Trey of Swords (Witch World (Estcarp Series)) (10 page)

That wan light of gray which is the first awakening of the morning rendered visible a wild, churned land. Some chaotic movement of the earth had had its way here. Uruk slowed. I saw his helmed head move right to left and back again, as if he sought a sign which was missing.

Now we must weave a path through a choking of brush and shrub which grew up about tumbles of dark blocks of stone. Still, when I surveyed this with half-closed, measuring eyes, I could see patterns—as if buildings of mist and fog spiraled upward from those battered remains, and roads opened for us.

Uruk paused. When I looked at him I saw his face set, his mouth grim-lipped. He searched the ruins ahead with a fierce, compelling stare as if he would tear out of them by the force of his will alone some mighty secret.

“HaHarc—” He did not use the mind touch, rather spoke aloud as if he could not quite believe in what he saw. Then he swung the ax, and there was rage in that swing as he brought the weapon down, to decapitate a thin bush. He might have been striking out against all the past with that useless blow.

For a long moment he stood, the withered leaves and branches he had cut still lying on the ground, the blade which had severed them pressing their wreckage into a drift of soil. Then he shook his head. Once more he stared about him intently and I sensed that he sought some landmark which was very needful for whatever he was to do here. But my battle with that other within me had begun once again, and I felt suddenly drained of strength, of any care concerning what might lie ahead.

Uruk moved forward, but hesitantly, not with the swift purpose he had shown before. It could be that, fronted by these ruins, he had lost some landmark which he needed. Still we wove a way among blocks, pushing through the growth, though now I followed behind him.

The valley which had held HaHarc was narrow at its entrance. I could mark in the growing light that it had been closed here by a wall or fortification running from one side of the heights to the other. Though the stones of that building were so cast about that it would appear the land itself had shaken off that bondage, as indeed it must have done.

Past that point, the way before us widened and those structures which had been divorced from the walls showed taller, less tumbled. The stone was darkly weathered. Still here and there, even in the gray of early dawn. I could sight remnants of carving. Sometimes I had to close my eyes for a breath or two because I could also see the mist curdle, raise, bring back ghostly shadows of what must have been.

We stumbled upon a street, still paved, though drifted with soil which had given rootage to grass, some small bushes. This ran straight into the heart of the destroyed fortress city. For I knew without being told that before its destruction HaHarc had indeed been both. Like the Green Valley, in its day it had stood as a stout oasis of safety against the Shadow.

On Uruk tramped, now facing straight ahead, as if he had at last found the landmark he sought. Thus we came at length upon an open space where the ruins walled in a circling of stone blocks, tilted and fissured now. At regular intervals about this had been set up. on the inner side of that circle, monoliths, carved with runes, headed by time-eroded heads; some of men and some of beasts, strange, and yet menacing—but in their way no more menacing than those creatures of intelligence who comraded the People of Green Silences.

Some had fallen outward, to shatter on the pavement. But others leaned this way or that, still on their bases. And two or three stood firmly upright. Within the guardianship of these there was another building, which, in spite of its now much broken and fallen walls, I think had been tower-tall. And the stone of its making was different from that I had seen elsewhere in the ruins—for it was that dull blue which marked those islands of safety throughout Escore, the blue we had been taught to watch for during any foraying as a possible place of defense.

Once more Uruk stopped, this time facing a gateway in the tower. Had there ever been any barrier of a door there, that was long since gone. I could see through the opening into a dim chamber, wherein blocks fallen from the higher stories were piled untidily.

“Tower of Iuchar—” Again he spoke aloud and his voice, though he had not raised it, echoed oddly back. “Iuchar, Iuchar.”

My other memory struggled for freedom. Iuchar—I had known—

A man—tall as Uruk—yet not one I had seen in the body, no. Rather he was—what? A ghost which could be summoned at will to hearten people, who in the later days of HaHarc needed strongly some such symbol to reassure them in a war they sensed was already near lost? Iuchar of HaHarc. Once he had lived—for very long had he been dead—dead!

I denied uchar, for all his tower, Uruk, leaning a little on his ax. turned his head toward me. I saw his eyes beneath the rim of his dragon-crested helm. They held a somber anger.

“Iuchar—” he repeated the name once more, to be echoed. He might so have been uttering a warning to me.

Then he raised the ax in formal salute to that travesty of a tower. And I found myself willed by that other to draw Ice Tongue also, and give with it a gesture toward the open doorway.

Uruk went forward, and I followed. We passed beneath that wide portal. And I saw on the walls without the traces of flame, as if Iuchar's tower had once been the heart of some great conflagation. But within—

I halted just beyond the portal. In my hands Ice Tongue blazed, and there was an answering fire running along the double blades of Uruk's ax. There was an energy in this place, a flow of some kind of Power which made the skin tingle, the mind wince and try to escape its probing. However badly time and disaster had treated HaHarc, in this, its very heart, the Light held, fiercely demanding. Bringing with it a fear which was not born of the Shadow, but rather a foretaste of some great demand upon courage and spirit, from which he who was merely human must flinch.

But there was no evading that demand. My hands shook and Ice Tongue quivered from that shaking. But I did not drop the sword, that I could not have done. Uruk had moved on until he stood in the very center of that circular chamber, and now he turned and beckoned to me.

Unhappily, but realizing that I could not resist what had lain here so long waiting, I took three or four long strides to join him. No earth had drifted here, the stone under our boots was clean; for those rocks which had fallen from above lay close to the walls. It might have been that the force which clung here determined to keep the core of its hold clear. Now I saw that the pavement was crossed and recrossed by lines, into which some dust had shifted, so that the pattern they fashioned was not to be too clearly defined.

Uruk took his ax, and, going down on one knee, he used one of the blades with infinite care, scraping away that shifting of ancient dust, to make plain that we stood within a star. While again moved by the stirring of that other will which had become an inner part of me, I used the tip of Ice Tongue in a like manner, bringing into clarity certain runes and symbols, all different, which had been wrought near each of the points of that star. Two I recognized; those the Valley used for its safeguarding; the others—I could have opened Tolar's memory perhaps, but stubbornly I resisted.

While always about us, pressing in upon mind and will, was that sense of waiting Power. Had any of it drained during the ages of HaHarc's loss? It did not seem so to me. Rather I thought that it had stored energy, waiting impatiently for the release we were bringing, if unwillingly on my part.

His task done, Uruk arose and gestured again to me.

“The fires—”

I knew what he meant, though the logic of Yonan denied that this could be done—even while the sword of Tolar moved to do it.

I passed slowly around within the star, reaching out with Ice Tongue. And with that ice-turned-uncanny-metal I touched the tip of each point of the star set in the rock. From that touch sprouted fire—a fire unfed by any lamp, or even any fuel, burning upward unnaturally out of the blue rock itself.

Then Uruk raised the ax high and his voice boomed as might the gong in one of the shrines tended by the Witches. I did not understand the words he intoned, I do not think perhaps that even that long-ago Tolar would have known them. To each adept his own mystery, and I was certain that Tolar had never been one of the Great Ones of Escore.

If Uruk was (but somehow that I doubted also), at least he had given no other sign of such. But that he could summon
something
here I had no doubt.

From those points of flame my own sword had awakened into being there now spread a haze—sideways—though the flames of blue still arose pillarwise toward the broken roof above us. And that haze thickened.

As Uruk's voice rose, fell, rose again, the wall of mist grew thicker. I sensed that out of our sight, hidden behind that, presences were assembling—coming and going —uniting in some action which Uruk demanded of them. I kept Ice Tongue bared and ready in my hand, though the Tolar part of me felt secure. Excitement was hot along my veins, quickened my breathing.

The mist had risen to fill the chamber save within the star where we stood. My head felt giddy. I had to tense my body to remain standing; for I had an odd idea that outside the mist the whole world wheeled about and about in a mad dance no human would dare to see, or seeing, believe in.

Uurk's chanting grew softer once again. He dropped the ax, head down, against the floor, leaned on its haft as if he needed some support. His whole body suggested such strain, a draining of energy, that, without thinking, I look a step which brought me to his side, so that I could set my left arm around his shoulders. And he suffered my aid as if he needed it at that moment.

His words came in a hoarse, strained voice, and finally they died away to silence. I saw that his eyes were closed. Sweat ran in runnels down his cheeks to drip from his jaw line. He wavered, so I exerted more strength to keep him on his feet, sensing that this must be done.

The fires on the star points flickered lower, drawing in that mist, in some way consuming it. There were tatters in the fog now, holes through which a man could see. But I did not sight the fallen blocks, the same chamber in which we had entered. Now the floor was clear, and there was other light beyond our flames, flowing from lamps set in niches. Between those lamps strips of tapestry hung, the colors muted perhaps, but still visible enough, blue, green, a metallic golden yellow, with a glitter, as if the real precious metal had been drawn out into thread to be so woven.

Then the star fires flashed out as if a giant's breath had blown them altogether. We were left in the glow of the lamps, while beyond the open doorway shone the brightness of the sun. I saw near that door a table and on it a flagon and goblets.

Steadying Uruk, who walked as if he were nearly spent, I brought him to that table. Laying Ice Tongue on its surface, I used my free hand to pour pale liquid from the flagon into one of the cups, then held that to my companion's lips. His face was drawn, his eyes were closed. But he gulped at what I offered as if he needed that to retain life within him.

And as he drank I heard sounds—voices, the hum of a town. I looked over Uruk's shoulder. As the room had changed, so had HaHarc. My hands shook as I realized what must have happened. We were—
back!

No!

Tolar memory no longer warred with Yonan, but with its own self. I could not—I could not live this again! The pain from my first dream shot through my body as I remembered, only too vividly, what the past had held then, and now it had returned to face me—
no!

4

There was no brightness in this day. Dusky clouds covered in part the sky, while from the ground mist curled like smoke from uncountable campfires. Thick and evil was that mist, eye could not pierce its billows, nor could any mind send exploring thought through it. Thus we knew it was born of wizardry and what it held was truly the enemy.

I stood with Uruk, with others who wore battle mail and helms fantastically crowned by this and that legendary creature. To most of them the self I once was could give names, yet we did not speak one with the other. Our silence was as thick as the mist below on the plain.

Uruk shifted his weight. I could guess what was in his mind, for memory had returned to me full force—Tolar memory. But that was also a memory which stretched into the future. This was the Lost Battle. Though I could not see them, I could count over in that memory the names —and species—who gathered within the mist below.

What task lay upon Uruk and me now was something which I believed no man, nor adept, had tried before. Could we, knowing what we did, alter the past? Or would we be slaves to it—marched on to face once more the same fates which had overtaken the men of HaHarc in the long ago?

Though I had searched my small gleaming of legendary lore, I had never chanced upon any tale of time travel, of the ability to so alter what had been. And if we were so fortunate—what would be the result? Would HaHarc later fall to some other Power from the Dark?

Time—what was time? A measurement we ourselves forced upon the world, counting first by light and dark, then perhaps by the building of cities, the reigns of notable lords. Time now stood still as we drew our battle line and watched the forward creep of the fog.

“Be ready.” Uruk's half-whisper reached my ears only because we stood shoulder to shoulder. It was coming —my skin crawled, my body tensed—the first of our chances to fight memory reached out to us. My mouth seemed overfull with saliva. I swallowed and swallowed again.

If we were not the puppets of time—then—

There was a sudden swirl in the mist. A dark figure strode through its curtain. Manlike, it stood erect. But it was not human.

“Targi's familiar—” Uruk's ax lifted slowly, very slowly.

Memory supplied what was going to happen now. In the before Uruk had met that creature, slain it—and then the fog had taken him. I watched, waiting for the pattern to grip him now. I saw him sway, as if some force pulled at him strongly.