Tales From High Hallack, Volume 2 Read online

  The rigid line of his shoulders eased. He nodded as if in answer to his own thoughts, then beckoned again. Itlothis wriggled through to join him. The seat on which she crawled was padded, but both short and narrow, so his body pressed tight to hers. Oslan hardly waited for her to settle before he brought the palm of his hand down on a control button.

  There was an answering vibration, a purr, as the vehicle came to life, moved forward, down the open way it faced. Itlothis waited no longer for an explanation.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Seal the nest place.”

  “Can you?”

  “I will not know until I try. But there is no other way.”

  There was no use in trying to get any sense out of him while he was so sunk in his obession. She must let him follow his fantasy to the end. Then, perhaps, he would break the dream.

  “How do you know how to run this?” she asked.

  “This is my second such visit to Yul. I came at an earlier time in the first part of my dream, while there were still men serving Its needs.”

  He had been two days deep in the dream when she had located him and she supposed a dream fantasy could leap years if necessary. That did have some logic of its own.

  The vehicle trundled forward. Now the passage began to branch, but Oslan paid no attention to the side ways, keeping straight ahead. Until a rock wall blocked them. At that barrier he turned into the passage at the left.

  This new way was much narrower. Itlothis began to wonder if sooner or later they might not find themselves securely caught between the walls. From time to time Oslan did stop briefly. When he did so he stood upon the seat, reaching his hands over his head to run fingertips along the ceiling.

  The third time he did this he gave a soft exclamation. When he sat down he did not start the vehicle again. Instead he crouched closer over the control panel, peering at the buttons there.

  “Get out!” he ordered without looking up. “Go back, run!”

  Such was the force of that command she obeyed without question. Only she noticed, as she jumped to the floor, his hands were flying over the buttons in a complicated pattern.

  Itlothis ran back along the corridor. Behind her she heard the vehicle grinding on. As she turned, pausing, she saw Oslan was speeding toward her, the machine moving away on its own. Satisfied he had not deserted her she began to run again.

  He caught up, grasped her arm, urging her to greater efforts. The sound of the vehicle receded. They gained the mouth of the main tunnel. Oslan pulled her into that, not lessening his furious pace as he pounded back the way they had come. The fear which boiled in him, though she did not know its source, fed into her, making her struggle ahead as if death strode in their wake.

  They had reached the cavern holding the machines when the floor, the walls, shook. There came a roar of sound to deafen her. After that, darkness. . . .

  Something hunting through the dark . . . a rage which was like a blow. Itlothis hid from that rage, from the questing of the giant anger. Shaking from fear of that seeking, she opened her eyes. Inches away from her face was another’s which she could see only dimly in this light. She wet her lips. When she spoke her voice sounded very thin and far away:

  “Clan Chief Oslan. . .”

  She had come here hunting him. Now someone, some thing, was hunting her!

  His eyelids flickered, opened. He stared at her, his face wearing the same shadow of fear as possessed her. She saw his lips move, his answer was a thread of sound.

  “It knows! It seeks!”

  His mad obession. But perhaps she could use that to save them. She caught his head between her hands, forcing him to continue to look at her. Pray All Power he still had a spark of sanity to respond. Slowly, with pauses between words, summoning all her will, she gave the order:

  “Break the dream!”

  Did any consciousness show in his eyes, or had that same irrational and horrible fear which beset her now driven him into the far depths of his fantasy where she could not reach? Again Itlothis repeated those words with all the calm command she could summon.

  “Break the dream!”

  The fear racked her. That which searched was coming nearer. To lapse herself into madness, the horror was worse than any pain. He must! He. . .

  There was. . .

  Itlothis blinked.

  Light, much more light than had been in that cavern below Yul. She stared up at a gray ceiling. Here was no scent of dust, nor of ages.

  She was back!

  Hands had drawn away the dream helmet. She sat up, still hardly believing that she, they, had won. She turned quickly to that other divan. The attendants had removed his helmet, his hands arose unsteadily to his head, but his eyes were open.

  Now he saw her. His gaze widened. “Then you were real!”

  “Yes.” Had he really imagined that she was only a part of his dream? Itlothis was oddly discomfited by that thought. She had taken all those risks in his service and he thought she had only been part of his fantasy.

  Oslan sat up, looked about as if he could not quite believe he had returned. Then he laughed, not angrily as he had in Yul, but in triumph.

  “We did it!” He slammed his fist down on the couch. “The nest was walled off, that was what made it so wild. Yul is dead!”

  He had carried the fantasy back with him, the obsession still possessed him. Itlothis felt a little sick. But Oslan Sb Atto was still her client. She could not, dared not, identify with him. She had performed her mission successfully; his family must deal with him now.

  Itlothis turned to the medico. “The Clan Chief is confused.”

  “I am anything but confused!” Oslan’s voice rang out behind her. “Wait and see, Gentle Fem, just wait and see!”

  Though she was apprehensive during the hyper jump back to Benold, Oslan did not mention his dream again. Nor did he attempt to be much in her company, keeping mostly in his cabin. However, when they reached the spaceport on their home planet, he took command with an authority which overrode hers.

  Before she could report formally, he swept her aboard a private flyer bearing the Atto insignia. His action made her more uneasy than angry. She had dared to hope as time passed that he had thrown off the effect of the dream. Now she could see he was still possessed by it even though this was not the Benold the dreamer had envisioned.

  As he turned the flyer north he shot a glance at her.

  “You believe me ready for reprogramming, do you not, Itlothis?”

  She refused to answer. They would be followed. She had managed to send off a signal before they rose from the port.

  “You want proof I am sane? Very well, I shall give you that!”

  He pushed the flyer to top speed. Atto lay ahead, but also Yul! What was he going to do?

  In less than an hour planet time, Itlothis had her answer. The small craft dipped over the ruins. Only this was not the same Yul she had seen on her first flight to Atto. Here only a portion of the outer walls still stood. Inside those was a vast hollow in which lay only a few shattered blocks.

  Oslan cut power, landed the craft in the very center of the hollow. He was quickly free of the cabin, then reached in to urge her out with him. Nor did he loose his hold on her as he asked:

  “See?”

  The one word echoed back hollowly from the still standing outer walls.

  “What. . .” Itlothis must admit that this was a new Yul. But to believe that action taken in a dream on a planet light years away could cause such destruction. . . .

  “The charge reached the nest!” he said excitedly. “I set the energy on the crawler to excess. When the power touched the danger mark it blew. Then there was no safe place left for It to sleep in, only this!”

  She had, Itlothis supposed, to accept the evidence of her eyes. But what she saw went against all reason as she knew it. Yet whatever blast had occurred here had not been only weeks ago, the signs of the catastrophe were ages old! Had they been sent eons back in time? Itl
othis began to feel that this was a dream, some nightmare hallucination.

  But Oslan was continuing:

  “Feel it? That has gone. There is no other life here now!”

  She stood within his hold. Once in her childhood, when she was first being trained for the service, she had been brought to Yul. Then only just within the outer wall, beyond which few could go, and none dared stay long. She remembered that venture vividly. Oslan was right! Here was no longer that brooding menace. Just the cry of seabirds, the distant beat of waves. Yul was dead, long ago deserted by life.

  “But it was a dream!” she protested dazedly. “Just a dream!”

  Oslan slowly shook his head. “It was real. Now Yul is free. We are here to prove that. I told you once, ‘Get out of my dream.’ I was wrong; it was meant to be your dream also. Now this is our reality . . . an empty Yul, a free world. And, in time, perhaps something else.”

  His arms about her tightened. Not in anger or fear. Itlothis, meeting that brilliant green stare holding hers, knew that dreams, some dreams, never quite released their dreamers.

  Of The Shaping of Ulm’s Heir

  Tales of the Witch World (1987) TOR

  When my Lord Ulric put aside his wife, the Lady Elva, because within two years she had borne naught but dead babes and those far ahead of the time of normal birthing, there was much whispering in the Dale—both of keep folk and of those who dwelt on the land. Yet the majority of those who spoke behind one hand and kept an eye out for any talebearers were inclined to agree with their lord’s action. Ulmsdale must have an heir, all knew that. For a Dale where there was no one of the right blood to sit on the High Seat of the hall had wretched times of quarrels, and sometimes its folk were forced to live under a strange banner of some invading lord. Evil and danger one knew was better than what might lie ahead.

  Not that Ulric was either an evil or a danger to his own people. He was a man soured by what he considered a major misfortune and which others muttered was the curse of his house. That, since the days of his father Ulm, and that one’s impetuous despoiling of a treasure house in the waste, there had been born no living children to the blood of his line—Lord Ulric himself being fathered before that venture. One did not steal from the Old Ones, even though they be gone, without some harsh payment in return.

  My lord’s first wife had died in childbed—though that was not too uncommon a thing. However, even then the whispers began, for no follower of Gunnora tended her, and all knew that when things go amiss in the ways of womankind the Lady of Fruitfulness can well move to set them aright.

  My lord did not even wait the full year of mourning before he was a-wooing again and this time his selection was my dear lady. It was my pride that her choice of first chamberwoman fell upon me, who am also accursed in my own small way, and live in the keep only by sufferance. For my father was marshal on that fateful trip into the Waste under Lord Ulm, and, in his sin and folly, also wrought ill for his blood. For I was born with a beast one’s face—my upper lip split like that of the free running hare. So that people ever turned from me in disgust, from the time I was able to understand my deformity.

  Only the Lady Elva never showed such aversion to me. Instead spoke me fair and praised my skill with my needle and my soft touch when putting to order her long hair. Long and beautiful was that hair—lighter than any I have ever seen—closer to the sheen of gold—waving of itself when it was loosed from the formal loops of a matron’s styling. Hidden now beneath a dark veil yet she is content to have it so.

  For after my lord, speaking in a strange high voice unlike himself and looking everywhere but at her whom he addressed, had said the words of dismissal, she made no plaint but withdrew to the Abbey at Norsdale and there took the secondary vows of one who comes from the world, having been a wife. Though before her all such were widows ready to find a safe refuge from the world.

  I begged her to let me go with her, and that was when I first learned that, though she was of pure Dale’s blood, she had the Seeing, or some portion of such power. For, even as Lord Urlic’s eyes had turned from her as he had ordered her forth from his household, so now did she look beyond my shoulder as if she saw no wall of stone but that which was alive.

  “Ylas, there is that ahead which will concern you, and more than you. Here you must abide until that hour when what you shall do will be greater than you know and will change much for others.” Then she took from around her neck the chain which held an ancient carving which she had worn ever under her robe so that none save me had ever marked it. Worn by years and handling it was, still there was no mistaking its shape—for it was an amulet of the Great Lady Gunnora who smiles on womankind. And this the Lady Elva put around my own neck and then laid her hand upon it, pressing it against me so that I felt its weight even through robe and under smock, and she said, “This will be shield to you, dear heart, when the time is here. Think often upon her whose sign this is and when the evil creeps upon this place call to her.”

  Thus she went from us, to be swallowed by the abbey walls and no more have any touch with our world. Sore was that parting for me, very sore—once more I was the outcast one. But I think that my lord might have had second thoughts concerning his act—though the need for an heir ruled him so straightly—for he gave me freely the foretower top chamber and said that I was no longer to be the butt of other’s foul humors and laughter. Clever with my needle I remained, and thus I felt that I earned my bread, for I made clothing and worked upon hangings for the walls.

  My lord did not remain long without a lady. Save this time he needs must go far afield, since the whispers had run beyond the valley walls, and he was looked upon by the neighbors as a cursed man. His new wedding brought us the Lady Tephana out of the north.

  She had no right to stand against any curse, for men said—or their wives whispered—that she, too, was from an uncanny House. Her kin had had dealings with some of the remaining Old Ones of the Waste so that strange blood flowed even within her own body.

  As my own dear lady had been fair, so this one was dark with a pale skin which seemed more of the moon’s giving than any healthy sun-touched flesh. She was small, and quick but graceful in her movements, and she laughed much, though it seemed to me that good humor never touched her dark gray eyes.

  Though I was no longer chamberwoman she sought me out and gave into my hands various lengths of fine stuff which my lord had gifted her for her bridal, showing me with well-drawn pictures what she wanted made for her adorning. Though she would have her own maid do the measurements, as if she would not have upon her my touch. I did not care, for it seemed to me that there was that about her which was like a thin grayish mist. And always, I noted from the first, when she was nearby, the amulet my dear lady had given me seemed to chill, as if in some queer warning.

  Her own chamberwoman she had brought with her from the North. She was a dour, sour-faced creature, much older than her mistress. They said that she had been the lady’s nurse and that the lady had grown up always with her tending.

  Her name was Maug and she made no friends in the keep, though she had presence even as if she were of the high blood, for people moved quickly to do her bidding. She need only to look sharply at any of the folk and straightway they were eager to do as she wished to get rid of her.

  But to me she did not use whatever small power she brought to bear upon the others. Though I was aware that she watched me whenever I was in her lady’s presence, almost as if I were some bold raider and she was a loyal guard.

  The Lady Tephana was not a bride more than a month before she went forth from Ulmsdale saying that she would consult with a wise woman who had settled near Gunnora’s hill shrine that she might do her duty according to my lord’s great desires.

  She had already borne one child, yet he was not with her but dwelt in her people’s keep for a while. So it would seem that the lady had already favored her, and my lord had done well for himself in finding a fruitful lady. Still, when she rode forth with
Maug and two of the guards, I noted from my tower window that she did not make the turn to the path which led to Gunnora’s shrine but passed that by. Then curiosity moved in me and I changed house robe for a shorter tunic and put stout climbing boots on. Taking a shoulder bag with food for a double day’s journey, I slipped out of the keep at twilight and made my own way over the women’s road.

  Why I thought thus to spy upon my new mistress I could not even understand myself, save that the need for my going gnawed in me like a hunger and would not be appeased.

  It was close to midsummer and the moon was new, thus I felt that I had naught to fear for myself. Still I took with me a stout staff of ash over which I had rubbed my amulet along with the crushed leaves of illbane. Although I knew no spells, I called with my heart and mind upon the favor of Gunnora, trusting that one so much the greater would know that I meant no harm but that there was that which I must know.

  The track was a winding one, for it had never been laid or cut by men but patterned so by the feet of women who sought the care and favor of The Lady. I had taken it many times before, since I had sworn service to the Lady Elva seeking with my own petitions to bring her the wish of her heart. Thus, even in the half dark, I trusted to my feet, which seemed of themselves to know each dip and straightway.

  None in Ulm had a part in the building of the shrine toward which I traveled. Like much within the Dales THOSE WHO HAD BEEN BEFORE had laid the stone of its walls and planted about its doorway the sweet-smelling herbs which carried in their scent something which would lighten even the most dour heart for a space. But at the coming of our people to this land women were drawn to the place, and, within a generation of our people’s lives, the power which dwelt here was recognized.

  I came out upon the hillside at the top of which stood the place I sought. But there were no horses in pickets, no sign of the two guards, and I needed not even that to tell me that the Lady Tephana had not come this way.