High Sorcery (4 page)

Takya and her brother came; such sometimes, if rarely, came from the common people. They were carefully watched by the Black Hoods, then discovered to be a new mutation, condemned as such to be used for experimentation. But for a while they were protected by the local lord who wanted Takya.

But he might not take her unwilling. The power that was hers as a virgin was wholly rift from her should she be forced, and he had wanted that power obedient to him, as a check upon the monopoly of the Black Hoods. So with some patience he had set himself to a peaceful wooing. But the Black Hoods had moved first.

Had they accomplished her taking, the end they had intended for her was not as easy as death. She wove a picture of it, with all its degradation and shame stark and open, for Craike's seeing.

“Then the Hooded Ones are evil?”

“Not wholly.” She untwisted the hair and put it with care into the fire. “They do much good, and without them people would suffer. But I, Takya, am different. And after me, when I mate, there will be others also different; how different we are not yet sure. The Hooded Ones want no change; by their thinking that means disaster. So they would use me to their own purposes. Only I, Tayka, shall not be so used!”

“No, you shall not.” The vehemence of his own outburst startled him. Craike wanted nothing so much at that moment than to come to grips with the Black Hoods, who had planned this systematic hunt.

“What will you do now?” he asked more calmly, wishing she would share her thoughts with him.

“This is a strong place. Did you cleanse it?”

He nodded impatiently.

“So I thought. That was also a task one born to this world might not have performed. But those who pass are not yet aware of the cleansing. They will not trouble us, but pay tribute.”

Craike found her complacency irritating. To lie up here and live on the offerings of river travelers did not appeal to him.

“This stone piling is older work than Sampur and much better,” she continued. “It must have been a fortress for some of those forgotten ones who held lands and then vanished long before we came from the south. If it is repaired no lord of this district would have so good a roof.”

“Two of us to rebuild it?” he laughed.

“Two of us, working thus.”

A block of stone, the size of a brick, which had fallen from the sill of one of the needle-narrow windows, arose slowly in the air and settled into the space from which it had tumbled. Was it illusion or reality? Craike got to his feet and lurched to the window. His hand fell upon the stone which moved easily in his grasp. He took it out, weighed it, and then gently returned it to its place. This was not illusion.

“But illusion, too—if need be.” There was, for the first time, a warm note of amusement in her tone. “Look on your tower, river lord!”

He limped to the door. Outside it was warm and sunny, but it was a site of ruins. Then the picture changed. Brown drifts of grass vanished from the terrace; the fallen stone was all in place. A hard-faced sentry stood wary-eyed on a repaired river arch. Another guardsman led out ponies, saddle-padded and ready; other men were about garrison tasks.

Craike grinned. The sentry on the arch lost his helm, his jerkin. He now wore the tight tunic of the Security Police; his spear was a gas rifle. The ponies misted, and in their place a speedster sat on the stone. He heard her laugh.

“Your guard,
your
traveling machine. But how grim, ugly. This is better!”

Guards, machine, all were swept away. Craike caught his breath at the sight of delicate winged creatures dancing in the air, displaying a joy of life he had never known. Fawns, little people of the wild, came to mingle with shapes of such beauty and desire that at last he turned his head away.

“Illusion.” Her voice was hard and mocking.

But Craike could not believe that what he had seen had been born from hardness and mockery.

“All illusions. We shall be better now with warriors. As for plans, can you suggest any better than to remain here and take what fortune sends, for a space?”

“Those winged dancers—where?”

“Illusions!” she returned harshly. “But such games tire one. I do not think we shall conjure up any garrison before they are needed. Come, do not tear open those wounds of yours anew, for healing is no illusion and drains one even more of the power.”

The clawed furrows were healing cleanly, though he would bear their scars for life. He hobbled back to the grass bed and dropped upon it, but regretted the erasure of the sprites she had shown him.

Once he was safely in place, Takya left with the curt explanation that she had things to do. But Craike was restless, too much so to remain long inside the tower. He waited until she had gone and then, with the aid of his staff, climbed to the end of the span above the river. From here the twin tower on the other bank looked the same as the one from which he had come. Whether it was also haunted Craike did not know. But, as he looked about, he could see the sense of Tayka's suggestion. A few illusion sentries would discourage any ordinary intrusion.

Takya's housekeeping had changed the rock of offerings. All the rotten debris was gone and none of the odor of decay now offended the nostrils at a change of wind. But at best it was a most uncertain source of supply. There could not be too many farms up river, nor too many travelers taking the waterway.

As if to refute that, his Esper sense brought him sudden warning of strangers beyond the upper bend. But, Craike tensed, these were no peasants bound for the market at Sampur. Fear, pain, anger—such emotions heralded their coming. There were three, and one was hurt. But they were not Esper; nor did they serve the Black Hoods, though they were, or had been, fighting men.

A brutal journey over the mountains where they had lost comrades, the finding of this river, the theft of the dugout they now used so expertly—it was all there for him to read. And beneath that there was something else, which, when he found it, gave Craike a quick decision in their favor—a deep hatred of the Black Hoods! They were outlaws, very close
to despair, keeping on a hopeless trail because it was not in them to surrender.

Craike contacted them subtly. They must not think they were heading into an Esper trap. He would plant a little hope, a faint suggestion that there was a safe camping place ahead; that was all he could do at present. But so he drew them on.

“No!” A ruthless order cut across his line of contact, striking at the delicate thread with which he was playing the strangers in. But Craike stood firm. “Yes, yes, and yes!”

He was on guard instantly. Takya, mistress of illusion as she had proved herself to be, might act. But surprisingly she did not. The dugout came into view, carried more by the current than the efforts of its crew. One lay full length in the bottom, while the bow paddler had slumped forward. But the man in the stern was bringing them in. And Craike strengthened his invisible, unheard invitation to urge him on.

VI

Takya had not yet begun to fight. As the dugout swung toward the offering ledge one of the Black Hoods' guardsmen appeared there, his drawn sword taking fire from the sun. The fugitive steersman faltered until the current drew his craft on. Craike caught the full force of the stranger's despair, all the keener for the hope of moments before. The Esper's irritation against Takya flared into anger.

He made the illusion reel back, hands clutching at his breast from which protruded the shaft of an arrow. Craike had seen no bows here, but it was a weapon to suit his world. This should prove to Takya he meant what he had said.

The steersman was hidden as the dugout passed under the arch. There was a scrap of beach, the same to which Craike had swum on his first coming. He urged the man to that, beaming good will.

But the paddler was almost done, and neither of his companions could aid him. He drove the crude craft to the bank, and its bow grated on the rough gravel. Then he crawled over the bodies of the other two and fell rather than jumped ashore, turning to pull up the canoe as best he could.

Craike started down. But he might have known that Takya
was not so easily defeated. Though they maintained an alliance of sorts she accepted no order from him.

A brand was teleported from the tower fire, striking spear-wise in the dry brush along the slope. Craike's mouth set. He tried no more arguments. They had already tested power against power, and he was willing to so battle again. But this was not the time. However, the fire was no illusion, and he could not fight it, crippled as he was. Or could he?

It was not spreading too fast, though Takya might spur it by the forces at her command. Now, there was just the spot! Craike steadied himself against a mound of fallen masonry and wept out his staff, dislodging a boulder and a shower of gravel. He had guessed right. The stone rolled to crush out the brand, and the gravel he continued to push after it smothered the creeping flames.

Red tongues dashed spitefully high in a sheet of flame, and Craike laughed.
That
was illusion; she was angry. He produced a giant pail in the air, tilted it forward, splashed its contents into the heart of that conflagration. He felt the lash of her rage, standing under it unmoved. So might she bring her own breed to heel, but she would learn he was not of that ilk.

“Holla!” That call was no illusion; it begged help.

Craike picked a careful path down slope until he saw the dugout and the man who had landed it. The Esper waved an invitation and at his summons the fugitive covered the distance between them.

He was a big man of the same brawny race as those of Sampur, his braids of reddish hair hanging well below his wide shoulders. There was the raw line of a half-healed wound down the angle of his jaw, and his sunken eyes were very tired. For a moment he stood downslope from Craike, his hands on his hips, his head back, measuring the Esper with the shrewdness of a canny officer who had long known how to judge and handle raw levies.

“I am Jorik of the Eagles' Tower.” The statement was made with the same confidence as the announcement of rank from one of the petty lords. “Though”—he shrugged—“the Eagles' Tower stands no more with one stone upon the other. You have a stout lair here”—he hesitated before he concluded—“friend.”

“I am Craike,” the Esper answered as simply, “and I am also one who has run from enemies. This lair is an old one, though still useful.”

“Might the enemies from whom you run wear black
hoods?” countered Jorik. “It seems to me that things I have just seen here have the stink of that about them.”

“You are right; I am no friend to the Black Hoods.”

“But you have the power.”

“I have power,” Craike tried to make the distinction clear. “You are welcome, Jorik. So all are welcome here who are no friends to Black Hoods.”

The big warrior shrugged. “We can no longer run. If the time has come to make a last stand, this is as good as place as any. My men are done.” He glanced back at the two in the dugout. “They are good men, but we were pressed when they caught us in the upper pass. Once there were twenty hands of us,” he held up his fist and spread the fingers wide for counting. “They drew us out of the tower with their sorcerers' tricks, and then put us to the hunt.”

“Why did they wish to make an end to you?”

Jorik laughed shortly. “They dislike those who will not fit into their neat patterns. We are free mountain men, and no Black Hood helped us win the Eagles' Tower; none aided us to hunt. When we took our furs down to the valley, they wanted to levy tribute. But what spell of theirs trapped the beasts in our deadfalls or brought them to our spears? We pay not for what we have not bought. Neither would we have made war on them. Only, when we spoke out and said it so, there were others who were encouraged to do likewise, and the Black Hoods must put an end to us before their rule was broken. So they did.”

“But they did not get all of you,” Craike pointed out. “Can you bring your men up to the tower? I have been hurt and can not walk without support or I would lend you a hand.”

“We will come.” Jorik returned to the dugout. Water was splashed vigorously into the face of the man in the bow, arousing him to crawl ashore. Then the leader of the fugitives swung the third man out of the craft and over his shoulder in a practiced carry.

When Craike had seen the unconscious man established on his own grass bed, he stirred up the fire and set out food. Jorik returned to the dugout to bring in their gear.

Neither of the other men were of the same size as their leader. The one who lay limp, his breath fluttering between his slack lips, was young, hardly out of boyhood, his thin frame showing bones rather than muscled flesh under the rags of clothing. The other was short, dark skinned and akin
by race to Kaluf's men, his jaw sprouting a curly beard. He measured Craike with suspicious glances from beneath lowered red lids, turning that study to the walls about him and the unknown reaches at the head of the stair.

Craike did not try mind touch. These men were rightly suspicious of Esper arts. But he did attempt to reach Takya, only to meet the nothingness with which she cloaked her actions. Craike was disturbed. Surely now that she was convinced he was determined to give harborage to the fugitives, she would not oppose him. They had nothing to fear from Jorik and his men, but rather would gain by joining forces.

Until his wounds were entirely healed, he could not go far. And without weapons they would have to rely solely upon Esper powers for defense. Having witnessed the efficiency of the Hooded Ones' attack, Craike doubted a victory in any engagement to which those masters came fully prepared. He had managed to upset their spells merely because they had not known of his existence. But the next time he would have no such advantage.

On the other hand the tower could be defended by force of arms, bows. Craike savored the idea of archers giving a hooded force a devastating surprise. The traders had had no such arms, as sophisticated as they were, and he had seen none among the warriors of Sampur. He'd have to ask Jorik if such were known.