Trey of Swords (Witch World (Estcarp Series)) Read online

  Between her fingers, the Lady Dahaun held that figure of clay and hair and rag which had drawn Crytha from our protection to the Thas. And the eyes in that company fastened on what she held.

  “It would seem,” Ethutur broke the small silence which had lain for a space on us, “that our protection is not as secure as we believed it. For such a thing could not have tome into this place otherwise.”

  I clasped my hands tightly before me. My right palm itched; the fingers kept cramping as if they would hold something. In me a hunger gnawed, a hunger I must fight with all my strength. For I had done as I had sworn. Ice Tongue lay where I had dropped it on the heights above and I would have no regrets—no regrets!

  “This,” the Lady Dahaun balanced the ugly talisman on one palm, “was not fashioned beyond our walls, but within them.”

  At that saying, our uneasy glances swept from face to face around our circle. Would she tell us now that among us was a traitor? Yet how could that be? Who had enough strength of the Dark Power to pass the barriers so often renewed and set to our defense?

  “The clay,” she continued, “is of the brookside; this hair is from the head of Crytha, as is this also hers.” She flicked with one finger tip the rag twisted around the image.

  “Who—” Lord Kyllan's hand was on his sword hilt. His face, young-seeming as it was, was grim and set as if he looked ahead to some battle wherein he might go down to defeat.

  “Crytha.” Her answer came so quietly that it took me two or three breaths of time to understand. And then I would have protested, but before me was Lord Hervon.

  “Why, Lady, would she fashion a trap in which to entangle herself? This is not sense, but folly!”

  “She did not fashion it, my lord, not knowingly. But this maiden of your house has more talent within her than we realized. Untrained, the Power can harm as well as aid. She had drawn upon what lies within her eagerly, as a man drinks at a pool of clear water when thirst torments him, foreseeing no evil in her acts since all she desired was for good. She is a born healer of great promise. But no talent is single in one, and where Power opens the door and there are no safeguards, then there can creep in that which we fear most.

  “Those safeguards we have set to make invulnerable this Valley work against physical invasion. But some subtle brain has devised a way of reaching out along a level of mind which is not guarded, which cannot be detected, except by the training which those of the Talent use as their shields.

  “Such a questing thought will not trouble us who are so shielded. But it can influence—and without their knowledge or understanding—those who have not such shields. Fear not, now that this evil has so revealed itself it cannot use her again as a tool in its hand. Uruk”—she spoke directly to him—“who holds the Thas within his hand?”

  He did not answer at once. And when he did, he spoke musingly as if he himself faced some riddle.

  “Lady, you say I am but legend in this new world of yours. I lived in another time and a different Escore. My enemy there was Targi. The Thas paid him some liegeship—enough to let him use their burrows for my prison. But Targi—” He shook his head slowly now. “I have not sniffed out any of his mischief since I was freed. If he lives—” He slapped his hand flat down upon the head of the ax. “I would know it! We are too bound in enmity for me not to do so.”

  “Targi was slain in Emnin.”The words came from my lips, but they were not mine. I saw all those in the company turn their eyes, startled, toward me. “It was the Lost Battle.” That which was not Yonan continued. “Lost for the Banners of Eft, for the Fellowship of HaHarc. Yet the Shadow was also driven back; no side could claim victory on that day.”

  My sword hand flew to my lips, covering them. I was shaken by this sudden arousal of that other. And was well aware that those on either side of me withdrew a little as if I were revealed as an unclean enemy. Yet I had thrown away Ice Tongue—I was Yonan!

  I saw that Ethutur regarded me with a frown. His lips moved as if he would speak, but the Lady Dahaun checked him with a gesture. Then she raised her hand and traced in the air certain symbols. As green fire they blazed, and then the green became blue. While it seemed to me that I whirled giddily across the fire between us. that all which was me hung in midair, naked and defenseless before those signs of her witchery.

  “Who are you?” I saw her lips move to shape the words, but they sounded very faint and far away. Some mighty chasm now stretched between us.

  I struggled. Yonan—I was Yonan! But I heard my own voice answer in the same thin and faded tone of far distance.

  “Tolar—Tolar of Ice Tongue.”

  “And what would you here, Tolar?” came her second question.

  “The past must be erased, the evil geas broken.”

  “And this is your will, Tolar?”

  “I have no will in this. It is a geas which has been laid upon me, that my failure be redressed and time rewoven.”

  I—or that substance which was part of me—no longer hung before the Lady of Green Silences. Rather I was back once more in my own body. But I no longer sat among the people of Hervon. Rather, I had moved into the open, so that the breath of the flame nearly scorched my boots. I knew, bitterly, that he whom I had fought so hard to destroy was now fully awake within me. I had no longer a place here, but must be about some strange and terrifying quest which held little contact with the world I had always known.

  “I must return.’’ My lips fell stiff. In spite of the heat of the fire I was chilled, as I had been when I had hacked open the ice pillar of the Thas to free Uruk. And in me at that moment there arose the conviction that I went to death itself, yet I could not prevail otherwise against the compulsion which moved me.

  Uruk arose. “This hosting is mine, also. For though the craft of Targi prevented my fighting aforetime, it shall not now. Lady”—once more he saluted Dahaun with the ax—“we go into the dark; think of us with fair wishing, for our path will be very strange and the dangers along it such as few men have ever experienced.”

  “Boy—” I was aware Lord Hervon was beside me, his hand grasping my sword arm. There was a growing pain in my right hand, a pain which would never leave me until once more I clasped Ice Tongue and carried through what that uncanny sword, and this stranger within me, wished. “Yonan—what will you do?”

  I sensed concern in his tone. And that part of me which was still the youth he knew gathered a measure of courage from his thought of me. But so small a part of my person was now Yonan it might have been that a stranger spoke those words.

  “My Lord.” I gave him full courtesy; to me he now seemed as far away as our voices had earlier sounded. “I go where I must go, do what must be done. For I am what Ice Tongue has made me, and it I shall serve until once more comes the end. Perhaps this time”—small hope struggled within me—“the end will be a better one.” Yet memory overclouded that hope, as I knew again the sharp pains of my wounded body as I had dragged myself to that place into which I might fling the sword, lest evil find it and turn it to a still greater danger.

  His hand fell from my arm. While that company moved out and back, leaving a path into the dark, away from the cheer of the fire. Down that steadily darkening way I walked, and shoulder to shoulder with me, Uruk. While within me something was stricken and began to die. When it was truly dead I would be a man without hope, with only the geas left to move me on.

  Though it was dark my hands and feet seemed to find for themselves the way to climb the cliffs. And I went upward with greater speed and ease than I had ever gone before. Dimly I heard the movements of Uruk to my right. I felt no comfort in his company, he was too much a part of this thing which held me prisoner—which was killing Yonan as surely as if it tore open his breast to slit his heart.

  When we reached the top of that way I saw the light and it drew me. The sword I had discarded had a torchlike hilt. I stooped and picked up the belt, buckling it once more about me. Then I fingered the grip, to find it warm, not chill as
normal crystal.

  For the first time since we had left the fire, Uruk spoke. He did not make a question of that word, it was rather as if he affirmed a resolve.

  “HaHarc.”

  “HaHarc,” I echoed in agreement. As yet that stranger (he whom they called Tolar) was not in full control of my mind, only of my will and body. I did not have his memories—except in fleeting, time-broken pictures. But when Uruk had uttered that name, then I knew it for our goal.

  But we were not to reach those near-forgotten ruins unchallenged. For, as we made our way down the opposite wall of the mountain encirclement, my skin seemed to prickle between my shoulders; I found myself sniffing the air, listening. Evil was abroad in the night—and the menace it exuded was strong enough to awake every instinct of caution. I could not throw away my life, rather must I live for the veiled purpose to be demanded of me.

  It seemed that my hearing was keener, that I had other and new senses which brought me strong intimations of danger waiting below. And in the moment there flashed into my mind words—a thought not my own—

  “Those of the Shadow move—”

  But I had none of the Talent; how could I have caught this warning? No, Yonan had no Talent, but what did I know of the gifts and strengths of Tolar?

  A rising puff of wind carried to us a thick stench. Not Thas, no—Gray Ones. Those runners on evil roads who were neither man nor beast, but the worst of each wedded into one. I paused in my descent to listen.

  A faint scratching at the rock—not directly below but farther to my right. I peered down into a well of blackness. Then I saw the pallid blink of eyes which had a vile radiance of their own as they were raised to mine.

  “Move to the left.” Once more that mental message came clearly. “There is a ledge. I already stand upon it.”

  The Gray Ones made no sound. I set myself to exploring handholds to my left. There were enough to give me easy passage. Only moments later my feet found a firm surface and I could let go of those holds, turn to face outward.

  “They are not silent hunters usually,” my companion continued his soundless communication. “There are but five.” He mentioned that as if five of the Gray Ones meant nothing at all to armed men. At that I wondered, fleetingly.

  I saw the betraying eyes below. They moved steadily along what must be the base of the cliff, perhaps the height of a man—a little more—until they were again beneath us. I drew Ice Tongue.

  It was as if I had suddenly produced a torch, limited though that illumination was. And in my hand, the sword itself gave forth a sound so strange that had not my fingers clung to it willessly I might have dropped it.

  The songsmiths who tell and retell our legends, keeping alive so much which is long since gone otherwise from the world of men, speak at times of “singing swords,” marvelous blades which give forth a shrill song when they are battle-ready. But Ice Tongue—snarled! There was no other word to describe the sound it made.

  And its snarl was echoed from below. A dark bulk sprang up toward us. Not a Gray One, for it showed no lighted eye discs.

  Uruk moved and, in the light of my blade, I saw his ax descend into that black mass, heard a horrible howling as the creature, whatever it might be, fell back and away. Now the Gray Ones leaped up, as if maddened into stupidity by the wounding of their battle comrade. For our position above them gave us a superiority which no sane creature would have ignored.

  Again Ice Tongue snarled as I cut down at a misshapen head, felt flesh give, bone shatter. They leaped to reach us as if they were frenzied, compelled to attack in spite of the fact that we could so well deal with them from where we stood.

  Thus in the dark we slew and slew again. Screams and whimpers arose from below us. But we twain voiced no war cries. Nor did Ice Tongue “speak” by my will or training, but as if it, itself, had such a hatred for those below that it must vent that in force.

  At length, Uruk's thought came to me, “Enough. They are dead.”

  I leaned on the bared sword, searching for any telltale flash of luminous eye, listening for any sound. But the night was now both black and still. I fell myself weary, drained, as if Ice Tongue had drawn upon my very spirit.

  “We must move,” Uruk added. And in me, too, a feeling of urgency warred with that weariness. “Those here have their masters, who will soon know that they are dead.”

  We followed the ledge on for a little and found at length that it narrowed so that we must descend once more. And. when, at last, the ground was under our feet, Uruk turned sharply away from the scene of our struggle.

  “HaHarc—” he said. “We are not yet masters of time.”

  What he meant I did not yet guess, but I wiped Ice Tongue on a rough clump of grass and followed him, though I kept that blade bare and ready as I tramped along.

  3

  Though there was no moon and the stars were very far away, affording no light at all. yet we two strode through the night even as we had left the fire in the Valley, shoulder to shoulder. We might well be following some torch-illumined path. In me there was a certainty as if my mind saw instead of my eyes. Yet another part of me was ever on sentry duty against what might slink behind on our trail.

  I had been tired when we had returned from the venture in the burrows of the Thas. My rest had been but a short one before we had been summoned to that council. Yet now I had no feeling of fatigue, only a burning desire to get ahead with what must be done. Though the nature of that act, whatever it might be, was still hidden from me.

  Uruk did not break the silence between us, with either thought or speech. The Lady Dahaun had called him legend, but she had accepted him at once, which meant he was not of the Shadow. And he had known Tolar—yet I was afraid to try to recall any early tie between us. Yonan still flickered faintly within me, his fear enough to impose this last desperate restraint.

  If evil did sniff behind us that night, it kept its distance well. Perhaps the slaughter we had wrought at the base of the cliff made the enemy wary. Or maybe they would entice us on in our folly well away from the Valley so that we would be easy meat for them. Dully, I wondered which of these guesses was nearest to the truth as I went, ever on guard.

  That wan light of gray which is the first awakening of the morning rendered visible a wild, churned land. Some chaotic movement of the earth had had its way here. Uruk slowed. I saw his helmed head move right to left and back again, as if he sought a sign which was missing.

  Now we must weave a path through a choking of brush and shrub which grew up about tumbles of dark blocks of stone. Still, when I surveyed this with half-closed, measuring eyes, I could see patterns—as if buildings of mist and fog spiraled upward from those battered remains, and roads opened for us.

  Uruk paused. When I looked at him I saw his face set, his mouth grim-lipped. He searched the ruins ahead with a fierce, compelling stare as if he would tear out of them by the force of his will alone some mighty secret.

  “HaHarc—” He did not use the mind touch, rather spoke aloud as if he could not quite believe in what he saw. Then he swung the ax, and there was rage in that swing as he brought the weapon down, to decapitate a thin bush. He might have been striking out against all the past with that useless blow.

  For a long moment he stood, the withered leaves and branches he had cut still lying on the ground, the blade which had severed them pressing their wreckage into a drift of soil. Then he shook his head. Once more he stared about him intently and I sensed that he sought some landmark which was very needful for whatever he was to do here. But my battle with that other within me had begun once again, and I felt suddenly drained of strength, of any care concerning what might lie ahead.

  Uruk moved forward, but hesitantly, not with the swift purpose he had shown before. It could be that, fronted by these ruins, he had lost some landmark which he needed. Still we wove a way among blocks, pushing through the growth, though now I followed behind him.

  The valley which had held HaHarc was narrow at its e
ntrance. I could mark in the growing light that it had been closed here by a wall or fortification running from one side of the heights to the other. Though the stones of that building were so cast about that it would appear the land itself had shaken off that bondage, as indeed it must have done.

  Past that point, the way before us widened and those structures which had been divorced from the walls showed taller, less tumbled. The stone was darkly weathered. Still here and there, even in the gray of early dawn. I could sight remnants of carving. Sometimes I had to close my eyes for a breath or two because I could also see the mist curdle, raise, bring back ghostly shadows of what must have been.

  We stumbled upon a street, still paved, though drifted with soil which had given rootage to grass, some small bushes. This ran straight into the heart of the destroyed fortress city. For I knew without being told that before its destruction HaHarc had indeed been both. Like the Green Valley, in its day it had stood as a stout oasis of safety against the Shadow.

  On Uruk tramped, now facing straight ahead, as if he had at last found the landmark he sought. Thus we came at length upon an open space where the ruins walled in a circling of stone blocks, tilted and fissured now. At regular intervals about this had been set up. on the inner side of that circle, monoliths, carved with runes, headed by time-eroded heads; some of men and some of beasts, strange, and yet menacing—but in their way no more menacing than those creatures of intelligence who comraded the People of Green Silences.

  Some had fallen outward, to shatter on the pavement. But others leaned this way or that, still on their bases. And two or three stood firmly upright. Within the guardianship of these there was another building, which, in spite of its now much broken and fallen walls, I think had been tower-tall. And the stone of its making was different from that I had seen elsewhere in the ruins—for it was that dull blue which marked those islands of safety throughout Escore, the blue we had been taught to watch for during any foraying as a possible place of defense.