The Warding of Witch World Read online

  Thus, had he come to grief it would have been by his own reckless choice. He stopped combing his hair now and stared into the mirror before him, but what he saw there was not his own reflection, rather another scene years ago, one which had marked him apart from the others and for which he must pay all his life.

  He saw very clearly the small boy who was angry with the young girl Eydryth had been, deciding in his impudence to teach her a lesson. There stood the doorway wreathed with rowan and illbane, spell-set to protect a coming birth. It had been his hands which had torn away that protection willfully, thinking only to give Eydryth trouble, but really opening the door for an evil which had lasted for long years and sent Jervon out of his wits, and Eydryth roving even overseas, with even a threat to his father before the end.

  Reckless and thoughtless he had been, and perhaps that taint still was set within him—as witness his rash ride forth this day to spy upon an enemy none of them could weigh for Power. It was told that the Gryphon would hold Arvon itself against ill to come, but he was the outsider—he could not meld with them. Any Power he could summon would be his alone. Now there was this matter of wild magic. What if this was only the first of such storms to be set loose and bring chaos to all Light?

  • • •

  They gathered in the great hall, and Kerovan bowed Neevor into the lord’s seat at the middle of the table. Firdun looked down the line of faces. There they were—Kerovan and his Lady Joisan, both strong in the talent and Kerovan of stranger heritage. Then Alon, a true-born adept, once apprenticed to the last of the Old Adepts, Hilarion of Escore. Next to him his wife Eydryth, the Song Witch, and beyond her her mother Elys, also of witch blood but later an armswoman who had awoken her own talent, and Jervon the warrior who claimed and won her. Next Hyana, moon-sworn and still in the process of learning how deep was her talent, and last of all Trevor, only a child, yet those about him were already certain that he was the focus for what the rest could call upon—the point to the spear they held for the Light.

  It was Firdun who told the day’s story at the lifting of Neevor’s hand. And when he spoke of the young mage, Neevor halted him to ask careful questions about what Firdun had noted concerning the man.

  “The wheel turns ever,” Neevor commented. “You, Alon, are adept-born, though you know not your kin. But, save for Hilarion of the ancient days, you are the only holder of such talent. But if the Light strives now to provide us with warriors, then to even the balance the Dark does also. And should such a one be born on the Dark side and in this land, he would seek out Garth Howell and sharpen his talents there. But that the wind of magic was born of his meddling—that I do not believe. We must check with our own fountain of knowledge—Lormt overseas—and perhaps learn thus what we face.

  “This much I know: the vulture woman-thing Firdun saw is of the Waste. She and her winged flock are utterly of the Dark—but the Waste lies well to the south. Tell me, Kerovan, how goes it with the Four Lords? Are their holdings still at peace—Silvermantle, which touches the edges of the Waste, Redmantle, Bluemantle, Gold?”

  Kerovan was frowning, turning his goblet around in his hand. “Of clear knowledge I can say nothing. There have been no hunting parties southward for some months, although this is the time of year the young bloods of the lordships take to the hunt. Nor have any traders come our way. The Kioga have remarked on that.”

  Neevor nodded. “Hints, yes. But sometimes hints have trouble to feed them. The Four Lords have not always been in complete accord. Any more than the Dale lords, who often have an eye for a piece of neighbor’s property. You have made a casting?” he spoke now to Hyana.

  She looked surprised at being so singled out. “No, Lord, I thought there was no reason—also I do not have strong knowledge of anyone at any of the four courts.”

  Neevor took a sip from the cup before him. “Tomorrow we shall call upon the Star Tower. Those at Reeth have bindings with the very land and so can often pick up what we may not envision or hear. But I would that there was some way we could speak with those at Lormt, for more than one answer may lie there. The distance is too wide for scrying and also there is the sea between, which wars against any Power.”

  “There may be a way,” Alon spoke up. “This problem of communicating at a distance was one which my Master Lord Hilarion often considered. Together—though we are far apart—we have for a time been working upon some method of mind-send. It lacks but a little adjustment here to use—though I cannot tell how Lord Hilarion fares with his portion.”

  Neevor’s eyes seemed ablaze. “Yes, the adepts had such in the old days—and when a thing has been discovered once, then perhaps it can be discovered again. Also Hilarion has all of Lormt to draw upon. Let us hope you can try it soon.”

  “There are the Dales,” said Jervon, whose earlier days had been given to warfare there, not Dale lord against Dale lord but against the invaders from Alizon. “We were waiting on Hagar for knowledge of what passes there, though we know that one flock of the Falconers have settled at the coast and are building an Eyrie. They fought a mighty battle against invaders from another Dark-damned gate and won.”

  “I fear you must not expect Hagar this season,” Neevor answered. “He lies abed at Norseby Abbey, where the dames try to bring back his wandering wits, for he came staggering out of the Waste two months ago babbling strange words and acting as one caught in a nightmare. Dame Rutha, who has lately become healer mistress, now suspects possession of some sort. And the Great Ones know that land is ridden by enough hungry spirits to seize upon a man who does not take care. Whether he will ever be free again we cannot tell.

  “But we can well establish contact with the Dales. While the Daughters of the Flame do not care for us and I think would do little to aid, there were others—those they call wise women, who give homage to Gunnora and are sympathetic to our ways. Yes, there is much to be done. We are like hunters now, facing a web of many trails and not knowing which to be followed for the greatest gain. It is up to us to choose—and very soon.

  “We do not know how much Garth Howell’s plans suffered when you called down those nature forces upon them, Firdun, but I will not believe that they have been greatly overborne by the loss of a couple of sacrifices. That they are willing to spill blood is a dire warning, and we must set up guards against them.”

  Neevor looked along the line, though his gaze did not reach Firdun at the end—it could not. “Those of the Gryphon have been foretold. Now I say unto you, make secure all your defenses, and at the same time seek new ways to bend your talents. Those of Reeth will come and others, and in the end you will make a stout stand.”

  But would it be enough to hold—to reduce Garth Howell to what it had been for years: a place of knowledge? Firdun remembered too well that handsome face turning evil eyes upon him and the thickness of Power which clothed the mage tighter even than his red robe.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Arvon, Reeth, Gryphon’s Eyrie

  B roken strings trailed from the hand harp and Aylinn rubbed the cramping fingers of one hand against the other. She was not even sure that she was in the same room, for this one was a mass of debris, smashed bottles, broken jars, and a cough-inducing smell where one of the braziers had fallen and was bringing to sparking flames twisted lines of drying herbs.

  Her head ached and she felt as if she had been picked up and tossed aside by some force who had no possible kinship with human life. As she looked around at the wild destruction of months of work, she felt first the heat of anger, then the deadening force of frustration. For there was certainly nothing she could blame for this sudden chaos. Unleashed Power of an extent she would not have been able to imagine had it not struck before her. Who? Where?

  “Aylinn—Aylinn, are you all right?”

  The girl looked now to the doorway. Kethan, her foster brother, seemed to sway a little as he stood there. There was a cut over one of his gold-brown eyes which had begun to dribble blood in a crooked path down his face.
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br />   She pressed her hands against the moonsign on her breast from which she was never separated. Somehow she managed to free her wits from that maddening whirl which had struck without warning.

  “What? Who?” she asked.

  Kethan took a step within the triangular room of the Star Tower to plant his shoulders against the wall as if he still needed some support.

  “Wild magic,” he answered her hoarsely. “No control!”

  “Aylinn! Kethan!” The woman who pushed in to face them both gave one look at what lay before her. Both of her hands flew to her lips as if to stifle some moan of loss.

  Aylinn got unsteadily to her feet. “I—I was just trying to harp and then—Who has done this?”

  “It had no imprint of our knowing.” The man whose hands fell on the woman’s shoulders to steady her spoke with a voice which was hardly far above a snarl. “And it was not centered upon us. Were that so, Reeth, I think, would have ceased to be.” For a moment the outline of his body wavered in their sight; it might be that a great snow leopard stood hind-legged half embracing their mother. But Herrel of the Weres brought his rage swiftly under control.

  Kethan picked up a small bowl which had miraculously survived being pitched halfway across the room. “Wild magic,” he said slowly. “Could this”—he made a small gesture to indicate the room—“have been . . . called?”

  “Gillan?” Herrel looked to his lady.

  The shock of loss was beginning to lighten a little from her face. “It is true that Power attracts Power. But all here is of Green Magic, born of the earth, and such should not draw such destruction.”

  She stooped and began to gather together the lines of drying herbs, pulling them with a quick jerk away from where some of the brittle leaves had begun to smolder. Aylinn quickly laid aside the ruined harp and began to start the cleanup of that debris-covered floor from her side of the room. Kethan stepped past her to return a now-empty case of shelves to its place against the wall. But Herrel was prowling back and forth, in and out of the door, his soft-footed strides like those of a caged beast.

  Each in that room controlled his or her own form of power and was fairly sure of its limits. But as far as Herrel knew they had no enemies. True, he had left the Werebrothers when he had gone with Gillan, whom they deemed “witch” in their foolish ignorance.

  But when they had been led to Reeth—for both of them would always be sure that was what had brought them, a purpose which they did not yet understand—his power took another turn, one meant to foster life instead of fanged death. And Gillan seemed to become more and more before his eyes one of the fabled Green Ladies who had once walked the Great Wood of Arvon.

  Aylinn, who was daughter and yet not daughter, being foisted unknowingly upon them at her birthing, turned easily to the Moon Magic and had twice gone to shrines apart to study. But the were line held in Kethan—though he had been stolen to be raised as a keep lord—and when the time came he had found his way to his parents through a peril so ancient it might have existed even before the Old Ones walked the land.

  But what they held, they held in prudence and for good—to heal, to grow with the Light. Reeth itself had not only welcomed them but held them in a strange kinship of learning as the years had passed. Perhaps they had grown too trusting, believing that the outer world fared as well as they did. Herrel snarled. Once he had been a fighter both with sword and claw. If the Dark arose again, he could bring back memories of those old skills.

  It took them three days of labor to clear Gillan’s cabinet of lost harvests and reset the shelves. It was too late in the year to replace some that were gone. And it would take several growth seasons to replace what had been lost.

  Herrel and Kethan took turns to roam on were nights, always seeking some answer as to what threatened. They made contact with those of the Gray Tower, Hyron, Herrel’s sire, himself seeking them out but with no addition to the guesses which they all voiced from time to time.

  Doggedly they spent their days wood-seeking with Gillan and Aylinn for what rarities they might find growing. And Gillan combed her garden, only to sort leaves, stems, and flowers with sighs.

  However, they were gathered together in the growing gloom of night when the first of their answers came. They had not lit the lamps, for there was a full moon tonight and Aylinn sat in the outer door, her head back, her slim young body nearly bare to its coming rays.

  There was a curdling of light on the nearest path of the herb garden. Its appearance brought them all to their feet. Yet none of their many safeguards had reacted to it. Therefore, perhaps, they could safely think of it as a thing of the Light.

  Now Kethan could distinguish the outline of a form within it, seeming to draw the light and so solidify. But only the face at last looked out at them.

  “Ibycus!” Kethan could never forget the one who had given him his pard belt, made him free to be what he was: a were of weres, and perhaps more after he passed through the ordeal set by his enemies.

  The face in the mist smiled, the outline of the head nodded.

  “Greetings to the kin of Reeth.” The voice was almost as musical as the tones Aylinn had been once able to draw from her ruined harp.

  Herrel took a step forward. “I take it, Ancient One, that there is trouble.”

  Ibycus gave a soft chuckle. “Straight to the point as always, Herrel. Nor is our world ever free of trouble. As yet we know not what we face—save it has set astir much we hoped would continue to sleep. There was magic—in the far east—”

  “The Dales?” questioned Gillan. She had spent what had then seemed long dull seasons there, but there were those who had been kind and she wished no ill for them.

  “Farther—perhaps Estcarp wars again. Yet this had no touch of witch sending. We strive now to contact the Adept Hilarion, since Alon of Gryphon’s Eyrie was his ’prentice and they dealt with new learning. Those of the Castle of the Gryphon seek knowledge among the four clans—there is stirring of possible conflict there. And . . .” he hesitated a moment as if to make what he now had to say the more forceful, “Garth Howell has opened its doors to take a hand in some ill game.”

  “And we of Reeth?” Herrel asked swiftly. “What would you have of us, Ancient One?”

  “Them!” A curl of mist broke away and then into two threads indicating Aylinn and Kethan. “The Lady Sylvya—she who suffered under the evil hunt and won free by our aid—has appealed to the Voices in the north hills. As usual they will not answer clearly, speaking in a maze of words through which we must find our way. But this much we have learned. There is to be a mustering at the Eyrie, first to deal with Garth Howell, and then for some even greater task. And the choosing of those for the task is not to be of our making. Aylinn, Moon Daughter and Healer, you have a part in this. Kethan, were and warrior, you also. This is my summons—come to the Castle of the Gryphon, for there is need.”

  “And for us—what need?” There was a deep angry growl in Herrel’s question.

  “To hold Reeth, you and my Lady Gillan, as it has never been held before—with all the power you can summon. When we go up against Garth Howell we shall have good need for such founts of strength, and Reeth is now you, as you are Reeth.”

  Ibycus—or his authoritative shadow—gave them no more time for any questions. The mist swirled and then was gone, leaving the four of them in the moonlight with the scent of herbs about them. Though there was still the marks of chaos within the tower, here was peace.

  Or only the suggestion of it, for all Ibycus had said hung like a warning stormcloud over them. Aylinn held forth her arms, her head turned upward so that the moon encased her fully. Within her the uneasiness was growing ever stronger and it must be battled and put down.

  There came a frightening roar from her left and now the moon glistened on sleek white fur as a wide-jawed, fearsomely fanged head raised to once more sound red anger. To her right Gillan had moved into view, her hands and robe stained with the nearly destroyed harvest of herbs, and by h
er side padded a pard, snarling. Of such was the garrison of Reeth, and so it stood as one.

  But how can one defy an unknown enemy, Garth Howell? Aylinn knew the place only secondhand by rumor. Those born with her talents were not welcome there, nor would she ever wish it otherwise. And what part had she and Kethan to play in the action Ibycus had only hinted at?

  Together as they had stood ready for battle, so they returned at length to the inner stronghold of the star-shaped tower of Reeth. Those rods along its walls held steady with the bluish haze which meant their usual protection held.

  No snowcat now, no pard, the two men pulled forward their usual chairs and Herrel would have seated Gillan also, but she shook her head and tramped back and forth across the wide end of the wedge-shaped room while Aylinn settled by the smoldering hearth and fingered the rod topped with moonflower which was her talent focus.

  “Kar Garudiyn is a three-day ride.” Herrel broke the short silence. “You will take the were mounts.” He did not look straightly at either his son or his foster daughter.

  “Then,” Aylinn answered, “should we not be prepared?”

  Gillan stopped in her pacing. Her mouth was straight set and she wore the face which was hers when some problem raised by the talent confronted her.

  “Why Aylinn, Kethan?” she demanded of the room at large. “Ibycus speaks in half riddles as the Old Ones have a way of doing. There is this . . .” She made a small gesture toward the door which gave upon the wreckage of what had once been her particular stronghold. “Power draws Power. This blowout of chaos has already made plain how feeble our defenses may be. Yet Ibycus prates of Reeth as a stronghold. I should have had him look upon what chanced here and then ask what good our defenses were. Now he asks for—” She shook her head. “A force to go up against Garth Howell. Is the Ancient One mad or age-forgetful? And then hints of another task beyond that.”