbank now and then. There’s a current here, sure, but not as strong as that. You need scullin’ if you want to make time and the wind’s in the wrong quarter—which it was then. But they was makin’ time—good time.”

The Sulcar captain looked across the bowed head of the seaman to Simon. “I do not know of any way save sculls or wind to move in the river,” he reported. “If a ship has such a method of travel, then that kind of ship I have not seen before, nor have any of my brothers. The wind and oars we know, but this is—magic!”

“But not of the Estcarpian kind,” Simon replied. “Captain, make signal to the seneschal’s ship. Then put me aboard her with this man also.”

“Well, Captain Osberic,” Koris turned to the Sulcar fleet commander when the story had been repeated to him, “is this a tale poured from some wine bottle, or could it be true?” That he wanted to believe that it was true, had already fitted it into his own quest, was apparent to them all.

“We know of no such vessel—that this man saw what he has told us, yes, that I believe. But there are ships which are not ours.”

“This was no submarine,” Simon pointed out.

“Perhaps not, but as they seem to copy now our shape-changing, perhaps Kolder might give another covering to a vessel as well. Perhaps in the confusion existing along the river while we were setting our men across, they took a chance on betraying their alienness to gain time they believed they needed.”

Koris slipped the haft of Volt’s gift up and down in his hand. “Down river to the sea, then to Yle.”

Only perhaps, Simon wanted to remind him. If the ship, small as it must have been to resemble the river craft, was really more than it seemed, it could be heading to Yle—or even overseas to the Kolder nest which lay no man knew where.

But Koris had already made up his mind. “The fastest ship you have, Osberic, our men for the sculls if need be. We’re going after.”

Only if the ship was ahead of them, it had made good use of its long head start. With night a wind came to fill the sail Osberic had set, and they slipped along at as smart a clip as any river vessel knew, not needing scull labor. Behind them the string of transports was nosing into the northern shore, to disembark the raiders who would ride for the border, leaving chaos behind them. Only Osberic’s chosen ship and two others with Sulcar crews pursued the river chase.

Simon had some hours of sleep, his cloak about him, the discomfort of Fulk’s mail still heavy on his limbs. They had rid themselves of their shape-changed disguises, but the borrowed weapons and clothing they still wore. His sleep was uneasy, full of dreams which fell to fragments each time he awoke, though he was plagued with the thought that they were important.

And at last he lay watching the stars, listening to the wind, and now and then the murmur of some Sulcar man on duty. Koris lay an arm’s length away and Simon thought that perhaps fatigue had struck at last and the seneschal slept.

Yle—and Kolder. There would be no turning Koris aside from Yle—short of putting him in bonds by force. Yet, there was taking Yle either. Had they not bitten again and again on that hard nut these past months? They had won into Gorm because chance had taken Simon as a prisoner into that stronghold and made him aware of certain chinks in Kolder armor. But then Kolder had been confident, almost contemptuous of its opponents with their vulnerability to Kolder might.

The enemies’ defeat in Sippar would have taught them a lesson. Had in this much—that there was now an invisible barrier about Yle by both land and sea—a barrier nothing, not even the power of the witch probe, could pass. For months Yle had been sealed. If the garrison of that stronghold came or went, it was by sea, and not on the surface of that sea. The Kolder ships were submarines, three such had been taken at Gorm. But—

Simon knew again the doubts which had moved him months earlier when he had stood before the Council of Guardians and had given the opinion they had asked for: leave the things found at Gorm alone, be very careful of the alien secrets lest they unleash something they could neither understand nor control. Had he been wrong then? He wavered now. Yet something inside him still argued firmly that he was right, to use Kolder means was to deliver oneself in part to the enemy.

That the witches were exploring the finds on Gorm slowly, carefully, Simon knew. And that did not disturb him, for they would use every possible safeguard, and their own power was a barrier which Kolder recognized. But to put into the hands of others those machines . . .

Yet they might have a way there of breaching Yle now. Simon had thought of it before, but never, not even to Jaelithe, had he put that thought into words.

It might be that he alone could once more crack the shell of a Kolder fortress. Not via submarine—he had not the knowledge for that, and they had not yet discovered what motive force propelled those ships, unless it could be the mental power of the Kolder leader who had died with the metal cap on his head, failing his men at the last. No, not under the sea, but through the air. Those flyers lined up on the roof top in dead Sippar—they might be the key to Yle. But to mention that to Koris would be the rankest folly.