Horn Crown (Witch World: High Hallack Series) (15 page)

Still, with my eyes fastened on him, I fumbled with the lashings of my wallet, to take that cup forth—prove that I was one pledged to him! This was how he had saved me again from the prowlers in the dark. This was—

I had the wallet open. My fingers reached in and touched the cup, my forefinger slipping into the bowl.

The man wavered. No! Not to go! I could prove—I could—

Once more he wavered. Then I saw her—that girl—she was pushing ahead of me. Her hands were up, out, she was reaching. . . .

There was no man, no Horn-Crowned warrior. There was a woman, not she who had nearly drawn me into her net, no, this was a girl, slender, lithe, her body partly covered by a moon-silver tunic which fastened on one shoulder and came to mid thigh. On her head she wore the crescent of the new moon. She was gone. The man began once more to form.

I had pulled loose the cup, held it beneath my chin, awkwardly. What ancient wisdom had come out of the past to make me aware that this was what I must do? There was nothing in that cup, still there came to my nostrils from its interior a sharp, clean scent—the leaves of certain trees, under the morning sun, the sharpness of herbs crushed beneath foot.

It was as if a veil had been swept away and I really
saw!

Cloud bubbled and frothed within the oval, veiling and then revealing the form of Gruu, who lay on his side unmoving. There were streaks of red in that murk, darker shadows, as if small things wavered back and forth through it. Still Gathea moved toward it, her hands outheld. She had already passed me. However, that hold upon us which had kept us from any movement was broken now. Still cradling the cup close to me with one hand, I threw myself forward and flung out my other hand across her path when she came close to that coiling matter.

Her face was rapt, her eyes all for the frothing within the oval. At first she simply pushed against my hold as if she did not expect or know what it might be. I knew that thus, one-armed, I could not hold her back. I dropped my arm, laced fingers of my left hand instead in her belt, jerked backward myself, so brought her with me, even as a tendril of the mist reached for her.

She tripped and fell and I went with her, my body rolling over her as she began a frenzied struggle for freedom. I do not think she even knew me for who I was, but rather only as a barrier between her and what she must have. With fist, tooth and nail, she fought me, and I could but use my strength to pin her to the ground, attempt to dodge those raking nails. For I knew that the cup was my salvation and only while I held it to me, and breathed in that strange scent which still arose from it, would my head remain clear and that weaver of illusions could not take me to its self.

Somehow I held, and then hoping that it would serve her as it had me, and because I felt a little safer with my back to that oval of light, I forced the cup itself closer to her face where her head turned from side to side and she snapped her teeth as if seeking to tear my arm, as Gruu himself might do in a frenzy.

We were still caught in that struggle when—

My grip on Gathea became desperate, my hold on the cup even more. We no longer lay on the pavement of that place of darkness. There was cold so sharp that I believe no living thing could have stood it for more than the instant. Then we were in light again, a red light which leaped and flamed. As the cold had struck at us, so now did heat lick out to sear our bodies.

Gathea lay still, her eyes closed. But I could feel the quick rise and fall of her breast under gasping breaths. I raised myself to my knees and looked around. The heat was so intense it seemed that every breath I drew must black and char my lungs. There was rock under us—that, too, blistering hot, so I hastened to pull Gathea up from it, hold her against me lest she burn. I smelled singeing of hair and as I turned my head I saw Gruu, still stretched motionless nearby.

We were surrounded by a wall of flame which burned red and yellow. Now and then, as if blown by a breeze we could not ourselves feel, it sent long tongues reaching for us. The fire was bright, its wall held no breaks, so I could not see what lay beyond it. All I could think now was that our defiance had angered the tower presence so that it had abruptly banished us through some mastery of power into this prison which was like to complete the matter by reducing us swiftly to fire-blackened bones.

“Dains!” Gathea opened her eyes. They still did not focus upon me, but searched beyond. I was sure she sought whatever vision the tower presence had formed for her beguiling. She frowned as apparently true sight returned. Then she looked at me with an anger that would send me hurtling into that blazing wall if she could aim it rightly. “Dains—she was there! She called me—at last!”

She raised both hands and fended me off so sharply that I was indeed pushed too near the fire, had to jump away and to my feet. The cup I kept held of with a fierce grip.

“It was all an illusion,” I retorted. She had claimed to know so much of sorcery, why had she not seen that for herself when Gruu had been drawn, when twice I had faced what was intended to bind me also to the dark?

“What did you see?” I continued, fronting her and speaking with the heat which was not of any flame wall, but arose out of my own spirit. “Gruu went to another cat. I saw first a woman—” I was not going to go into detail there—“and then the Horn-Crowned One. You—did you see your goddess—your Moon Daughter?”

I think that Gathea had no mind to listen to me at first, that she was still so bemused over the illusion that she had only anger for me and used it to drown out my voice. She raised her hand, balled into a fist, as if she would beat me, and then as she took a step, she snagged her boot on Gruu’s limp body and fell forward, sprawling over the cat.

“Gruu!” Her cry was loud. As she lifted herself, she gathered the cat’s head into her hands, stared into his half-closed eyes. I wondered if he had died, his life sucked out by whatever lure that thing had set for him. “Gruu!” She was smoothing the fur about his throat. Then her eyes wide, and with all the bemusement gone from them, she looked up at me.

“He is—no!” She added, her fingers dug deep into the fur at his throat. “He is not dead! You—” Still cradling the cat’s head against her breast she gazed at me again.

“You saw Gruu—what happened to him?”

That she had not seen the cat leap into that enticement should not have surprised me. I had already reckoned that the presence had set for each of us the most suitable temptation. Gruu had gone to another cat, doubtless a female of his own species. I had fronted that which had beckoned to me first for the body, as if my senses were like Gruu’s—and then touched on a more subtle line.

“He was drawn to that thing by sight of another cat, a female!”

“Dains—Dains was there!” The girl shook her head as if still she could not rid herself of that dream. “I had found the shrine—I was—” Then she stopped, though her hands still caressed the head of the cat. “You did not see her. You saw others—” Gathea looked at the flames now which sent waves of heat against my back, not at me.

“One who deals in false illusions.” She shivered as if her own fear chilled her enough to banish those flames. “And one of the Dark! But why—? And Gruu—” She looked down at the quiet head pressed against her.

“How did we get here?” she asked after a long moment, her voice steady now as if she had accepted what had happened as fact and then put it behind her, ready to face what might come.

I told her—of the cup and how the scent from it had banished all illusions for me, that I had prevented her going into the light and then we had been transported to this place. She listened. I believed she not only understood what I said, but was able to build upon it a little from her own strange knowledge.

“Three of us,” she said slowly. “It had to control three of us at the same time. That spell which its liegemen brought to us—yes, that could be held. For it was set to control our bodies together, and the wills of the three riders would help feed it. But when we fronted it alone, that control no longer worked. Poor Gruu, wise as he is he would have no understanding of a spell of illusion, therefore he was first trapped. And you—you were guarded in a way it did not suspect.”

“You did not see what it fashioned for me?” I asked as casually as I could. Why had she stood so silent and aloof while all that had been pictured for me? Or had her vision of Dains been produced at the same time as mine?

“I saw a shrine—a Moon Shrine—with the light full on the altar. I waited, for I knew that
she
would come—that that was the place I have searched for. No, I did not see what was made for you. Only, that spinner of vision could not hold two illusions steady, one for each of us. When you defeated its aims with your cup, then it wrought Dains—as I waited for her. It could not hold for the three of us at one time. Your cup power shook it, and you were freed, enough to free me—

“But,” she gave a sweeping glance which took in the flame wall, “where did it banish us when we would not yield?”

“Into some strong evil of its own,” I returned. “I do not know where anymore than I know how. If there is any way to win out of here we had better seek it before we are dried and cooked and so barred from all hunting entirely.”

Gathea laid her cheek against the cat’s head. “I no longer have the wand,” she said. “My learning is nothing here. Nor can we hope to reach the Light if we are deep in the realm of the Great Dark, for there is no passage between the worlds of the two. They meet at boundaries and there they struggle one with the other. Only I think that here we are well past that debatable land and no moon magic will come to my calling.”

I could not believe that she was resigned to whatever fate awaited her. I had learned, I was sure, that she would not give up, no matter how high the odds against us. That we had defeated in part something which seemed to have power far beyond my imagining at least heartened me.

Gathea was busy now, loosening the latching of her wallet. She brought out a packet of dried leaves. Sorting out seven of them she put them into her mouth and began chewing quickly and thoroughly.

“What—?” I began a question.

She shook her head and pointed to her mouth, signalling that she could not speak. Then her hand went once more to Gruu’s head and I realized that what she strove to do was for the sake of the cat.

15.

Gathea took a pat of paste from her mouth, and pressing the cat’s eyelids down gently, she spread the mixture across the closed eyes. When she had finished she touched fingertips of both hands to Gruu’s skull between the ears. The girl appeared to take no note of the flame wall about us. The breath of that was, I believed, growing stronger. I strove to win some measure of sight through the play of the red tongues, but they seemed to stretch solidly.

Flame has been man’s tool for years uncounted, but it is also his bane. Now I felt that that space about us might at any moment narrow to consume us all. While Gathea sat supporting the head of the cat, her eyes also closed, using some inner power of her own to summon back whatever life essence our enemy of the tower had forced from its victim.

Gruu moved a paw, unsheathed claws. A mewing such as might issue from a bewildered kitten came from his mouth, which hung open to display his formidable fangs. Gathea caressed the fur behind his ears, rubbed along the line of his jaw.

“It is well. He is waking.”

“To what?” I retorted. “If he escaped this,” I waved toward the flame, “through illusion, why summon him back?”

My mouth was dry; I longed for a long pull at the water bottle hooked to my belt, except that I had no mind to waste the small store of liquid it contained. Sweat plastered my hair to my skull, ran in trickles within my clothing, making both linen and quilted jerkin cling tightly to my skin.

“Illusion,” Gathea repeated. She still soothed the cat. “It would seem that the weapon of this Power lies therein. And—”

She looked beyond me to the play of the flame wall. There was no need to put into words what thought had come into her mind.

“Perhaps that is an illusion,” I conceded. “Yet it is tight woven and I think we cannot break it—”

“As above, so below—” she said then, and the meaning of her words I did not understand.

“Illusion,” she continued, “means the drawing of thought from an enemy’s, or victim’s mind, building upon it. Then one summons from another plane the substance of that which is most feared—or desired—and the subject transposes it into life himself.”

“You mean, we feed this flame?”

“As long as we believe we see it, then our belief feeds it.” She nodded.

“And if you are not right, if we have indeed been dropped into a real place of fire?”

“Even reality can answer to Power. What can be summoned can also be dismissed. Have you not already proven that?”

I saw the trickle of sweat down her own cheek. Then Gruu’s head raised from her knee; the smears of dried herb paste cracked and fell away as his eyes opened; his gaze centered on her face. He made a sound between purr and growl.

Yes, I could accept the changes I had witnessed for myself as well-woven illusion—but this was something else again. For I was sure if I put out a hand those flames would sear my flesh to the bone.

My companion closed her eyes again and the great cat seemed content to stay where he was, as if he drowsed. In the red light I saw movement of her lips, though now no words were spoken aloud.

This playing with minds! No wonder my clansmen had fought shy of the ways of the Wise Women, much as they had depended upon the fruits of such delving into the unknown. I wanted no more at that moment than an opponent I could see, one with a sword in his fist, ready to do battle in a way which was open and of my own world.

I was not even sure that where we were now pent
was
in the world I knew at all. Certainly we had been snatched here in a way that suggested travel through a space not meant for those of my species. Even if we conquered the flames by whatever sorcery Gathea could summon—what then? If we were not in our own place—or time?

She opened her eyes to stare straight at me. “You hinder!” she accused. “You withhold unbelief! Oh!” She made a fist with one hand and pounded it against the hot rock of the floor on which she had hunkered as if that were spring cooled. “If I but had one who was fitted to this task! You—you fight me with your belief in the wrong things!”

Her emotion passed into the cat. He lifted his heavy head well up for the first time to snarl at me.

I was stung by her words. She owed me a little. I had kept her from answering to the false Dians, had I not? Once more I felt for the cup and raised it, hoping that I could again sniff that cool rich air which had served and saved me. There was nothing there now. Gathea looked at what I held and her eyes narrowed. There came a faint change in her expression; she might have been looking at some object she could put to better usage.

“If you only knew more—”

“Tell me, then!” To my sight those flames which sprouted from the fire wall were moving closer.

Gathea raised her hand to push back the hair plastered against her forehead.

“What you ask is impossible. You cannot compress years of learning into a few words here and now!”

Then she gave a jerk as a flame tongue nearly licked her hand and I saw the shadow of fear arise in her eyes.

“We may not even have time for a few words,” I pointed out grimly.

“Those who have the Power,” she answered hastily, “are said to be able to transfer objects from one plane of existence to the next. They look into the thing and see its innermost self. For each thing, born or made, was once only a thought, therefore it remains partly a thought. That thought being the substance we on the plane can see, does exit elsewhere in another form. A mistress of the Mysteries can seek out such a thought, reduce the object once more to its beginnings. This is what we are taught—”

“You have seen it done?”

Slowly Gathea shook her head. “It would take one who knew much to see the innermost heart of a thing and so use it.”

“But you have said that if I knew more,” I persisted, “you could help us. What should I know?”

She shook her head again slowly. “We do not know the innermost being of the force that sought to entrap us. And—”

“This—” I pointed to the flames again flaring inward at us. I was
sure
that the circling walls were coming closer—”is fire. Fire is born of fuel—wood—some liquids which burn fast if a striker spark ignites them. What is then the innermost part of fire—that which it feeds upon?”

In this fire I could see no sign of either wood or a trough for the oil we used for long-lamps.

“That which it feeds upon—” Gathea repeated thoughtfully after me. Then an expression of excitement began to grow on her thin face. “Yes, it could be that the food for the fire exists elsewhere.”

A statement which did not seem helpful to me, but which appeared to awaken new life and purpose in her.

“Come.” She reached upward, holding out her hand to me. “The cup—have you a measure of water to pour into that?”

“A very little.”

“It must do. I cannot do this thing, for the cup is yours. Only you can evoke the power it exerts. Pour water into it—hold it steady. Then link hand with me. Perhaps Gruu also can give us of his strength, since his own bespelling is broken. Do this—it may be our only chance! For my power cannot rise alone.”

I allowed a trickle of water to moisten the bottom of the cup, hardly enough to be seen. Holding it in a grip tight enough to cramp my fingers, I sat on my heels, my left hand firm clasped in hers.

“Now, close your eyes. There is a fire, it is burning—from wood—just as it would on a keep hearth. There is water, a spring of water and it is rising, rising.
See
this! You must
see
it!”

There was urgency, force in her words. Yet when I closed my eyes, my mind rebelled, I could not build such a picture. When I tried it was a pale thing which winked out of mind as the lack in me allowed it to vanish.

Somewhere a voice was to be heard—but far off, sounding in such need that I strained to hear better. No, it was the fire picture not the voice—not anything but a fire burning in the pocket of a forest clearing. A fire, laid on wood as might be in any hunter’s camp—a fire!

Something built within me, a strength of will which I had never known I possessed. It was as if the force of the water and the fire had themselves transformed their substance, and all the energy which both held now filled
me.
My weak and fluttering picture of the fire firmed, I could hold it longer. There were the rocks of a basin into which the water of a spring flowed. Fire and water—ancient enemies!

That fire, that basin of water, became the world. Nothing lay beyond them, no action mattered save that I hold them in mind’s eye as steady and clear as I could. Fire— and water!

Into me continued to flow that strength which made clear my sight, which now allowed me not only to visualize the fire, the stream from the basin, but enabled me to use that stream, to draw the water higher and higher in the basin. No, it was a full well of water, very deep. The water which filled it to the brim overflowed—toward the fire!

The fire flared, was gone. I held firmly to my thought-picture. It
was
there! And once more it was. The water had fallen away as I had concentrated on the fire. No, up water, up—over—down—I saw the rise of it like a wide sea wave, issuing forth from the mouth of the well, splashing, flowing heavier. Again, when my picture wavered, there was a renewal of the other strength so that I could catch and hold.

Down poured the water, it lapped at the wood, then engulfed it. The flames sputtered, fled to far ends of the brands which were its food; the water advanced upon those also. There was a last flicker of my picture as if the fire I watched knew its force was failing. Only
I
held, and the water flowed on in full flood. There were no flames left. I released the flood. It was gone. But had it, for a moment, mirrored a head crowned with horns? I could not be sure. I opened my eyes. The head was there, shining on the side of my cup. For the rest it was dark, we were no longer surrounded by the blistering heat of that wall.

I blinked and blinked again. The only source of light came from the dim glow of the head on the goblet, and that was slowly fading. If there had not been the firm stone under me I would have thought we had been whirled out of life itself. As the interior of the tower had been so was this blackness thick enough to swallow one, pressing against the body with a stifling hold. I heard a sigh from the dark and knew it came from Gathea.

“It—it worked!” I found my tongue. “The fire is gone. But we are not yet back—or is this still the tower?”

Somehow I did not believe that. There was an otherness which was like the Dark, pressing in. Now that we had lost the fire which had held my mind, I realized that one step could not mean a journey. Out of the thick black came Gathea’s voice to awaken my unease yet further.

“We are still trapped,” she said. “This is not of our time or place. . . . And—”

What she might have added I will never know for at that moment the darkness changed. There was no oval of light piercing it—rather we were being sucked, pulled through it at such a speed as to nearly tear my breath from me, so I gasped and fought to fill my lungs. My hold on Gathea’s hand was vise tight. At that instant I feared more than anything that we be separated, each whirled to a different fate.

My body seemed weightless, as fragile as a leaf caught up by the wind’s blast. I even closed my eyes, for the pressure of the dark through which we were drawn seemed painful against them, as if it would strike me permanently blind. We were drawn and that which drew us gathered strength, lapping us as lightly about as if we were encased in a net of ropes which drew tighter and tighter across and around our bodies.

Then—that feeling of rushing through the air vanished. We hung, still prisoners in the dark, for I ventured to open my eyes to see nothing. There was a purpose; I could sense it. Within me something marveled at how quickly I was able to sense the unknown. I had no teaching, as Gathea had pointed out. Then what had awakened me to this knowledge of things-which-were-not and the patterns wrought by Power?

We hung, as I say, helpless, waiting the need—or the pleasure—of a pressure so beyond my comprehension that I could not begin to guess at its nature. All that linked me to the real was my hand interlocked with Gathea’s. I wanted to ask questions, my words were smothered before they reached my lips by the heavy pressure of the black upon my chest and throat.

I think that I was not far then from retreating out of myself, seeking even death as a shelter, if one’s will can carry so far as that. The faint light which had outlined the face on the cup had vanished, perhaps blown from us during that wild journey. I could still feel it, know that, like Gathea’s hand, it was locked to me for good or ill.

There was another wrenching, we were on the move again. Once more I experienced that icy cold, that sensation of blasting through some unbelievable barrier. Now there was light—dim—gray—yet still enough to cut through the curtain, make me blink. It was below, as if we were aloft in the sky, but it grew larger, brighter, and we were falling toward it being wafted downward, upheld by will—whose will and why?

There was a shock, wrenching my body with such force that I was torn loose from Gathea. That power which imprisoned me carried me away at another angle. Now I might have looked through the eyes of a bird or some winged thing which held itself aloft by swiftly beating wings.

Below stood a circle of stone, silver bright, for there were moon’s rays across it. In the center was a block of shining white, so vividly aglow in this light that I would have hidden my eyes from its glare had I had the ability to raise my hands. Again no part of my body would obey my will. On the stone lay someone, a woman. Her hair was outspread behind her head, flowing back over the edge of the stone. She wore no clothing and at first I thought that she might be dead, for I could determine no sign of life in that quiet shape.

Now I saw that there were four pillars set at the four corners of the pavement, each bearing a moon sign—even as there had been in the shrine among the dale hills. Under each of these wavered a thin form which seemed unstable, wraithlike, weaving in and out of human outline. They thickened, became more stable the closer I was borne to their stations.