High Sorcery Read online

  “Look below,” Jorik urged, “and see what shall trip them up until we can pin them.”

  Again Craike blinked. The illusion was one he had seen before, but that had been a hurried erection on the part of a desperate girl; this was better contrived. All the ways leading to the river towers were cloaked with a tangled mass of thorn trees, the spiked branches interlocking into a wall no sword or spear could hope lo pierce. It might be an illusion, but it would require a weighty counterspell on the part of the Hooded Ones to clear it.

  “She takes some twigs Nickus finds, and a hair, and winds them together, then buried all under a stone. After she sings over it—and we have this!” Jorik babbled. “She is worth twenty hands—no, twice twenty hands, of fighting men, is the Lady Takya! Lord Ka-rak, I say that there is a new day coming for this land when such as you two stand up against the Hooded Ones.”

  “Aaaay.” The warning was soft but clear, half whistle, half call. It issued from Nickus’ lofty post. “They come!”

  “So do they!” That was a sharp echo from Zackuth, “and down river as well.”

  “For which we have an answer.” Jorik was undisturbed.

  Those in the tower held their fire. To the confident attackers it was as such warfare had always been for them. If half their company was temporarily halted by the spiny maze, the river party had only to land on the offering rock and fight their way in, their efforts reinforced by the arts of their masters.

  But, as their dugout nosed in, bow cords sang. There was a voiceless scream which tore through Craike’s head as the hooded man in its bow clutched at the shaft protruding from his throat and fell forward into the river. Two more of the crew followed him, and the rest stopped paddling, dismayed. The current pulled them on under the arch, and Zackuth dropped a rock to good purpose. It carried one of the guardsmen down with it as it hit the craft squarely. The dugout turned over, spilling all the rest into the water.

  Zackudi laughed; Jorik roared.

  “Now they learn what manner of blood letting lies before them!” he cried so that his words must have reached the ears of the besiegers. “Let us see how eagerly they come to such feasting.”

  VIII

  It was plain that the Black Hoods held their rulership by more practical virtues than courage. Having witnessed the smashing disaster of the river attack, they made no further move. Night was coming, and Craike watched them withdraw downstream with no elation. Nor did Jorik retain his cheerfulness.

  “Now they will try something else. And since we did not fall easily into their jaws, it will be harder to face. I do not like it that we must so face it during the hours of dark.”

  “There will be no dark,” Takya countered. One slim finger pointed at a corner of the terrace, and up into the gathering dusk leaped a pencil of clear light. Slowly she turned and brought to life other torches on the roof of the tower over the river, on the arch spanning the water and on the parapet. In that radiance nothing could move unseen.

  “So!” Her fingers snapped, and the beacons vanished. “When they are needed, we shall have them.”

  Jorik blinked. “Well enough, Lady. But honest fire is also good, and it provides warmth for a man’s heart as well as light for his eyes.”

  She smiled as a mother might smile at a child. “Build your fire, Captain of Swords. But we shall have ample warning when the enemy comes.” She called. A silent winged thing floated down and alighted on the arm she held out to invite it. The white owl, its eyes seeming to observe them all with intelligence, snapped its wicked beak as Takya stared back at it. Then with a flap of wings, it went.

  “From us they may hide their thoughts and movements. But they can not close the sky to those things whose natural home it is. Be sure we shall know, and speedily, when they move against us.”

  They did not leave their posts however. Zackuth readied for action by laying up pieces of rubble which might serve as well as his first lucky shot.

  It was a long night, wearing on the tempers of all but Takya. Time and time again Craike tried to probe the dark. But a blank wall was all he met. Whatever moves the Black Hoods considered, they were protected by an able barrier.

  Jorik took to pacing back and forth on the terrace, five strides one way, six the other, and he brought down his bow with a little click on the time-worn stones each time he turned.

  “They are as busy hatching trouble as a forest owl is in hatching an egg! But what kind of trouble?”

  Craike had schooled himself into an outward patience. “For the learning of what we shall have to wait. But why do they delay?”

  Why did they? The more on edge he and his handful of defenders became, the easier meat they were. He had no doubt that the Black Hoods were fertile in surprise, though judging by what Takya and Jorik reported, they were not accustomed to such determined and resourceful opposition to their wills. Such opposition would only firm their desire to wipe out the rebels.

  “They move.” Takya’s witch fires leaped from every point she had earlier indicated. In that light she sped across the terrace to stand close to Jorik and Craike and close to the parapet wall. “This is the lowest hour of the night, when the blood runs slow and resistance is at its depth; so they choose to move.”

  Jorik snapped his bow cord, and the thin twang was a harp’s note in the silence. But Takya shook her head.

  “Only the Hooded Ones come, and they are well armored. See!” She jumped to the parapet and clapped her hands.

  The witch light shown down on four standing within the thorn barrier, staring up from under the shadow of their hoods. An arrow sang, but it never reached its mark. Still feet away from the leader’s breast, it fell to earth.

  But Jorik refused to accept defeat. With all the force of his arm he sent a second shaft after the first. It, too, landed at the feet of the silent four. Craike grasped at Takya, but she eluded him, moving to call down to the Hooded Ones.

  “What would you, Men of Power, a truce?”

  “Daughter of evil, you are not alone. Let us speak with your lord.”

  She laughed, shaking out her unbound hair, rippling it through her fingers, gloatingly. “Does this show that I have taken a lord, Men of Power? Takya is herself, without division still. Let that hope die from your hearts. I ask you again, what is it you wish, a truce?”

  “Set forth your lord; with him we will bargain.”

  She smoothed back her hair impatiently. “I have no lord; I and my power are intact. Try me and see, Tousuth. Yes, I know you Tousuth, the Master, and Salsbal, Bulan, Yily.” She told them off with a pointed forefinger, like a child counting in some game.

  Jorik stirred and drew in a sharp breath, and the men below shifted position. Craike caught thoughts. To use a man’s name in the presence of hostile powers was magic indeed.

  “Takya!” It was a reptile’s hiss.

  Again she laughed. “Ah, but the first naming was mine, Tousuth. Did you believe me so poor and power lost that I would obey you tamely? I did not at the horning; why should I now when I stand free of you? Before you had to use Takyi to capture me. But Takyi is gone into the far darkness, and over me now you can lay no such net! Also, I have summoned one beside me—” Her hand closed on Craike’s arm, drawing him forward.

  He faced the impact of those eyes meeting them squarely. Raising his hand he told them off as the girl had done:

  “Tousuth, Master of women baiters, Salsbal, Bulan, Yily, the wolves who slink behind him. I am here, what would you have of me?”

  But they were silent, and he could feel them searching him out, making thrusts against his mind shield, learning in their turn that he was of their kind; he was Esper born.

  “What would you have?” he repeated more loudly. “If you do not wish to treat, then leave the night undisturbed for honest men’s sleep.”

  “Changeling!” It was Tousuth who spat that. It was his turn to point a finger and chant a sentence or two, his men watching him with confidence.

  But Craike, rememb
ering that other scene before Sampur, was trying a wild experiment of his own. He concentrated upon the man Takya had named Yily, his black cloak and black hood making a vulture’s shadow against the rock. Vulture—vulture!

  He did not know that he had pointed to his chosen victim, nor that he was repeating that word aloud in the same intonation as Tousuth’s chant. “Vulture!”

  A cool hand closed about his other wrist, and from that contact power flowed to join his. It was pointed, launched.

  “Vulture!”

  A black bird flapped and screamed, arose on beating wings to fly at him, raw, red head outstretched, beak agap. Then a scream of agony and despair and a black cloaked man writhed out his life on the slope by the thorn thicket.

  “Good!” Takya cried. “That was well done, Ka-rak, very well done! But you cannot use that weapon a second time.”

  Craike was filled with a wild elation, and he did not listen to her. His finger already indicated Bulan and he was chanting: “Dog—”

  But to no purpose. The Black Hood did not drop to all fours, he remained human; and Craike’s voice faded. Takya spoke in a swift whisper:

  “They are warned; you can never march against them twice by the same path. Only because they were unprepared did you succeed. Ho, Tousuth,” she called, “do you now believe that we are well armed? Speak with a true tongue and say what you want of us.”

  “Yes,” Jorik boomed, “you can not take us, Master of Power. Go your way, and we shall go ours.”

  “There can not be two powers in any land, as you should know, Jorik of the Eagles’ Tower, who tried once before to prove that and suffered thereby. There must be a victor here, and to the vanquished—naught!”

  Craike could see the logic in that. But the master was continuing: “As to what we want here; it is a decision. Match your power against ours, changeling. And since you have not taken the witch, use her also if you wish. In the end it will come to the same thing, for both of you must be rendered helpless.”

  “Here and now?” asked Craike.

  “Dawn comes; it will soon be another day. By sun or shadow, we care not in such a battle.”

  The elation of his quick success in that first try was gone. Craike fingered the bow he had not yet used. He shrank inwardly from the contest the other proposed; he was too uncertain of his powers. One victory had come from too little knowledge. Takya’s hand curled about his stiff fingers once again. The impish mockery was back in her voice, ruffling his temper, irritating him into defiance.

  “Show them what you can do, Lord Ka-rak, you who can master illusions.”

  He glanced down at her, and the sight of that cropped lock of hair at her temple gave him an odd confidence. Neither was Takya as all-powerful as she would have him believe.

  “I accept your challenge,” he called. “Let it be here and now.”

  “We accept your challenge!” Takya’s flash of annoyance, her quick correction, pleased him. Before the echo of her words died away she hurled her first attack.

  Witch fire leaped down slope to ring in the three men, playing briefly along the body of the dead Yily. It flickered up and clown about their feet and legs so they stood washed in pallid flame. While about their heads darted winged shapes which might have been owls or other night hunters.

  There was a malignant hissing, and the slope sprouted reptiles, moving in a wave. Illusions? All, or some, designed, Craike understood, to divert the enemy’s minds. He added a few of his own: a wolfish shape crouching in the shadow, leaping, to vanish as its paws cut the witch fire.

  Swift as had been Takya’s attack, so did those below parry. An oppressive weight, so tangible that Craike looked up to see if some mountain threatened them from overhead, began to close down upon the parapet. He heard a cry of alarm. There was a black cloud to be seen now, a giant press closing upon them.

  Balls of witch fire flashed out of the light pillars and darted at those on the parapet. One flew straight at Craike’s face, its burning breath singeing his skin.

  “Fool!” Takya’s thought was a whip lash. “Illusions are only real for the believer.”

  He steadied, and the witch ball vanished. But he was badly shaken. This was outside any Esper training he had had; it was the very thing he had been conditioned against. He felt slow, clumsy, and he was ashamed that upon Takya must the burden of their defense now rest.

  Upon her—Craike’s eyes narrowed. He loosened her hold on him and did not try to contact her. There was too much chance of self-betrayal in that. His plan was utterly wild, but it had been well demonstrated that the Black Hoods could only be caught by the unexpected.

  Another witch ball hurtled at him, and he leaped to the terrace, landing with a force which sent a lance of pain up his healing leg. But on the parapet a Craike still stood, shoulder to shoulder with Takya. To maintain that illusion was a task which made him sweat as he crept silently away from the tower.

  He had made a security guard to astonish Takya, the wolf, all the other illusions. But they had been only wisps, things alive for the moment with no need for elaboration. To hold this semblance of himself was in some ways easier, some ways harder. It was easier to make, for the image was produced of self-knowledge, and it was harder, for it was meant to deceive masters of illusion.

  Craike reached the steps to the rock of the offerings. The glow of the witch lights here was pale, and the ledge below dark. He crept down, one arrow held firmly in his hand.

  Here the sense of oppression was a hundredfold worse, and he moved as one wading through a flood which entrapped limbs and brain. Blind, he went to all fours, feeling his way to the river.

  He set the arrow between his teeth in a bite which indented its shaft. A knife would have been far better, but he had no time to beg Jorik’s. He slipped over, shivering as the chill water took him. Then he swam under the arch.

  It was comparatively easy to reach the shingle where the dugout of the Black Hoods had turned over. As he made his way to the shore he brushed against water-soaked cloth and realized he shared this scrap of gravel with the dead. Then, the arrow still between his teeth, Craike climbed up behind the Black Hoods’ position.

  IX

  The thorn hedge cloaked the rise above him. But he concentrated on the breaking of that illusion, wading on through a mass of thorns, intact to his eyes, thin air at his passing. Then he was behind the Black Hoods. Takya stood, a black and white figure on the wall above, beside the illusion Craike.

  Now!

  The illusion Craike swelled a little more than life size, while his creator gathered his feet under him, preparatory to attack. The Craike on the wall altered—anything to hold the attention of Tousuth for a crucial second or two. A monster grew from the man: wings, horns, curved tusks, all the embellishments Craike’s imagination could add. He heard shouts from the tower.

  But with the arrow as a dagger in his hand, he sprang, allowing himself in that moment to see only, to think only of a point on Tousuth’s back.

  The head drove in and in, and Tousuth went down on his knees, clutching at his chest, coughing; while Craike, with a savagery he had not known he possessed, leaned on the shaft to drive it deeper.

  Fingers hooked about Craike’s throat, cutting off air, dragging him back. He was pulled from Tousuth, loosing his hold on the arrow shaft to tear at the hands denying him breath. There was a red fog which even the witch lights could not pierce, and the roaring in his head was far louder than the shouts from the tower.

  Then he was flat on the ground, still moving feebly. But the hands were gone from his throat, and he gasped in air. Around him circled balls of fire, dripping, twirling, he closed his eyes against their glare.

  “Lord—Lord!”

  The hail reached him only faintly. Hands pulled at him, and he tried to resist. But when he opened his eyes it was to see Jorik’s brown face. Jorik was at the tower. How had Craike returned there? Surely he had attacked Tousuth? Or was it an illusion?

  “He is not dead.”


  Whether or not that was said to him, Craike did not know; but his fingers were at his throat, and he winced from his own touch. Then an arm came under his shoulders, lifting him, and he had a dizzy moment until earth and gray sky settled into their proper places.

  Takya was there, with Nickus and Zackuth hovering in the background of black jerkined guardsmen who stared back at her sullenly over the bodies of the dead. For they were all dead—the Hooded Ones. There was Tousuth, his head in the sand. His fellows were crumpled beside him.

  The witch girl chanted, and in her hands was a cat’s cradle of black strands. The men who followed Tousuth cringed, and their fear was a cloud Craike could see. He grabbed at Jorik, won to his feet, and tried to hail Takya. But not even a croak came from his tortured throat. So he flung himself at her, one hand out like a sword blade to slash. It fell across that wicked net of hair, breaking it, and went to close upon Takya’s wrist in a crashing grip.

  “Enough!” He could get out that command mind to mind.

  She drew in upon herself as a cat crouches for a spring, and spat, her eyes green with feral lusting fire. But he had an answer to that, read it in her own spark of fear at his touch. His hands twined in her hair.

  “They are men.” He pulled those black strands to emphasize his words. “They only obeyed orders. We have a quarrel with their masters, but not with them!”

  “They hunted, and now they shall be hunted!”

  “I have been hunted, as have you, witch woman. While I live there shall be no more such hunts, whether I am hound or quarry.”

  “While you live—” Her menace was ready.

  Suddenly Craike forced out a hoarse croak meant for laughter. “You, yourself, Takya, have put the arrow to this bow cord!”