The Warding of Witch World Read online

  With the steady, slowly brightening glow of light ahead, even Keris could pick it up now—that foul emanation which steamed forth from any invoking of the high lore of the Dark. He saw Denner uncover his quiver.

  It would seem that whoever or whatever lay ahead had some influence over the weather, for the pelt of rain suddenly ceased as if they had come under an unseen roof, though there was no lightening of the clouds overhead.

  Simon slid out of the saddle and Kyllan nodded as he caught the reins of the Torgian his father handed him. This was the old, old game Simon had played now for many more years than he wanted to count. His booted feet sank ankle-deep in the wet moss as he moved forward, using every bit of cover.

  The mush of the moss lasted only for a few feet and then Simon felt the rise of more solid footing. He planned to half circle the rise to his right, trusting he could find a point from which he could see. The Valley men and their mounts could pick up any communication he would need to make. But—for one moment only—he held in mind the picture of another, her dark hair, her proud head high: Jaelithe. During the past year, as they had helped to police Escore, he and Jaelithe had often been apart—but never could he feel that something of himself was missing. Now she—

  Abruptly he shut off those disturbing thoughts to concentrate on matters at hand. He had indeed reached a kind of lookout, one that Kurnous the Head Lord himself might have arranged.

  But what he looked down upon was a puzzle which he strove sharply to bring into proper focus. There were men below, right enough. A number of them were plainly Alizondern slaves born into hopeless labor for all their lives. Only one of the white-haired, arrogant warrior class was visible, apparently sent to oversee the labors of the others.

  Equipped with massive chains and wrist-thick ropes, they had apparently drawn into this place—for the ground was deep-rutted behind them—two massive pillars of stone. The red light which gave sight for their labors came not from any true fire but out of a huge kettlelike cauldron around which stood three men of another race.

  Simon’s lip curled. Both those of good and those of evil had survived not only the Great War of the adepts but all the chaos thereafter. One of those men down there he knew—not from any meeting between them but because he had seen his image summoned up in smoke when Dahaun of the Green Valley had sought danger near and distant.

  It was Rarapon, once linked with the traitor Denzil, and as eager as that damned one to regain power. He wore the crimson robe of an adept but kept fussing with its belt and then its collar as if it did not fit.

  The slaves were finishing their labor. Deep pits had been dug and now the stones were ready to be raised by pulleys. Simon saw Rarapon make a quick gesture. The Alizondern noble nodded and clicked his fingers. At that signal there were short struggles next to the pits ready to receive the ends of the rocks. At each, two of the slaves turned on a third, one of their fellows, and hurled him down into the dark hole, even as the pillar was allowed to crash into place.

  Rarapon moved forward with a strut such as might be assumed by the leader of a great congregation. He raised both hands high and began to weave a pattern back and forth in the air, angry red trails following his fingers.

  Now he chanted also, but the sound reached Simon only as singsong noise.

  Simon needed no nudging from a talent he lacked—he knew! Rarapon was striving to open a gate! Gates were the ancient ways through which the adepts of the Great Age had explored other worlds at their whims—whose secrets, even whose existence in most cases had been forgotten.

  The gates had not only taken wanderers and wayfarers out—they had drawn them in. From solitary venturers, such as he had been so many years ago, to whole nations like the Dalesmen of High Hallack, the Sulcars, and various smaller bands and clans.

  And they had drawn evil as well. The plague of the Kolders, who had ravaged as much of this world as they could touch. Lately also that invasion overseas made by strange seagoing race of fanatics whom only the skill, blood, and courage of Falconers and Dalesmen together had stopped. The Falconers themselves, the—

  None of those who survived that blast of raw magic, uncontrolled, chaotic, could afterward honestly describe the ponderous power which had played with them. Deafened, only half conscious from the terrible pressure against his outward senses and his inward person, Simon dimly saw the pillars bow toward each other and fall, to crush all who had been in that narrow valley. The cauldron glow was extinguished.

  Simon rolled over on his back, his arm upheld in a gesture of pleading, to whom or what he could not guess. Then she came. Jaelithe was as visible in his mind as if she stood before him.

  “Back, get you back, Simon. Bring with you all those you can add to the force of Light. For there has been such magic wrought as threatens an end to all our world!”

  He reached for her now, but she flickered out. Nor did he understand then that the ancient Mage Key had vanished from this plane of existence. It left behind uncontrolled, unwardered other gates against which there would be no defense save the bodies and minds of those doomed to struggle through the days to come.

  PROLOGUE TWO

  Arvon, Kar Garudiyn (Castle of the Gryphon)

  T he day was fair, that Eydryth could not deny. She stroked her harp. Certainly a day to bring music into the world. Yet something kept her from plucking at the silver-blue strings of the instrument. She felt restless and at the same time was disinclined to move out of this warm band of sunlight in the courtyard.

  This was not the silent keep her parents had ridden into years ago, felted deeply by dust over the passing years. Instead, for more than her lifetime it had been a dwelling alive with those whose love and camaraderie she cherished the most. Now she was late home from perilous wandering, and she should sink happily into its welcoming peace. But this morning—

  Though she had not realized it, Alon had been a second half of her for longer than their actual marriage. Yet in the past few days it was as if a drift of time and space had come between them.

  It was surely because of Hilarion—that adept survival of the Old Time who had taken Alon into training, knowing him for what he was, born with the greater talents. She had never seen Hilarion, who lived with the famed sorceress Kaththea Tregarth, half the world away. To her he was but a name, for Alon seldom mentioned those days before their own meeting.

  She had seen him weave magic far beyond the control of any that she knew—but that was only in times of great danger, and all that was now safely behind them.

  Alon had not gone with the rest—Kerovan, Joison, and their son and daughter; Jervon and Elys her own parents—down to the Herd Marking of the Kioga when the proper colts were chosen for training and the Kioga camp was a swirl of noise and confusion.

  No, for the past days Alon had quietly disappeared into the high tower of this ancient pile, and what he sought, or what he wrought, there she had no idea. None save that this was a thing which Alon must choose to tell when and if he would. Still her mind kept pricking her with the thought of Hilarion.

  “Eydryth, where is Firdun? He promised—” Her young brother padded barefooted across the pavement of the court with a peevish echo in his question.

  They had all gotten over the shock Trevor had provided last year, or at least were no longer overridden by it. On the point of giving birth, his mother Elys had been viciously ensorcelled, hidden away in a state of half-life.

  It had been Eydryth herself who had started the breaking of that spell, years long as it had lasted. Her mother had been mercifully freed and within moments had given birth. But it was no baby toddling toward her now. For, having been broken, that power, which had tightly held mother and unborn child, released time as well as captives, and in the weeks following his birth Trevor had caught up bodily and mentally with the years he had been denied.

  “Firdun?” He stood straight before her now, his thumbs looped into his belt, his lower lip outthrust, taking on the guise of Guret, the Torgian horsemaster,
to a comic degree.

  Inwardly Eydryth was close to sighing. Firdun, the son of Joison and Kerovan, and recognized by them all as having talent perhaps even past their own way of measuring—was as unlike his sister Hyana as day from night. So far the discipline of his parents had held, but he had refused within the past month to work longer with Alon (of whom Eydryth thought he was jealous).

  Perhaps the greatest difficulty of all was the fact he had not been named to the Champions of the Gryphon. Eydryth’s own father Jervon had not been among them, but he was a fighting man without talent and readily accepted that his worth lay in another direction. But Trevor—yes, the newborn—had been named to their chosen circle, though he was but a child. Firdun had not, in spite of his obvious power.

  Trevor, however, had fastened upon the older youth as a life model. He dogged Firdun whenever he could and, while Firdun was never harsh with him, he now avoided the child as much as he was able.

  “Firdun said,” Trevor was continuing, “that we would go to see the horses. The choosing.” His large eyes were shining. “Could be one might even choose me and then Father would not say I was too little to ride except with him.”

  Suddenly Eydryth shivered. She had no farseeing talent, but it was as if a dark troubling had touched her for an instant.

  To her surprise, Trevor swung away from her. At the same time she heard the pounding of hastening boots on stairs. A moment later Alon burst into the courtyard and skidded to a sudden stop just before he crashed into the two of them, as if he could not control the force of the necessity which had brought him. One of his hands fell on Trevor’s small shoulder and he pulled the small body closer. At the same time he reached also to Eydryth as if he must embrace them both, as he was looking in the same direction as Trevor.

  There was nothing to be seen—not for her. But she swept fingers across the harp strings and their answer was much louder than she had sought for—almost nearing the blast of a battle horn.

  Alon shook his head at her as he pushed her brother into her arms, taking a position before the two of them. Trevor was wriggling and Eydryth had a hard time holding him under control.

  The troubling! It was not just a touch now. From the camp in the valley below, as far as that was from them, they heard a dulled shouting, the screams of fear-maddened horses.

  “Garth Howell rides!” Alon spat.

  Eydryth shivered. Those of Garth Howell had good reason to hate her. Fueled by rage, she had curse-sung one of their great warriors. Yet never before had those shadow ones ventured out of what they considered their own territory. They nested upon their stores of unknown knowledge with far fiercer protection than the scholars of Lormt guarded their finds.

  Alon was moving toward the vast gate of the castle. Eydryth, one arm about Trevor, her other hand grasping her harp, was quick to follow. But already the others were coming up the castle rise, their horses hard pressed. Kerovan played rearguard and Jervon had drawn sword readily, save that against their foes steel was of little value.

  Nevertheless they dismounted, sending the horses into the courtyard with sharp slaps on the rumps. Then, as archers at the forefront of a coming battle, they formed a line.

  Kerovan and Alon were shoulder to shoulder, flanked by their wives, then Hyana and Trevor. Eydryth began to hum.

  They ride to the Dragon Crest!

  Eydryth was not surprised by that sudden flashing into her mind. The Lady Sylvya, who was more than half of the Ancient Ones, might share their home, but also she still roamed the hills which had been her joy in youth.

  The fairness of the day had dimmed; clouds gathered. From the Kioga camp the din still sounded. Alon gave the command:

  “Wall!”

  Eydryth’s voice swelled. Her fingers were swift on the harp strings. To her voice fit the chant that Alon now uttered, one which was picked up by the others. Only Trevor remained silent, but he moved to stand before the adept, head up and childhood’s seeming vanished from his small face. Both hands rose over his head, his fingers clutched as if he grabbed for something hanging here. Then he hurled the invisible.

  They have with them a captive. Sylvya’s mind-words thinned as if between them had arisen a barrier. Firdun! He is mind-bound!

  Eydryth’s voice faltered, Trevor’s hands shook, their chanting died away. Alon’s features were as set as if graven on the image of one of the High Ancients. He made a slight gesture and they moved a little away from him.

  Power—Eydryth could feel it gathering—

  Then—

  She was hurtled to the pavement, her harp under her bruising her arm, Trevor screaming and clawing at her. The raw chaos which struck at that moment was like no torment she had ever tried to face before. She saw Joison wilt and go down, dragging Kerovan with her.

  Alon staggered back, both hands to his head, his features twisted as if he stood in full torture.

  Would this continue forever? If so, Eydryth did not believe that any who cowered there could live through it.

  However, as suddenly as it had struck, it was gone. They lay still for a long moment, as weak as plague victims who had crawled from their beds.

  Sylvya’s message shook them back to life.

  There has been such magic wrought as this world has not seen since the final battle of the Great War—a rending and tearing past measuring. Those of Garth Howell lie now as dead and their captive rides to freedom.

  Alon’s face was wet with sweat as he rubbed his hands across his cheeks. “That was not aimed at us here, or we who had our minds open would be dead. Hilarion—I must know—”

  He swung around as if he would go back at once to the tower where he had been so pent, but Eydryth caught his arm.

  “What has Hilarion to do with this? He is an adept of Old, one of the race which brought doom upon us all in that day. Is this some new magic of his devising?”

  Alon drew her close. “Not so. I was pupil to him and he is a master of the Light. We strive now to devise a form of communication which can cover great distances. It is my belief that perhaps such raw power unleashed may answer our last problem. But I must know—”

  “We all must know.” That was Kerovan. “For I think that a very wide door to the ways of the Dark may have been opened, and that all of good need to stand together to preserve the Light.”

  PROLOGUE THREE

  Shrine of Gunnora, South of Var

  D estree n’Regnant strode back from the bathing pool, her wet towel swinging in one hand, the fingers of the other busy with the latches of her jerkin. Destree had never been one to linger over the matter of arising in the morning, with its attendant need for dressing, preparation of food, and the like, but she accepted such as a matter of living.

  She had slipped a silver ring over her shoulder-length fall of fair hair, tethering the locks out of the way at the nape of her neck, though some remaining drops of water sprinkled from side to side as she walked.

  Already her thoughts were well ahead of her body, busy with the known demands of the day before her. There was the potion to be enflasked for Josephinia, whose joint pain had awakened fiercely during the recent weeks of one storm after another, and she must swing by the Pajan farm to look upon the new colt that was reported a weakling. But there never seemed enough time between sunrise and sunset to do everything.

  Also, this morning she had awoken with a faint troubling of mind. It was not a lingering from one of her Lady’s outright informative dreams—she would have remembered every detail of such—yet she could not altogether forget it.

  The huge black cat, sitting on the steps of the ancient shrine Destree had worked with her own hands and strength to restore, opened his mouth in one of his silent meows. By the Lady, Chief seemed to grow larger every season! He certainly was far more impressive than any of the farm cats of the valley. Cleverer, too, or else the others hid what they thought from the minds of her kind. But Chief was not of this world and so not of the native feline blood at all. With Destree he had surv
ived the ordeals of the Port of Dead Ships, as well as transportation through one of those strange gates. Though this particular gate no longer existed—thanks be to the Lady and her Powers. The cat bonded with her, who was outcast and shunned, in a tie so strong she did not believe even death would break it.

  “Ready for breakfast, my lord?” she grinned down at him. “Though I do not doubt your night’s hunting has already given you a full belly!”

  There was no expression in his large yellow eyes. Instead, he yawned widely, exposing fangs which she knew he could use to good or bad purpose, depending upon the nature of his prey.

  Within were two chambers. Destree had restored fallen stones to their places, swept, washed, and then worked patiently to rub down the walls with a mash of scented herb leaves from the garden run wild. The outer room was her own domain for housekeeping tasks, though there was no hint of disorder allowed. A table of the very hard—and precious—varse wood, which held a metallic sheen of the purest gold when it was well rubbed, was accompanied by two benches of the same. There was a corner where a fireplace did not dare to strew any ashes onto the floor, and shelves and a cupboard or two.

  Here were no tapestries, no rich carvings, but Gunnora’s fancy itself had taken command. For, up from the meeting of wall and flooring, around the room had risen a weaving of vines. No matter the season these retained their flowers and their fruits, mingled together, bringing the peace of the outer world in.

  The second chamber was the shrine. Destree spread her towel over the end of the table to dry and surveyed the flowers on the vines.

  Not blue—no—that faint shadow which had followed her out of the night forbade that. Then—she made a deliberate choice carefully plucking, by their long curls of stem, a handful of the vine’s bounty. The white blossoms which stood so often for a seeker who was not even sure of what he or she sought; the gold for the promise of harvest, which was Gunnora’s own high season.