Lost Lands of Witch World (85 page)

I had never believed him actively evil, only one of those who, following a trail which interested them, could be ruthlessly self-centered, acting recklessly out of curiosity and confidence in themselves. So had he been once, and if he remained so, then he was a threat to what was being built here anew in Escore. If he could track us to the Green Valley . . . !

We could mind block Ayllia completely again. But if we did so she would be only an inert bundle, needing to be carried and constantly tended. And there surely lay many dangers ahead which would make such a captive our bane and perhaps even our deaths. We could abandon her, but that, too, was unthinkable.
And the final decision was not mine but to be shared by the three of us.

During the rest of my hours of watch I listened, not only to the noises of the night, but to any sound from Ayllia. She slept untroubled, however.

When I roused my father to take the final watch I warned him of what I had heard, that he might be alert in turn, even though there was certainly little more that she could report.

In the morning we took council together. My mother was very thoughtful as she considered my ideas.

“I do not believe in a tribal seeress doing this,” she said. “Your Utta must have been unique among those people. Hilarion
is
the more reasonable answer. Upon us may now rest an error in judgment for leaving him behind.”

“But—” I protested.

“Yes, but and but and but. There are many ifs and buts to be faced in every lifetime and we can choose only what seems best at the moment when the choice is to be made. We have the Power, which makes us more than some, but we must be ever on the alert not to think that it makes us more than human. I think we dare not mind block her. It would render her too great a burden on us. Also, I would set no rearguard cover spell. Such can be as easily read as plain footprints in muddy earth by one like Hilarion. Better to let him think we suspect nothing while we plan ahead for a defense needed at our journey's end.”

My father nodded. “As ever, you put it clearly, my witch wife. Our first need is to cross this country to where we shall find friends. To be thought less than we are, not more, is a kind of defense in itself.”

They were logical, right. Yet as we started on in the first daylight, I had a feeling that I must now and then look behind me, almost as if some barely perceptible shadow crept behind, always fluttering into hiding just upon my turning so that I never saw it, only sensed it was there.

W
e found no more sweet and sunlit spots such as the orchard; neither did we again chance upon a pool of vileness as the wood. Rather we journeyed over what might have been a land where man had never set foot before. A wild country, yet not too difficult to travel. And for two days we headed steadily west over this. Each night we listened also as Ayllia reported in whispers her account of that day's traveling, as if she had walked with a knowing mind and open eyes scout-trained to see. Nor when I urged that she be blocked did my parents agree, for fear of rendering her helpless that we could not transport her.

On the third day distant blue lines against the sky to the north and west broke into individual mountain peaks. And I was heartened, for by so much were we
closer to a land I knew, at least in part. And perhaps I could, within this day's journeying or tomorrow's, pick out some landmark which would guide us into a land the Valley riders patrolled.

We surmounted a ridge at midday, to look down and away into a meadow-land, though the grass was now a drab, winter-killed mat through which only a few spikes of early green stuff broke. But man had been here, for there were very old stone fences, so overborne by time that they were mere lines of tumbled rocks. Yet those lines in one direction marked out a road, and the road ended in piers water-washed by a languidly flowing river, some planted in the water, jagged stumps above its surface, and one on an island midway between the two shores.

But it was what occupied that island which froze us, startled and staring, on the ridge crest, until my father's fiercely hissed warning sent us down flat, no longer to be noted against the sky. What we had chanced upon was a sharp skirmish between two bands of sworn enemies.

On this side of the stream reared, pawed, galloped up and down, black Keplians—those monsters with the seeming of horses that served the Sarn Riders. The Sarns—I had thought them all dead in the defeat of Dinzil, but it would seem that enough had survived to make up this troop at least—were human appearing, their hooded cloaks flapping about them. Padding along the margin of the water were the Gray Ones, pointing their man-wolf muzzles into the air as they slavered and screeched their hatred. But, as ever, running water kept them both from full attack. Not so the others of that Shadow pack. From the air shrieked the rus, those birds of ill omen, flying with talon and beak ready to harry the party on the island. And I saw, too, the troubling of the water as rasti swam in waves of furred and vicious bodies, struggling out into the jumble of rocks which was the only defense the island party had.

And running water did not hold others of that foul regiment. Well above its surface floated a swirl of yellowish vapor which did not travel fast, yet made purposefully for the island. Only the sharp crackle of the energy whips of the Green Riders on the island kept all these at bay. Yet perhaps what the forces of the Shadow fought for was only to hold until support came, since we could see movement on the ground at the other side of the river, an ingathering of more of the Sarn Riders and the Gray Ones. Behind those something else moved with intent, but was so covered by a flickering of the air that I could not truly see it. I believed it, however, to be one of the strong evils.

Once Kemoc and I had been so besieged in a place of stones, with a monster force ringing us in. Then Kyllan and the Green People had broken through to our rescue. But here it would seem that some of the Green People themselves were at bay.

Kemoc! His name was on my lips but I did not cry it aloud, remembering that such a betrayal of my recognition might be caught by one of the Shadow and
used as another weapon against the very one I would protect. Now I saw a boiling of water about the island and wondered if the Krogan, alienated as they had been, had also now come fully under the Dark Ones' banner.

My father had been surveying the scene below with critical measurement. He spoke now.

“It would seem wise to provide some diversion. But these are not Kolder, nor men—”

My mother's fingers moved in gestures I understood. She was not really counting those of the enemy between us and the river; rather she was in a manner testing them. Now she answered him.

“They do not suspect us, and among these there is knowledge of a sort, but they are not of the Masters, rather creatures born of meddling in pools of the Power. I do not know whether we will turn them by spelling, but one must try. An army . . . ?” And of those last two words she made a question.

“To begin with, yes,” he decided.

She brought out of the fore of her tunic some of the herbs which she had used to break the counter spell of the monster-seeming while my father and I clawed loose the earth of the ridge about us. Using spittle from our mouths, we made of it small balls, into which Jaelithe pressed some of the bits of dried leaf and broken stem. When she had done so, she set them out in a line before us.

“Name them!” she ordered.

And my father did so, staring long and hard at each one as he spoke. Some of the names he uttered were ones I had heard:

“Otkell, Brendan, Dermont, Osboric.”

And a great name that last was! Mangus Osberic had held Sulcar Keep and taken its walls and Kolder attackers with him when there was no hope of relief.

“Finnis . . . ” On and on he spoke those names, some of Old Race Borderers, some of Sulcarmen, one or two of Falconers. And I knew that he so chose men who had stood beside him once, though now they were dead and so could not be harmed by our magic.

When he had done, and there were still some balls remaining, my mother took up the tale. The names she called sounded with a particular crackle in the air. Thus I knew she raised, not warriors, but Wise Women who had gone behind the final curtain.

She was done and a single ball remained unnamed. I was—possessed? No, not in reality, for another will did not enter into me to direct my hand or take over my brain, yet I did that which I had no forethought to do. My finger went out to the last ball and the name I gave it was not that of the dead, but of the living, and a name I would never have voiced had not that compulsion out of nowhere brought it to my lips.

“Hilarion!”

My mother sent a single direct and measuring glance. But she said naught,
rather put then her force to the summoning, and my father and I joined with her. Then from the small seeds of soil, herbs and spittle, gathering form and solidity as they did rose, came the appearances of those named.

In that moment, they were so very real that even putting forth a hand one might feel firm flesh. And one could indeed die under the weapons they carried, ready for battle.

But that last seed, that which I had so intently named, did not bear fruit. And I had a fleeting wonder if it had been only my fear of him, perhaps a desire to think him dead and safely removed from us, which had led me to that act.

There was no time left for idle speculation as down from the ridge marched the army we had summoned, the warriors to the fore, behind them a half a dozen gray-robed women, each with her hands breast-high, holding so her witch jewel, in its way as great or greater a menace to the enemy than the steel the others bore.

So great was the hallucination that, had I not seen the spell in progress, I would have accepted the sudden appearance of a battle-ready force as fact. Yet that one ball of mud remained. I would have pinched it into nothingness but I discovered that I could not, so I left it lying as we four got to our feet to follow the army our wills commanded down the slope to the river.

I do not know which of those in the lines of besiegers first looked up to see us coming, but suddenly there was an outward surge, mainly of the Gray Ones leaping at us. Among them our warriors wreaked slaughter, though at first I thought that perhaps the enemy could sense they were not normal and meet them as illusions.

Now the Sarn Riders wheeled and rode, and from them sprang lance points of fire. Yet none of those at whom they aimed shriveled in the flames or fell in death. And as our warriors had met the Gray Ones, so did the Wise Women of the second line send forth beams from their jewels. These touching upon the head of Keplian or rider appeared to cause madness so that Keplian ran screaming, stopping now and then to rear and paw wildly, throwing riders who had not already been crazed by the touch of jewel beams.

Our advantage was a matter of time, as I knew well, and I struggled along with my parents to hold fast the flow of energy which fed our illusions. For, if we faltered or tired, they would fail. And soon we marched less quickly, and I felt drops of sweat gather on my forehead, to roll as tears of strain down my cheeks. But still I gave all I had to this task.

The regiment of illusions reached the river bank. Then the drifting swirls of mist floated back from the island toward us. These were in fact so insubstantial they were naught which could be hewed nor did the jewel beams appear to harm them, though they would swing away from any aimed at their centers.

And, if these were not enough, that curious “thing” we had seen advancing on the other side of the river was drawing closer. But the Sarn Riders and the Gray
Ones on that side of the water made no attempt to cross and join the fighting here, nor even to reach the island. It could be they only waited to cut off retreat, leaving the strange thing to do the battling.

Suddenly my mother flung out her hand, and, as suddenly, my father was at her side, his arm about her shoulders, supporting her. I caught only the sidewash of that chaotic confusion which struck at us obliquely, so that my mother must have taken far more of its force. And I knew without being told that it was a blow from that flickering unseeable. However, if it had thought to contemptuously sweep us into nothingness by such tactics, it was soon to learn that we had more, or were more, than it expected.

Our illusionary troops did not fall dead, nor fade away; they simply ceased to be, as we withdrew that energy which gave them life and being in order to defend ourselves. Still, they had cleared a path to the river bank and those on the island were quick to take advantage of what relief we could offer them. I saw Renthan arise from where they had lain, men swing onto their backs, energy whips lashing, to sweep the rest of the rasti away. Then, with great leaps through the water, they came to us.

Kemoc was well in the van, and sharing his mount was Orsya, her hair and pearly skin still water-sleeked. Behind them were six of the Green People, four men, two women.

“Mount!” My brother wheeled his Renthan close, his order clear. I saw my father half throw Ayllia to one of the Green Riders, and then aid my mother to mount behind another. I took the hand of one of the women and rose to sit behind her, seeing my father behind another.

The Keplians and Gray Ones who had been so scattered by our illusions were not united to stand yet, and we rode southeast, keeping along the river bank. We rode knowing that behind us that flickering menace was coming, and, of all the enemy we had fronted this day, that was the most to be feared.

I glanced back, to see that it was out over the stream now—though it made that journey quickly, as if it cared little to cross running water. Then it was on the same bank. And how swiftly it might travel could mean the difference between life and death for us. We dared not halt again to make a new army, even if we could summon strength anew to call it into life.

I had never really known just how much speed the Renthans could summon, but that day I learned, and it was such learning as I would not care to face a second time unless the need was very great. I only clung to the one who sat before me and centered all my determination on holding that seat, while I closed my eyes to the wild sight of the world flashing by so fast that it would seem we bestrode a flying thing which never touched hoof to solid earth.