Three Against the Witch World ww-3 Read online

  It was while I was butchering that the sound of water reached my ears, the steady, rippling gurgle of what could only be a swiftly flowing stream. Having made a bundle of meat inside the green hide, I shouldered the package and followed that sound.

  Not a stream, but a river, was what I slid down a high bank to find. There was a good current, and a scattering of large rocks around which the water washed with some force.

  I ran forward and knelt to drink from my cupped hands. The flood was mountain born, for it was cold, and it was good to fill my mouth and then splash it over my bared head, upon my sweating face. For a long moment or two I was content merely to revel in the touch of water, the wonderful taste of water. Then I rinsed out the saddle bottles, filled each to the brim and hammered in their stoppers, making certain not to lose a drop.

  Food and drink—and Kaththea and Kemoc waiting for both. With the heavy bottles dragging at my side, and the prong-horn meat on my shoulder, I started to retrace my trail. But to climb the bank at this point, so burdened, would not be easy. I needed two hands—thus I moved to the right, seeking a gap in the earth barrier.

  What I came upon in rounding a stream curve was another reminder that this land had once been peopled. But this was no ruins of a house, nor any building I could recognize. There was a platform of massive blocks, now overgrown in parts with grass and moss. And rising from the sturdy base a series of pillars—not set in aisles, but in concentric circles. I doubted, after surveying them, whether they had ever supported any roofing. And the reason for such an erection was baffling. It was plain curiosity which betrayed me, for I stepped from raw earth onto the platform, and walked between two of the nearest pillars.

  Then . . . I was marching at a slow, set pace around the circle, and I could not break free.

  Round and round, spiraling ever to the middle of the maze. From that core came forth—not a greeting—but a kind of gloating recognition that prey was advancing to its maw, a lapping tongue from which my whole nature revolted. A complete and loathsome evil as if I had been licked by a black foulness whose traces still befouled my shrinking skin.

  The attack was so utterly racking that I think I cried out, shaken past the point of courage. And if I screamed with throat and tongue, so did I scream with mind, reaching for any help which might exist, in a blindly terrified call for aid.

  That came—I was not alone. Strength flowed in, made union with me, tightened to hold against the licking of what dwelt in this stone web. There was another contact and that touch snapped. Satisfaction and desire became anger. I set my hand to the pillar, pulled myself backward, broke the pattern of my steady march.

  Pillar hold by pillar hold I retreated, and in me held that defense against the raging entity I could not see. Rage fed upon frustration and bafflement. And then the confidence began to fray. The thing that lurked here had been bloated with constant success; it had not met any counter to its power. And that fact that it could not sweep me in easily for its feeding now worried it.

  I had clawed my way to the outer row of the pillar circle when it launched one last attack. Black—I could see the wave of black foulness flowing towards me. I think I cried out again, as I threw myself on with a last surge of energy. My foot caught, and I was falling—into the dark, the black, the very opposite of all that life meant to me.

  I was vilely ill—of that I was conscious first, as if there were some substance in my body now being violently rejected by my flesh. And I was retching miserably as I opened my eyes, to find Kemoc supporting me through those wrenching spasms. For the time, only my illness was real. Then, as my brother lowered me to the ground, I levered myself up, to stare wildly about, fearful that I still lay within the pillar way.

  But around me was open field, clean and wide under a late afternoon sun which held no hint of any threatening shadows. As Kaththea leaned over me to hold one of the water bottles to my lips I tried to raise my hand to her and found that gesture was beyond my power.

  Her face had a strange, closed look; her mouth was set. Beyond her Kemoc was on one knee, his eyes roving, as if he feared attack.

  “Evil—” Kaththea cradled my heavy head on her arm. “But thank the Power it was tied to its own sink hole! There is indeed peril in this land. The stench of it hangs to warn us. . . .”

  “How did I get here?” I whispered.

  “When it took you—or strove to take you—you summoned. And we came. When you reeled out of that trap we brought you away, lest it have greater range than its own cold web—but it did not.” She raised her head, looked from side to side; her nostrils expanded as she drew in deep breaths of the warm air. “This is sweet and clean, and wishes hurt to nothing—empty of all threat. Yet there you stumbled on a pocket of evil, very ancient evil, and where there is one we are likely to find another.”

  “What kind of evil?” I asked. “Kolder—?” Even as I gave the name of that old arch enemy, I was sure it did not answer what I had stumbled upon by the river.

  “I never knew Kolder, but I do not think this is of that ilk. This is evil, as of. . . the Power!” She gazed down at me as if she herself could not believe in what she said.

  Kemoc broke in sharply: “That is a contradiction which cannot stand!”

  “So would I have said before today. Yet, I tell you, this was born not from any alien force, but in a twisted way from what we have known all our lives. Can I not recognize my learning, my weapons, even when distorted and debased? Distorted and debased is this thing, and for that reason perhaps the greater menace to us, as it carries in it a minute particle of the familiar. What happened here to turn all we know utterly vile?”

  But there was no reply for her. She rested the palm of her hand flat against my forehead, and stooped far over me so that her eyes looked directly into mine. Again from her lips came a low chant, and her actions drew out of me, mind and body, the rest of the wrenching nausea and terrible revulsion, leaving only the warning memory of what had happened and must never happen so again.

  A measure of my energy restored, we went on. The open field had been security of a kind, but with night so close upon us we wanted shelter. Thus we followed the walls until we came to a small rise with on it a mound of stones, some of which still held together in an angle of what once might have been the corner of a building.

  Together Kemoc and I worked to loosen more and build up a barricade before that triangular space while Kaththea roamed about the rise gathering sticks, and now and then breaking off a bit of growing thing. When she returned she was lighter of countenance.

  “There is no rank smell here—rather, once there must have dwelt nearby one who followed the healing arts. Herbs will grow without tending, once they are well rooted. And look what I have found.” She spread out her harvest on top of a squared block of stone, “This”—one finger touched a slip of what could be fern—”is saxfage, which gives sweet sleep to the fevered. And this”—a stem with four trifid leaves—“langlorn, which brightens the mind and clears the senses. Best of all, which may be the reason that the other fair herbs have continued to grow—Illbane—Spirit Flower.”

  That I knew of, since it was the old, old custom even in Estcarp to plant such about a doorway in spring, harvest its white flowers in the fall and dry them, to wreath above the main entrance to any house and stable. Such action brought good luck, prevented the entrance of ill fortune, and also had an older meaning—that any power of evil be baffled by its scent. For it was the nature of the plant that, picked or broken, its aromatic odor lingered for a long time.

  Kaththea built a fire, laying her pieces with the care of one constructing a work of significance. When I would have protested such revealment of our presence, Kemoc shook his head, laying fingertip to lips in warning. Then, when she had her sticks laid, she crushed between her palms the saxfage and langlorn, working the mass into the midst of the wood. Last of all she carefully broke two blossoms from her spray of Illbane and added those also. Taking up the stem with its remaining ti
p cluster of flowers, she began to walk back and forth along our small barricade, brushing the stones we had set there with it, then planting the bruised spray among the rocks as a small banner.

  “Light the fire,” she bade us. “It will not betray; rather, it will guard this night. For nothing which is truly of the dark will find in it, smoke and flame, that which it can face.”

  So I set spark and the flames arose. The smoke was spiced with the smell of herbs. And shortly thereafter came another fine aroma as we toasted fresh meat on spits of wood. Perhaps Kaththea had indeed wrought strong magic, for I no longer felt that eyes saw, ears listened, that we were over-watched in this strange land.

  VIII

  WE SLEPT WELL that night, too deep for the troubling of dreams, to awake rested and clear-eyed, with only memory’s warning against what must walk here. But Kaththea must have awakened the first, for when I roused she knelt, her crossed arms on our barrier, gazing out into the morning land. There was no sun, only clouds prolonging the half-light of the early hours into the day.

  She turned her head as I stirred. “Kyllan, what do you make of that?”

  My gaze followed her pointing finger. There was a copse of trees some distance away and from beyond that a glow reached the sky. Not the red of fire flame, but a greenish radiance, which clearly was from no natural cause.

  “It remains always the same, neither waning nor waxing.”

  “A beacon of sorts?” I hazarded.

  “Perhaps. But to summon—or to guide—what? I do not remember that we saw it last night. But I have listened and there is naught to hear.”

  I knew that she had not listened with her ears, but with her seer-trained inner sense.

  “Kaththea—”

  She turned her head to look at me.

  “This land may be full of such traps as I blundered into. There may be good reason why it was closed and is closed to those of our mother’s blood.”

  “All that is true. Yet it has come to me that there was a purpose beyond our own wills guiding us here, Kyllan. Save for such plague spots as you found, this is a fair land. Look about you. Even under the shadow of the clouds, do you not find it in you to have a liking for these fields?”

  She was right. There was an odd drawing in me, a desire to walk those ancient, overgrown fields, even to thrust my hands deep into their waiting soil. I wanted to fling off the heaviness of helm and mail, to run joyously free and unburdened, with the wind about me and a fresh land under my feet. I had not felt so since I had been a small boy already under the hammer of Otkell’s discipline.

  Kaththea nodded. “You see? Can you turn your back on all this merely because it suffers from some disease? We can beware of the places of evil, and make the best of those of good. I tell you such herbs as I harvested last night cannot grow where all is befouled by the Powers of the Dark.”

  “No matter how fair a land,” Kemoc said from behind us, “a man must have two things—a shelter and a supply of food. I do not believe this is what we want for a home roof-tree or hall. And for awhile we must turn hunters for food. Also, I would like to know a little more of our neighbors.”

  With that I agreed. It is always best to be sure that any shadow pooled behind a tree is only shadow and not sheltering some unpleasant surprise.

  We ate more of the meat and drank the tart vine fruit, and then we prepared to journey on. Though before Kaththea left the hill she again plucked a selection of herbs, bagging them in a strip torn from the hem of her robe, which she now proceeded to shorten to only slightly below knee length.

  The gleam, still faintly visible because of the clouds, drew us. But we went warily, taking to the cover of the woods. Kaththea reported no troublesome scents and the small copse seemed normal with birds and other wild life. This woods was not too wide and finally we reached a fringe of brush on its far side. Here again was open country and through it wound the river. In a curve of that stream stood the first real structure we had seen this side of the mountains. And it was familiar in shape—one of the watchtower-guard-keeps, such as we had been housed in many times in Estcarp. From the slit windows of the third and fourth levels issued the light, and more was diffused from the crown, where were the only evidence of age, a few stones missing from parapet gaps.

  Looking upon it I had not the slightest desire to explore further. It had not met us with an active slap of evil such as I had met in the stone web . . . but there was an eerie sense of withdrawal, a signpost without words to ward off the coming of men. Whatever walked there might not be actively antagonistic to our species, but neither would we be welcomed by it. As to how I knew this, I cannot explain. But Kemoc agreed with me.

  Kaththea centered upon it her “seeing,” then shook her head. “There is no penetration of mind, and I would not try in body. Let be what lies there, if anything does. There are and have always been forces which are not actively good or evil—they can kill or cure. But to meddle with them is risky; it is best not to awaken them.”

  Still I had a distaste for being observed by anything or anyone manning that post. The others agreed to slip back into the wood and circle under its cover to the river. We kept downstream from the site of the pillar web, Kaththea sniffing the wind for any warning of ill.

  Though it did not rain, yet the gloom of the clouds continued as we followed the stream for a guide. And this country was more wooded and therefore dark. Then I sighted the fresh tracks of one of the large, flightless birds which are esteemed excellent eating in Estcarp. They being most wary, I thought it best to hunt alone, promising faithfully that I would not fall under any enticement because of curiosity. I stripped off pack and water bottle, and even my helm, lest its chain mail throat scarf give forth some small clink of noise.

  It was plain that the birds fed in beds of riverside wild grain, but tall reeds arose nearby, promising cover. However, I was not to reach my quarry.

  Warning came in a movement across the stream.

  Drift from past high water had gathered on a sand bank there, piling up a causeway. In and among that tangle were slinking shadows—black, agile, so swift of movement that I could not truly make out what manner of creature they were. Yet the very stealth of their approach, the concentration of their numbers, was a warning. As if they knew or sensed my uneasiness, they came the faster, more and more of them. The first plunged into the water, its narrow snout cutting a V across the current.

  Only the swiftness of the current delayed their determination, carrying them well downstream. Yet I was certain they would make a landing there somewhere. And they were not hunting the birds, but me!

  Trouble—head for the open—the nearest field.

  As I thought that alarm I got to my feet and ran for the open. The slinking advance of these things needed cover; in the open they could be met more effectively.

  Kemoc acknowledged and signaled me to the right. Now I slowed my retreat, walking backwards, having no wish to be rushed from behind. And my precautions proved to be well taken when the first of that black pack darted from a bush to the massive roots of a fallen tree in my sight a few moments later.

  I was moving through shoulder high bush, and this was unpleasant country through which to be so stalked. There were too many excellent sites for ambush. Animals! Perhaps I had been too shocked from my experience with the web thing. I had been able to control animals before, so there was no reason why I might not again. I sent an exploring thought to what lurked behind the tree roots.

  No animal—no normal animal! What? A red madness of kill, kill, tear and devour—an insanity which was not animal, but raw fury combined with cunning on another level. There was no control for this, only revulsion and the fear that the sane can feel for the chaotic depths of complete unbalance! Again I had erred, for my contact aroused them even more, flamed their hunger to a higher pitch. Also there were many—too many—

  I wanted to run, to burst through the brush which was now a prison restraining me to be pulled down and slain at their pleasu
re. But I forced myself to move slowly, dart gun ready, watching for any slinker that came within range.

  The bushes became smaller . . . then I was free, out in a wide stretch of open. Some distance away Kemoc and Kaththea moved, heading for the very center of that space. But with the pack coming . . . How could we stand them all off?

  In my eagerness to reach the others I stumbled and went down. I heard Kaththea cry out, and flung myself over, to see the black creatures flow eagerly toward me. They ran silently, not as hounds that give tongue in the hunt, and that silence added to their uncanniness.

  They were short of leg, though that did not impair their speed, and their bodies were sleekly furred, very lithe and agile. Their heads were narrow, pointing sharply to muzzles where yellow fangs showed against their dark hides. Their eyes were small specks of red fire.

  Since I dared not take time to get to my feet I fired as I lay. The leader of that pack curled up, biting savagely at a dart in its shoulder. Yet even in pain and rage the thing made no outcry. However, the mishap of their leader gave the rest of the pack pause. They scattered back into cover, leaving the writhing wounded one behind until its struggles were stilled.

  I ran for where Kaththea and Kemoc stood.

  Kemoc was waiting with ready gun. “Hunters,” he said. “Where did they come from?”

  “They crossed the river,” I panted. “I have never seen their kind before—”

  “Haven’t you?” Kaththea held her bundle of herbs pressed tight against her breast as if in those withering bits of twig, leaf and stem she had a shield to withstand all danger. “They are rasti.”

  “Rasti?” How could one associate a rodent perhaps as long as a mid-finger with these three-foot, insane hunters? Yet, when I considered the appearance of the creatures, perhaps not true rasti, but of the same family, grown to gigantic proportions for their species and with even worse ferocity than their midget brethren displayed. To so identify them removed some of the fear of the unknown that had been part of their impact upon me.