Tales From High Hallack, Volume 2 Read online

  “By Oak, by Stream, by Storm, by Fire—” The words came in the old tongue—

  Lethe nodded, though he might not be able to see that gesture of approval in the gloom.

  “By Sword and Staff, by Horn, by Crown.” The old words came so easily in this place, though it was another time when they were common here. “So warrior, you have at least trod a stride or two down that path?”

  “My lord was of the House of Uye. When we were given our swords as men he held by the old oaths.”

  Swords as men! she thought. These must be dire days when boys were counted men. But only dire days could have drawn her here.

  “Then you know that this is a place of peace.”

  She heard the faint snick of the dagger being sent once more into sheath.

  “Lady, in this land there is no longer any place of peace.” His words were stark and harsh.

  “To that we shall take council. Come—”

  Hurten hesitated, still unwilling to admit that the watch he had taken on himself might no longer be necessary. But she had already started back as if she thought there could be no questioning, and he followed.

  They found the rest around the fire. Orffa and Marsila both looked up in question as Hurten came in, but Lethe was quick to explain:

  “There is a guard, and one which will keep the watch well. For now there is that which we must discuss among ourselves.” Deliberately she chose her words to ally herself at once with these chosen for a purpose she could not question.

  “Time may change but not the seasons.” Lethe had waited until they had cleaned their bowls. “The sea winds herald ill coming. There was once some command over wind and weather in this place, but that was long ago. We shall need that for day and night”—she pointed to the fire— “and food—”

  “We have been gathering,” Marsila answered sharply as if some action of hers had been called into question. “We have a storeroom.”

  Lethe nodded. “That I do not question. Save that if the dire storms hit, as well they may, there shall be needed every scrap of food, every stick of wood. Herb-craft also, for there are the illnesses which come with weather changes, and some of those are severe.”

  There was movement at the other side of the table. Alana carried a nearly asleep Robar to one of the fireside pallets.

  Hurten leaned forward.

  “What are we to you?” His voice was a little hoarse. “We are not of your breed. No.” He glanced briefly at the others. “Nor are we even of one House or blood ties ourselves. We make no claim of vassalage rights—”

  “Why did you come here?” Marsila planted one elbow on the table and rested her chin upon her hand. “There has been no tale of your kind among us since the High Queen Fothuna died, leaving no daughter for the rule, and all the land fell apart, with quarrels between lordlings and War Ladies. And that was a legend length of years ago. We have none of the old power. Lusta, yes. Twice she dreamed us out of fell dangers—but our race was and is wise in our own way only. Thus we ask, why do you come to speak as a chatelaine here?”

  “And I ask again, what do you want with us?” Hurten repeated.

  He was frowning, and that frown was echoed by a stronger scowl drawing together Orffa’s straight brows. The impish humor that had looked ever ready to curve Tyffan’s lips was gone, and the twins were blank-faced.

  Lusta’s tongue showed a pink tip between her lips but she did not speak, and Alana’s hands clasped together tightly on the table top before her.

  “You, in a manner, called me. No”—Lethe shook her head, aware of the denial already on Hurten’s lips— “I do not say that you knew of me. But in those days of far legend Marsila has mentioned there were gaes laid, and this was mine: that I was tied to Kar-of-the-River—this keep in which we shelter. And so I fulfill now that set upon me. I did not know until I came hither what I would find. As to what you mean to me—that we both must learn. For I must in right tell you this, that you are bound even as I—”

  Hurten’s hand balled into a fist. He moved as if to stand. He was of no temper to play with words, as Lethe saw, yet what more could she tell him yet?

  It was Orffa who got to his feet and moved behind the older boy, as a liege man would back-cover his lord. But of him Hurten took no notice as he said:

  “Lady, we are not those for your binding.”

  Lethe sighed. Patience, ever patience. A weaver must be sure that no knotting despoiled her threads. It was Marsila who put an end to it.

  “The hour grows late.” She had pulled Alana closer beside her, and the child leaned heavily against her shoulder. “With the morrow there will be time enough for questions.”

  It seemed that even Hurten was willing to surrender to that. So the fire was set for long burning and they took their places on the pallets within its warmth, Lethe lying down upon a cushion of her cloak—though she did not sleep. For her kind needed little of such rest. Instead, behind closed eyelids, she rebuilt what now closed her in as she had seen it last in other days. Out of the past she summoned others who moved as shades where they had once been true life.

  A sound broke through her half-dream. She opened her eyes. One of those on the pallets had sat up, shrugged aside a covering of skins. The fire flickered to show a face—

  Lusta, the dreamer!

  Lethe’s keen sight was not deadened by the gloom. The girl’s eyes were closed. Nor did she open them as her head swung around as if in answer to some summons. On hands and knees, eyes still shut, she crawled away from the hearth into inner darkness, and then got to her feet. Lethe allowed her a small start and followed after.

  Down the hall into the great presence chamber. The globe light was gone, it was totally dark here, yet Lusta went with the confidence of one who saw perfectly. Lethe followed. To break the girl’s trance—no—that was a dangerous folly. She must know what drove Lusta into the night.

  They came forth from the hall into the open of the courtyard. Up the stairs Lusta went without a stumble. A moon shone warily between moving clouds, and to Lethe this was light enough. Lusta had sought out the very perch where Hurten had earlier made his sentry post.

  She turned slowly, facing outward, and then her hand went out to the parapet and her fingers tapped along it. Sparks flew as if she used a wand of iron instead of her own flesh.

  Lethe’s head went back. Her nostrils flared as if to catch some faint scent. She was already up the stairs. Now she moved forward, and, standing behind Lusta, put out her own two hands, touching fingers lightly to both the girl’s temples.

  The woman’s lips flattened into something closer than a snarl. This—but she had not thought that the new invaders were so knowledgeable. Or were they only symptoms of an older and fouler plague?

  She applied pressure, flesh to flesh, and forced will upon dream. Lusta’s own hands paused in their tapping. Then she cried out sharply and crumpled as if all life had been withdrawn in a matter of a breath or two.

  Lethe did not kneel at once beside her; rather she now turned all attention to the danger at hand. Where Lusta had wrought a breaking spell, she relaid the guard, this time reinforcing it with will enough to leave her feeling nearly as drained as the unconscious girl at her feet.

  It was not well—what she had done would alert that other power that had already made this first move. Yet Lusta taken over, with a gift she had not been trained to protect, was a key which must not be used.

  Lethe crouched down to gather the girl into her arms, pulling her cloak about the both of them. Lusta’s face was as chill as if she had been brought out of a snowbank, but both of her hands, which Lethe took into one of hers, were warm, near fire-hot. That which the girl had not finished projecting into the break spell was turned back upon her, eating in. She moaned and twisted in the woman’s hold.

  “Lusta!” There came a call from below, then the scrape of boots on stone.

  Tyffan came in a scrambling run. “Lusta!” He went down on his knees beside the two of them. “What�
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  “She is safe—for now.” Under Lethe’s touch the fire had cooled from the girl’s hands. “Tyffan, you say she dreamed you here?”

  “What is wrong with her?” He paid no attention to that question.

  “She has been possessed.” Lethe gave him the truth. “Perhaps even her dreaming you here was by another’s purpose. This night that which held her in bond used her to attack the guards.”

  Tyffan stared at the woman. “But Lusta would not—”

  “No!” Lethe assured him quickly. “She would not have brought harm to you willingly. But she was not taught to guard her gift, and that laid her open to—”

  “The demons!” But how—”

  “We do not know by whom or why she was sent to do this,” Lethe said quickly. “But she has overused her strength, and we must get her into warmth now.”

  Hurten and Orffa met them at the door of the presence chamber, and Tyffan gave them a confused answer as to what had happened as Lethe hurried the girl, who was on her feet but barely so, into the warmth of the kitchen place.

  She oversaw the brewing up of an herbal potion and stood over Lusta until the girl drank it to the dregs. Lusta seemed but half awake, dazed, mumbling, and unaware of where she was or what had happened. Lethe saw her back to the pallet and then faced the others.

  “You asked me earlier what I wanted of you,” she said directly. “That I do not yet fully know. But it may also be that another power brought you here and is prepared to make use of you.” And she explained what Lusta had been led to do.

  “Lusta is not a demon!” Tyffan near shouted.

  It was Marsila who answered him. “She is Wise. That is a power. Lusta would never use it for any but good. In truth”—now she spoke to Lethe— “she never used it by her will; the dreams came to her without her seeking or bidding.”

  “We speak of power as a gift,” Lethe said. “It may also be a burden, even a curse, if it is not used with control. I do not think that Lusta was given any aid in learning what she could do.”

  Tyffan stirred. “She—she didn’t know as how it meant anything.” He looked toward where the girl lay. “Her mam, she died when Lusta was just a mite. M’ mam, she was closest kin an’ took her. But we had no Wise for a long time. T’wasn’t ‘til after th’ demons came that she dreamed—or at least told her dreams. But she’s no demon—ask Hurten—ask Truas and Tristy. She dreamed us together!”

  “The demons,” Lethe returned. “Have you heard that they have some form of the Wisdom among them?”

  The children looked to one another and then Marsila shook her head.

  “They came like—like storm clouds—and there was no standing against them. There were so many and they seemed to appear without any warning. But my father said we fared so badly in the field against them because the lords and War Ladies had been cut adrift from any one leader. Each fought for their own holds, and one by one those Holds fell. There was no High Queen. It was almost as if we were all blinded—”

  Hurten nodded. “My lord—he tried to send for help to the Hold of Iskar, and the lord there told him no because he feared those of Eldan more than the demons. He told the messenger that the rumors of demons were put about to frighten timid Hold-keepers. That was before Iskar was taken in two days and left but bloodied stone. There, it is true”—he spoke thoughtfully now, almost as if he were examining memory and seeing a new pattern in it— “that the Holders did not come together. And what they gave as reasons were mainly wariness of their own neighbors. Was that—could that have been some power of the demons?”

  His hand had gone once more to the hilt of his dagger and he stared at Lethe as if he would have the truth even at a point of steel.

  “It could be so.”

  It was Alana who came a step or so closer and looked up into Lethe’s face.

  “Lady, why would the demons want us who are here in this place—unless to kill us as”—she hesitated a second and the old fear came flooding back into her firelit eyes— “they did all the others? Lusta dreamed us here—but there were no demons waiting.”

  “This was waiting, and perhaps your entrance here would open doors for them or something else.” Lethe was searching—her senses weighing first the children and then the very walls about them. No, there had been no tampering save that she had caught this night. There was no taint of dark in this company.

  “What lies here then?” flared Hurten. “The demons came upon us from the north; they are not of our kind. Perhaps”—his eyes narrowed— “they are of yours—Lady.” And there was little goodwill in the title he gave her.

  “Before your demons,” she answered him, “there were other powers abroad. Some were always of the Dark. Open your mind, youth: is this such a place as welcomes the Dire Shadows?”

  For a moment there was a silence. Hurten’s frown did not fade. Then tentatively his right hand arose between them and the fingers moved in a gesture that brought a sigh of relief from Lethe.

  “Bite of iron, warrior.” She held out her own hand. He hesitated, then drew his dagger. She deliberately touched the end of the blade, withstanding a stab of flame pain that was true fire. When she took her hand away and turned it over, she held it well into the light.

  There was an angry red blotch on her pale skin. She endured the pain for a space, that they might see, and then willed healing into the skin.

  “Cold iron.” Hurten looked down at his own weapon as if it possessed a potential unknown to him.

  “The demons,” Orffa broke in, “can die but from edge and point. Only the First Ones—” He drew a deep breath.

  “Only those of the Right-Hand Path,” Marsila interrupted her brother, “cannot hold iron.”

  “And our wards still held here,” Lethe pointed out. “Still there must be that which would put an end to weaving by destroying loom and weaver.”

  “You speak of weaving,” Marsila said then. “You are the weaver?”

  “So it has been set upon me.”

  “It remains.” Hurten turned to the earlier problem. “Lusta led us here, by whose will?”

  “Who can tell that?” Lethe spoke wearily, for again the truth burdened her down.

  “Will—will she be possessed again?” Marsila approached Lusta with caution. The younger girl appeared deep in sleep, unaware of all about her now.

  “I have set guards,” Lethe answered. “For now those will hold.”

  None of them questioned that—as if they avoided voicing doubts. Hurten settled by the fire, but not to sleep. Instead he brought from a belt pouch a whetstone, and with this he set about giving edge to his dagger, working as one who must occupy himself with even so small a preparation against trouble to come. Marsila dragged her pallet up beside Lusta’s, just as Tyffan barricaded the girl on the other side.

  Hurten’s belt with its empty scabbard—without a sword—

  Without a sword, that symbol of manhood for his race. Lethe once more closed her eyes, but her thoughts were awake. A sword—she resisted, having the feeling that she was being pushed too swiftly into decisions. It was not for her to deal with weapons as this land now knew them, but neither could she deny to others the safety a blade could offer. However, this could wait until tomorrow. Hurten had stopped the push of the whetstone, returned it to his pouch, was stretching out to sleep.

  Lethe lengthened the narrowest edge of thought as a field commander would dispatch a trained scout. The guards were firm, nothing tried them. Lusta? The girl was so deep in slumber that no invader could reach her. Safe? Were any of them safe?

  Lusta had offered a gate to some old power—what of the other children? Lethe shrank from what she must do—this was something that could only be justified by dire danger. Did they face that?

  She made her decision and began the search. Alana, one arm thrown about her little brother in constant protection—nothing there.

  The shepherd twins? A hazy dream picture, partly shared, of a fair morning in home heights. Tyffan—dar
k shadows acreep—the beginning of a nightmare in which he struggled to reach a farmhouse where Lusta awaited him. That she could banish, and she did.

  Marsila—fall woodlands in brilliant color, a sun-warmed morning—rightness and loving memory. Her brother—deep sleep as untroubled as Lusta’s. Hurten—the sentry on the wall, a pressing need to hold off some threat that had not yet shown itself—a need the greater because he had no weapon. She had been right—this one needed the talisman of a blade.

  Lethe searched memory. She had read them and there was no taint here. So assured, she could await the coming day.

  They broke their morning fast with a rough mush of wild grain only made palatable by a handful of dried berries. Lethe waited until they were done before she spoke.

  “You have two bows, two daggers among you—that is not enough.”

  Hurten laughed angrily. “The truth, Lady. But here there is no forge, nor are any of us smiths. Is there an enemy we can hope to plunder?”

  “Come—”

  Lethe led them back to the presence chamber, all, even Robar, trailing her. She came to face the wall behind the dais. There hung one of the time-ravished lengths of weaving. This was no tapestry like the others, rather the remains of what might once have been a banner.

  So hard had time treated what lay here! However, she was not saddened, rather stirred by the need to be about her task. The chairs that had once stood against the wall were debris. But the long table there was intact, save it was covered with dust and splinters of wood.

  She swept out with her staff, and the litter was lifted and blown away by a strong puff of breeze. Lethe pointed now to the frail banner.

  With the staff she drew a careful outline around what hung there while she hummed—a faint drone of sound, like the sigh of wind in a wood. On the wall the banner moved. Dust motes shifted down, but none of the frail fabric parted. As a single piece it was loosed while her staff moved back and forth as might that of a shepherd guiding a flock around some danger. Down came the length of ancient weaving, to lie full-length on the table.