The Warding of Witch World Read online

  Destree passed into the shrine. Here stood a block of pure white stone such as was to be seen nowhere else in this countryside. Its sides were carved with Gunnora’s seal—the shaft of ripe grain bound by fruited vine. She crossed quickly to that, avoiding the long couch placed directly before it, where seekers for wisdom might sleep and learn.

  There was a single slender vase on the altar, shaped skillfully as the rare river lilies. Destree took from it the withered flowers of yesterday and replaced them with her handful of gold and white.

  She cupped between her hands her amulet, the heritage which served her so well. Its amber felt warm, as if another hand rested within her hold.

  “Lady,” she said slowly. Of course the Great One could already read what lay within her mind; still, as all her species, she clung to speech. “Lady, if there is trouble, let me serve as you have called me to do.”

  She was well into her morning tasks when she heard the creaking of farm cart wheels. Stoppering the flask she had been filling, she went to the terrace outside the shrine entrance.

  The road up from the village was hardly more than a track and the huge plow beast that pulled the rude cart protested from time to time with a bellow.

  Josephinia! But Destree had meant to deliver the potion herself to the farm. Trimble, the woman’s husband, tramped beside the work beast, prod ready in hand. But there also swung from his belt an axe, the edge of which gleamed after a fresh sharpening. And coming behind, bows in hand, watching alertly from side to side, were Stanwryk and Foss, the two most expert hunters of the valley. The small procession took on, as it emerged from the curtaining wood, the appearance of travelers abroad in perilous country.

  Destree was already hurrying to meet them.

  “What is to do?” Her early morning premonition was now well enforced.

  “Woods monster, Voice.” Trimble’s voice raised to outrumble the cart. There came a whimper, half pain, and half fear, from his wife bundled between rolls of blankets.

  “Aye.” Stanwryk pushed forward eagerly. “Last night, Labert o’ th’ Mill—he heard his sheep in a pother an’ loosed Tightjaw. There is nothing living in the valley willin’ to stand up to that hound, as you well know, Voice. Only then there came such a screeching an’ to-do that Labert took to his house an’ barred his door. This morning . . .” He paused his spill of words and Foss took up the tale. He was always a man of few words, but today he was freer of speech than Destree had ever heard him.

  “First light come and Labert was out—had his bow, he did, an’ his grandsire’s sword. In th’ graze land over th’ mill—a dead sheep, more than half eaten—an’—”

  Stanwryk demanded his chance again. “Tightjaw—that hound was torn in two—torn in two, I’m sayin’ an’ I seed th’ body for meself! Just like he was no more than a rabbit under th’ wolf’s teeth. An’ that was not all, Voice. There was tracks, mind you—an’ they warn’t made by no hill cat nor bear. They was like a man’s—but a man with twice the length of foot of Trimble here.”

  Trimble clumped forward a step or so. “Voice, since we was children, our paps and mams, afore us, we have heard tales of creatures of th’ Dark who hunt an’ savage all true men. This here shrine of th’ Lady, why, ’tis said it was set right here that there be a strong place of Light against the Dark from the north. But this here night thing which has come upon us, truly it be of the Dark, an’ we asks you, Voice, call now upon th’ Lady that She may hold us under Her cloak.”

  “Yes,” Destree said.

  How well she knew that things of evil could wander far. Her body tensed. Had she not fought with one remnant of the Black Power—that which was set to swallow the crews of ships it captured, even from other worlds than that of Estcarp? Had another gate gone wild—activated in some fashion so that it had provided a doorway for a thing from an entirely different world? Or had some skulking monstrous creature come prowling far south to establish for itself new hunting grounds? She must somehow discover which and what they faced. For these people of the valley had no defenses against any strong manifestation of the Dark.

  Did she—? Her hand went to her amulet. She had the Lady, and promises between them would hold until the world’s end.

  As Destree worked with Josephinia’s poor, pain-twisted body, the men waited without the shrine. But when she issued forth again having put her charge under a soothe-sleep, she found only Trimble there, striding distractedly up and down, while the draft animal sampled the sweet, high-growing grass of the shrine field. Foss and Stanwryk were gone.

  “Voice!” The farmer hurried toward her, his big hands outstretched as if to wring what he wanted out of her. “What can a man do against th’ Dark Ones? Long ago our kinfolk fled ’ere to be away from such danger. Now—”

  Destree laid her hand gently on his shoulder. “The Lady takes care of Her own, Trimble. She will show us a way.”

  He stared at her as if he wanted to accept her words as a sworn oath.

  “Foss—Stanwryk—they have gone to raise th’ valley that we can form a hunt. Pacle’s hounds—” he shook his head slowly. “Voice, there has never been a hound whelped in the valley as dangerous as Tightjaw, nor as sly and clever in th’ hunt. Yet this thing took him with ease.”

  He smeared the palm of his hand across his face. “Voice, those who hunt the Dark are many times fools.”

  Trimble was no coward, that she well knew. He only spoke bare reason. But how many would listen to it?

  “There is another way of hunting.” She glanced over her shoulder to the shrine behind. “Be sure that that will be tried.”

  It was well into midday when the clamor of leashed and impatient hounds and horses’ pounding hooves, as well as one man striving to bring them to order, sounded from the cart track. Josephinia had wakened from her sleep and stretched cautiously.

  “But there is only a memory of the pain now, Voice,” she said excitedly. “I am as new!”

  Destree showed her a flask. “Be sure to drink of what this holds night and morn. Also eat sparingly of meat but well of that which grows in the earth through the Lady’s bounty.”

  The ragged body of the assembled hunt came bursting in to shatter the peace of the shrine meadow. Slavering hounds strained at the restraint of collar and the leash. Their handlers were a motley crowd—from lads still to name themselves men to a grandsire or two, they were milling about. Foss pulled off his peaked leather cap and came directly to her.

  “Voice—Hubbar’s youngest, he was down by th’ river an’ he saw a thing—a thing of hair an’ huge of body, with fangs for tearing. It was by the water laving one arm—for Tightjaw must have left his mark after all. But when Yimmy came with th’ news an’ we went there it was gone. Now we ask the Lady for arm strength and weapon strength to take it before it kills again!”

  “I shall ask,” she said, “but this I must say. If this is but some wild beast of a kind new to us, then it can be well hunted. If it is more—then go with caution.”

  He nodded as he put on his cap again. They were on their way. Trimble and his cart, with his wife now sitting upright clasping the flask to her ample bosom, had a handful to play guard. But the majority struck off northward, into the first thick fringe of the forest. Destree watched them go with concern.

  However, what she had to do lay elsewhere. She returned to the outer room of the shrine and quickly stripped off her homespun clothing. Into a large basin she ladled water from the hearth pot and measured into that, drop by careful drop, oils from several different vials.

  Then she washed herself from head to foot, even dipping her hair into the basin, smearing the oily liquid over her whole body. Making no effort to dry herself, she then sought the inner room. Drawing from the couch before the shrine the covering on which the farmer’s wife had lain, she substituted another taken from a small chest by the altar. Green it was and brown, gold, and purple, all intermingled so no human eye could follow any pattern, and though it was very old yet it was still intact.<
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  Destree spread it with care over the couch and then stretched herself upon it, folding her hands beneath her full breasts and closing her eyes.

  The transition came quicker than it ever had in the few other times she had tried this ritual. Fear—pain—the need to run—run—run—Strange—all the world about was strange, there was nothing to be seen as a guide—yet—fear/pain—the need—the need to escape—

  And the world she saw dimly was strange.

  That strangeness fed fear. The very color of a leaf, the shape of a branch was all wrong. The ferns which beat about her legs as she ran—she shrank from their touch. This was not her world—where had the Lady led her?

  She—she had been in the home wood and at peace with herself and the world about. Then there had been the tall stones. One of them had been shiny, and that had attracted her so that she went and laid hand upon it. Then—then she had been whirled away into nothingness and when she could see again she was in this fearsome place where all was alien and wrong.

  Destree tried to cut behind the ever-present fear. The Dark? She sought the smell, the feel of evil. But there was none—only confusion and fear, pain—

  Gruck! Out of nowhere came that name. She was . . . Gruck! In the same moment that became clear to her, she strove to break the bond. But she realized now where the Lady had sent her. She—she was the hunted monster.

  But it was no beast. It thought, it strove wildly to learn what had happened to it. Nor was it anything of evil wandering southward. It now rested under the compassionate hand of the Lady. So somewhere another of those cursed gates had made a capture, and the innocent would be hunted down and slain unless she could prevent it!

  Destree’s eyes snapped open. She was already pushing herself up from the couch. She paused long enough to return the covering to its time-set folds and then, from a chest in the foreroom, she brought her own woodsrunning clothes. Not the skirts such as she wore for the sake of making the valley people receive her more easily. Instead, she drew on over her still oily body breeches, a shirt, a sleeveless jerkin with oddly fashioned silver latches, boots made for hard service over indifferent trails. There was a belt with knife and small pouch, and at length she pulled from near the bottom of the coffer the backpack she kept ever ready for travel needs, checking to make sure that it held salves and herbs for the treatment of wounds.

  There was no question in Destree’s mind that she would find Gruck—that this poor refugee from another place was now her charge. Chief leaped out of the shadows and took the fore, entering the woods at a different angle than the hunters had followed. She listened but could hear nothing of their clamor and she wondered how far back into the thickly wooded hills they had gone.

  “Gruck?” She sent out a mind-call. But there was nothing to anchor it and so draw her to her quarry. She did not know what Gruck looked like. She knew little more than the creature’s emotions at its displacement and perhaps the hunt on its track.

  Chief appeared to have no doubts about direction. For want of a better guide, Destree followed the leaping passage of the great cat.

  Now—now—she could hear!

  The clamor of the hunt suggested that Gruck was at bay. She hastened her pace from trot to run. They must not kill this stranger! It was not of its doing that it had come here. Yes, it had killed a sheep—but that was because it hungered. It had killed a dog which attacked it. Certainly no man there ahead could say that he would have done otherwise in its place.

  Destree came into the open. There had been a forest fire, stormset, here a year ago. The land was all blackened stumps and sprouting green between. And there was a tall rock firmly planted. Around that the battle now raged.

  Three dogs lay dead and a fourth crept away, uttering a keening howl. With its back against the rock, the monster half crouched. It was taller than any man Destree had seen, and its entire body was covered with thick curls of wiry black hair. Yet its head was well proportioned by human standards and its green eyes held intelligence. One of its arms had been crudely wrapped in a covering of leaves already torn and half gone.

  About its waist, seemingly too small for the width of those heavy shoulders, there was a wide belt, along which ran glitters with every movement of its body.

  Why Foss or one of the other bowmen had not already shot it down Destree did not know. Perhaps that was by the grace of the Lady. She raised her voice now. The land about them seemed to amplify her call.

  “Hold!”

  With Chief running at the same easy pace before her, she cut down into that place of desolation. The hunters had turned their heads at her call, though Foss’s attention swung almost instantly away and he had arrow to string now.

  “This is not of the Dark.” Her voice came pantingly. She shoved between two of the men before they knew she was upon them and threw herself into place before the creature at bay.

  Foss’s face was bleak. “Stand aside, Voice. We owe you much, but we have no place for monsters.”

  “I tell you”—Destree had her voice under better control now—“the Lady’s hand stretches out to this one.” She tried to sign the truth of that by reaching behind her to where Gruck leaned weakly against the stone. Her fingertips were fretted by alien fur.

  “This thing is a killer. Protect it at your own peril, Voice. If you would have anyone in this valley heed you an’ th’ words of your Lady ’ereafter, you will stand aside.”

  She could read only a shadow of doubt in a few faces. They were as one on this. Yet her duty had been set upon her. Destree drew a deep breath as she tried to summon words which might break their resolve.

  What came was something far different. A huge furred hand shot out and gripped her. She smelled the strange odor of alien flesh sharpened by fear. But there was only an instant for them to cling together so.

  The blast which beat down upon them all was none of the Lady’s calling. Destree knew that, before her senses reeled and she clung to her strange companion even as it held to her. This was strange magic, raw, without a check.

  Her throat filled with bile as she saw men tossed about like straws in a tempest. The whole world split apart. Not the Lady’s doing, no. Nor, she was certain, did Gruck have aught to do with this. Gate—had the gate which had captured this refugee gone as wild as that gate at the Port of Lost Ships when they put an end to it? No, something within her—perhaps the Lady reaching through the torment of assaulting magic—assured her. This was the beginning of something else—something such as no record she knew of listed.

  Its mind-blinding attack ended. Dimly Destree saw the men of the hunt helping each other to their feet. One of them took up the injured hound. Then they turned and went away as if both Destree and their quarry had ceased to exist.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Ingathering at Es City

  T he city was old, even beyond the imagining of the most fanciful. It was and it had simply always been. No one raised questions concerning the time of its youth; they were too awed by the feeling of leaden age which seemed to breathe from each worn stone. That Power had gone into its erection, from the pentagon citadel which was its core to the smallest of the houses clustering inward toward that promise of protection was known. It was and it would continue to be.

  Yet for the first time there was a questioning which grew with each day. For parts of Es which had slumbered dourly through generations were being refurbished. More and more weary travelers arrived along each of the highways feeding into the four great gates.

  This was no festival time. Those who had lived quietly, mostly in peace during the passing of one long year to the next, had no part in this ingathering. Tradesmen came to the fore of their booths, their apprentices and children edging out carefully into the streets, while the upper window curtains were looped far back so that the women and elders, usually within, did not miss the sight of such strangers, their mounts, their apparel, their followers.

  There was no cheering, as might have arisen to greet the safe return o
f champions, but rather a muttering, a whispering which sometimes uttered clearly a name or two. Riders were pointed out by senior to junior, who stared in equal awe. For these who came now to Es were part of distant legends—traders’ tales, heretofore never completely believed.

  They rode or strode in silence also, no small talk, only sometimes the jangle of a piece of equipment, the snort of a war Torgian, or the like.

  A tailor grabbed excitedly at the sleeve of his wife, who had come down into the shop.

  “’Tis one of the Green Valley, that one! See, he sprouts horns! And the lady with him—she is Dahaun!”

  His wife drew a breath which was close to a sigh. “Master Parkin said she was noted fair—but this is a goddess!”

  Still they came. From the north, Borderers of those squads which served to hold the passes into Alizon. Out of the river which linked Es with the sea moved others, sleek of body, finned as to feet, who stared about them silently for a moment or so before they began their inward march. There were Sulcar captains, too, their huge, furred cloaks thrown back, their horned or center-ridged helms bright with gold, proving that they were wide-faring, and lucky in that faring.

  For three days they came. Only once did the city guard not retreat to give passage. They wavered into an untidy line before two riders from the southland. There was a woman clad in leather and with her plainly a high-born lord of the Old Race. However, it was the steeds which they bestrode that had brought forward the guards.

  Men knew of Torgians, famous for their battle readiness. And they had seen, during the past days, those roan-red Renthans which allowed riders from Escore to mount them.

  As with the Renthan these new mounts wore no reins, no sign of restraint to any wills save their own. They stood taller than any Torgian and their shining coats were uniformly black.

  As they tossed their heads, snorting at the movement of the guards, those close enough could see that their large eyes were of a startling vivid blue—that of the freshest of summer sky. Yet—