The Jargoon Pard (Witch World Series (High Hallack Cycle)) Read online

When Ursilla hesitated, Heroise pulled herself higher on the couch.

  “The baby, what is the matter with the baby?” she demanded.

  “Naught—” Ursilla replied slowly. “Save that you have a daughter—”

  “Daugh—” It was as if Heroise could not force the whole of that word from her quivering mouth. Her hands grasped so tightly on the covering of the divan that she might be preparing to rend the stout cloth into strips.

  “It cannot be! You wrought all the spells the night that—that—” She choked. Her face was a twisted mask of rage. “It was in the reading—that you vowed to me.”

  “Yes.” Ursula wrapped the birth cloth about the baby. “The Power does not lie; therefore, there must be a way—” Her features set, her eyes stared straight at Heroise. Yet in them there was now no intelligence. It might be that Ursula's spirit had left her body, sought elsewhere for knowledge she must have.

  Heroise, watching her, was tense, very quiet. She did not spare a single glance for the child now whimpering in Ursula's hold. All her attention was fixed avidly on the Wise Woman. She felt the Power. Enough of her early tutoring remained for her to recognize that Ursilla now wrought some spell of her own. But, though Heroise's tongue uttered no more reproaches, she twisted and tore at the covering with crooked ringers she did not try to still.

  Then intelligence came back into Ursula's eyes. She turned her head a little, pointed with her chin to the wall at their left.

  “What you would have lies there. A boy child, born at the same moment as this one you bore—”

  Heroise gasped. A way out—the only way out!

  “How—” she began.

  Ursilla gestured her into silence. Still holding the baby within the crook of her left arm, the Wise Woman faced the wall. Her right hand rose and fell, as with the tip of her finger, she drew signs and symbols on the surface of that barrier. Some of them flared red for an instant, as if a spark of hearth fire glowed in them. Others Heroise could not follow for the swiftness of those gestures.

  While she signed so, Ursula chanted, her voice rising and falling as she recited words, spoke Names. Still never was it louder than a whisper. Yet it carried to Heroise's ears through the rumble of the storm. At the sound of one or two of those Names, she shivered and shrank, yet she did not protest. Greedily she watched, her fierce hunger for what she wanted most alive within her.

  Then Ursilla had finished. “It is done,” she told Heroise. “I have raised a spell of forgetting. Those within now sleep. When they awake they will have a baby who shall seem to them the rightful one.”

  “Yes! Do it quickly, quickly!” Heroise urged.

  Ursilla was gone, the Lady lay back upon the divan. This she had done—borne an heir for Car Do Prawn. In the years to come—her eyes shone—she—she would be mistress there! And with the resources of all the hold land—the lordship—behind her, the heir her creature, and Ursilla to aid her—what else might she not achieve in due time! She laughed aloud as Ursilla returned, a baby wrapped in a birthing cloth once more within her arms.

  Coming to Heroise, she held out the child. “Your goodly son, Lady.” She used the old formal words of the birthing woman. “Look upon him, name him, that he may have life well set before him.”

  Heroise took the baby awkwardly. She peered down into his face where eyes dark-lashed were tightly closed, one small fist pressed against his mouth. He had dark hair. Well, that was right. Her own was near the same shade. She pulled away the cloth to inspect the small body critically. Yes, he was properly fashioned, with no mark upon him that could afterward be raised to question his identity.

  “He is Kethan,” she said swiftly, as if she feared someone to dispute her naming and her owning. “He is my true son, heir to Car Do Prawn, so do I swear before the Power.”

  Ursilla bowed her head. “I will summon your women,” she said. “Once the storm is spent, we had best be on our way.”

  Heroise looked faintly uneasy. “You said they,” she nodded toward the wall, “would never know.”

  “That is true, for now. But the longer we linger, the more chance may upset our plans, even though I have used mighty spells to further them. She—” Ursilla hesitated. “The one who is the mother yonder, there is something about her that I find strange. She has some of the talent—”

  “She will know then!” Heroise clutched the baby to her so tightly that he awoke and gave a little cry, waving his fists in the air as if willing to do battle for his freedom from that grasp.

  “She may have talent,” Ursilla countered, “but she is not my equal. You know that we can judge another of our kind.”

  Heroise nodded. “But it is best to be away. Send my women to me—I would they see this baby, know him in the first hour for Kethan, who is mine alone!”

  In the other room, the mother stirred. The shade of uneasiness, which had been upon her face earlier, had returned. She shifted her head upon the pillow and opened her eyes. The space of a pointed finger away lay the baby. And over her bent the Wise Woman.

  “Aye, m'lady, this be a proper little daughter. She do indeed! Your goodly daughter, Lady. Look upon her, name her, that she may have life well set before her.”

  The mother gathered the baby into her arms joyfully. “She is Aylinn, my true daughter and that of my Lord. Oh, go and bring him quickly, for now that I am out of Gunnora's care, I feel uneasy. Bring him quickly!”

  She held the baby close and crooned lovingly. Aylinn opened her eyes and then her mouth, giving voice to a small cry as if she were not quite sure she found the world entirely pleasant. The woman laughed joyfully.

  “Ah, little daughter, welcome are you, thrice, four times welcome. Indeed life shall be better to you than it was to me when I was young. For you have my arms about you and my Lord's strength to guard you—and both our hearts to hold in your two hands!”

  Outside the storm began to die. The stranger fought his way out of the stable to meet, at the door of the shrine, the Wise Woman. As he hurried to his wife, he heard a stirring in the other chamber, but it held no interest. Nor did he even watch when, in the morn of the following day, those from Car Do Prawn rode away, their mistress in her horse litter, her son in her arms.

  For the three left behind, there was also a faring out some time later. They turned their faces northward to the wilds of the forest, which to them meant home.

  Of the Heirship of Kethan and Life in Car Do Prawn

  Car Do Prawn is not the greatest of the Keeps that gave allegiance to the Redmantle Overlord, nor the richest. But what it holds within its boundaries is satisfying to look upon. There are orchards of cherry and apple, from which come not only fruit in due season, but also cider, a cherry cordial for which we have no small fame in Arvon. There are also fields of grain, always yielding abundantly at Harvest tide. And there are flocks of sheep and a goodly herd of cattle. Centermost in this smiling and fruitful country sits the Keep itself, and about that a small village. The village lies open under the sun, its cottages possessing sharply gabled roofs, the eaves of which are carved with fanciful shapes. Their walls are all of a light gray stone, the roofs of slate, while those carvings are entwined with runes painted green and gold.

  But the Keep itself, while of the same stone, has no such lightsome embellishments. There is always about the Towers a seeming of shadow. It might be that some invisible cloud keeps it so. Within the walls, even in the depths of summer, there abides a chill that none save I ever seemed to note. There I had often the sense that things moved along its very old corridors, in the corners of its shadowed rooms, which had little in common with the ways of mankind.

  From the time of my first understanding, my Lady Mother made plain to me that, in the future, I would rule here. But that promise gave me no feeling of pride. Rather, I oftentimes wondered whether any man could claim full sovereignship within such a haunted place. Perhaps my own reticent nature was my protection, for I never spoke to her nor to Ursilla (of whom I was greatly in awe) of those
strange and disturbing fancies concerning Car Do Prawn.

  Until I reached the age of six, I lived in the Ladies’ Tower, where my only companion in age was the Lady Thaney, she who was Lord Erach's daughter and my elder by a year. It had been told me early that our destinies were designed to be one, that when we came to a suitable age, we would be wedded, thus fast locking together the House fate; though at the time this meant little or nothing to me, or perhaps to her.

  Thaney was tall for her age, and very knowing, also somewhat sly. I early learned that were we in any mischief together and discovered, the blame would fall wholly upon me. I did not like her or dislike her. I accepted her presence as I did the clothing on my body, the food on my plate.

  With her brother Maughus, the matter was far different. He was some six years my elder and dwelt in the Youths’ Tower, coming only at intervals to visit his grandam, the Lady Eldris, his mother having died of a fever shortly after Thaney's birth. I say his grandam, though by decent, I was also a grandson. However, the Lady Eldris made plain her preference, and either ignored me, or found fault whenever I was in her sight, so I kept away from her apartments.

  Ours was a strange household, though I did not realize that, as it was all I had known. Thus I could believe that all families perhaps lived in the same fashion. Lady Eldris had her own apartments and it was there that Thaney was supposed to stay, though she followed mainly her own will, for her waiting woman was old and stout and more than a little lazy, not keeping as strict a watch upon her ward as custom demanded.

  Maughus's visits to their rooms were a signal for me to be on guard. He made very plain when we were ever private together (which I saw, as best I could, was seldom) that he carried ill will for me. He was fiercely proud, possessing much of the same ambition that I knew was inherent in my mother. That he would not be Lord in the Keep after his father caused a bitterness that ate at him even as a child, growing stronger through the years until I was well aware he hated me for what I was, if not for myself.

  My mother, the Lady Heroise, and the Wise Woman, Ursilla, had in turn their own chambers, which lay at the top level of the Tower. My mother was much concerned with matters of the household. Whether in the past there had been any clash of wills between her and the Lady Eldris, decided in my mother's favor, I never knew. However, when Lord Erach was absent, it was the Lady Heroise who held Manor Court in the Great Hall and gave the orders. At such times she had me ever beside her, seated on a small stool a little behind the Lord's great chair, which had the red mantle of our clan draped across its back, listening to what judgments she would give. Afterward, she would explain to me the way of this or that decision, whether dictated by custom, or the product of her own reasoning.

  That she longed to occupy the seat permanently, I learned by instinct while I was yet a small child. It was as if the qualities that were adjudged by the world to be those of a man had been embodied in her woman's flesh, so she chafed against our customs, decreeing the narrow limits of her own life. In one thing alone she was free, and that was the use of the Power.

  Ursilla was the only being within the Keep my mother acknowledged her superior. The Wise Woman's knowledge and talent was, I know, a matter of abiding envy for the Lady Heroise. Though my mother possessed a small talent herself, it was in nowise enough to fit her for the long learning and discipline of spirit that would have made her the equal of her instructress, and that lack she had the intelligence to recognize. But she did not admit in any other thing that she was less than able.

  The Lady Heroise lacked the temperament to school her own desires and emotions for any further training in the Other Ways than she had learned in her youth. Even had she not been the vessel to bear the next heir for Car Do Prawn, she would still have been unable to enter into the full training of a sorceress. And to desire so greatly what one cannot obtain because of some lack in one's self is a matter to sour and warp the one who has failed.

  If she could not have one kind of Power, then she would excel in another. To this end she now strove with all the force of her ambition.

  I have said I was in awe of Ursilla, and I would have gladly avoided her. But, even as my mother enforced upon me her form of training, so did the Wise Woman concern herself equally with my affairs. Though that part of the Power which is wielded by a sorceress is not the same as that which a Warlock or Wizard may summon, still she gave me what learning she deemed useful, carefully pruning such lessons, I realized later, of any material that I could use in an attempt to escape the fate they had set upon me.

  It was Ursilla who taught me to read the runes, who set before me carefully selected ancient parchments—mainly those dealing with the history of the Four Clans, with Arvon, and with Car Do Prawn. Had I not had a measure of curiosity about such things, I would have found such tutoring a dull and discouraging time of enforced attention. But I developed a liking for the Chronicles the Wise Woman deemed useful in fashioning my character and learned eagerly.

  Arvon itself, I discovered, had not always dreamed away time in this ease of golden days that now seemed endless. In the past (the addition of years was obscure since it seemed that those who wrote the accounts were never interested in reckoning up any strict numbering of seasons), there had been a great struggle that had nigh destroyed all ordered life.

  Before that period of chaos, our present domain had not been bordered by the mountains to the south and east, but had spread beyond, reaching east to the legendary sea, also south into territories long since forgotten. However, those of Arvon had always had the talent in lesser and greater degrees, and our Lords and rulers were often also masters of Power. They began to experiment with the force of life itself, creating creatures to serve them—or, in mistaken experiments, ones to slay their enemies horribly. Ambition as strong as that which moved my mother worked in many of them, so that they strove to outdo each other to establish only their wills across the land.

  They awakened much that should never have been allowed life—opened Gates into strange and fearful other dimensions. Then they warred, ravishing much of the land. Many of the forces they had unleashed were plagues destroying even some of the Power itself. The disputatious Lords withdrew as their numbers grew less, returning here to the home—heart of their own country. Some came quickly, alarmed and dismayed by manifestations that they could not control. Others lingered as long as they might, their roots planted so deeply in their own holdings that they could hardly face what seemed to them to be exile. Of these latter, a few never came back to Arvon.

  Perhaps in the Dale land to the south, where another species of man now lives, they or their descendants still had a shadow life. But none here knew if that were so. For, after the last withdrawal, the ways outward from Arvon were spell-sealed, no one venturing forth again.

  Still not all who had retreated were content with their escape from the results of folly. They continued to challenge their fellows, until the day when the Seven Lords rose in wrath and might, and there was a final, terrible confrontation between the ones who chose the path of struggle and those who wanted only peace and perhaps forgetfulness.

  Many of the Great Ones who had used the Power to their own wills were thereafter either exiled beyond Gates that led to other dimensions and times or extinguished when their will force was utterly reft away. Then their followers also went into exile under certain bonds of time.

  When I came upon that story in the Chronicles, I asked of Ursilla whether any of the wanderers had ever returned. I do not know why that was of importance to me, save that my imagination was struck by the thought of myself being so sent out of Arvon to wander hopelessly in an alien world.

  “Some have.” She made me a short answer. “But those are the lesser. The Great Ones will not. It is of no matter now, Kethan. Nor should such concern you, boy. Be glad that you have been born into this time and place.”

  Her voice to me was always sharp, as if she waited for me to commit some fault she could seize upon. Often, while reading, I wou
ld raise my head and find her staring at me with such an intentness that small sins I had reason to answer for were drawn to my mind immediately, and I squirmed upon my stool waiting for her to draw a confession from me by dominating will alone. But this never happened.

  What did change was that I reached the age when, by custom, I must go out into the Youths’ Tower and there begin the tutorage that would make me a warrior (though for some long years there had been no war except some raiding at intervals from the wild men of the hills). The night before this event, Ursilla and Heroise took me into the inner chamber, which was Ursilla's own shrine, if shrine might be the term given it.

  Here the walls were not cloaked with hangings, but unadorned bare stone, having painted on them, in time-dulled colors, signs and runes I could not translate. In the middle of the floor stood a single block of stone as long as a bed a man might lie upon. It was lighted, head and foot, by candles, four of them, as thick as my small boy's arm, set in tall holders of silver much pitted and worn, as if they also had existed for countless years.

  Above the table hung a globe from which beamed a silver gleam nigh that of the moon itself. I could see no chain to support it. Rather, it was suspended there invisibly, while about the block, on the floor, was painted a five-pointed star. This glinted so bright and new the brush of its coloring might just have been lifted.

  At each star point there stood another tall candle-holder, so that the wax cylinders so supported were on a level with Ursilla's shoulder, well above my own head. The candles at the head and foot of the stone block were red, but those in the points were yellow.

  In the comer of the room itself were braziers of the same silver as formed the candlesticks, each putting forth scented smoke, which curled up to the ceiling overhead where it gathered in a blanketing cloud.

  Ursilla had put off her usual robe of dull gray, the coif of pleated linen that always wreathed her thin, sharply featured face and hid her hair. Now she stood, arms bare to the shoulders, hair dark, threaded with silver, lying loose over a robe of blue that drew the light of the silver moon overhead, until the fabric rippled with dazzling color.