The Warding of Witch World Read online

  They had their supplies, but it was the Trade Master who at the end ordered them a selection of better beasts chosen from those owned by his own kin. However, these small creatures could not carry packs even as full as a hill pony of the south. So the party pared and pared again all they had brought with them.

  They were assured there was game to be found clear up to the very verge of the ice wall. In fact, along the foot of that even greathorns were to be found. And such plants as could nourish a traveler were carefully displayed and the virtues of each explained.

  However, Trusla was well aware that those who helped never expected to see the party again. In fact, a few were hinting that their very presence in the port perhaps could bring down the Dark on bystanders.

  Stymir formally turned the captaincy of his ship over to his mate. Oddly enough, at the last moment he gained them another recruit—old Joul, who actually appeared where they were assembling the pack train with an animal of his own, a seaman’s well-corded chest on its pack frame.

  Since there was no real dawn in this land that was nearly always light, Trusla was not sure what time their small party moved out. But early as it was, there were those gathered to watch them. The attitude of those watchers, however, was somber, and there was none of the bright joking and friendly calls which had marked their embarcation from Korinth.

  The Trade Master marched with them to the end of the scattered burrows of the village, but the Watcher, though appearing bedabbled in her ceremonial paint, made no such concession to ceremony. In fact, it was plain that she was glad to see the last of them.

  Odanki, Simond, Stymir, old Joul, and even Audha strode along with full complements of weapons and armor, helms covering their heads. As usual Frost was well to the fore with her swift smooth stride. She carried no visible weapons, but she had accepted from the Trade Master a seasoned staff with the admonition that it was sometimes wiser to test patches of footing ahead. Matching her, the bulk of her feather cloak and furred cloth making her look almost square from behind, was Inquit, who led one of the horses, on the back of which, above the rolled belongings of the shaman, perched Kankil, who alone of their present company appeared to treat this faring forth as a good and exciting adventure.

  There were no roads to follow here, only the traces of trails made by those who had gone out earlier this season and returned during the past few days. But they did have a guide, as they need only lift their heads to view it.

  The glaciers in their slow march had covered the land, but even with their weight they had not completely defeated some show of the rock crowns of a cluster of northern mountains. It was toward one of these that Hessar had pointed them and somewhere along its cloaking glacier—if it did exist at present—they would find the seasonal drainage stream.

  The land about them was so fair under the clear sky that Trusla found it hard to believe that evil had already marked it. However, long before nooning they were to have proof of what had occurred before and could be done to the unsuspecting travelers.

  They saw the smoke first—tendrils befouling the air—before the odor of the burning reached them. Stymir and Simond split off from the party, but not until Inquit had joined them, moving as swiftly, in spite of her heavy clothing, as the men.

  Frost took up position between the rest of the party and those going to investigate. She was holding her jewel and it was beginning to glow. But she made no attempt to stop them.

  They did not go far. Those waiting could still see them as they stood together on a slight rise staring ahead—and then they returned at a swifter pace than they had gone.

  “A death camp,” the captain explained curtly. “We must not be caught in the open so.”

  “Nor shall we,” replied Frost. “We have warning.” She had slipped off the chain of the jewel and now held it lying flat on her palm before her. It glowed, not with the clear light of day, but rather with a dull and blackish color. Yet when Frost swung her hand toward the points of the half-buried mountains, it cleared.

  “There be caves along the ice wall,” Joul rasped. “Better a wall to the back, even if it be ice, than have to face four ways at once and perhaps find ourselves a fifth one and them in it we don’t want to meet.”

  They no longer kept to the even pace of their morning’s start. And when they halted to rest the animals and take some food for themselves, they ate with weapons close at hand. As they continued to travel steadily far into the dusky night with only a few such rests, the third day brought them to the ice wall.

  Joul had been right. The edge of the glacier was pitted and jagged with falls of ice, some of it carrying great embedded boulders. It was among such that they set up a camp as a midpoint for their searching.

  That night Frost again communicated with her sisterhood while entranced. But this time Inquit kept guard, sitting image-still at the witch’s feet while Kankil guarded her head. Trusla, on impulse, brought out her sand jar and sat with it between her hands, but she did not allow herself any entrance into dreaming.

  “There is a find,” Frost reported at the loosening of her trance state. “Hilarion works against time to unravel some ancient puzzles. And”—now she was very sober—“this much fortune allows us. For some reason, that which awaits has for a space withdrawn. Whether this is a ruse on its part so that we shall enter its nets without sensing them, or whether it has exhausted more Power than it can now summon, who knows? For this space we are free, though how long that freedom will last I do not know.”

  “The more reason we find our stream, and speedily!” the captain said.

  Simond stirred. “We have already marked streams,” he said slowly. “One at least seems to agree with Hessar’s description. Lady,” he addressed Frost directly, “is there any way that something found can be again attracted to the place of its finding?”

  Inquit clapped her hand over her mouth. Kankil, who had been in her usual resting position against the shaman, sent out a series of loud chirps and made almost wild gestures with her small paw-hands.

  “Give me the find,” the shaman commanded the captain.

  He hesitated, watching the now extremely excited Kankil dubiously. Then he did produce the plaque. In the glow of the day that black center dot was this time fully visible. Kankil made a quick dart forward and wrested it out of his hands before he could stop her.

  “Here—” He made a grab for the small creature, only to have Odanki suddenly between them.

  Kankil brushed the mosslike tundra growth smooth and set the plaque at a precise angle on it, making several small adjustments, until she seemed sure that she was correct in what she would do.

  Having so placed the plaque, she dropped cross-legged beside it. Holding out her hand with the stubby index finger pointing, she moved her hand as if it were fastened by a cord to the plaque. The plaque had, Trusla was sure, taken on a glow of its own, and certainly the blot which was its core was growing larger and darker.

  It was clear to all of them that Kankil in no way touched the plaque where it lay. Yet suddenly the block lifted far enough so that space could be seen between it and the tundra on which it had rested.

  Now Kankil, still holding her finger in position, scrambled to her feet. She moved as if she led one of the pack animals forward, while the plaque slid through the air definitely to some purpose.

  The rest hastened to join her. Frost’s jewel was again agleam, but once more with the white light of acceptance. They pushed on, silently, for they were all intent on what they were watching. There came the soft sound of running water and Kankil now stood on the back of one of the lesser streams they had charted, not one they had considered a major find.

  Slowly Kankil lowered her finger and the plaque sank to earth at the very edge of the stream. She looked over her shoulder to Inquit and shrilled those thrilling notes which Trusla had come to know signified pride and accomplishment.

  Leaving the plaque lying now inert, she flung herself into the shaman’s outstretched arms and hugged
the woman.

  “There are many talents, Captain. No one, even the ancient adepts, could count nor command them all. This little one is a talented searcher. She has found your stream.”

  The captain stopped to pick up the plaque. It slipped out of his fingers into the water and he grabbed frantically to get it back. Now he stared up at them all in utter amazement.

  “It must be Hessar’s stream in truth—the water is warm.”

  Which set them all to testing it. Compared to the icy, biting cold of the other streams, this was indeed warm and yet it flowed, as they could well see, out of a fractured crack in the ice wall, the chilling breath of which reached them.

  They moved camp after Stymir was at last able to reclaim his trophy from the water, though the horses were unruly and could not be brought to drink of the stream or graze near it.

  There was an odor to the water true enough. Yet the shaman’s testing could produce no sign of anything poisonous. Now it remained for them to strike into the country of the ice itself.

  Regarding those treacherous walls of the glacier which they had been warned to keep at a distance from, they could see no way of climbing to move inland. Odanki, the only one among them who knew the ice lands, declared at once that such a feat was impossible.

  Nor could they take the pack beasts on any such climb, and to cut their supplies to less than half at near the very beginning of their journey would be utter folly. There remained then only one road for them—the bed of the stream itself. Stymir and Odanki tested it with staff and the poles of spears. Here it was not deep, though the bottom was dangerous, being strewn with stones released and washed down into the open. There were no fish or other life to be seen.

  However, the fissure through which it came was nearly as tall as a ship’s foremast and venturing in by degrees the men reported that that ceiling did not lower. However, the unpleasant smell of the water seemed caught under the ice roof to strike anyone daring to travel so.

  That night they held a full conference, each giving an opinion. As Simond pointed out, Frost smiling and nodding as he spoke, they had never really believed that what they were sent to do would be an easy task. They had Frost’s jewel for a warning and, though the shaman did not advance any details, she let it be known that she, also, had her ways of Power for protection and practical foreseeing. It was Audha who had the last word. As she was usually silent and aloof, her voice brought silence when she spoke:

  “If there is but a single path, then that is the way I take with the morning. I cannot rest until my kin’s blood is cleansed from me. I know little of your Light and Dark battles—to me this is a life debt and only I can pay it. Therefore I shall go.”

  And they accepted that she spoke the truth. Her ordeal in Dargh had left her with only one purpose—to repay death with death, and as all Sulcars she would hold to it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Into the Land of Ice, North

  I t was impossible to force the packhorses to follow the road provided by the stream—not only because of their complete refusal to be dragged into the lapping water, but also because the rough bottom of the cut threatened broken legs for the small beasts.

  Yet the party was reluctant not only to leave a larger part of their supplies behind, but to let the animals themselves drift free on the tundra, where it was very plain that something was eager to slay all invaders.

  Inquit and Kankil of them all were able to round up the small beasts and hold them quiet while Frost went from one to the next, touching each with her jewel and so setting upon them some warding—though how strong that would be against what had already struck here, the travelers had no way of telling.

  Their gear was then broken down into individual packs, and they assumed layers of spare clothing over that which they already wore, in protection against the freezing cold which they were certain awaited them ahead. Into a larger pouch she could swing from her belt, Trusla managed to stuff the jar of sand.

  They had a last very hearty meal, consuming supplies which could not be taken. The horses had already wandered off, grazing as they went. They did not scatter apart far but kept close enough that they might be in a recognized herd.

  The horses were finally gone, small black dots to be seen only in the distance but certainly heading on the back trail, when, after a rest period Stymir urged on them all, the travelers gathered together for their own departure. Each was equipped with a staff of sorts—mainly a stout spear—from the spare supplies. Because of the rough footing, they had to proceed at a slow pace and make sure that every step was as stable as possible. Still there were falls, plunging the unfortunate forward into the water—which luckily never reached more than thigh high.

  The crevice—though it offered only the narrowest strip of footing on either side of the stream—did not narrow as they went. But it did close overhead so that they moved through a strange dusky world, transparent in places and elsewhere containing dark blots that were perhaps rocks carried forward by the eternal invisible movement of the ice.

  “It is warmer!” They had halted for a breathing space and Captain Stymir drew off his heavy glove to plunge his hand into the water. He was right, as the others’ experiments quickly confirmed. The stream, which had been only faintly warm when they had first found it, was distinctly heated to a higher degree.

  One good result of this appeared to be its effect on the size of the fissure, as that continued to widen until they could splash along at its sides in lower water.

  “Aaaagha.” Odanki, who had been in the lead, suddenly halted, with so little warning that Frost had to catch at his pack to keep herself on her feet. There seemed to be a jog here in the way they were following. The ice wall which projected, forcing the stream to one side, was opaque and dark. Trusla, expecting to see a rock of some monstrous size, pushed a little on until Simond caught her in a nearly bruising grip.

  This was no rock! What it might be she could not, for a moment, understand. In some places the encasing ice had thinned enough so she could see what seemed to be a cluster of snakes, each of them larger than a man’s leg in girth, frozen together in a contorted knot.

  Above those rose a dome which ended in a great beaklike projection, and there were two saucer-sized pits which might once have sheltered eyes.

  The ice had melted back a little in one place so that the tip end of one of those snakelike appendages was freed to trail down to the water. But from the position in which the creature had been frozen it seemed that it was about to launch itself straight at them if they tried to pass, if it could at its will break its prison.

  “Sethgar!” The Sulcar captain stood looking up at the thing which towered well over him. “But—but demons do not lie in ice!” He looked to Frost. “Lady, we have a very ancient tale of such as this—that they acted as do the Hounds of Alizon but the masters they obeyed were beyond the power of men to battle.” He suddenly caught at his fur overgarment and brought forth the plaque.

  There was a glow about it and he spat out an oath, nearly dropping it into the water, as if it had burned or cut his fingers. At the same time Frost’s jewel flared red.

  “It is dead, long dead.” Inquit used the tip of her spear to poke at that dangled bit the ice had released. It quivered under her prodding, but that was all.

  “This Sethgar,” Simond demanded. “It was a thing of the sea, was it not?”

  Certainly they could not see any form of legs—only those lengthy snakelike appendages.

  “Yes. But . . .” the captain was staring down at the plaque he held. Once more it resembled a small window through which they could see into . . . where? Another world? Trusla wondered.

  The strange black ship was far clearer in every detail now. And, plainly clinging to the deck near the bow, was a dark mass which could be just such a creature as they faced now.

  “It seems”—Frost cradled her jewel against her—“that if your legend of coming through some ice gate in the north is correct, then we are finding p
roof of what hunted your people here, and we follow the proper trail.”

  Stymir visibly shuddered. “Lady, some tales are told for the pleasure of listeners who, sitting by a comfortable fire, enjoy to shudder at what does not exist. To see a demon come to life is no light thing.”

  “It is no demon.” Odanki had advanced, spear in hand. Now he struck the ice wall which covered the monster. A chip or two broke off, but there was no other change. “This is old, old, and long since dead—the ice will release it in time and it will rot into nothingness like any dead thing.”

  Joul uttered a cackle of laughter. “The Latt has the right of it, Captain. It is true that even men have been lost in ice crevices only to be spouted forth years later looking as they did when they went in.”

  In Stymir’s hold the plaque appeared to dull and he looked down at it and then shrugged. “So be it. But the Lady is right—what we search for must lie ahead.”

  There was no way here to establish any resting place. Though their pace from the start had been a slow one, bodies began to ache from the constant care one must take to avoid the perils of the footing. They ate sparingly as they went and Trusla began to wonder if she could keep up—the ice crevice appeared to have no end.

  Odanki had scooped up Kankil and the little one rode on his shoulders, chirping now and then, perhaps to herself, for no one answered her.

  The mist came first, Trusla suddenly realized that the water had been growing ever warmer as they went and now there was a thin cloud rising from it ahead.

  Luckily the passage widened ever larger and there was a stretch of mixed earth and gravel on either side of the stream which was fast becoming truly hot. But, in spite of their efforts, they were lagging, though advancing doggedly.

  Now there was a smell also, one which irritated throat and nose and set them coughing. It was perhaps borne by that stream.

  Trusla dug her spear butt into the ground and pulled herself on. Simond had tried to take her pack beside his own some time back, but she refused. Each must give all one could to this venture.