"Think on the one you want, keep him only in your mind, lady."
The batter of that cake was spread out above that handful of fire and the woman from Estcarp began to sing. Strangely enough that something which had so alerted Simon moments earlier, which had thickened and curdled about them in that second when she had traced the fiery sign in the air, was now ebbing from the room.
But in its way her singing wove a spell of its own, changing thought images, evoking another kind of response. Simon, realizing it for what it was, for what it could do, after an incredulous second or two, bit hard upon his lower lip. This-coming from the woman he thought he was beginning to know. Fit magic for Aldis and her like; for the cool cleanliness of Estcarp, no! And it was beginning to work upon him also. Simon screwed his fingers into his ears to close out that sultry heat which seeped from words in the air to the racing blood in his own body.
He took away that defense only when he saw the witch"s lips ceased to move. Aldis" face was a delicate pink, her parted lips moist, her eyes fixed before her unseeingly, until the witch lifted from her knees the board and brazier. The woman from Estcarp took up the cake, crumbled it into a square of white cloth and held it out to her client.
"A pinch of this added to his food or drink." The life had gone from the witch"s voice; she spoke as one drugged with fatigue.
Aldis whipped the package from her, thrust it into the breast of her gown. "Be sure I shall use it rightly!" She caught up her cloak, already on her way to the door. "I shall let you know how I fare."
"I shall know, lady, I shall know."
Aldis was gone and the witch stood, one hand on the back of the chair as if she needed its support. Her expression was one of weary distaste with a faint trace of shame, as if she had used ill means to gain a good end.
THREE TIMES HORNED.
Koris" hands moved in steady rhythm, polishing the ax blade with slow strokes of a silken cloth. He had reclaimed his treasure the minute he returned, and now, perched on a window ledge, with it resting upon his knees, he talked.
". . . he burst in as if the Kolder were breathing upon his back and blurted it out to the sergeant who spewed up half the wine I had paid for and was like to choke loose his guts, while this fellow pawed at him and yammered about it. I"d stake a week"s looting of Kars that there is a kernel of truth in it somewhere, though the story"s a muddle."
Simon was watching the other two in that room. He did not expect the witch to reveal either surprise or the fact that she might already have heard such a tale. However, the youngster she had produced out of nowhere might be less well schooled, and his att.i.tude proved Simon right. Briant was too well controlled. One better trained in the game of concealment would have displayed surprise.
"I take it," Simon cut through the Captain"s report, "that such a story is not a muddle to you, lady." The wariness which had become a part of his relationship with her since that scene with Aldis hours earlier was the shield he raised against her. She might sense its presence, but she made no effort to break through it.
"Hunold is truly dead," her words were flat. "And he died in Verlaine. Also is the Lady Loyse gone from the earth. That much did your man have true, Captain," she spoke to Koris rather than to Simon. "That both these happenings were the result of an Estcarp raid is, of course, nonsense."
"That I knew, lady. It is not our manner of fighting. But is this story a cover for something else? We have asked no questions of you, but did the remainder of the Guards come ash.o.r.e on the Verlaine reefs?"
She shook her head. "To the extent of my knowledge, Captain, you and those who were saved with you are the only survivors out of Sulcarkeep."
"Yet a report such as this will spread and be an excuse for an attack on Estcarp." Koris was frowning now. "Hunold stood high in Yvian"s favor. I do not think the Duke will take his death calmly, especially if some mystery surrounds it."
"Fulk!" The name exploded out of Briant as if it were a dart shot from his side arm. "This is Fulk"s way out!" His pale face had expression enough now. "But he would have to deal with Siric and Lord Duarte, too! I think that Fulk has been very busy. That shieldman had so many details of a raid that he must have been acquainted with a direct report."
"A messenger from the sea just landed. I heard him babble that much," Koris supplied.
"From the sea!" The witch was on her feet, her scarlet and gold draperies stirring about her. "Fulk of Verlaine cannot be termed in any way a simpleton, but there is a swiftness of move here, a taking advantage of every chance happening which smacks of something more than just Fulk"s desire to protect himself against Yvian"s vengeance!"
There was a stormy darkness in her eyes as she regarded all three of them coldly. She might almost have been numbering them among hostile elements.
"This I do not like. Oh, some tale from Verlaine might have been expected; Fulk needed a story to throw into Yvian"s teeth lest the stones of his towers be rained down about his own ears. And he is perfectly capable of spitting both Siric and Durate to give added credence and cover his tracks. But the moves come too swiftly, too well fitting into a pattern! I would have sworn-"
She strode up and down the chamber, her scarlet skirts swirling about her. "We are mistresses of illusion, but I will take oath before the Power of Estcarp that that storm was no illusion! Unless the Kolder have mastered the forces of nature-" Now she stood very still, and her hands flew to her mouth as if to trap words already spoken. "If the Kolder have mastered-" her voice came as a whisper. "I cannot believe that we have been moved hither and yon at their bidding! That I dare not believe! Yet-" She whirled about and came directly to Simon.
"Briant I know, and what he does and why, all that I know. And Koris I know, and what drives him and why. But you-man out of the mists of Tor, I do not know. If you are more than you seem, then perhaps we have brought our own doom upon us."
Koris stopped polishing the ax blade. The cloth fell to the floor as his hands closed about the haft."He was accepted by the Guardian," he said neutrally, but his attention centered upon Simon with the impersonal appraisal of a duelist moving forward to meet a challenge.
"Yes!" The woman from Estcarp agreed to that. "And it is impossible that what Kolder holds to its core cannot be uncovered by our methods. They could cloak it, but the very blankness of that cloak would make it suspect! There is one test yet." She plucked at the throat fastening of her robe and drew forth the dull jewel she had worn out of Estcarp. For a long moment she held it in her hands, gazing down into its heart, and then she slipped the chain from about her neck and held it out to Simon. "Take it!" she ordered.
Koris cried out and scrambled off the ledge. But Simon took it into his hand. At first touch the thing was as smooth and cold as any polished gem, then it began to warm, adding to that heat with every second. Yet the heat did not burn, it had no effect upon his flesh. Only the stone itself came to life; trails of opalescent fire crawled across its surface.
"I knew!" Her husky half-whisper filled the room. "No, not Kolder! Not Kolder; Kolder could not hold without harm, fire the Power and take no hurt! Welcome, brother in power!" Again she sketched a symbol in the air which glowed as brightly as the gem before it faded. Then she took the stone from his hold and restored it to its hiding place beneath her robe.
"He is a man. Shape changing could not work so, nor is it possible to befool us in the barracks where he has lived," Koris spoke first. "And how does a man hold the Power?"
"He is a man out of our time and s.p.a.ce. What chances in other worlds we cannot say. Now I will swear that he is not Kolder. So perhaps he is that which Kolder must face in the final battle. But now we must . . ."
Their preoccupation was sharply broken by the burr of a signal in the wall. Alert, Simon and Koris looked to the witch. Briant drew his gun. "The wall gate," he said.
"Yet it is the right signal, though the wrong time. Answer it, but be prepared."
He was already half out of the room. Koris and Simon sped after him to the garden door. As they reached outside, free from the deadening thickness of the walls of that unusual house, they heard a clamor from the town. Simon was plagued by a wisp of memory. There was a note in that far-off shouting which he had surely heard before. Koris looked startled.
"That is a mob! The snarl of a hunting mob."
And Simon, remembering a red horror out of his own past, nodded briskly. He poised the dart gun to welcome whoever stood without the wall gate.
There was no mistaking the race of the man who stumbled in to them. A b.l.o.o.d.y gash could not disguise Estcarp features. He fell forward and Koris caught him about the body. Then they were all nearly rocked from their feet as a blast of sound and displaced air beat in on them and the very ground moved under them.
The man in Koris" hold moved, smiled, tried to speak. Deafened momentarily they could not hear. Briant slammed shut the gate and set its locking bars. Together Simon and the Captain half carried, half supported the fugitive into the house.
He recovered enough to sketch a salute to the witch as they brought him to her. She measured some bluish liquid into a cup and held it to his lips as he drank.
"Lord Vortimer?"
He leaned back in the chair into which they had lowered him. "You just heard his pa.s.sing, lady-in that thunder clap! With him went all of our blood fortunate to reach the emba.s.sy in time. For the rest-they are being hunted in the streets. Yvian has ordered the three times horning for all of Estcarp or of the old blood! He is like a man gone mad!"
"This too?" She pressed her hands tight against her temples as if she might so ease some almost intolerable pain. "We have no time, no time at all?"
"Vortimer sent me to warn you. Do you choose to follow him along the same path, lady?"
"Not yet."
"Those who have been horned can be cut down without question wherever they are found. And in Kars today the cutting down does not come swiftly as a clean death," he warned dispa.s.sionately. "I do not know what hopes you may have of the Lady Aldis-"
The witch laughed."Aldis is no hope at all, Vortgin. Five of us . . ." She turned the cup around and around in her fingers and then looked directly to Simon. "More depends upon this than just our lives alone. There are those in the outer parts of Karsten of the old blood, who, warned, might safely get through the mountains to Estcarp, and so swell our ranks. Also what we have learned here, patchy though it is, must be taken back. I could not hope to summon power enough-you will have to aid me, brother!"
"But I don"t know how-I have no use of power," he protested.
"You can back me. It is our only hope." Koris came away from the window where he had been peering into the garden.
"Shape changing?"
"It is the only way."
"And how long will it hold?"
She shrugged.
Vortgin ran his tongue across his lips. "Set me outside this cursed city and I"ll rouse your countryside for you. I have kin in the backlands who"ll move on my word!"
"Come!" She led the way to that tapestried room of magic. But just inside the door Koris halted.
"What I have been given I bear with me. Put on me no shape in which I cannot handle the gift of Volt."
"I would call you lack-witted," she flared back, "if I did not know the worth of that biter of yours. But it is not of human make and so may change shape also in illusion. We can only try. Now let us make ready, quickly!"
She pulled a strip of carpet from the floor as Simon and Koris shoved the chair and stool, bore the other things to the other end of the room. Stooping she traced lines with the jewel of power and those lines glowed faintly in the form of a five pointed star. A little defiantly Koris dropped his ax in the center of that.
The witch spoke to Simon. "Shapes are not changed in truth, but an illusion is created to bemuse those who would track us down. Let me draw upon your power to swell my own. Now," she glanced around and brought the small clay brazier to sit by the ax, puffing its coals into life, "we can do what is to be done. Make yourselves ready."
Koris caught Simon by the arm. "Strip-to the skin-the power does not work otherwise!" He was shedding his own jerkin. And Simon obeyed orders, both of them aiding Vortgin.
Smoke curled up from the brazier, filling the room with a reddish mist in which Koris" squat form, the fugitive"s muscular body were half hidden. "Take your stand upon the star points-one to each point," came the witch"s order out of the murk. "But you, Simon-next to me."
He followed that voice, losing Koris and the other man in the fog. A white arm came out to him, a hand reached for and enfolded his. He could see under his feet the lines of a star point.
Someone was singing-at a far distance. Simon was lost in a cloud where he floated without being. Yet at the same time he was warm-not outwardly, but inwardly. And that warmth floated from his body, down his right arm. Simon thought that if he could watch it he would be able to see that flow-blood-red, warm-being drained in a steady stream. Yet he saw nothing but the greyish mist, he only knew that his body still existed.
The singing grew louder. Once before he had heard such singing-then it had aroused his l.u.s.ts, and urged him to satisfy appet.i.tes he had beaten under by force of will. Now it worked upon him in another way, and he no longer loathed it fiercely.
He had closed his eyes against the endless swirling of the mist, stood attuned to the singing so that each note throbbed within his body to be a part of him, made into flesh and bone from this time forth-yet also did that warm flood trickle out of him.
Then his hand fell limply back against his thigh. The drain had ceased and the singing was fading. Simon opened his eyes. Where the murk had been a solid wall it was now showing holes. And in one of them he caught sight of a brutish face, a beastly caricature of human. But in it sat Koris" sardonic eyes. And a little beyond was another with disease-eaten skin and a flat lid where an eye had once been.
He wearing the Captain"s eyes glanced from Simon to his neighbor and grinned widely, displaying decayed and yellowed fangs. "A fair company we shall be!"
"Dress you!" snapped the witch from the disappearing murk. "This day you have come out of the stews of Kars to loot and kill. It is your kind who thrive upon hornings!"
They put on the gear they had brought into Kars, but not enough to go too well clad for the dregs of the city that they seemed. And Koris took up from the floor- not the Ax of Volt-but a rust incrusted pole set with hooks, the purpose of which Simon would rather not imagine.
There was no mirror to survey his new self, but he gathered that he was as disreputable as his companions.
He had been expecting changes in the witch and Briant also-but not what he saw. The woman of Estcarp was a crone with filthy ropes of grayish hair about her hunched shoulders, her features underlined with ancient evil. And the youngster was her opposite. Simon stared in pure amazement, for he fronted a girl being laced into the scarlet and gold gown discarded by the witch.
Just as Briant had been pallid and colorless, here was rich beauty, more than properly displayed since her tiring maid did not bother to pull tight breast laces. Instead the crone quirked a finger at Simon.
"This is your loot, bold fellow. Hoist the pretty on your shoulder, and if you grow tired of your burden-well, these other rogues will lend a hand. Play your part well." She gave the seeming girl a shove between her shoulder blades which sent her stumbling into Simon"s arms. He caught her up neatly, swinging her across his shoulder, while the witch surveyed them with the eye of a stage manager and then gave a tug to strip the bodice yet farther from those smooth young shoulders.
Inwardly Simon was astonished at the completeness of the illusion. He had thought it would be for the eyes only, but he was very conscious that he held what was also feminine to the touch. And he had to keep reminding himself that it was indeed Briant he so bore out of the house.
They found Kars harbored many such bands as theirs that day. And the sights they had to witness, the aid they could not give, ate into them during that journey to the wharves. There was a watch at the gates right enough, but as Simon approached, with his now moaning victim slung over his shoulder, his raffish fellows slinking behind him, as if to welcome the leavings of his feast, the witch scuttled ahead with a bag. She tripped and fell so that the brilliant contents of her looter"s catchall rolled and spilled across the roadway.
Those on guard sprang into action, the officer kicking the crone out of his way. But one man had a slightly higher sense of duty, or perhaps he was more moved by Simon"s supposed choice of pillage. For he swung a pike down in front ofTregarth and grinned at him over that barrier.
"You"ve got you a soft armload there, fishguts. Too good for you. Let a better man sample her first!"
Koris" pole with its rusty hooks snaked out, hooking his feet from under him. As he sprawled they darted through the gate and along the wharf, other guards in pursuit.
"In!" Briant was pulled out of Simon"s grasp, thrown out into the flood of the river, the Captain following in a cleancut dive to come up beside the draggling red and gold clad body. Vortgin took off at a stumbling run. But Simon, seeing that Koris had Briant"s hand, looked back for the witch.
There was a flurry down the wharf and a tangle of figures. Gun in hand he ran back, pausing for three snap shots, each taking out a man, dead or wounded. His rush brought him there in time to see that twisted gray-haired body lying still while a sword swung downward aimed at the scrawny throat.
Simon shot twice more. Then his fist struck flesh, crushed it against bone. Someone shrieked and fled as he scooped up the witch, finding her weight more than Briant"s. Bearing her over his shoulder he staggered to the nearest barge, his lungs laboring as he dodged among the piled cargo on its deck, heading for the far rail and open water.
The woman in his arms came to life suddenly, pushing against him as if he were indeed a captor she might fight. And that overbalanced Simon so that they went over together, tumbling to strike the river with a force he had not expected. Simon swallowed water, choked, and struck out instinctively, if clumsily.
His head broke the surface and he stared about him for the witch, to see a wrinkled arm, hampered by water soaked rags cutting in a swimmer"s stroke.
"Ho!"
The call came from a barge floating downstream and a rope flicked over its side. Simon and the witch gained the deck, only to have Koris wave them impatiently to the opposite rail into the river again, the craft serving as a screen between them and the city sh.o.r.e.
But here was a small boat with Vortgin sitting therein, Briant leaning over the side being actively sick into the water, while he clutched his red robe about him as if indeed he had been the victim of rapine. As they scrambled down to this refuge, Koris pushed them away from the barge, using the point of his hook spear.
"I thought you lost that at the gate!"
Koris" ruffian face mirrored his astonishment at Simon"s comment. "This I would never lose! Well, we have us a breathing s.p.a.ce. They will believe us hiding on the barge. At least so we can hope. But it would be wise to head to the other sh.o.r.e as soon as this has drifted far enough from the wharves."
They agreed with the Captain"s suggestion, but the minutes during which they remained wedded to the barge were very long ones. Briant straightened at last, but he kept his face turned from them as if heartily ashamed of the guise he wore. And the witch sat in the bow surveying the far sh.o.r.e with searching intensity.
They were lucky in that night was closing in. And Vortgin knew the surrounding country well. He would be able to guide them inland across the fields, avoiding houses and farms, until they had put enough distance between them and Kars to feel reasonably safe.
"Thrice horned-yes, that sentence he can enforce in Kars. For the city is his. But the old lords have ties with us, and where they lack such ties or sympathy, they may be moved by jealousy ofYvian.They may not actively aid us, but neither will they help the Duke"s men cut us down. It will be largely a matter of their closing their eyes and ears, hearing and seeing naught."
"Yes, Karsten is now closed to us," the witch agreed with Vortgin. "And I would say to all of the old race that they should flee borderward, not leaving escape until too late. Perhaps the Falconers will aid in this matter. Aie . . . aie . . . our night comes!"
But Simon knew that she did not mean the physical night closing about their own small party.
FALSE HAWK.
They lay behind the winter pressed stack in the field, Simon, Koris, and Vortgin, wisps of the dank straw pulled over their bodies, watching what went on at the crossroads hamlet beyond. There were the brilliant blue-green surcoats of the Duke"s men, four of them, well mounted for hard and far riding, and a fringe of the dull-robed villagers. With some ceremony the leader of the small force out of Kars brought his horse beneath the Pole of Proclamation and put a horn to his lips, its silver plating catching fire from the morning sun.
"One . . . two . . . three . . ." Koris counted those blasts aloud. They heard them clearly, all the countryside must have heard them, although of what the Duke"s men said to the a.s.sembly afterwards they caught only as a mumble.