Horn Crown (Witch World: High Hallack Series) (14 page)

There was no humanity in her. She had been frozen away from every warmth known to my kind. Still there was in the lift of her proud head, about her face a trace haunting of memory. I did not question that this vision in my inner eyes was that of the entity Gathea had summoned, and that there was nothing in her which would move her followers to seek out aught but sterile knowledge which would serve to wall them yet further from their own kind.

There was no escape for me from her inspection. I sensed a kind of impatient contempt—not for me as a person—but because to her no male was of consequence.

“Gunnora!” Had I thought that, or had I cried the name aloud?

The saying of it broke the calm. She did not frown, she did not draw back, yet I sensed that, in some way beyond my comprehension, she was disturbed, shaken. There might well be a feud upon another plane of existence which touched this land, in which power strove with power. I had chanced upon one such power, Gathea had found another, and they were far from allied.

That I had thought before the change began. The white garment took a tinge of color, the girl’s body beneath it ripened into curves, the crescent moon of her diadem grew into a circle, the same sign at its full zenith. That halting resemblance I had half seen—this was also Gunnora! But in another guise. Maid, woman—both the same, but possessing different gifts.

The cold which had tried to freeze me warmed. I could smell scents of full summer, that of ripened fruit, the dusty aroma of grain falling to the harvest. Two natures! That which abode in Gathea had summoned one, that which lay dormant in me had drawn the other.

Only for an instant did I see my amber lady. Then she winked out of my mind’s vision. However as she left I felt that I was indeed accepted by her and that there were more gates open to me, giving on stranger lands even than the one I now walked. I need only reach for what I wished with the full strength of my mind, and my desire would come to me bit by bit in answer to the force which I exerted.

“Gunnora!” I called as she vanished, my whole being longing once more to hear the richness of her voice. My lips burned again, as they had when I had received her kiss.

“Dians!” My own cry was echoed by another name. Gathea reached up into the air, as if she would catch and hold the intangible. For I knew that we were now alone. The Power she had called up had answered me as well as her.

Her voice had a desolate ring as if she had called upon near kin who were leaving her forever. Then her hands fell down upon her knees, her head drooped forward.

I did not move to her, for I knew at that moment she would resent bitterly any touch of mine. But I spoke:

“She was Gunnora, maid—wife—”

“She was Dians who knows no man! She was—” Gathea lifted her head. The tears in her eyes astounded me as much as if one of the tree trunks about us wept. “She is—the Moon Lady. Then—then—” Again that hawk fierceness shone in her eyes as she raised her head to look at me. “Gunnora is for woman also, but only for women who put off their maidenhood to follow the path of submission to some man.”

“Submission?” I countered. These was nothing in my Amber Lady to suggest submission. “I think not so—unless the woman so desires. She is of the harvest, the coming together of those who would produce new life. She is warmth—your Dians all cold—”

Gathea shook her head slowly. “It is true that Gunnora answered your thought-call. I do not know why or how she lends favor to a man. Her Mysteries are not for you. Hut it seems, past all belief, that she has indeed chosen you for some reason. Only—it is to Dians’s shrine that we go and that is another matter.”

I noted that her “I” had become “we.” However, I was wise enough to make no comment. She arose slowly, as if that invocation had worn her hard. Now she plucked the wand from the ground to lay it across her palm which she held out well before her.

Though I could detect no movement of the flesh on which it rested, the wand did turn, pointing to her left, out into that green land. Gathea nodded.

“We have our guide, let us go.”

That this land was inhabited I was sure and I had no mind to meet with any in possession until I learned more of what we might expect. The coming of the birds was warning enough to tread with caution and keep well away from what we did not understand until we could judge it good or evil.

These who had withdrawn from the dales were, I suspected more and more, of many different species. I remembered the glimpses I had had in that feasting hall of those who were far from human in their seeming. Though all had been in harmony there, much time must have passed. Having been raised among a people who were often torn by clan feuds, I could understand that some such disputes might well have rent apart the dwellers here.

“You spoke of the birds as Ord’s.” Now that I had broken through Gathea’s barrier against explanation I determined to make the most of it. “Who then is Ord?”

“I do not know—save he is a Dark Master—and those are loathsome things which are hunting prey their master wishes.”

“That winged thing which I strove with in the mountains?” Swiftly I told her more of that battle and of the strange statue which had guarded the entrance to the foul hole from which it had crawled.

“Evil, yes—but twisted from another way long ago. There was some great warring here once. Those who chose the Dark were changed. Then there are the ones who made no choice, who withdrew. They changed in another way—drawing farther apart from either good or ill into a state where they acknowledge the power of neither and cannot be summoned to a quarrel.”

“You have learned a lot,” I commented.

“Do you not understand even yet?” she asked. “I was born knowing that I had in me powers, talents, which I could not use because I lacked the key which would unlock them. I came here and there were keys! Zabina wanted me to walk slowly, to creep as a babe who has not yet found the way to rise upon its feet. I am young, but my years do not stretch so far ahead that I can wait, and wait, and accept humbly scraps of knowledge when I know there is a full feast provided for those who dare seek it! The Moon Shrine—that gave me the key. Through it I would have been able to fly where now I stumble foot over foot, although the magic which lay there came only now and then. Before I could draw upon it your keep girl blundered in. I hope she will or has learned what it means to steal another’s hopes!”

She spoke with a twist of lip which made me think that she would rather have framed a curse to hurl at Iynne.

“I know Gunnora—she is another phase of your Moon Lady—though she goes in guise of sun warmth. Who is the Hunter who came to my calling?”

“What his name tells you. In a woman lies the right to hold the seed, to nourish it, to watch it grow, to harvest when it is ripe. In a man lies hasty action, the seeking for prey, the hand on sword, the readiness to cut down growth. The Horn-Crowned One hunts—and slays—”

“So he is evil?”

I could read in her face a desire, or so I thought, to agree. But, at length, she answered reluctantly:

“All things must balance in any world. There is light and dark—moon and sun—life and death. For the most part one is neither better nor greater than the other. The mother sows, the man reaps, she gives life, he grants death when the proper hour turns on the everlasting wheel. To her all the harvest rooted in earth, to him dominion over that which runs four-footed, flies two-winged, unless the balance is disturbed and there arise those strong enough to challenge the proper order of things and bring about pure evil. For that is the true nature of evil—it is power which is used to pull apart the smooth weaving of life and the world.”

“So the Hunter is the opposite of your Dians, of Gunnora, yet he has his place.”

I thought of the fact that she assigned death as the task of the Horn-Crowned Man and that I did not like. Even though it was part of the scheme of life. For my blood mostly look upon Death with dread—unless life has beaten them so cruelly that they do indeed welcome him as a friend. That I had summoned Death incarnate to our help made me now uneasy and I longed to throw from me that unlucky cup—perhaps the leaf also—and have nothing more to do with them. But Gunnora had given me the cup, and if she stood for the abundance of life why would she present me with the visible image of death? Unless (the woman of the forest had also life coursing in her, strange though that might be—I could not believe her leaf a promise of ending) unless there had been a dire message in both gifts.

Only never would I admit to Gathea my doubts of the Amber Lady and what she stood for. Since I was bred a fighting man I should not shrink from the idea that I had indeed called upon Death as an aid. In that moment I decided to live for one day only. What came I would face without flinching. If Gunnora had meant that cup as a warning—no, that I would not believe. She had spoken of a future for me, and I would hold fast to her prophecy.

Gathea could not read my thoughts. Now she frowned. Not as if she held me to fault, but rather as she faced a puzzling task.

“The Horn-Crowned One is not the opposite of Dians.” Her words came slowly, her frown grew more forbidding. She plainly spoke against her will. “He is honored with the Maiden, and the Mother—he is in turn, brother, and mate—even son to the Old One—”

“And this Old One?”

“The Wise One, she who finishes life as the Maid begins it, the Dark Moon we cannot see. Yes, the Horn-Crowned One is their equal. Save that he does not answer to the Shrine—he has his own place. And—”

What more she might have said she never added for there came a silver flash through the air. With one leap Gruu was again with us. Behind the cat coursed something else. To me it looked like a streak of black lightning—if one can conceive of lightning as being that, instead of the brightness which we know. It cracked in the air as might the lash of a whip—

The lash of a whip! That was what it was! Out of the countryside rode at a gallop three robed figures and one of them was reeling back, as he came, a black lash, both hands busy with that while his mount, unguided, came forward, its huge fanged jaws agape, its scaled legs in such motion as I thought no living creature might achieve. For these were no steeds of the common world which the three riders bestrode, rather they raced upright on ponderous hind legs, their shorter and thinner forelegs dangling as they came, while their riders balanced on saddles strapped upon those mighty shoulders.

I saw that black lash coiled, ready to come flying out at us. Gruu had turned at bay once he reached Gathea’s side, his fangs showing white and sharp as he roared. I drew steel and thrust myself before the girl, knowing that there was no time for us to flee back into the forest. Death-bringer indeed. I had summoned the Hunter and now I was faced with his price for playing a game I could not understand.

14.

Our attackers made no attempt to close with us, rather they set their monstrous steeds to circle, penning us in. I pivoted to watch, while Gruu crowded back against us both, his head up, snarling, his tail lashing in rage. The lizard things these dark strangers rode hissed, shot out forked tongues as if to impale us. Why the trio did not ride us down straightway I did not understand.

There was no time now for any invocation such as I had used back in the wood. Nor could I even be certain at this moment that the threat faced had not been drawn upon us because I
had
called on a power I had no ability to order.

At length the three of them came to a halt again. Their faces I could not see for they wore hoods after the manner of my own people in winter, and those were drawn so far forward as to conceal their features, though I caught glimpses of pallid skin on sharply pointed chins. One stopped his slavering mount on the right, matching his fellow to the left. While he who had first used the lightning flash was directly before us.

They have said that the best defense is sometimes attack. I knew in that moment without being told that such an act would avail me nothing. Why they did not simply cut us down with those lines of flame I did not understand.

In spite of my attempt to shield her, Gathea had moved out, her shoulder near touching mine, even though she held no sword, just the shortened wand. We waited, the only sound now being the rumble of Gruu’s growl, the hissing now and then of one of the mounts.

I remembered what my companion had earlier said—that iron in itself was a menace to some forms of Dark life. Could it be my sword that they feared, not because of any skill of mine in using it, but because it was wrought of that metal? If so—then perhaps attack might still be possible—

From the very air over us there came a voice, deep as thunder in its way, so startling that it shook my attention away from our captors, making me look up to hunt its source.

Save that there was nothing there.

No! That was not so! There was a troubling of the air, like unto a ripple which a pebble might cause in a pond. If sounds could have visible substance. . . . And those did! There were trails now of something like the thinnest smoke. These did not vanish, rather curled and circled over our heads as the riders had encircled us. While we moved to the ordering of that near invisible ring in the air.

I struggled hard to counteract the compulsion which sent me walking forward, even to use the sword I had in hand. My body was no longer under my control, I was a prisoner within my own flesh and bone. Both Gruu and Gathea must have been the same, for they, too, moved in a stiff, jerky fashion, as if they were being pulled along by invisible ropes.

He who directly faced us turned his scaled mount, heading outward into the open land, with us drawn behind him, paced on either hand by the other riders. Though there was sun above us and the land still looked fair and green beyond, still it was as if we walked prisoner within a shell which was subtly foul.

We crossed a road, but he who led did not turn, kept rather in a straight line over open fields, while always that faint circle over our heads continued to hold.

“What do you know of these?” How deep Gathea’s knowledge of this land might run I had no idea, but any hint which she could give me might be of service—had to be of service! I might be helpless now against some witchery, but there could also come a moment, a chance—

“They are of the Dark,” she answered me shortly. “Their master is a strong one. It is his voice which holds us in spell. Save that they are the enemy, I can tell you no more.”

She had pressed both hands against her breast, the wand resting between her palms and her body as if she would somehow shelter that thing of power. I did not sheathe my sword as I was urged onward. It was better that I go prepared.

Thus we were taken captive, and thus we passed over green and pleasant lands to come into another strip of country. The growth was as luxuriant here, perhaps even more free and full. Still it seemed unpleasant, darksome. There were flowers which looked like avid scarlet mouths ready to fasten greedily upon anyone who passed too close, others stood pale, possessing ugly-looking stamens of green-yellow which caught and held struggling insects, and from which spread a charnel reek. The trees were twisted, with lumps upon their trunks which were like masks of dread, or rather the heads of men and women who had died in agony and despair. While their leaves were few, the green of them was overlaid with ashy gray as if disease had so marked them.

The ground was also gray-dark and with each step we took there arose a stench of mouldy decay. Fungi grew in patches, looking like the sloughing flesh of things long dead but not decently buried.

Things lived here. We could hear rustling in that mass of growth. Now and then eyes peered at us and we caught short, very fleeting glimpses of stunted misshapen creatures which could be animals twisted by some strange magic from their proper forms—animals—or worse!

On this blighted ground stood a wood of trees, so interwoven and matted that I did not see how any living thing could force a way through. Still from the midst of those dark trees arose a tower.

The stone of its fashioning was a dull black, making a smear against the clear sky to outrage nature. It was toward that tower that our captor rode, we being forced along in his wake.

I saw no opening of path but, as the rider approached, that wood, so much of a barrier, thinned, drew back. It, too, could have been of smoke or an illusion. Yet I somehow knew that it would prove very real to any who had no dominion over the power which had set it there.

Thus the rider moved within its boundaries without any halt and so did the three of us march after him, compelled still by what had taken command of our limbs, if not our minds. I glanced from side to side as we went on into that dark and more noisome place. There were great thorns as long as my belt knife on branches. In other places gray flowers with red veining across their petals, like the veins which brought life through a true body, dripped from their hearts sluggish yellow drops I was sure were poisonous. Strange it was, but also there was about it a daunting aura of evil and of vile life. I made myself face my own fear and ride above it. Sight and smell and sound—these had been used, yes—and witchery worked in them. Only inside I still was myself and that I must hold to in this place. I might be helpless of body, but my mind—

Why it was necessary to remember that at this moment, I did not understand. Save that thought was the only way remaining that I could fight, holding out against my captors in so little.

We came into that opening in the wood where the tower itself stood. There was no outer wall, no other building of any true keep—only that upward pointing black pillar. In the side facing us opened a doorway which gaped darkly, no barrier seeming set in it to deny any entrance.

Our mounted guide came to a halt before that doorway, raised the staff from which his lightning lash had shot in a salute. He did not speak. Now even the hissing of his mount and of those other two ceased. It was very quiet in that tower-centered clearing—hot, oppressively so, and the air so filled with a variety of stenches that no lungful one drew seemed to satisfy the body’s craving for air.

No voice spoke at this time, but the rider, as if he had received an order we could not hear, drew his mount to one side. He did not dismount though I saw his cowled head turn as that which controlled us now pushed us on, straight into the waiting, open door.

The dark appeared to reach out for us. I had been in unlit rooms, in the dark of storm-clouded nights. Yet nothing could equal this complete and utter absence of light. Even as we were marched through the arch we were encompassed by it and lost in a thick black.

Lost—I strove to command my hand by even this much—that I could reach out and touch either Gathea’s flesh or the fur of the cat. Only no command I used to signal that action reached my muscles. I might well have had both arms tightly bound to my sides. The dark itself was smothering so that I heard my own gasps for breath, knew within me a stir of panic.

We no longer—or at least
I
—no longer moved. Nothing of the day’s light penetrated here. Nor could I even guess where we now were, for I had a strange sensation that in passing within that doorway I had entered no hall but a vast space of another existence, that there were no walls about me—only long, unseeable distances.

How long did I stand so? I will never know, for in this other place there was no measurement of time. That had been suspended. There was only the here and now, the crushing dark which was forcing, with a slow, sadistic pleasure, the spark of my life into nothingness which would leave me forever caught like an insect in the sticky gum of a fruit tree, trapped and encircled.

My species fear the dark. That is born in us. Still is it also born in most of us that we must fight fear lest we vanish into nothingness. No man of the clans might have faced such an ordeal as this before, still I found, a little to my astonishment, much to my heartening, that I could hold the fear at a distance—for this moment, and the next—counting time by the breaths I drew as shallow gasps. If I could do it for this instant, then I could do it again, and once more, and—

The dark—there was a change in the air ahead—the stenches of the humid hotbed behind us no longer tormented our nostrils. Instead there was a puff of scent, heavy, musky—not entrancing—rather with a sweet hint of the beginning of decay.

That was accompanied by a faint, very faint lighting of the complete dark. A spot of the same smoky gray as had formed to take us prisoner grew slowly there, hanging in the air equal with our heads. Pale it was, in this utter gloom glowing wanly.

It enlarged from a disc into an oval, spreading down-ward and its gray became a sickly white—tinged with yellow—as the flowers we had seen without. Now it resembled the surface of a mirror, though it reflected no part of the three of us. Complete in its growth it remained forming a second doorway, though the force which had compelled us here did not now move us toward it. No, rather that which had its being on the other side approached.

Just as the doorway had grown so did this come slowly—first a shadow on the oval, then deepening in substance into a blurred figure which was like us in form. Only about it there was a hint of ill-shaping—of distortion. The rest of it came with a rush. In the blink of an eye it was there sharp and clear.

I saw a woman, her skin pale, her hair long and dark, loose and flowing nearly to her knees. Her body was as ripe as Gunnora’s and she stood flaunting it in a way which a part of me understood and responded to, just as I had responded earlier to Gunnora’s womanhood.

Only—

Was my mind playing tricks? When I thought of Gunnora in connection with this female there was a blurring for an instant of that perfect body, the eyes which had been green-yellow, like Gruu’s, had held a red spark. I had sensed a small flash of rage.

Still I took a step forward in spite of myself. I was aroused now, as I had been by Gunnora. I was not aware that I could move freely until I found myself sliding my sword back into the sheath; I wanted my hands, my arms free, I wanted—

My swinging hand scraped across my bulging wallet. Again the figure awaiting me—promising me—blurred. The cup—

She might well have read my confusion. Now she held both arms to me, and lustful hunger almost overwhelmed me until I was on the verge of taking those steps between us, reaching out my hands to stroke that satin smooth skin, to caress, to possess. . . . She was all a man could want in a woman and it was me she wooed! She was—

Something moved before me. Gruu flashed into the air in one great leap. I cried out, hurled myself after the cat. The figure in that oval of light blurred again. Somehow, as I swung my weapon—I must save her from the beast if I could—I brushed against the wallet. Brushed, no, my hand clung to the leather above the bulge of the cup, fastened there, in spite of my violent efforts to free it. At the same moment I did not see the dark lady savaged by the beast as I had thought. Rather Gruu rolled with another cat, one which matched him. I heard him cry out and saw him bowl over the newcomer. There was no woman, only the two cats.

Then Gruu and the other were gone, the woman stood there again, her enchantment reaching once more for me. Only there was a wrongness in her image. It strove to fit itself into the pattern it had made earlier, yet it continually flowed beyond the bounds here and there. So at length I knew—this was an illusion. What awaited me there was no woman but something which used witchery to bring its prey peacefully into its hold.

I pressed my hand harder against the wallet. If there was any power radiating out of that I needed it now! The Horn-Crowned One! Gunnora! I grasped at fragments of memory, sought to weave those into a shield.

There was a woman—there was swirling substance—there was a woman—back and forth the struggle of the Dark One who ruled this nest of evil went. Perhaps she—or it—was not aware at first of what small defense I had. The lure was still strong, my body pulled me forward, the lustful heat in me arose high and higher. I fought both myself and that illusion, tearing myself apart with a fear that I would never be able to find words for.

Once I was on my knees, crawling like the animal which more than half of me had become, toward that light and her who had managed to wholly materialize there for a longer period. Only there was no woman there—that I held to, as a dying man holds to the last spark of life. For I truly believe that had I been conquered by my body then, I would have been dead after a fashion which is too evil to think upon!

The Horn-Crowned! Kurnous—Kurnous—! I had no wine to summon him; I had nothing but a part of me and memory. To summon Gunnora in my thoughts—no! Hastily I walled that away. Gunnora, herself, had a small part of this kind of magic. To think of her would open the door again. The Hunter—the Killer—the slayer—

That figure in the light changed. No woman postured and beckoned there now. Instead there was a man, tall, well favored, and wearing on his head a crown of interlaced antlers. He had the calm, proud face of a great and well beloved lord, and he held out his hand to welcome me. Me, the kinless, the clanless. Never alone again. I need only take that hand and I would not be just liegeman, but sword brother, close kin! This was not Garn, but one infinitely above him, a lord one would follow eagerly on great quests, joining to rid the land of the shadow which lay upon it, to serve in glory! This was he I had called upon in ignorance, now come to me in all his—